Today's material got posted pretty early. I personally like the reminder that blizz said the game would be out this year followed by the dev commenting that several items are known broken or untuned as they haven't progressed that far in testing yet.
BlizzCon Ticket Drawing Update - 8/19
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
As discussed last week, we?re preparing a drawing to offer 3,000 more BlizzCon 2008 tickets for sale. We?re finalizing the process now, and you?ll be able to enter the drawing beginning Wednesday morning -- in the meantime, here is an overview of how the drawing will work:
[*]To be eligible for the BlizzCon ticket drawing, you must (1) have an active Blizzard Account that was created on or before 9:00 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, August 12, 2008, when we first announced BlizzCon 2008 tickets had sold out; (2) be an adult in your country of residence; (3) have not previously purchased BlizzCon 2008 tickets; and (4) live in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, or South Korea.[*]Prior to the drawing, we will hold an opt-in period during which you can enter an eligible Blizzard Account into the drawing for a chance to purchase two BlizzCon 2008 tickets. Once the opt-in period begins, you?ll see an opt-in feature when you log in to Blizzard Account Management. The opt-in period begins on Wednesday morning and will end the evening of Sunday, August 24. As this is a random drawing, those who opt in early will not have a better chance of being selected than those who opt in later.[*]After the opt-in period ends, we will randomly select 1,500 eligible Blizzard Accounts from the opt-in pool to receive the opportunity to purchase up to two BlizzCon 2008 tickets. If selected, you will be notified via email with further information about how to purchase the tickets.[*]Prior to the end of the opt-in period, please ensure the contact information (both email address and phone number) associated with the Blizzard Account is accurate and up to date, so that we may contact you if you are selected. To check and update your information, log in to Blizzard Account Management.
[/list]
Please note that a Blizzard Account is an account created for the Blizzard Online Store -- as opposed to an account created for a Blizzard game, such as World of Warcraft. If you have any questions regarding Blizzard Accounts, please read our Blizzard Account FAQ.
We will announce when the drawing opt-in period begins on our website soon. For more information, please refer to our Blizzcon Ticket Drawing FAQ
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
WotLK Release Date
Keep in mind Mike Morhaime did say not that long ago that WotLK will be released between October to December of 2008. So perhaps you have a bit better of a range now. (Source)
WotLK Lore and Quests
Some Horde beta testers have been asking about why there seems to be a lot of Alliance only quests that related significant lore regarding Northrend, for example the changes with Mograine and the Ashbringer. It's true that the Alliance are learning a bit more of the lore while in Northrend, that isn't directly available to the Horde. The Alliance has a greater view at the lore behind the Vrykul. There's also a bit more that the Alliance is exposed to simply because the King of Stormwind and Arthas are both humans, or at least... were.
But then conversely back in Nagrand Horde players learned a lot more about Thrall's history, whilst the Alliance had little better to do than rescue some annoyingly dim-witted guy from a cage! Also talking in strict numbers only, the Horde have more Outlands quests and currently more quests in Northrend also. We'd like players to think about what "epic" quests they do have, rather than what they don't.
As an aside, more lore on the Ashbringer can be found in the comic book. The comic series is meant to compliment the game: events in the comics occur in the game as well. So this includes the King returning home to Stormwind, with the throne appearing and Bolvar moving to Northrend.
[...] we can move mountains when need be. Though we're starting off with floating necropoli and a magically transported city...
By the way, regarding Naxxramas, I just wanted to confirm that this would only be moved to Northrend and the level 60 version will not be available anymore. It's likely there won't be any achievements relating to the old Naxxramas, except there might be something related to Atiesh. (Source)
Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Bear Form armor compensationBears need to be compensated for less bonus armor on leather and lack of parry and block. Period. We haven't added those talents or bonuses or whatever they are going to end up being yet because the game isn't in a state where we could say e.g. what amount of armor a L80 tank needs to handle Patchwerk. Pointing out where you think bears (or any class) fall short in mitigation (or any aspect of tanking) is helpful. This is a beta though, and there is going to be a lot of iteration until we're happy with everything. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Totem of Wrath Stacking
Totem of Wrath is currently stacking crit and damage. Sorry but this isn't intended and will be resolved. ;-) Also, we're possibly going to look at reworking this totem somewhat. (Source)
Mana Tide currently restores 0 manaBugged, will be fixed soon. (Source)
Ancestral Weakening healing the "wrong" person (See the post)The ability is currently bugged and developpers are aware of it. (Source)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
New ranks for Demon Form abilities
There won't be new ranks, the spells should scale with level indefinitely. This is a bit hard to do for spells like the Shadow Bolt, because of the way Shadow Bolt scales in the game (it isn't very linear). Note that some/most of the spells right now do not scale correctly, and some are place holder. (Source)
Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
We aren't going to make a big dps pass on classes until talents have stabilized a bit and most of the bugs are knocked out. Last time we did one, DK damage was too high, but I couldn't honestly tell you if that was from a few bugs, a few OP abilities, talents stacking too well or something across the board.
If we had spent a lot of effort balancing say the old Frost Rune Frost Strike, that would have been wasted effort in retrospect. It's more important for the abilities to gel first then hit the numbers. (Source)
Black ice
Black Ice affects all Frost and Shadow damage and will continue to do so. We'll change the tooltip. (Source)
Plague Strike
The Blood Plague change would be in addition the current hot removal of Plague / Scourge Strike. It did seem stange to spam Plague Strike just to keep a healer from reapplying the hot just after your hit. That is why we went with a random chance on Blood Plague -- it will probably remove a hot on its own, but if you really want to make sure, go ahead and use Plague Strike again. (Source)
Scourge Strike upgrade ?We will probably add an Unholy talent to reliably generate Death Runes. That has proven to be a pretty fun mechanic. At the moment it would probably really only benefit a DK with Bone Shield and / or Corpse Explosion.
The idea of having Scourge Strike be an Obliterate upgrade has come up a few times, and it does have some benefits (especially if you do something like have Scourge Strike not remove diseases). It does turn Unholy into a rotation a little like Frost though, with the double FU ability on every other rotation.
I have had trouble figuring out how Scourge Strike as BU would work. It would be nice on times when you had Death Runes, but with a normal rotation, I'm concerned you'd see something like:Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Scourge Strike -> Blood Strike... er Icy Touch again?
You'd have a similar problem with the proposal to have Scourge Strike renew Frost Fever. Freeing up a Frost Rune doesn't help you that much unless you want to Chains of Ice.
There is also an idea to make Scourge Strike FU but apply both diseases. Then you could do Scourge Strike -> Blood Strike -> Blood Strike -> Obliterate, at least when in melee.
But... Heart Strike is pretty fun as a pure replacement for Blood Strike, so there is also a pretty decent reason to leave Scourge Strike as is. (Source)
Facebook
Twitter