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Garrisons and Alts: How can it be improved?
I sometimes find myself wishing that garrisons were designed to be account-wide from the beginning. It may sound silly, but I'd love to see my alts hanging out in my single account-wide garrison when I'm logged on another character. This is obviously not in the cards, but maybe there could be some changes to make managing multiple garrisons a little bit easier. You can tell yourself that they are "optional" as much as you want, but you'd be missing out a large portion of this expansion if you simply ignored them, even on alts. Thankfully, Blizzard is listening to feedback and plans on making adjustments in the future. Takralus We're looking into ways to make Garrisons a bit more friendly in future patches for those of you who enjoy alts. We see that Garrisons are a bit too much for you guys right now. source Good to hear. I have a few ideas on how things might be improved, some more realistic than others. 1. BoA follower armor and weapon upgrades As it stands, having a Dwarven Bunker/War Mill and Salvage Yard are essentially requirements if you want to partake in the most worthwhile follower missions. Wouldn't it be nice if after your first or second garrison this was no longer the case? I've put a significant amount of time and resources into my main's followers, and I'm at the point where most of them are maxed out in item level. However, I still have a ton of items like War Ravaged Weaponry which I can no longer use on this character. My alts could put them to good use.
Spirits of Harmony may become BoE after all
Spirits of Harmony, the Mists of Pandaria currency used by many professions both for supplies and for crafting, have been BoP since the expansions launch. The last we'd heard, there were no plans to make the items BoE by the end of expansion, as with Cataclym's Chaos Orbs and Wrath's Frozen Orbs. However, a tweet exchange last week between Professions Designer @hwoome and a player suggests that the resource might not stay BoP after all ... and might even make the switch to a BoE item sooner than we'd thought. @StarkRavingCalm No harm in 6.0? I agree. Maybe even a little earlier. ;) - Hwoo (@hwoome) March 28, 2014 While it's not a confirmation by any means, the tweet came from a game designer, which suggests at the very least that the issue is not off the table for discussion as previously thought. Whether or not we'll see Spirits lose their BoP status is still up in the air, though -- so I wouldn't worry about stockpiling the items for now.
No plans to make Motes or Spirits of Harmony account wide
Thanks to Chaos Orbs in Cataclysm, which began life as a BoP item, but became BoE with the last patch, and Wrath of the Lich King's Frozen Orbs, many had assumed that Spirits of Harmony would lose their soulbound status towards the end of the expansion. Community Manager Lore has confirmed once and for all that there are no plans to make this change with Spirits of Harmony. @rebrown38 @WoWMonk No plans to make those (or Spirits) account-wide. - Lore (@CM_Lore) March 21, 2014 We're not entirely sure on the reasoning behind this decision, but it might be something of an annoyance for players. Although, with previous expansions at least, the item was largely completely irrelevant by this point. Spirits of Harmony, in so much as they can be traded for items in the Shrine, have at least held some value. So don't stockpile them for an alt's crafting, on the basis that they might become BoA, or for an auction house bonanza that may never come.
Warlords of Draenor: More information on the new toybox feature
Blizzard Community Manager Rygarius has posted on the US forums giving readers a good deal more information about the new Toybox feature planned for Warlords of Draenor. This follows a couple of snippets from Bashiok yesterday, where he mentioned that players will be called upon to provide feedback on what should and shouldn't be in the Toybox. As ever, you can read all Rygarius' responses to player questions after the break -- there's a lot of great information on how they're categorizing toys before players get to weigh in with their feedback. It seems likely that Archaeology items will be included, for example, and equippable items with effects will likely be turned into a spell, allowing the player to use the effect without having to have the item equipped. However, Rygarius does point out that certain items (the particular one under discussion being Sylvanas' Music Box) may remain character specific. Other things such as the Jade Raccoon are under consideration as toys, but not confirmed either way. Regardless, the goal is to free up more space in your inventory, something that will be welcomed by all!
Neverwinter announces Hunter Ranger booster pack
Cryptic today revealed a new booster pack bundle that will go live with Neverwinter's upcoming Shadowmantle expansion. Designed specifically for the Hunter Ranger, the Hunter Ranger booster pack offers a few key goodies that should soften the starting experience for players checking out Neverwinter's newest class. The bundle includes a Hunter Ranger-exclusive bow and hatchet, account-wide neck and slot items, and hunting hawk companion. Additionally, it contains a bag of identification scrolls, assorted skill kits, and a 24-slot bag. Those who purchase the bundle will receive the title Master of the Savage Wild. The Hunter Ranger booster pack launches alongside Shadowmantle on December 5th, 2013.
