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PvP Season 14 end confirmed, patch 5.4.7 likely February 18
The official World of Warcraft Twitter account just confirmed the end of PvP Season 14 would take place as estimated, on Tuesday February 18. PvP Season 14 is currently scheduled to conclude with next week's standard realm maintenance. Good luck! http://t.co/MxsaULpaE1 - World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) February 15, 2014 As Brian Holinka has tweeted in the past, the end of the PvP season has, in recent instances, indicated the release of the coinciding patch. Throughout Mists of Pandaria, this is the pattern that has been followed, so it seems likely that patch 5.4.7 will be no exception. You can check out all our patch 5.4.7 coverage in the meantime. WoW Insider also put together a short guide to what you should be doing to prepare for the end of the PvP season, so get those wins in for that mount, cap out that honor by killing those rares, and be ready!
Patch 5.4.7: Targeted nerfs to Garrosh on 10-man Heroic
Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has made a characteristically excellent post on the US forums, detailing targeted nerfs to Garrosh on 10-man Heroic difficulty. Watcher's full post is, as ever, after the break, but the main details are as follows. There were several encounter mechanics where the numbers scaling for 10-man meant that the difficulty was higher than in 25-man. Watcher particularly notes the interaction between Malice clumps and Iron Star triggering. In 25-man, the Malice groups, a total of six players, were never large enough to trigger the Iron Star, when they inevitably overlapped with Bombardment in the fourth Malice. On 10-player heroic, the Malice clump size of three in total would also trigger an Iron Star in the fourth Malice. Now, in 10 Heroic, the Iron Star trigger clump size is four, bringing it in line with 25 Heroic. Additionally, Garrosh's health is reduced by around 5%, and Minion of Y'Sharrj health is reduced by 10%. DPS checks for 10 Heroic were causing guilds to try to single-heal the fight, and 25 Heroic players are able to kite the adds while 10 Heroic guilds don't have the spare manpower. These changes show the process Watcher has discussed in the past, specific targeted nerfs, and will bring the two sizes in line. Hit the break for his full post.
Mila Kunis talks WoW and other gaming
Mila Kunis joined One of Swords podcast's Dan Amrich to talk to the hosts about her gaming life, including her time spent playing World of Warcraft, joining one of her ex-guildmates on the show. She chats about how she had to change her in-game name, as the title "Captain" in her mage's name "Captainpicard" wasn't allowed. She then discussed her gaming history, and how it led to her move into WoW, starting with co-host Hugh Sterbakov as their game night shifted from Settlers of Catan into WoW. She even talks about dragging her friends into the game, including the podcast's other guest, Lisa Sterbakov. They discuss playing all day sessions, questing together, killing mobs and wiping a "raid" in Black Morass while Mila went AFK for a bathroom break. Unfortunately, as her friends quit, Mila eventually lost interest. It's a fun listen, Mila's segment begins from 27 minutes in, and continues after the WoW chat, talking about other games.
Warlords of Draenor: Proving grounds will be updated
As we heard today that Mists challenge modes will be ending at the Warlords of Draenor pre-patch, I wondered what the fate of Proving Grounds might be, as they share the scaling methodology of Challenge Modes, as well as rewarding players with titles, although not mounts or the like. So I asked Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas: @oliviadgrace Proving Grounds serve a different purpose and will be updated for WoD. We think of CMs as a PvE analogue to arena seasons. - Watcher (@WatcherDev) February 13, 2014 To first address Watcher's point on Challenge Modes as analogous to Arena, it makes a lot of sense. The focus and structure of the reward and rank system is similar to that of arena, as Watcher points out in a subsequent tweet. Both arena and Challenge Modes reward high-end play on a specific class, and as a result the rewards, rankings and titles for Gladiator or Gold are similarly not account wide. Certainly, the number of rewards given out are markedly different, but the principles are comparable. Proving Grounds, conversely, do not work the same. While there are titles available, there is no ranking, and they do not offer similar rewards. While Challenge Modes are designed to be challenging content that is for players at their best, Proving Grounds are for learning. This may well make them easier to update for the new systems, as well as the fact that they focus on one spec at a time.
