Olivia Grace
Articles by Olivia Grace
Blizzard on raid design evolution
Lead Game Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has written a very extensive blog on the evolution of raid design, the first installment of which went live this morning. In this first part, Watcher covers the history of raiding, from the launch of the game in 2004 all the way through to the end of Icecrown Citadel in 2010. For many, these were the glory days of raiding and World of Warcraft alike, well, if you believe the forums at least. Watcher talks about the developers' aims to make raiding more accessible, and to improve the gameplay of groups by reducing them in size -- one healer in a group of fifteen healers can't have as big an impact as one healer in a group of five or two. He also discusses the introduction of varying difficulties in raiding, and looks back over all the patches of some of the game's greatest raids. Hit the break for the full post.
WowCraft episode 3: Profession Obsession
Carbot Animations, the creator of the StarCrafts series of cartoons, as well as the Heroes of the Storm trailers, has released the latest episode of his World of Warcraft series, WowCraft. After the first episode dealing with character creation, and the second one handling the joke about toothless dogs that's almost as old as the game itself, this one is diving into professions, and the perils of gathering herbs around higher level characters. While the episode doesn't detail the corpse camping and judicious use of the /sit command that would likely have taken place in reality, the juxtaposition of the angry orc and warlock and their delightful baskets of pretty flowers is entertaining, and the Imp really steals the show for me! I liked the episode, and am hoping the series will develop into something really fun, just like Starcrafts.
Further MMR adjustments for Rated Battlegrounds
You may recall that, a little while back, WoW Insider posted about the changes being made to MMR tolerance in order to repair the ladders after a bug. It seems, unfortunately, that these changes did not go far enough to rectify the issues for players of Rated Battlegrounds. It makes sense that, for this far less played discipline, MMR issues have not self-corrected. As a result of this, matches played are still resulting in 0 point rating gains with wins, which is disheartening at best. So Blizzard has come up with a simple solution that might have been a faster and more popular fix to the initial issue -- increase everyone's rating to get it closer to their current MMR. If these terms are confusing, I made a fair attempt at explaining them in the last post. This, coupled with the initial increased tolerance in MMR to rating parity, should result in everyone gaining points for wins. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
New WoW Source: PvP and Class Changes
WoW Source has made a return, with Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas, and Lead Class Designer Kris Zierhut. They're talking PvP and Class Design. Diminishing Returns categories have been cut from thirteen to five. Fear's PvP duration has been reduced from eight seconds to five. CC needs reduction, but without it the game would be boring. In WoD every PvP item will have two item levels, e.g. 550 for PvE and 590 for PvP. This will be effective in the world too. We saw an early map and description of Ashran -- looks like a League of Legends style ARAM-esque back-and-forth with other activities around the main central run. There was some more information on Skirmishes, they may drop Conquest gear, and will drop bags containing Honor, Honor gear, or gold. Tanking will not go back to being about Threat Button Bloat has focused on redundant or duplicative abilities Sometimes cutting or simplifying buttons has made class flavor/fantasy better. They do want to give players new things where appropriate, but they need to free up some space to do so. The devs do their best to avoid different spell behaviors in PvP. The devs endeavor to make classes fun to play without affecting their numbers. The devs are listening to feedback and nothing is final. You can view the video above or on Battle.net.
Breakfast Topic: What would you do in WoW if you were immortal for a day
Just for one day, in WoW, you can't die. You can't be killed by anything. Not by magic, not by bosses, not by falling, not by anything at all. So what do you do? Now, you have to remember that, on this day, everyone else is immortal too. PvP is right out, because there would just be really crazy long bouts of PvP where nobody ever died. I mean, that might actually be a ton of fun, who knows? So what do you do? I strongly suspect a lot of you are going to say Siege of Orgrimmar progression, but that's a little dull. Challenge Modes would be made easier for sure, so maybe those too, especially given that your tanks could pull as much as they liked with no risk of death. I mean, so could your DPS, they wouldn't be in any danger either. But you'd still have to kill the mobs in time to get the medals, so it might be a little more entertaining than slowly whittling Heroic Garrosh down to 0 health. Personally, I'd go exploring. No fatigue risk means unlimited flight range, and something about seeing the edge of the world appeals to me. And maybe I'd find the mythical GM Island... What would you do?
