There's not a whole lot of action today on the official forums, but here are the pertinent blue posts from today, as well as two cool videos for your enjoyment -- the first of which is holiday-themed.
No server downtime during the holidays.
Nethaera wrote:
Over the holidays, on December 25th and January 1st, we will be performing a series of rolling restarts for all realms starting at 5:00 AM PDT, in lieu of weekly maintenance. Each realm is anticipated to be down for no more than 15 minutes, and should additional maintenance be necessary, we will notify our players in advance. Have a happy holiday!
Tier 3 skins will be re-used for WotLK Naxxramas.
Bornakk wrote:
We have said that we really thought these armor models worked perfectly for coming out of this dungeon and we plan to reuse them for the "updated" version in Wrath of the Lich King.
As far as the actual statistics are concerns, I wouldn't expect them to remain anything like the original Tier 3 version.
Should the old rank titles be brought back? Probably not.
Bornakk wrote:
I can't say for sure as it was done a long time ago, but I believe it happened at the same time that we removed the old honor system and with a completely new honor system put in place we didn't feel earning the same titles in a completely different way made a lot of sense.
Head Enchants haven't been finalized for Lich King yet.
Bornakk wrote:
First off, the head enchants for Wrath of the Lich King aren't finalized so I don't know what they will be.
That said, from a history perspective, I think this was brought up when The Burning Crusade was coming out. People feared they'd be running Zul'Gurub to get their head enchant and while it's still an option if you want to get that specific one, most people appear to be using the new ones.
Don't expect an "Anonymous" status option.
Nethaera wrote:
This has been brought up quite a few times before, but we don't feel that having this option is a beneficial addition to a multi-player game. In the end, we'd end up with a bunch of "invisible" or silent players in what is supposed to be a social environment.
No new races in Wrath of the Lich King.
Bornakk wrote:
We are not "against" new races so to speak, but we don't want to force new ones into the game just for the sake of having them either.
In The Burning Crusade we launched 2 new races, we put a lot of development time into making them fit into the game along with the 2 starting zones that each of them now have.
In Wrath of the Lich King we are focusing on the first ever Hero Class, the Deathknight. While you may think a lot of people aren't excited over it, I think a lot of people really are. Right now there really isn't a lot of information to share beyond what was shown at BlizzCon four months ago. We are working really hard on developing it and when we are happy with the results more details will be shared and I'd bet the talks and excitement will flare up for it.
So why no new races? There are a lot of things that are fun ideas, but we did do this recently and we want to focus on other bigger and better things for out players to experience.
Will we never add new races then? Never is a bad word to use, there is always the possibility of this happening in the future, we just don't plan to do it for Wrath of the Lich King. :)
Finally, two videos for you. The first is from Pure Pwnage and is called "Christmas Time in Dun Morogh." The second is a throwback to the "good ol' days" -- a Ragnaros kill submitted by Azaradel.
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Comments
Don't get me wrong Kody, you do a good job, I just go "ZOMGZ NEW RACE?!" when its actually a no inside hehe. I know its going to be, but that moment of exhilaration as the page loads is enough to be a sad panda. You still do great work though :-P
BUT!
Priests need their overhaul now imo... I don't even play one but its quite obvious that they aren't even close to on par with druids, paladins, or shaman. Their healing is passable yes, but to me, it would be the priests that generally lead the field of healing in instances. Maybe not the best "all the time" healer, but definitely worth its weight in the raid. There was a huge upsurge in shadow priest population with BC for many reasons, but one of them I think is the huge buff that druids took for healing and shaman being both sides of the field. Pally's haven't changed a whole lot from the beginning but they've also always been solid.
As for balancing for 1v1, I think blizzard is taking the right stance here. This game, just like many games, is pretty much impossible to balance 1v1. Some classes just have latent strengths against other classes. Its an uphill battle a lot of times. They aren't "de-balanced" to the point of post-Trials of Atlantis DAoC for sure, so I don't feel as though they've done a terrible job in this regard.
