Olivia Grace
Articles by Olivia Grace
More old World of Warcraft design notes
Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi loves to tweet out his old notes, and this morning has seen another two instalments from his journals of Warcraft past. This time, we saw Rhok'delar's design laid out in messy scrawls over two pages, personally the "turn in to third dude" made me chuckle. The interesting thing about those notes is how the design is created before any kind of story, and how the different stages panned out in concept. Next up, as an extra treat, Alex posted the to do list we see above, which you can view in all its glory on Twitter. He also issues a challenge, asking readers to spot what didn't make it to fruition. What can you see? I can certainly see a couple of lines that I can barely make out... Repeatable something something for Silithus? Hard to tell. And if you want to follow the Blizzard team on Twitter to see these for yourselves, WoW Insider posted a guide to Blizzard's Twitter accounts.
Swedish supermarket invites you to grind to 90 this weekend
Swedish Supermarket Willys has found fame on reddit with their latest marketing campaign. Why am I looking at a load of shopping bags with writing on them in a language I don't understand, I hear you ask? Well, this is the version of the Reddit image from the Willys Facebook page. And the bottom right shopping bag reads "Grind to lvl 90 this weekend -bag". Appropriately, the bag appears to be packed with energy drinks and cheesy snacks! Panser's recent video on the history of the World of Warcraft showed off a few other adverts for companies like Toyota, but subtle advertizing like this makes me wonder whether there are other little nods to the game we all love in advertizing or other media.
PvP Season 15 begins today
Blizzard has announced that PvP season 15 starts, as scheduled, on February 25. The ladders are already open, queues are already available for arenas and rated battlegrounds, and what's more, titles and rewards are already going out. Blizzard With weapons at the ready and armor secured, it's time to kick off PvP Season 15! The playing field is even once more, and this is your chance to prove that true grit and steely determination are what it takes to become a champion. So grab your most trusted companions and teach your enemies the true definition of fear! Before you set foot in an Arena or on a Battleground, keep in mind we've made a few changes this season: Conquest gear is now Item Level 550 The Dampening debuff will be applied 5 minutes after the start of an Arena match, and games will reach a draw at 20 minutes. Dampening decreases the effectiveness of healing spells by 1% every 10 seconds. Base Resilience is now 77% (up from 72%). Battle Fatigue is now 65% (up from 55%). Good luck, champions-may the most bloodthirsty warriors win! source If you want to dive in with both feet, step one will be to farm out honor points for 522 gear. You can check out our past posts on this to discover the most efficient ways!
Ion Hazzikostas explains level 90 boost pricing
WoW Insider posted last week about the level 90 boost that appeared momentarily on live servers during maintenance, and now Eurogamer has had the chance to discuss it with Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas. Ion had this to say: We realised as soon as we came out with Warlords of Draenor boost to 90, we knew that there was going to be demand for more than 1. It's tremendously awkward to tell someone that you should buy two copies of the expansion just to get a second 90. That's odd. So we knew at that point we were going to have to offer it as a separate service. When pressed on the price, he responded as follows: In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling. If our goal here was to sell as many boosts as possible, we could halve the price or more than that - make it $10 or something. And then hardly anyone would ever level a character again. But levelling is something that takes dozens if not over 100 hours in many cases and people have put serious time and effort into that, and we don't want to diminish that.I am not an economist, I'm not the one setting the dollar value myself, but it's not the profit maximising price. That was not our aim here. Ion's explanations make sense, but it does not alter the fact that $60 is a huge amount of money, more than almost anyone ever thought the service would cost. Ion's interview with Eurogamer certainly implies although doesn't confirm that the $60 price point is correct, or at least was intentional at the time. [Thanks for the tip, silvertongue0!]