Warlords of Draenor: Wowhead digs up Garrison models and more
As a new alpha build hit servers last night, the datamining began again. Wowhead has already turned up a plethora of new models, weapons and more, and has now turned to one of the most hotly anticipated features of Warlords of Draenor, Garrisons. They've put together a detailed list of 70 buildings, along with what exactly all of them do, and what size plot they go on. There's a lot of interesting information one can glean from this data, such as how follower gearing might work and what mission rewards might be, as well as how you get various vendors into your Garrison. Of course, this is datamining, so shouldn't be taken as 100% fact, but it's still really interesting stuff. There's also information showing off small images of the Garrison buildings, and a map. It seems like these may be UI elements that allow you to design your Garrison and set up its layout, but of course, this is just inference from the data that's presented. There is, however, even more information on each building type, that ties in with the aforementioned list. We're slowly getting an idea of what the Garrison progression might look like.
Warlords, models, and performance
We all know that Warlords of Draenor is bringing a much-desired and long-awaited feature in new character models, and understandably, there's concern about the impact on PC performance. WoW Insider reported on EU Community Manager Taepsilum's post on the forums, which has since been updated to indicate that there is no requirement to run the game on Low settings to use the old models. Instead, the toggle which has been seen in the Alpha is set to remain. Taepsilum's assertions that you won't need a new computer are, perhaps, bold. Gamespot has picked up on them for an article, and asserts that you "probably" won't need a new machine. This is accurate, with the key word being "probably". If you're currently only able to run the game at 8FPS on Low settings, it's pretty likely that Warlords of Draenor will push your system over the edge. Let's be realistic here. World of Warcraft has pretty amazing performance on older machines. A little while ago I asked on Twitter about players running it on low-spec systems, and it will let you run the game on some pretty archaic specs. Performance is about what you can do with the game, and is subjective. I'm happy with the graphical quality I get out of WoW on my machine, but to friends with higher level systems, it looks awful.
Warlords of Draenor: Flight path reassurance
Community Manager Bashiok has posted on the official forums in an attempt to calm players' fears about the enforced dependence on flight-paths that will come with Warlords of Draenor. Bashiok We're going to be making sure flight paths and other forms of travel are quick and efficient, with a goal of getting you to the places you want to go. Flight paths in the past have always been "the scenic route", lazily listing from side to side and around waterfalls to the intended oohs-and-aahs of the transportee. The flight paths in Draenor are not going to be loop-de-loop sightseeing tours, and we're going to be looking to our beta testers to let us know if any are less than tip-top. source The key to his point here is the directness. Especially in Mists, flight paths were gratuitously looping and indirect. The Horde shrine from the PvP vendor, for example, does a series of completely arbitrary tours around the shrine before actually landing. Hopefully this will not be the case in Warlords.
PAX Beta keys temporarily allowed Warlords of Draenor access
Matthew Rossi posted on Friday about Blizzard's handing out Beta keys to people who played Warlords of Draenor at PAX East. Those keys were supposed to be for a later phase of the beta, but, as Bashiok elucidates on the official forums, a few of them actually worked during the PAX weekend itself. This meant that a few of the players who took their key home and applied it to their account were able to access and play the beta well in advance of when the keys should have allowed them to. Blizzard has taken steps to revoke those players' access, but it would explain some of the streams seen on Twitch over the weekend. Where players have legitimately accessed Warlords with PAX keys, no action appears to have been taken. However, it seems that the Twitch warning is still in place for anyone streaming the alpha outside the select few who had accessed it legitimately with keys. Those players no longer have access to the beta, and will need to re-redeem the same keys again at a later stage. No comment has been made by Blizzard so far about keys appearing on Ebay, but based on previous betas, they will be taken down as soon as they can be. Hit the break for Bashiok's full post.
Heroes of the Storm: First account wipe this Tuesday
The first account wipe for the alpha of Heroes of the Storm is coming this Tuesday, April 15. Players in the Alpha have received an email, which you can see after the break. It's working a little differently to the usual wipes, so let's lay out what you're losing and what you're keeping. All purchases made with real money will be unaffected. This does not mean future wipes will be the same. Your account will be reset to level 1 All experience points, all quest progress and leveling progress will be reset All in-game gold you've earned, and purchases you've made with that gold, will be reset. You will also receive some rewards for your hard work, to compensate you for what you're losing: Starting after the wipe on Tuesday, April 15, all players will gain access to every single hero until Thursday, April 17 at 3:00 p.m. PDT. You'll get in-game gold as a reward based on your leveling progress: Levels 1 – 19: 10,000 Gold Levels 20 – 39: 30,000 Gold Level 40: 30,000 Gold and an exclusive Heroes of the Storm lanyard Hit the break for the full email I received.