Major reputation changes coming to WoW
I'm going to be honest -- I'm not a huge reputation person. I end up with them, because you have to, but I wouldn't do the grinds if it wasn't necessary. So I may be the absolute target audience for this post from Crithto on the official forums, highlighting changes coming to the rep grinds. This makes this morning's Klaxxi questing feel less onerous to me. Crithto - Upcoming Reputation Changes Earning reputation with various factions has long been an important part to World of Warcraft and as time has gone on, we've made tweaks and changes to the system to make it more interesting and to give players access to unique items. For example, we recently hotfixed the game to apply a change to some reputation items which you can read about in our recently updated blog that allows players to purchase certain items much sooner. And we're not done! Coming in a future patch, earning reputation is going to become much more fluid. Basically, once one of your characters has reached at least Revered reputation with a faction, all other characters on the same Battle.net account will then earn reputation with the same faction at twice the rate. Going one step further, and as an added bonus, your main character who reached Revered will also begin to earn double the reputation as he or she climbs to Exalted. Here's a simplified break down: Any single character earns Revered reputation with a faction All other characters on the Battle.net account begin to earn double reputation for that one same faction The Revered character earns double reputation as he or she works toward Exalted ??? Profit We'll keep you posted as this change is closer to being implemented. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your feedback! source My biggest problem with reputations has always been having to do them again on my alts. Now my characters on Cenarion Circle and Sisters of Elune will reap the rewards of my main's hard work, which I like. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
GuildOx introduces Alt Detection
WoW database site GuildOx, which ranks guilds, players and loot from World of Warcraft by reading data via the official WoW API, has introduced a sparkly new service for would-be recruiters. Thanks to the introduction of account-wide achievements, GuildOx, along with any other site that is smart enough to extract this information from the API, can use the cross-account information to tell you exactly who that new player's alts are that's applying to your guild. So, if someone claims to have amazing gear, and anything else that isn't a linkable achievement on an alt, you can now check it out on GuildOx. The functionality could allow a guild leader to see if the new person they're picking up is actually the worst trade chat troll on the server, for example. As GuildOx says, this can provide extra insight into applicants when recruiting new guild members. If you think you'd benefit from this, then you can check it out on GuildOx's new service by viewing one of the site creator's characters, and all their alts. There is, of course, a down side.
Warring perspectives on account-wide achievements
Yesterday, with a speculative post on twitter, I unwittingly started a bit of an argument between a few of my friends about the 5.0.4 changes to achievements. I didn't mean to, I had been reading the comments on The Queue and was not hugely surprised to note that I was not the only person who wasn't jubilant at the changes. I am ever the partisan, and try to consider both sides of every argument when making a decision, but at this point I can't quite decide whether I like the new achievement system or not. Why? Well, let's see. Making the meaningless less meaningful I was kind of upset at the changeover from Wrath to Cataclysm at the disappearance of the Wrath and earlier talent trees. If you weren't around for those, they were gigantic behemoths of talent trees, far larger than the Cataclysm ones, and featuring far more talents that addes 1% damage onto something, or reduced a cast time or cooldown by some insignificant amount. I didn't miss them because I mourned the loss of any particular aspect of them, or felt they were more complicated or clever, but because getting a talent every level made going from 23 to 24 feel like something meaningful.
What you should know about account-wide pets, mounts and achievements
Patch 5.0.4 is live and most of your achievements, pets and mounts are now account-wide. The problem is that they will not all show up when you first log in. You also may find that you don't have as many of each pet as you thought you did. Here's what you should know: You must log in to all of your characters for their pets, mounts and achievements to show up across your account. All learned pets that are unique will be merged into one pet. All learned, non-unique pets will be reduced to three. You can only learn 500 pets. So if you logged in and didn't like the size of your pet and mount journal, log on to all of your characters. The full posts from Blizzard with this information are after the break.
What to expect from patch 5.0.4
Patch 5.0.4 will be here on Tuesday, Aug. 28. As with other pre-expansion patches, 5.0.4 will include some important changes that will reflect gameplay in Mists of Pandaria. To be perfectly clear, while this is a pre-patch for Mists, it is not Mists itself and shouldn't be confused with the game we'll all be nabbing on Sept. 25. While there are some features from the beta that we'll see go live with this patch, others will not be released until the new expansion goes live in September. This is a confusing time for some players, because they're not quite sure what to expect when it comes to the pre-expansion patch. Will new features be rolled out? Will we see new instances or profession changes or playable pandaren? To avoid confusion, here's a short primer on what you will and will not see in patch 5.0.4.