Heroes of the Storm skins, mounts and more
Our friends over at Adriacraft have been extremely busy datamining Blizzard's upcoming Hero Brawler Heroes of the Storm. As a result, we have a huge dump of information from them, including skins, mounts, Hero lore, and more. Digging through giant posts like these can be something of a daunting task, especially with the strings. The extensive pictures of heroes and skins are fantastic, I am a particular fan of the "Lurkablo"-Diablo and the "Diablo Kaijo" skins, and their flavor text: "The government of Neo-Tristram grew overconfident as their experiments yielded more and more nuclear energy. They thought the power of the atom was under their control. They were wrong." But why are we interested in the strings, the lines of code at the top? Well, they indicate that Heroes of the Storm is going the same way as Hearthstone, by working off a dual-currency system. The currency that allows you to buy skins, mounts and more could be your local currency, as suggested by the Select Currency, Tax and Real Money purchase strings. We can also see that heroes are sometimes free-to-play, and that you will get a reward for beta-testing the store. Not only that, but the various access unlocks suggest a secret shop!
Warlords of Draenor: EU reports from fansite play testing [Spoilers]
Among several others, EU fansite Mamytwink was invited to a press event in Versailles where he not only got to interview Ion Hazzikostas, but also was able to play the same character, a gnome warrior, for five hours, allowing him to finish the alliance "start" zone in Draenor, Shadowmoon Valley. This is a direct translation of Mamytwink's french bullet points covering his 5-hour playtest with some minor adaptation for clarity. Spoiler alert! The last point after the break has a spoileriffic spoiler in it. Be warned. Mamytwink played a gnome warrior in Shadowmoon Valley, the Alliance landing zone in Draenor. After around 5 hours /played and 80 quests, he completed the zone, reaching level 92 The new models are excellent (he also created a dwarf). The facial expressions are amazing! At level 91, he had 63,000 HP as a tank Mobs had approx. 100k HP His attacks hit for between 1k and 5k when not crits. Crits on certain abilities hit for 10k (Shield Slam) Level 90-91 was 597k XP, 640k for 91-92 Quests awarded between 10 and 15k XP, 20k for more difficult ones. A new type of quest has been added, "bonus objectives". When you arrive in a zone a quest may appear in your log which you earn additional XP for completing. If you leave the area, the quest disappears.
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka interviewed in Korea
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka was interviewed in Seoul, Korea, as part of the Press Event that's taking place worldwide this week. The video is above, but some of the key points covered are below. These are in chronological order so it's easy for you to find more information on the video, rather than arranging them by topic: Blizzard is not yet ready to talk timelines with Warlords beta, or release, but are happy with how things are progressing. It's on schedule. The changes to PvP in Mists and Warlords have all been focused on improving PvP participation One of the main reasons why Holinka is so active on Twitter is to be a point of contact for PvPers. There will be a tutorial zone, as discussed at BlizzCon that is to provide a starter experience for all players going into Draenor. The option to use this as more of a tutorial will exist. Garrisons will offer a lot of playability, and are continuing in development beyond 6.0 with potential new features. Garrison PvP is a potential example.
Female dwarf 3D character model appears on Warlords of Draenor site
We've seen several character models appear lately with just still shots to appreciate them by, while the Warlords of Draenor official site remains forlorn with only the male orc, dwarf and gnome models visible. But now the female dwarf has been added, in all her three-dimensional glory, as Senior Art Director Chris Robinson tweeted. Fans of Burning Crusade races the draenei and the blood elf will also no doubt be really thrilled to note that there have been sections added to the site to include the updated models for all of those. There are also several new stills for the female dwarf, showing off her emotes. I think she looks fantastic, if a little manic! You can see all the model images released so far in the gallery below.
