Daxxari
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Soloing the Black Temple with Blizzard
Daxxari is back with another guide to soloing old raids, this time, The Black Temple. Whether it's transmog loot you're looking for, a chance at a warglaive, reputation with another faction (The Ashtongue Deathsworn) or just giggles, Black Temple has it all from Tier 6 sets and lookalikes to some of the coolest scenery the game's ever seen. Black Temple is by far one of my favorite raids. It's quite soloable by a max-level character -- the hardest fight is the Reliquary of Souls because you can easily do enough damage to yourself and the interrupts get brutal -- and it has some really awesome looking loot, cool fight mechanics, and some big lore deals like Teron Gorefiend and of course Illidan himself waiting for you. Daxxari explains the fight mechanics and how they work for a solo player, so head over to the official site and read up before heading into the Black Temple.
Blizzard looks back at the Molten Core
This weekend, Blizzard has begun a new series of blogs revisiting old raid content. Penned by community manager Daxxari, the first installment of Re-visiting Heroism's Past takes a look at Molten Core. Daxxari's guide includes a list of bosses, their most interesting drops, the battle pets added in the more recent past, and other tips for relative beginners to the game. Interesting to veteran players and game historians is the mouseover links in the post which provide tidbits of Molten Core history. Long-time players already know of the auction house shenanigans that occurred with Baron Geddon's Living Bomb, but it may be new information to discover that Molten Core nearly failed to make the final cut in World of Warcraft. According to the post, developers finished the dungeon in a single week, with Jeff Kaplan handling spawning and creature placement, Scott Mercer designing the bosses, Bob Fitch designing the loot, and Pat Nagle creating the Hydraxis questline. Molten Core was originally conceived as a single room where players would face Ragnaros. Everything else came much later.
The game as it was, the game as it is
People do not remember the game as it was. They remember it as they think it was. Want proof? See Daxxari responding to a forum poster who is wildly mistaken about a mechanic that never existed during The Burning Crusade. Daxxari - PvP gear penalty in pve content Quote: Posted by Mát in BC a penalty was introduced for wearing pvp gear in pve content. the simple version is the more pvp gear you had the more your damage and healing scaled down while in instanced pve content. I am not aware of any such mechanic ever having been implemented. Perhaps you're thinking of the equivalent loss of effectiveness due to Resilience having been budgeted into the item level of that gear, and thus it was less effective than an equivalent piece of PvE gear? source Now one of three things is happening here. Either Mát is misremembering (it happens to all of us), he or she is lying, or he or she has made the mistake Daxxari mentions, mistaking the fact that Resilience back then was part of the item budget and thus, PvP gear was less powerful in PvE because it spent itemization points on a stat that reduced your chance to be crit (back then, that's what Resilience did). But no matter how you look at it, the idea of this penalty introduced for wearing PvP gear in PvE did not exist - which is why so many of us wore PvP gear to PvE in. Sure, it had resil on it, but it was easy to get and often better than what we would have gotten from five mans to prepare for raiding Karazhan. With a game as old as World of Warcraft (we're entering its tenth year) this is understandable. Not all that many people playing today have played since launch, not even since the days of BC or Wrath - heck, there are a great many people who started playing in Cataclysm and even quite a few who started during this expansion. People will tell you that the talent system that we had up until Cataclysm allowed for great customization. They may even believe it.
What do you need explained more clearly?