Characters of Warcraft updates with Mists, Hearthstone heroes
A new selection of characters have been added to Blizzard's Characters of Warcraft page on the official website. For those unfamiliar with the page, it's a collection of brief profiles on various figures in Warcraft lore, featuring a little background information, artwork, screenshots, and links to related characters and pertinent short stories or fiction that involves the featured character. In other words, it's a pretty handy little quick reference guide for those wondering who's who in lore. The new additions include heroes from Mists of Pandaria such as Shaohao, Sunwalker Dezco, Taran Zhu and more. In addition, players can now find profiles for heroes that have been featured in Hearthstone's class decks. It's a pretty good addition, particularly for characters like Valeera Sanguinar, who plays a prominent role as the representative rogue deck in Hearthstone, but doesn't really feature all that much in World of Warcraft itself. I was also happy to see both Uther and Rexxar have been added as well. Although the Characters of Warcraft page is by no means complete just yet, the new batch of updates is pretty reassuring to see. Hopefully it's an indicator that this feature won't be left in the dust, and will continue to be updated and filled out with characters that are both pertinent to the expansions we're currently playing, and those that have were important in expansions past as well. Check out the page for the new additions, and while you're there, don't forget to look for short stories you may have missed along the way.
Heroes of the Storm client leaked, screenshots, hints of beta
WoW Insider first noted these Heroes of the Storm leaks on Adriacraft yesterday, where the title screens were posted showing the various options and the like. This morning, a hero list also appeared, where there were several additional heroes added from the list we already had following BlizzCon. The screenshots reveal pretty much what we were expecting, no huge surprises there. We're seeing all the standard configuration options, and the social screen shows ignore lists and block lists in the config section rather than an in-game social one. While the hero abilities are mostly what we had seen already, given that 18 of these characters were playable at BlizzCon, there are five new ones since November. Sgt. Hammer, Tychus, Zeratul, and Muradin are all new, and E.T.C. was not playable at BlizzCon although we knew a lot about him as he was discussed at great length during the panels. The most exciting part of these leaks is the implication that Heroes beta may well be coming soon! Edited to add: Heroes Community Manage Cloaken posted on Reddit to clarify that the images are legitimate, and no surprise to the team. He also adds a warning about phishing -- be vigilant! You can check out what we saw at BlizzCon and subsequent Q&As as well as my review of the game, and the gallery below!
Patch 5.4.2 hotfixes for February 12
A new, short round of hotfixes for patch 5.4.2 has been released and posted to the official blog. Included in the list is one adjustment to the Galakras encounter in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid -- but more importantly, a few changes have been made to drop rates that may have an impact on players that are currently farming Lovely Charms for the Love is in the Air event. Rygarius February 12 Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios Siege of Orgrimmar Galakras: Resolved an issue where Dragonmaw Grunts were attacking the wrong Demolition Crew on Heroic difficulty. Love is in the Air Players entering the instance for The Crown Chemical Co. now spawn inside the main courtyard. Lovely Charms should no longer be incorrectly awarded from Unstable Corruptions or Mutant Parasites. source
Turbine suffers another round of layoffs
Gamasutra and Twitter are reporting that an unspecified number of Turbine employees have been fired today in a new round of layoffs. A Warner Bros. representative responded with an official statement: "As part of our normal business process, we're routinely looking at the strategic alignment of our company. Unfortunately, in order for us to invest in growth areas at Turbine, we have to eliminate some positions. These are always tough decisions, which we don't approach lightly, but it's crucial that Turbine is structured in a way that reflects the current and coming marketplace." Massively has reached out to Turbine for additional comments.
Patch 5.4.2 Hotfixes for February 10
Another small round of hotfixes has been applied to patch 5.4.2 following the last set on February 5. The couple of changes we're seeing relate to some terrain changes in Battle for Gilneas, making hills lower to reduce sight lines. There's also a change to Siegecrafter Blackfuse on all difficulty levels, indicative of the targeted Siege of Orgrimmar nerfs Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas has described in the past. Rygarius February 10 Quests The Battle for Gilneas City: Reduced Sylvanas and Gorerot's hitpoints. Rapier of the Gilnean Patriots no longer heals enemies. Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios Siege of Orgrimmar Siegecrafter Blackfuse: Significantly reduced the damage of Blackfuse Sellsword's Envenomed Shadowstep on all difficulty modes. source
Warlords of Draenor: Details on the art of garrisons
Senior Art Director Chris Robinson has been keeping us on tenterhooks awaiting the next Artcraft installment, dealing with Garrisons, and it's here! It's a fascinating post, giving way more than just art, an insight into the design process and the "gameplay first" approach the designers have taken. We also hear from Wendy Vetter, the Dungeon Team's lead artist, who walks players through the process of making the new old, and the old new, as they borrow and adapt older textures and assets while still bringing them up to date with the new systems and graphical quality. There's also input from the props team, giving information on the elements they've added into the mix, the storytelling side of design, creating a whole with items and their use. They're the team working on decoration and filling the space in the buildings. It's another great installment in the series and a fascinating read!