Account-wide pet duplicates clarified
While account-wide pets and mounts will be going live with patch 5.0.4, the exact process involved has still been somewhat muddled. Game Designer Cory "Mumper" Stockton clarified the process somewhat in a post about battle pets yesterday. While pets that are unique, such as achievement, pet store, promotional and guild pets, will be combined into one pet in your UI, others will have duplicates available. Because of the nature of the merge, these duplicates will bypass the rule that only three pets of one type can be had with the new pet system. Any duplicates you have that can be caged will be tradeable, or you can simply release anything you don't wish to keep. This news should be a welcome relief to pet collectors who have multiples of the same pet on many different characters. Mumper Pets will still be merged on MoP launch, but instead of placing them in your bags or mail they will be placed directly in your pet journal. You will be allowed to have more than 500 and 3x per pet during this process. Any pets that are flagged as unique will be merged into one and also placed in your journal. (Unique pets are from Achievements, Pet Store, Promotions and Guild) You will be able to cage any pets that are tradeable and you can release anything that you have more than one of. A few examples: A B.net account has a total of 6 Wolvar Pups across all of it's characters. On merge the B.net account would have 6 Wolvar Pups. This would be the only time an account is allowed to have more than 3x of a single pet. A B.net account has a total of 3 Murky's from BlizzCon 2005 and 4 Nuts from the pet collection achievements across all of it's characters. (both unique pets) On merge the B.net account will have 1 Murky and 1 Nuts. Hope that helps clear things up. source It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Mists of Pandaria: Gold sink mounts will be account-wide
One of the most anticipated features of Mists of Pandaria is the fact that many things are going account-wide, including mounts. But this change will not affect all mounts, as Mike Sacco clarified recently in The Queue. "Gold sink" mounts, so called because of the large amount of gold needed to acquire them, were included on the list of mounts not going account-wide. Blizzard changed their stance on this today, as Game Designer Mumper explains below. Mumper We have been discussing this issue the last couple of days and we made the call to make the following mounts account-wide: Traveler's Tundra Mammoth Grand Expedition Yak Mechano-Hog Mekgineer's Chopper Sandstone Drake Grand Ice Mammoth Ice Mammoth Jeweled Onyx Panther (all color variants) Cloud Serpents (all color variants) At this point, the only mounts that are not account-wide are either class specific or rewarded from PVP. We feel like both these types of mounts should still be character specific. Thanks for your feedback on this issue! source This is in response to a post in the Mists of Pandaria beta feedback forum. Blizzard is listening to your suggestions -- keep it up! [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!] It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The OverAchiever: Q&A on account-wide achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, things are about to get a little easier. Between Ghostcrawler's blog post and Zarhym's additional notes on the forums yesterday, we now know a lot more about how account-wide achievements are going to work. No preamble this week, folks -- let's get right to it. A lot of questions were answered, but there are still a few unknowns. Question: Will all of my achievement titles be accessible from every toon? Answer: Probably, but there may be restrictions on their use. I've been looking to farm some nice titles out to alts that have done absolutely nothing to deserve them (who isn't?), and what we do know is that Blizzard's looking for a way to do this. From how GC's written about it, I'm wondering if this might actualy go live after Mists of Pandaria has already shipped, because Blizzard's talked about the technical limitations previously, and it's apparently still at work on it. We also don't know when these titles will become universally accessible. For example, your level 1 monk may not get access to Kingslayer until level 80 or Defender of a Shattered World until level 85, which is sensible insofar as my level 1 monk was not in much of a position to save anyone with Jab as the full extent of her repertoire. For now, put this firmly in the category of "Probably going to happen, but don't expect a firm date."
The Daily Grind: Are you a fan of account-wide rewards?
Guild Wars has long been a source of mild frustration for me because not all of the game's achievements are account-wide. While aspects of the Hall of Monuments are based on your account's accomplishments and skill unlocks are accessible by alts, the game nevertheless discourages me from devoting time to my secondary toons, not when there are factions and titles still to grind on my main. I'm intrigued by games that offer parallel power tracks that show your overall investment in the game, not just in one character. Lord of the Rings Online's Destiny and Star Wars: The Old Republic's Legacy systems do just that: They reward you for playing multiple characters by allotting you currency that can be spent on special rewards. So today we ask you: Are you a fan of account-wide rewards like Destiny and Legacy points? Or do you think they unduly reward scattered play rather than specialization in one character and class in the game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