Reading the forums (like I do) I came across a response by Daxxari to a forum thread that got me thinking. Daxxari - Oh God, 5.3 don't come!!! QQ thread!! Item budget is weird and crazy. Seriously. It's actually worlds better than it used to be, but still needs to be a lot more clear so people can understand it. Blizzard is bad at getting some really core information like that across. Fair enough. There's a huge amount of information to relate about World of Warcraft, and we can always communicate better and more clearly. We've already stated that PvP stats don't count toward a given item's ilevel, and we released the PvP Gear in Patch 5.3 blog that we hoped would dispel some confusion. What do you think is missing, and what else needs to be communicated clearly so players can make informed gearing decisions? source This got me to thinking about what I'd like expressed more clearly and concisely someplace easy to find in game, and it's how stat ratings work. This has greatly improved in that the character window pane will calculate out how much actual hit percentage, or critical strike percentage, you currently have on gear but I really think the game could benefit from a means to work out what changing X or Y will do to your stats without having to go to an outside site. So what about you? What do you find confusing and think Blizzard could explain better? Item levels? How PvP stats work? The difference between content tiers? If it bugs you, tell us how you think Blizzard could explain it better. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Ghostcrawler and Daxxari present Patch 5.2 Class Reviews
If you're wondering how your class has changed in patch 5.2, Blizzard's Ghostcrawler and Daxxari have joined forces to give you details on exactly that. This installment covers Death Knights, Druids and Hunters, so it's working alphabetically in case you're wondering where your class is. While the patch notes serve to give you the details on the changes, this series of posts exists to give you the motivation and reasoning behind the changes to the classes. Why did they buff this or nerf that? The motivations towards each change are explained in detail, letting you get a sense of just what's going on for you in patch 5.2. Ghostcrawler and Daxxari - Patch 5.2 Class Review Part 1 In terms of talent adjustments, while we're still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren't tuned as well as they could be or just weren't attractive. That's not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we're happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier. source Part one is up now, so keep an eye peeled to the official site for more.
Ghostcrawler tells 8 year old how to be a game designer
Rarely are the forums heartwarming, but this forum thread not only delivers on the heartwarming aspect but it also gives us a reasonably detailed peek at what companies like Blizzard are looking at when they look for new designers. When forum poster Aaiya made a thread on behalf of his or her eight year old son who is interested in becoming a game designer someday, we first got a solid response from Peratryn and then Daxxari comes in with a response from Ghostcrawler. Not only is it cool that the people who work at Blizzard would take the time to answer the thread in the first place, but upon reading Daxxari's post with Ghostcrawler's response, I know I felt like I'd learned something new, and I figured a lot of us would be interested in reading it over. Rather than pick it apart, we'll reproduce Daxxari's entire post after the cut.
Blizzard comments on how to deal with harassment
Community Manager Daxxari made several comments earlier today, detailing how players should respond to and report harassment in WoW. The comments were made in response to a thread on the official forums asking what Blizzard is doing to combat bad behavior in the WoW community. The original poster cited some of the visible efforts Riot Games is making to combat bad behavior in their game, League of Legends, and wanted to know if Blizzard had done anything similar. Daxxari gave the following response, as well as some advice for players being harassed in-game or on the forums. Daxxari -- Curtailing bad behavior Quote: What is Blizzard doing to curtail bad behavior in their playerbase? Harassment is a serious issue, and we've dedicated significant resources toward dealing with it. In fact, we have a large support team, and we've (comparatively) recently implemented faster tools to deal with harassment. If you're experiencing harassment in-game, there are a few steps to take. Don't respond, or get involved in an argument. Stooping to using language that violates our policies simply opens yourself up to suspension, and doesn't accomplish anything. Seriously, don't do it. Use right-click Report on their name next to any lines of text that contain offensive language--the appropriate category should be Language. Use /ignore to close the lines of communication. If your harasser by-passes the /ignore feature and contacts you on an alternate character, immediately place that character on ignore, then open a support ticket to report Ongoing Harassment, and include that phrase, as well as the offending player's name, realm, the exact phrase that they used to harass you and that they by-passed the /ignore feature to do so. Please be detailed, our Support team works hard, but they aren't wizards. Mostly. On the forums, just mouse-over the offending post, then click the 'downvote' hand, then select the 'Report' option. You won't receive notification when another player receives any kind of disciplinary action due to our privacy policies, but rest assured that we like to make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding what constitutes acceptable conduct in-game. source In a later post, Daxarri also included links to Blizzard's harassment policy, should players need clarification on what Blizzard considers harassment, and a guide for reporting bad language and names in WoW.
Tier 11 normal mode raid bosses to give valor points again
Good news for everyone tired of all those trolls: Tier 11 normal modes will once again give valor points. According to Community Manager Daxxarri, raids will receive 35 valor points on 10-man bosses and 45 valor points on 25-man bosses. This hotfix should be live within the next few hours. For the full text of the announcement, check after the break.