German guild Casuals 5-mans Garrosh Hellscream
German guild Casuals, who killed Garrosh on 10-man heroic back in early December, putting them in the western top 80 guilds, have taken the expansion's end boss on in normal difficulty with a team of five, and won. Even more remarkably, given recent history, none of them was a blood DK. The kill is filmed from the perspective of a DK, though, frost DPS Cize, and shows the entire kill from start to eventual finish. What's surprising is that they don't seem to hit the apparent enrage timer, with the fight lasting 14 minutes and 27 seconds. Their team was Cize, ilvl 576, as well as Lyzian, a prot paladin (572), Vayce, a discipline priest (575), Vranis, a fire mage (569) and Depression, a combat rogue (573). The armory is having some issues which are preventing me from seeing the characters today. The kill took them 30 attempts, and the logs can be found on World of Logs. [Thanks for the tip, fate47!]
Patch 5.4.7: oQueue's current issues to be resolved by Blizzard hotfix
WoW Insider heard from oQueue's creator, Tiny, regarding the issues the incredibly popular addon is facing with the arrival of patch 5.4.7. Essentially, various things changed in the API, the resource Blizzard creates for addon authors, that caused issues for oQueue. There was a change to Battle.net messaging frequency, which is how oQueue runs its "mesh", meaning oQueue had to move communications to a newly created channel. This was fine, and Tiny was able to work around it, changing the channels through which oQueue operates. Then a change was introduced to remove notes from battle.net invitations -- an attempt to remove a way for spammers to advertise their gold and other services. However, this completely broke oQueue's capacity to let people join groups. Fortunately, Tiny tells me, a hotfix is in the works to repair this latest issue. The hotfix also makes another API change which Tiny will release a new version to work around. This hotfix was scheduled for this week, so hopefully our favorite in-game group-finder will be up and running again soon. Keep an eye on oQueue's host site for the latest updates. Update: The hotfix is now live and Tiny is preparing the latest version of oQueue for download. The latest version is available at solidice.com
Warlords of Draenor PvP: Everything is awesome!
I was already excited for PvP in Warlords of Draenor. I was already looking forward to the stat squish and the ability squish and the changes to casting while moving and the lowering of CC. Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been tweeting about the internal testing in 6.0 environments, and I was already excited. You had me at the squish, Blizzard. You already had me. And now, the latest PvP blog's arrival has basically blown my mind. If you missed it, WoW Insider published a short summary of the key changes. Skirmishes are in, Trial of the Gladiator is out. Spectator invitations are in, for wargames, as well as an API allowing addon creators to build interfaces around the invitations. And all these are really, really exciting changes. Before you accuse me of being overly positive, I've been critical of PvP this expansion, highly critical in places, because I think it's had real problems. And it has -- it's fair to say that Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion of experimentation for PvP, and as is often the case with experiments, some are more successful than others.
The Queue: Money money money
Well, yesterday was exciting wasn't it? Adam's "insane" guess on the cost of a level 90 boost appears at least to have been below the price we saw. Lots of conflicting opinions abounded in the comments, both on that post and yesterday's queue, with some saying "too much" and some saying "just right". I don't think we saw anyone saying "too little" though. However, the first question was one that I saw a lot: Devin asked Q4TQ: With the 90 boost ostensibly being priced at $60 do you think Blizzard would introduce an option to buy levels individually for a dollar or so, or even a scaling price for higher levels? Allowing players to level by conventional means but avoiding areas of the game they dislike. The short answer is no, I don't think we'd see that. Reason being that it could net Blizzard far less revenue than the "give us $60" option. It would also have the issue of how people would use it, and the impact of that use. For example, I find leveling from 1-15 really tiresome. Start zones, for some races, are fine, but if I never have to do the Pandaren one again it'll be too soon. Same applies for the Worgen and the Goblin zones, the ones that trap you until you reach a certain point. Right now, I give Blizzard $25 for a race change, but instead I'd just give them $15 to get off that darn turtle.