110% guarantee soloing old raids will not be harder post squish
Technical Game Designer Chadd Nervig, aka Celestalon on Twitter, has answered a tweeter's question about item squishing with the following tidbit: .@ToppTheDwarf The item squish *will not* make soloing old raids harder. We promise, and 110% guarantee it. - Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 9, 2014 I read this, and my ears perked up. I really enjoy running around killing things indiscriminately in old raids, and I've wondered as to whether or not that would continue to be possible after the item squish. It's good to hear that Blizzard has no intention of letting older content stay as it is while our characters' ability to pump out damage is drastically reduced. Of course, this leads to the obvious question -- what approach is Blizzard going to take for keeping older raids and dungeons' mobs and bosses abilities proportional? The obvious answer is that all of it will be squished along with our characters' gear and abilities. I suppose that will include items dropped of of old bosses too. It will be interesting to see the approach that Blizzards' designers take with the new expansion to make this change go as smoothly as possible.
US Connected realms update for February 7
RP realms, your wait is nearly over. The list of US realms slated for the Realm Connection service has now been updated with new dates, and several of the RP realms mentioned earlier this month now have dates scheduled for connection. In addition to the updated dates, a fresh list of realms has been added, although no date is set as of yet for their connection. The following realms are slated for connection on Thursday, February 13: Azjol-Nerub and Khaz Modan Eldre'Thalas and Korialstrasz Farstriders and Silverhand Spinebreaker and Wildhammer Thunderlord and Azgalor/Azshara/Destromath Read on for the rest of the connections and dates.
Warlords of Draenor: Visual clutter to be reduced
Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas has been tweeting about visual clutter and the developers' response to it in Warlords of Draenor. @szspagna Completely agree. This is a major priority for us, and something we discuss among the class team, with our FX artists, etc., often - Watcher (@WatcherDev) February 6, 2014 There has been talk of this before, and with good reason too. When players go into melee and are faced with totems, pets, elementals, minions, imps, apparitions and more, it's hard to work out what's important and what isn't. At the PvP summit it was also raised, with discussion on making the most important visual cues really stand out, and the less important ones less flashy. The same is likely to apply in PvE, with emphasis added on your own animations and key ones from other players, mobs, bosses and so on. This should have several effects. Not only will it make life easier for melee, and for PvPers as a group, it will also reduce strain on players' systems. While it's remarkable that WoW still runs on older systems as well as it does, it is slowly getting harder and harder for less current machines to cope. And as upgrades like the new character models continue, it's only going to get worse. Things like reducing visual clutter, especially in raids, will be a huge help for system resources.
Warlords of Draenor: Is there already an internal alpha?
Here at WoW Insider, we're really excited about Warlords of Draenor beta. And when I say we're really excited, I mean we're really excited. So we're always looking for clues that it might be coming. If you weren't aware, the things that will generally happen before a press beta are an internal alpha, followed by a very small friends and family alpha. So when Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted the following, we had to share: Spent a lot of time today playing 5.4 arena then immediately playing 6.0 arena. Man what a difference. Looking forward to people's reaction. - Holinka (@holinka) February 7, 2014 Now, Holinka is definitely not saying that there categorically is an internal alpha. He is the PvP designer, after all, so it makes sense that he would have the ability to test his designs. But the big differences are things like the removal of abilities, the stat squish, CC removal, the rework of how health and damage scale -- all core systems. So while we can't take this as a confirmation of an internal alpha we can hold out hope that, if there isn't one yet, it won't be long. And that means that we could be well on the way to Beta. It seems that, if the Warlords of Draenor pre-orders appear with the launch of patch 5.4.7, beta can't be too far behind. Given Blizzard's history, asking players to shell out for an expansion that isn't even in beta yet might be a tall order.