Four new Heroes revealed at PAX East
Heroes of the Storm's PAX East panel has unveiled four new heroes, from left to right, Brightwing, Zagara, Li li and Murky. There's already a trailer for Brightwing, and the Heroes of the Storm official post supplies more information on the new heroes. While it's surprising that iconic characters which appear on the main screen of the game, such as Chen Stormstout, are not yet in the game, while these other heroes are. Nonetheless, they're really exciting additions, as the official post elucidates their roles in the game we can really see how interesting and varied the hero roles and abilities are thanks to the different playstyle. Hit the break for their abilities and information.
The Heartbleed bug and its effect (or lack thereof) on Battle.net
The Heartbleed bug, as it's been dubbed, is certainly hot news lately, with various sites being impacted and password reset advice abounding. But Blizzard has some good news: Battle.net was unaffected. However, the advice is to change your password if you used the same one elsewhere. This is especially true if you're using the same email and password combination as you use for your Battle.net account on other sites. A big way that players get hacked, especially those without authenticators, is that their guild forums get hacked, or their email gets hacked, or their Facebook. Once those username and password combinations are known, it's possible for hackers to try them in various different places, one of which might be your Battle.net account. So be careful, mix up your passwords, and in light of these recent security issues, consider changing your passwords. It's also a good idea, again as a general rule, to get into the habit of changing your passwords fairly regularly, for everything. So now might be a great time to start, even though Battle.net is unaffected by the recent issues. Hit the break for Blizzard's full post.
Garrosh Heirlooms have Bad Luck Protection
Garrosh has been killed captured many times over, thanks in part to the heirlooms that he drops. Everyone wants one, and players are frustrated at what is seen as a very low drop rate. I am among those players, so Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas' tweets are music to my ears: @tomrom83 Garrosh heirlooms have "bad luck protection" - you should start to see more and more each week as you get more kills. - Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 10, 2014 @tomrom83 Yeah, separate items, so separate chances. You wouldn't want getting a Flex heirloom to hurt your Normal chance. Keep at it. Soon! - Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 10, 2014 This is great news, and indeed, on my tenth kill of Garrosh on my shaman, my 14th kill across all characters on that account, my bad luck was finally protected, and I got my first heirloom. The message to keep at it is a good one, and maybe in time, as the expansion wears on, the game's tolerance for bad luck will be adjusted. Or people will have killed him so many times that they're drowning in heirlooms. I'd love to know a little more about how bad luck protection works, too. How unlucky do you have to be, does getting one drop completely reset its count no matter how long that drop took to happen? How's your luck? For clarity, these heirlooms only drop from Flex and above.
Warlords of Draenor: New mount and NPC models discovered
AdriaCraft are at it again, digging through the data and powering up the Model Viewer to bring us images of some of the new NPC and mount models in Warlords of Draenor's Alpha. There's a couple of mounts like the Raven Lord that we've seen already, but a few that are new, like the Clefthoof, who also comes in various different colors. There's also a Giant Boar mount, also in red, and a Draenor Wolf, who also comes in three other color schemes. Apart from the mounts, there are various NPC models apart from Thrall, some of which have surfaced already, some of which haven't. Velen, Grommash, Durotan and Blackhand are all there. There's several varieties of Iron Horde machinery that have been found, as well as some pale orcs, new Talbuks and Sporebats which we heard about following the recent press event, and Elekk, Goren and Hippos. All of these come in a variety of colors, so do check out the original post for more info. But my favorite new model by far is the Draenor Ancient. Like all the models, he's in a variety of colors, but look at his grumpy face! What has you excited from this recent datamine?
Warlords of Draenor Beta Installer appears on Battle.net
WoW Insider was alerted to the presence of this installer on battle.net. It's apparently there for every account, even starter editions with no World of Warcraft license. Its presence should not, therefore, be taken as any indication of alpha invitations being sent out or access granted. Nonetheless, the installer is downloadable, and runs, as can be seen below. It appears to be a 24.48GB download, so the CASC file system's smaller size will likely not be seen at the install stage. This definitely is not a mis-labelled PTR, either, as it doesn't replace them on the game list in the launcher, and launching it from the desktop app gets you to a set of servers that just don't seem to work, so it looks like access is not set up just yet. Closing that window will put you back to the Warlords of Draenor alpha-style Dark Portal login screen. There is not access to the game at this point. [Thanks for the tip, @Spazzo!]
Blizzard registers "Overwatch" trademark?