The thing that gets me the most, is that the death knight is coming along with a huge amount of fanfare and has the ability to tank with a two-hander. We can see the transition already occurring in instances like ZA where a tank would rather have high dodge and parry rather than defense because the mob is going to hit hard and possibly even crit/crush no matter what you do. I think this is leading into the deathknight personally. I don't see any other way to allow the class to tank without the huge defense from shields and such. Granted I don't have tons of experience in the tanking field, but I have picked up on a lot of things through my playing of WoW.
While finding groups its always difficult to find healers and tanks unless you're in a guild. Getting pug healers and tanks is like pulling teeth a lot of times, and I think thats where Blizzard is trying to lean with the new expansion. We have Warriors paladins and druids tanking, and we have Priests, paladins, shaman, and druids healing. Tipping another into tanking can always help, although I don't completely agree with the way they're doing it. I just hope for the sake of this well crafted but narrow in scope game that Blizzard can pull it off with the grace it has in the past.
I try to summarize the key points of the article with the titles, because unfortunately there's a text limit on the title that I can't really get around. Sorry if this one was misleading -- I didn't intend for it to be. :(
i agree with you m8. Also you have nice idea about how would new healing class looklike and i can say that you must try warhammer online when it comes to shop cause thats idea will be putted in that game. I cant w8 to try that :)
whats my thought about problem in this game atm: "good old times" was much interesting for me, balance issue in 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 are huge atm, evolution in pvp part went more to class which have strong crowd control abilities, so arena are atm for not so big number of speccs or classes( i know that some speccs are made for pve), changing raids number of ppl( from 20, 40 man to 10, 25) it reflects on raid setup and on guild progression( there are 1 good article about that so ill no describe fully), putting hero class as "you all can be" and not making as "mastering specific talent tree". All in all long time before was for me better then now, if you were very dedicated player you manage to enjoy more in any area of game pve or pvp. Thats just my opinion.
I'd have to disagree with your initial point. I've always found that Kody uses titles that are indicative of what the article contains but don't give away too much which means you are compelled to click the link and read the article which is, inevitably, what you should do :-P
To be honest, I'm disappointed in the Death Knight so far. Paladins have been crying for a tanking role for many an age and now that they finally have it, Blizzard are introducing a new tanking/DPS class... as far as I can see, the Death Knight is simply going to be a mix of Warlock and Paladin mechanics. What I want to see is some innovation in the healer department. I am aware that Priests are getting a major overhaul in WotLK as that has been confirmed but I want to see a new healer class - for example, A melee healer that uses a charge based system where by melee attacks generate moderate to low but generate charges that can be used for AoE healing effects and/or self healing effects etc etc.
I did have an idea a couple of nights ago. Blizzard are adament that they aren't going to be balancing the game around 1v1 and despite the cries for them to do so, it is apparent they see this as to mammoth a task and so will not expore it. If this is the case, the the dueling system shall remain broken and I dislike that. As such, why not introduce small group based PvP systems in WotLK where by players can party in 2 man, 3 man or 5 man groups and challenge another 2 man, 3 man or 5 man group to a group duel. Some people will argue that we should just do arena but at the end of the day, I want to see what my team can do against X team in a random setting (outside Org perhaps) and not in a preset setting.
Also, there has been a steady flow of information heading out of Blizz in regard to WotLK recently. I get the feeling that we may see some info poor out in the New Year in prep for an early Q2 release. 2.4 is blatantly going to be the last content patch and Season 3 the last AS to add a full set as new rewards so imo we're looking at a 3-6 month wait for WotLK. I'm probably very wrong however :-P
Ragnaros, the good old days lol
I've been hanging around curse for a while... and I have to say Kody, you're titles always get me extra excited then totally let me down in their actual context. It makes me cry almost every time I click on your articles. Do you get some sort of benefit per click like a news caster who talks about the Raging inferno that ends up being a backyard burning of leaves?
Not slamming you or anything, just always sad as I click on the links realizing what really going to be inside.
Having said that, I'm glad theres no new race. Let them focus completely on Death Knight and the PvP zone. If they can make it like DAoC's RvR and continue to completely smack around every other game in the market in PvE like they do, this game could be truly astounding.