This is the Friday, February 23rd edition of Blue Watch, covering Blizzard Employee posts in the General Forum, as well as the Raids and Dungeons Forum. While short, there's some information that should probably be shared right now rather than waiting for a compilation. So without further delay, on to the Blue Watch!

General Forum Information

Why is there no FFA PvP server?

In this thread, a question is posed about the reasons for World of Warcraft not having a Free-for-all PvP ruleset server. Tseric tries to explain the design decisions involved:

Here are a couple of reasons off the top of my head.

Historically speaking, in the MMO market, FFA realms do not build and hold a player base as well as a standard rule set. People get frustrated and that hostility plays itself out in a number of ways. Increased CS workload, quitting, etc. There have been some good articles on the web about this sort of thing and its limited successes.

Another reason, more specific to this game, is that it would require support of different coding at this point. Effectively, we would have to support two different clients, because of the changing of the ruleset between one and the other. Coupled with the above reason, we haven't seen anything in terms of demand that would balance out the cost necessary to make this supportable.

Not to say it will never happen or that we don't still consider it, but those are the chips as they lie at this time.

Later in the thread he adds:

Because it's a little more complicated than flipping a switch and walking away. Every zone in the game would have to be adjusted. Any number of NPCs would have to be re-flagged. While that would take development time away from everything else, that really isn't the worst part.

As I said before, which people seem to be glossing over, you're developing two different environments. What if something is bugged in an FFA realm but not in a standard PVE/PVP realm? There's QA being spread out between two game environments for testing. What if there is a more critical bug affecting the standard realms? It will probably get priority, which means you're one FFA realm is seeing bugs, which obviously the player base will deem critical in itself, that is going to be prioritized based on the number of people it's affecting, which is very few comparitively.

It's about flipping switches to PvP about as much as the internet is a series of tubes.

He goes on to add more:

Ok, let's take one example you bring up, then. Dueling. In an FFA enivronment, is issuing a request to duel going to confuse the game? It is trying to get into a state it already is in. Will it bug out with redundancy?

Consider another example. Town guards. Is it now easier to raid a town because guards might aggro same-faction griefing or do the guards only target other factions? Does this create a fair environment? Does it create other unintended opportuinites which could be exploited?

Many of this games mechanics are based on faction-PvP and as such, create completely different effects in an FFA environment. Any one command might bug out, be completely negated or create an unintended effect which would require a design solution.

Human Racial Diplomacy being removed?

In this thread, Nethaera puts the rumor to rest:

/rumor

Under Development Page updated

In this thread, Drysc informs everyone that the Under Development Page has been updated:

We've recently update our Under Development page with new info on what you can expect in future updates.

"Originally founded as a Draenei temple, this plot has been conquered and despoiled many times throughout the history of Outland, removing any spiritual grace it may have once held. The Black Temple has been the stage of the Orc Horde's blood curse, a fortress for the then-mortal Ner'zhul, and a prime staging ground for the Burning Legion's campaign of destruction.. Most recently, it has been claimed as home by Illidan, where he and his minions make their bid for power over the remnants of the shattered planet. Now, it is up to you to face the malefic forces of Illidan and his minions in hopes of freeing Outland from chaos and tyranny."

You are not prepared.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/

Raids & Dungeons Forum Information

Magtheridon to receive tuning

In this thread, Tigole lets players know that the Magtheridon encounter will be undergoing some tuning to make it a bit easier than it currently is:

Just a quick update:

I wanted to let the raiding community know that we're going to be re-evaluating Magtheridon over the next few weeks. We had expected progress on this boss to go quicker than it has been. Our internal raid group has had success on this boss and we felt that it was tuned accurately. However, we're investigating the encounter to see why it's causing so many issues on live servers. While the encounter is supposed to be challenging, it's not supposed to be more difficult than the encounters in Serpentshrine. It is a low tier raid in Burning Crusade.

We're not going to do anything rash and make sweeping changes without testing them first. But we are keeping our eye on the progress being made in the encounter and considering making some minor tuning adjustments to bring the encounter in line with where it needs to be in the Burning Crusade's raid progression.

Magtheridon Hotfix

In this thread, Tigole mentions a hotfix to the Magtheridon encounter:

Fixed a bug that was causing Hellfire Channeler’s spell ‘Dark Mending’ to heal for more than intended.

Melee DPS in Raids and Dungeons

In this thread, Tigole lets players know there's a balance pass coming to instanced content to make creatures attacks more forgiving for melee DPS - especially rogues:

We're going to be doing a tuning pass on our dungeon and raid content to make sure that the point blank damage that Melee dps is taking (in particular rogues) isn't overly harsh.

For example, we'll be changing many monster cleaves to be a directional, 180 degree cone attack, rather than a 360 degree chain melee attack.

Expect these changes in a future patch. More details to come.