World of Warcraft up to 7.8 million subscribers
According to the press release of the Activision-Blizzard earnings call taking place today, World of Warcraft has seen a rise in subscription numbers, up from 7.6 million as reported in November, to 7.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. A rise of subscriber numbers is almost to be expected following big events like BlizzCon, and big announcements like the upcoming expansion Warlords of Draenor. It's a small bump, but the number is still higher than even the 7.7 million subscribers reported in the second quarter of 2013. Subscriber numbers seem to have leveled off entirely in 2013, with the one dramatic drop for the year being the 1.3 million lost in the first quarter of 2013. With a new expansion on the horizon, a free level 90 to those that pre-order said expansion, and pre-orders set to become available soon, we may see another rise at the next earnings call. New expansions have a tendency to lure back old players, and garner the interest of new players as well. We'll have to wait and see how the game performs in 2014.
Riot allegedly patents Spectator Mode camera element
According to a Reddit thread today, Riot, creator of League of Legends, has had a patent approved for what the poster describes as the "self-moving camera" within their spectator mode. The patent documents spell out the specific thing Riot is claiming patent on, describing a spectator mode that has an element described as follows: ...the spectator server is further configured to calculate an interest value associated with each avatar and direct the user's view to the avatar having the highest interest value. The online multiuser game system of claim 1, wherein the spectator server is further configured to monitor data affecting the interest values and shift the view to another avatar if it gains the highest interest value. You can read the full text of the claim on the online document. Based on the Reddit thread, and reading the documents, it seems that this claim is very specific, dealing with a camera which the game automatically moves to whichever character has the most interesting action going on. According to the second part of the claim, it will also monitor data on what is the most interesting, and shift its view accordingly. The impact of this patent on other games, particularly Blizzard games, is open for discussion. Should Blizzard wish to introduce a self-moving camera with a background AI that monitors the "interest levels" of the actions of specific avatars, then it seems that might be a problem. That is, of course, if the patent withstands further scrutiny and any cases brought against it.
US and EU connected realm and free character migration updates for February 6
Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera has posted the latest set of Connected Realm updates for US servers. There are currently three batches so do hit the break for more information. The first batch will be connected today, February 6, with the exception of Thunderlord and Azgalor/Azshara/Destromath: Hydraxis and Terenas Kirin Tor and Steamwheedle Cartel Shattered Halls and Executus/ Kalecgos Thunderlord and Azgalor/Azshara/Destromath- This connection is on hold and will be rescheduled for a future point in time. Uther and Runetotem The next set, scheduled for Thursday February 13 will be as follows: Alterac Mountains and Balnazzar/Gorgonash/The Forgotten Coast/ Warsong Azjol-Nerub and Khaz Modan Eldre'Thalas and Korialstrasz Farstriders and Silverhand Spinebreaker and Wildhammer Hit the break for the third, upcoming set.
Patch 5.4.2 hotfixes for February 5
A small set of hotfixes for patch 5.4.2 were released yesterday and posted to the official blog. All three notes are minor bug fixes and adjustments to NPCs on the Timeless Isle -- including one welcome change intended to prevent players from intentionally griefing others via the use of cross-realm Ordos raids. Rygarius February 5 Creatures Huolon's spawn point has been moved to the ground. [Requires a realm restart.] Ordos can no longer get stuck channeling Eternal Agony indefinitely. Timeless Isle Players under the effects of the Censer of Eternal Agony no longer gain Blood Coins for defeating players in their party or raid. source
Mythic devs form new studio, take over DAoC and Ultima Online
Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online are moving out from under Mythic Entertainment's management and into a new studio: Broadsword Online Games. Today Mythic announced that 14 members of its team, including co-founder Rob Denton, have left to form Broadsword in order to take over daily operations and development of Mythic's two remaining MMOs. Broadsword will continue to work with EA for the games' billing and account services. The new studio said that it will be releasing more information about plans for UO and DAoC shortly.
Patch 5.4.2 hotfixes for February 4
A new, short batch of hotfixes for patch 5.4.2 were released and posted to the official blog yesterday. As far as hotfixes go, these are pretty minimal -- just addressing a couple bugs in the Siege of Orgrimmar, and one fix that should be nice news to those headed back to Icecrown Citadel for fun. Rygarius February 4 Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios Siege of Orgrimmar Galakras Resolved an issue where players that perform a soft-reset on the raid instance after defeating Galakras would incorrectly zone into the raid at Norushen. Kor'kron Dark Shaman Resolved an issue where Earthbreaker Haromm and Wavebinder Kardris could potentially path underneath the world. Icecrown Citadel: Fixed an issue where defeating The Lich King too quickly could prevent players from receiving loot. source