Orc female model revealed
The next installment of the Artcraft series has revealed the new Orc female model. We've previously seen pieces on Garrisons, as well as the human female model, adding to the undead male and female, as well as the gnomes, dwarves and male orcs we saw at BlizzCon. Blizzard is again doing sterling work in staying true to the original model, and I am glad to see that her body shape has not changed dramatically. The strong, powerful-looking orc lady is by far my favorite model in the game, so I'm glad to see that her musculature remains largely unchanged. There are some minor alterations to her posture, though, and her posterior looks somewhat altered, without wishing to be unkind. I can't help thinking her head looks smaller in some of the images too. But the face and hair look fantastic. There is some slightly odd shading where I had always assumed she was bald before, around her ponytails and the like, but I'll assume that's optional. The face is wonderfully expressive, as we've come to expect with these models, and the hair looks great.
Warlords of Draenor: PvP rework brings back Skirmishes, adds Spectator Invites
Blizzard posted a blog today that should make every PvPer really excited. It seems like they have shifted their thinking away from the proposed rework of the ladders and gone to a more inclusive feel, with a nod towards tournament organizers getting an easier ride too. What are the changes? Let's spell it out: Trial of the Gladiator is gone, removed. This is due to concerns about the proposed system. Skirmishes, un-rated arenas which you can solo-queue for or do with friends in 2v2 and 3v3, are in. Skirmishes reward honor and have the chance to award a bag containing gold, more honor, a small amount of conquest points or something else entirely A Spectator Invite system has been added, allowing players to put Wargames together and invite spectators. This is specifically aimed at tournament organizers, but could be a boon for streamers or casual observers in parties with players doing wargames. Tournament gear is in for Wargames only. Why should you be excited? Well, Skirmishes for one. These casual games allow players to try out arena by themselves, another solo-queue option that WoW PvP has sorely needed for some time, since Skirmishes were replaced with Wargames when Cataclysm launched. Not to mention earning honor from them! While many PvPers have allowed themselves to dream about Skirmishes' return, I don't think any of us ever dreamed we could earn honor from them! What's more, the addition of Spectator Invites and Tournament gear makes it far, far easier for would-be tournament organizers to put contests together. We can all hope to see more and more Arena tournaments coming out of the woodwork with these additions!
Bug: Refer-a-Friend rewards disappear
Patch 5.4.7 has brought a lot of intentional changes, and a couple of things that seem unintentional. The level 90 boost appeared briefly with a very high price point between restarts, and now, as the patch goes live for real, it seems that all refer-a-friend mounts have been removed from players' mount panes. We're aware of an issue that caused RAF & SoR mounts/pets to disappear. Should be resolved next realm restart: http://t.co/NsPu9wkJW5 - BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) February 18, 2014 So it seems the mounts will be returning to players as soon as the developers can work out this bug. We've also heard reports that players who logged out while flying on RAF mounts are falling to their deaths. This appears to apply to the Rocket, the Nightwing and the Zhevra as well as any other rewards received from refer-a-friend. WoW Insider has all their Spectral mounts from the Scroll of Resurrection intact, so the bug with that is clearly not affecting everyone.
Level 90 boost appears up on live servers for $60
While we were expecting that the level 90 boosts may appear sometime after the patch's launch, we weren't thinking that they would crop up today before the pre-orders even went out. And we certainly didn't think they would be priced at $60. It seems likely that this is not intended to be up yet, given that pre-orders are not live, so there is a possibility that this is a test number. A member of WoW Insider staff, Matthew Rossi, was able to log on and see this on his server, between restarts. Whether it will still be there when servers come back up later today remains to be seen. This is a far higher price point than many were expecting, but that can be viewed as a good thing or a bad one. A good thing because it puts the price on leveling at a point where the work that goes into a 90 still has value, a bad thing because it's expensive.
