It would make sense with some of the major lore being Titan related in Northrend. Ulduar is obviously coming in 3.1, but 3.2 promises to have a surprise, and one that Blizzard stated will please everyone. This is absolutely a dungeon players have been clamouring for since... well, people learned of it via quests in the classic game. What do you think?
Did Blizz think the endgame through? (Source)
Yes. Enjoy the current dungeons and I hope you enjoy Ulduar when that comes out.
Are beta testers getting all the realm firsts? (Source)
Not everyone who has gotten a realm first was in beta I'm sure and betas serve a much larger purpose in helping us make the best expansion we can. It gives us a much clearer picture of how players access the content and how they progress within it. We feel that the testing we have done has been beneficial and don't foresee any changes in that process at this point in time. We have a great community that is very astute and ferreting out possible issues and we appreciate the input we get both in beta and within the live game as well.
Will WoW ever finish? (Source)
Sure, all things have an end but I guess you could say we don't see one just as of yet and everyone has a different idea of what "finished" means. Even should WoW someday end, the stories of the people of Azeroth will always live on either in memory or in the possibility of what more could have been within someone's imagination.
Wintergrasp (Source)
It really feels like you're approaching Wintergrasp the way you approach battleground PvP. You can't because it's not. There is not a great focus on balancing around a fair fight in Wintergrasp because we rarely expect them on the micro scale. We're focusing on a macro scale of the whole siege taking place and balancing around that, because we can never count on even numbers. Again, it's not instanced and a controlled balancing act of virtually even teams and balanced abilities.
With all of this being said, we very recently toned down the tenacity buff and are watching to see how matches play out with this macro balancing technique. You're always welcome to try something a little new and see if it appeals to you when you've discovered a strategy for best dealing with this difference in game play.
"Bring the player, not the class" Discussion (Source)
Very interesting thread.
I don't want to stomp on any of the discussion, so I will just add a few things.
1) We like this change overall, but it is a change. There are going to be some rough edges to smooth out and tweaks to be made. I ask you to defer any of the cheeky "why am I paying to beta test the game" responses. It's an MMO. Things evolve. You want us to make changes when things are off. Believe me. :)
2) We don't want to see anyone sitting on the curb in PvE or PvP. That definitely includes the pure dps classes. If someone isn't getting into dungeons or raids, we'll make some adjustments. If someone isn't viable in Arenas, we'll make adjustments.
3) We've taken our first steps in the buff consolidation plan. More will be coming as we see the plan in action.
4) The fact that we haven't always made such adjustments in a timely manner is brought up a lot, which is totally fair. But I hope our recent actions suggest that we want to be more proactive on this moving forward.
Class Direction (Source)
I think new players do need some help in choosing a class. I don't think that's what this thread is about though. This is about descriptions of classes that are sufficiently detailed and robust that players can evaluate whether or not the class abilities and mechanics are delivering on that design. Our stance is that you guys shouldn't worry about that. You should worry about if the abilities and mechanics are working (e.g. "I can't beat druid") and if they're fun (e.g. "my rotation is too complicated.")
If players are finding something not fun or not functional, they should just mention that. You don't need to cross-reference those to whatever our design intent is. What is our design intent behind a particular boss or the stats on a piece of gear? Does it matter? Might it even make the experience a little less enjoyable if the curtain was pulled back so far? You should evaluate loot on whether it's an upgrade, whether its stats are good for you, whether you will ever really use that "click on use" ability, and maybe even if it looks cool or has a fun name. You don't need to know why we chose to put Strength or Crit on the item. I'm trying to argue the same thing for classes.
Vision for Classes (Source)
I get that. I just don’t think a concise description is going to give you that. Really the only thing that will is reading a lot of forum posts or just leveling that character. I think the kinds of character definitions that are being asked for will be used more like the examples in this thread of “the paladin is supposed to be a holy warrior” or “the shaman is supposed to be able to tank.”
I’ll try a couple here just for grins:
Hunter – you are the master of ranged combat. Your damage is mostly physical and done with a ranged weapon such as a bow or gun. You have a loyal animal companion that can help you in combat. You can place traps to try and constrain enemies.
Marksman – you focus on ranged combat.
Survival – you focus on traps and defenses.
Beastmaster – you focus on the strength and abilities of your pet.
Paladin – you combine Holy magic with melee weapons. You can tank, cause damage or heal. You have several defensive and reactive spells that can help keep you alive.
Holy – you focus on healing, especially single-target heals.
Retribution – you focus on dealing damage.
Protection – you focus on being able to mitigate damage so that you can protect your group.
In my mind those are so vague as to be unhelpful and you’d need a couple of paragraphs on each to really get the direction of the class and spec. But maybe I’m mistaken. When we make a major change to a class, we do attempt to telegraph it.
Druid
More on the upcoming Feral changes (Source)
It is a buff to 90% of druids. It is a nerf to a theoretical maximum that nobody currently has, and in truth wasn’t going to be able to get anyway because the armor on those items was so good that we were going to nerf them. In retrospect, a sneaky way to have handled this issue would have been to tell you we were going to nerf those items, then when there was outcry responded that we decided to change the way bear armor was calculated and not nerfed those items. I didn't choose that approach though.
The paladin healing armor is still something that doesn't quite fit in the new system and something we would like to change eventually. We have no announcements to change it at the moment though.
Feral Mitigation (Source)
Yes, we do that all the time. We haven't found Feral mitigation to be lacking, and my point is that even if we do, we can fix that by tweaking the numbers. Regardless of the outcome, it doesn't prove that the class needs more defensive stats on which to scale. If the bear mulitiplier is 700% (and there is no armor cap), then I promise you will scale very well with every piece of armor you pick up even if you have no other stats. You will be far and away the best tank and the easiest one to gear as well.
Like I said, you can argue that you would rather have lots of defensive stats because you just think it's more fun to pick up gear under that model. But now you're in the realm of wanting to change the class into something slightly different to suit your preferences. That still isn't off the table (almost nothing ever is), but it's a different sort of argument than saying "we *must* benefit from block and AP."
There are advantages and disadvantages to having a lot or a few stats to focus on. One of the disadvantages of fewer stats is diminishing returns on avoidance, but bears don't diminish on Dodge as fast as warriors in order to compensate for this. Part of the implementation of diminishing returns was to discourage warriors from stacking one stat, but that isn't an issue for druids.
I don't mean to sound argumentative in any of this. I just want to make sure I understand the issues. We were prompted to take a look at this by all of the discussions (and not just on this forum) about how few neck and trinket choices bears really had in all of WoW. By which I mean they helped us to understand the issue. We knew the situation felt a little off, but it was more off than we imagined, and we took steps to fix it.
Priest
Divine Hymn (Source)
We have some plans to tweak the Hymn spells a little, but they are not at the top of the list. When things settle down a little, we'll try some new ideas.
Shaman
Spirit Wolves not scaling (Source)
We found the bug with the Spirit Wolves and are planning to hotfix it.
