Rygarius
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Mythic difficulty lockouts explained
For some folks, mythic raiding is causing a bit of a problem. Not that it is hard in any way, but rather that they don't understand the specifics of its lockout system as compared to LFR or Normal/Heroic raiding. This is understandable - with all the changes to raiding, it can be hard to keep track of how everything has changed. Rygarius has taken the time to explain the system, and to anybody who raided before Mists of Pandaria it should look pretty familiar. Rygarius - Question about Mythic I've seen some confusion over Mythic raiding lately and wanted to clarify. Mythic difficulty's lockout works differently than the other raiding difficulties (Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic). In Mythic difficulty, you are bound to the raid ID. This means if you join a Mythic raid, defeat the first boss (thereby binding you to that Mythic raid ID) and leave; you'll return to the same raid. If the raid continues on to defeat bosses 2, and 3 while you were gone, you will return to the raid with those bosses already defeated. For that reason, it is important to stick together with the same group of people as much as possible for Mythic difficulty. When joining a Mythic raid that's already in-progress, read the notification box that pops up carefully. It'll let you know how many bosses have already been defeated and ask for confirmation to be saved to that raid. If something's not adding up, you can refuse to be saved and be teleported out without being saved. source Yes, it's the old raid ID system. It's understandable that it might confuse folks used to the more flexible loot-locked system we have in Normal/Heroic - with those raids, if you leave after three bosses into a raid, you can come back on a fresh clear and kill stuff until you get to a boss you haven't looted yet and start getting loot again. With Mythic, you and everyone in the raid who kills the first boss are bound by the raid ID - the 20 players who killed that boss are basically in the exact same instance of said raid, and if two people step out on boss 6 and are replaced, and the raid continues on to kill all the bosses, that's their raid ID - if they formed a raid and zoned in after the clear, they would arrive in a cleared out instance. It's clearly all part of the design to keep Mythic as something more akin to the old days of raiding, where server communities formed and fought for realm firsts. I admit, it's not a raid ID system that appeals to me anymore, but it's not complicated - it's the raid ID system that we've always had.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Proving Grounds
Patch 5.4 already? When they said patches would be coming more frequently they were not kidding - we've only been in patch 5.3 for a month or so and patch 5.4 is already on the PTR. And it is packed with new features, some of which we've been waiting for all expansion, like the long discussed proving grounds. Rygarius - Patch 5.4 Coming Soon! New Feature: Proving Grounds Proving Grounds is a new feature for individual players to test and improve their combat skills. At the Proving Grounds, players may undertake trials, designed for Damage, Tank, or Healer roles. It provides a great opportunity to learn how to Tank or Heal, without the need of a group. Each trial is available in four separate difficulties: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Endless. Harder difficulties include more difficult and varied enemies. Endless mode allows you to test your mettle against increasingly difficult enemies. Compare your best scores to friends and guildmates! [PTR]: Access to the Proving Grounds and more information is coming soon. source While we still don't know quite a lot (like what form these will take, whether they'll be in their own location like Brawler's Guild or queued for like scenarios) we do know they're currently planned for 5.4, they'll allow for DPS, tanks or healers to face solo challenges to improve in their chosen role and they'll have multiple difficulty levels. This has been a feature long anticipated and requested, so I for one can't wait to see how it is implemented.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Virtual Realms announced
What, you may ask, are virtual realms? Well, they're a very interesting new feature (and if you choose, you can pretend they're the new feature Ghostcrawler mentioned for 5.4) that will have quite an impact on how we play the game. To quote the patch notes: Rygarius - Patch 5.4 Coming Soon! Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests. source This is basically the first step in the creation of a unified, single realm across whole regions of World of Warcraft. Similar in concept to a PvP Battlegroup, this basically allows you to treat players from other realms in the shared virtual realm as if they were on your selfsame realm, including all the benefits of guilding, grouping and raiding.; This is an enormous game changer, and I admit, I don't think I ever expected to see it happen. For guilds on low pop servers, this drastically increases the potential player base that you can recruit, for just one potential benefit. Do remember, however, that this is the PTR. As Ghostcrawler says: Take data-mining and even PTR itself with a grain of salt. PTR is our Petri dish and not every experiment works. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 12, 2013 Stay tuned for more news -- this is definitely an exciting change.
Hotfix incoming to fix Seat of Knowledge death issues
If you're on a PvP realm, you may have noticed that with the release of Patch 5.3 that things have gotten kind of hectic at the Seat of Knowledge, where Lorewalker Cho hangs out when he's not pushing buttons randomly in MSV. Apparently the guards at the Seat simply cannot cope with the increased volume of Horde/Alliance aggression, and players who die in the fracas are finding out that they can't easily get back to their bodies. Rygarius, ever the helpful hippogryph, informs us that there's a hotfix on the way to smooth out these issues and allow players to get back to their bodies if they die ignominiously at Cho's feet. Or in the vicinity of his feet. His feet will be close, is what I'm saying. We're told that the hotfix may require a realm restart to take affect, so be on the watch for that.
The limits of transmogrification
I love transmogrification. I'm ridiculously enamored of it. I transmog all the time. Like, three, four times a day some days. I have specific looks for my DPS and tank sets, I work constantly on gathering that one iconic piece or weapon to tie a set together. I have sets based on old tier sets, sets recreating old looks from WoW's history, and sets I just made because I thought they looked cool. I am potentially a transmog junkie. With that in mind, please take this as it is intended -- I think it's a good thing that there are some limits to what you can and can't transmogrify. Rygarius' response to a recent post about letting players transmog from grey items made me start thinking about how much is too much when it comes to transmog. Now, our own Anne Stickney made a post about whether or not we should lift transmogrification limits, and her post is well worth reading, because I think there's an ideological tension between the two conceptions that is worth discussing. In short, there's a difference between the idea of lifting some transmog limits, and not having any limits, and I'd argue for erring on the side of caution.
Rygarius updates us on Cross-Realm Zones
Whether you love, hate, or have absolutely no opinion on Cross-Realm Zones (I'm in that third group, I just plain don't care about them) you're hopefully aware of them by now. Rygarius has been the CM working to keep us all informed about the feature, originally created to help lower level zones have more players to interact with when questing and leveling up since the majority of players tends to be in the higher level zones. Now Rygarius has updated us on CRZ, explaining what's being done on various issues players have with the feature. Discussed is the range of time zones the servers can pull from and ways to address the discrepancy (including wholly redesigning how the servers tell time), players being dismounted and seeing nodes disappear as they cross zones, and framerate/transition lag. If you're interested in any of these CRZ issues, you should read the full announcement after the jump.
The Sha of Happiness
The Sha of Happiness is upon us! He spawned unexpectedly yesterday afternoon in the US forums, summoned by Doulie of Illidan-US, and his reign of cheerfulness has spanned over 1,000 posts thus far. DjDave of Nerzhul even managed to snap this screenshot. Blizzard Blue Rygarius attempted to step in, perhaps to quash the chirpy chaos, but soon realised he'd likely need a 40-man raid, or at least 20 well-geared level 90s. Rygarius *Walks into the thread* *Reads thread* *Backs away from the thread slowly, to avoid making any sudden movements* source