We've heard from various recent news sources that Blizzard has registered a new trademark. Of course, we recognize the scepticism, following last years incidents with The Dark Below and the associated silliness, but let's take a cautious look at this one. The trademark is "Overwatch", a term usually used to denote small, supporting military units. Blizzard hired Left 4 Dead developer Michael Booth last year, and it seems like he is directing a small project, with a similar team size to Hearthstone, that isn't Titan. There have been various job listings for positions with this new project, some of which talk about multiplayer experiences and maps. Now this might all be nonsense, but perhaps it points to a new military-styled game coming out of Irvine. There has long been speculation that Blizzard's next franchise would be a shooter, but with Titan ostensibly on the shelf for now, could this new small team production be that game? We're understandably cautious in our presentation of this information, but it's certainly interesting.
Interview: Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig talks Warlords of Draenor
I was lucky enough to head over to Blizzard Campus this week to talk to Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig. Chadd is a huge part of the class design team, key to a lot of the changes we saw in the recent Warlords of Draenor patch notes, which is just what we discussed. We were also joined by Senior Community Representatives Zarhym and Lore. You can also find a much-abbreviated summary on Wowhead. Olivia: First up, is there anything you really wanted to clarify and get out there? Celestalon: I've tweeted about pretty much everything. This was the first version of the patch notes, there have been more changes since then, those patch notes are about a week old or so? Zarhym: Yeah it's like, tons of changes. [Rygarius] said he had a huge list of changes. Celestalon: There's another five thousand words that aren't up there yet, which [Rygarius] is working on now. There have been different amounts of patch notes released for different classes. Paladins have been complaining that they haven't got enough, rogues have been really happy that not much has changed. Is it safe to assume there's more to come? This is just step one? There's definitely more coming. Like, for example, paladins had relatively few patch notes, and a lot of that is we were relatively happy with how things played out, at least for ret and prot, with the exception of a few things we can solve with tuning – changing numbers. So a lot of what you see in the patch notes now is what we call design changes, so the mechanics that we want to change so we can get to some design that we like.
Blizzard clarifies Challenge Mode Realm Best titles [Updated]
Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has taken to the official forums to provide more clarity on the removal of Realm Best Challenge mode titles. As ever, you can read the full post after the break, but in summary, if you're really unhappy about the removal of the titles, it's not good news. Watcher explains the various options they considered, giving a title to everyone who'd ever been realm first, which was dismissed as too problematic for the next season. He also explains how leaving the titles with those who held them at the end of the season would not work because if those players changed servers they'd lose the server-tied titles. Response has been largely dissatisfied. It seems to me, and I may be wrong, I am not a WoW dev after all, that it would not be so huge a feat to create a new title for those players at the top of the ranks at the season end. Challenge Modes have been compared to arenas before, and this could work exactly the same. A title like "Mystical Challenger [Name]" could be applied in the week following the end of the season, attached to the character not the server, just like they do for arena Rank One. And just like arena, players would have to vy for those realm-best top spots right up to the last weeks. The Arena comparison makes a lot of sense to me, so let's keep it going. Hit the break for the full post, and an update posted after time of writing!
World Bosses no longer tap to faction
Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has posted on Twitter confirming what some players thought was a bug. Several players have noticed that, when an opposing faction group is attacking a world boss, like the Celestials, they are able to hit it and still get loot and credit. Watcher confirmed via Twitter that this was not a bug, and actually a hotfix that went in recently. That hotfix, he also notes, caused the boss health scaling with larger groups to break. This, in turn, has been fixed. He also later added that this was not just applicable to Timeless Isle bosses, but to all of them. So presumably, that's every boss from Galleon and the Sha of Anger, through Nalak and Oondasta, right to the Celestials, and Ordos. What this means is just as explained above -- if the opposite faction pulls a boss, you can punch it and still get credit and loot. You'd have to be a little brave or foolhardy to do so alone on a PvP server, unless you're a stealth class, but the opportunity remains. It'll be interesting to see whether this change has an impact on the use of the Raid Finder and oQueue for Celestials groups, or not. Given the convenience of those methods for finding a composed group, I suspect they'll prevail.
Hearthstone releases on iPad in Australia, New Zealand and Canada
The Hearthstone iPad roll-out has begun! The game is live on the app store in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Other regions of the world are "coming soon" with the reason given in the official blog being as follows: Blizzard Launching Hearthstone in a limited set of countries allows us to focus on the end-to-end player experience and make sure it's awesome before we move on to the rest of the world. If you don't live in Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, you don't have much longer to wait to get your hands on Hearthstone for iPad-Murloc Scout's honor. source It's also worth noting that everything is shared across all devices, so your collection linked with your account on your PC or Mac will be available on your iPad too. This is really exciting for people in those territories, and the rest of us will look forward to it landing on our local app stores soon. Hit the break for the full blog post.