Patch 5.4.7 official patch notes
Blizzard Community Manager Rygarius has posted the patch 5.4.7 official notes on battle.net. This is in anticipation of the patch's arrival on February 18, as Blizzard Customer Support tweeted on Monday. The key points are summed up in our patch 5.4.7 roundup post, and Timeless Isle weapons are being upgraded, but other than that it's really mostly PvP related news with a new season arriving and the changes to Alterac Valley and Dampening. The Krasarang rares have also had a nerf, now dropping honor just once per day. What's more, the PvP vendor guards have had a buff to their health and damage dealt. There are also several class changes, which are laid out in full after the break in the Official Patch Notes.
Patch 5.4.7 roundup
Patch 5.4.7 is upon us, barring catastrophe we are expecting its arrival tomorrow, February 18. But what's actually coming with the patch? Is it really just a PvP season? Well, not quite. The key changes in patch 5.4.7 are as follows: PvP season 14 ends, PvP season 15 begins Honor gear item level is increased to 522, Conquest gear item level is increased to 550. The new gear drops from the Celestials, too. The Krasarang rares now only drop honor once per day. Timeless Isle weapons are all automatically upgraded to ilvl 489 including ones you already own There are terrain changes and NPC changes in Alterac Valley Dampening will start at 5 minutes in 2v2 arenas only There are a few class changes, notably to warrior interrupts and druids' Heart of the Wild. We're also tentatively expecting to see the pre-orders for Warlords of Draenor sometime after the patch's release, and the much-discussed buy-a-90 feature, although this has not been officially confirmed by Blizzard. Boosted level 90s will get 483 gear, and if you're boosting a level 60+ character they'll also get maxed professions. What does this all mean if you're not really into your PvP? Why should you care about the patch? Well, if you're a PvE-er leveling a brand new level 90 character, or maybe boosting one, the best way to gear it straight to 522 is now to grind out honor gear. But don't worry, the best way to do that is still via PvE. Same applies if you've still got slots below that ilvl.
You're bad at WoW, and so am I
Blizzard Community Manager Lore recently posted a brief reply in an excellent thread, which brought up a topic I've wanted to address for some time: how it's OK to suck sometimes. While I'm not going to copy his two posts here, he talks about arenas, discussing how, when he and his team lose, he looks back and tries to work out where things went wrong, and what he could have done to help. He also discusses the merits of doing things like recording matches, to replay and examine what went wrong. While the option of recording your WoW play may not be open to everyone, self-examination is. And it's something we can all afford to do. None of us ever play perfectly, we are not robots. But the key to becoming better is to admit that, to see our failings, and to improve upon them. Sometimes it's you Sometimes it is. Sometimes you'll lose an arena or wipe in a raid because of someone else's error -- your tanks messed up the switching, or the person who had a debuff failed to perform correctly. Even in those situations, it's good to think back and wonder whether your performance was optimal. Sure, you weren't the reason why your team wiped or lost, but what more could you have done to perform well on your own personal scale?
Warlords of Draenor: Clarification on the removal of Dodge
Following a question in a recent edition of The Queue, Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig tweeted some clarification on dodge in Warlords of Draenor: @oliviadgrace Dodge is removed as a stat on gear, not as a mechanic. Players can still dodge. Brewmasters will still Dodge a lot. - Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 15, 2014 It seems people may have missed that dodge is simply being removed as a stat, not as a mechanic. Players will still hit without hit, and dodge is just the same. It seems likely that base dodge will be how it works, or maybe dodge will scale off another stat, as it previously has off agility. Nonetheless, tanks who rely on high dodge, such as brewmasters and bears, have nothing to fear. What exactly will happen with dodge's interaction with expertise in PvP, we're not sure just yet. Expertise is a funny one thanks to its interaction with other removed stats, and how it's a removed stat itself, so further information is required! No miss/dodge against targets 3 levels above will be interesting in PvP with cooldowns like Evasion. All this just serves to reinforce the notion that Warlords changes aren't happening in a vacuum. They're changes, not isolated nerfs to one thing or another. They're looking to ramp everything down, not to pick on specific roles or classes. Sure, there are outliers that need additional changes, but it's all being done together. It's easy to forget that.