Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Many of you asked me to keep you updated on the status of my s’mores pizza. I come here today to report that … I have failed. I didn’t make it yet due to lack of crust ingredients. You will just have to take me answering various questions as a consolation prize.
Pheonix asked:
“I know not all of the world zones are in the beta yet, but what’s your favorite zone in Cataclysm so far?”
"SC2GDF" (StarCraft 2 General Discussion Forum, for the uninitiated) has been a word of both love and hate. Perhaps most of you associate it with trolls and spam, but for some people it has been a home. I talk of course about Blizzard's Community Managers who have spent hundreds of hours in the forum doing all the things we don't notice, such as deleting spam, moderating flame threads and informing us of game updates.
It's with a tear in the corner of many an eye, some final goodbyes are made as the forums will be closing down today/tonight.
As we are not completely sure when exactly these forum will be wiped I would like to take an opportunity a little bit in advance to send my thanks to all of you here
It was truly a very memorable forum that we will all keep close to our hearts and remember for a long time. It definitely has been a place you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else. We could always find a lot of random funny stuff here and SC2GDF has always been mentioned a lot here in Blizzard Europe offices.
This forum definitely had a different flavor and will be remembered as truly legendary. So once again - thank you our dear constructive posters, lurkers, beginner posters (that some of you had a special name for) and last but not least all of our funny regulars that amused us in these (you know I am talking to you!).
Farewell and see you on the community site forums. Behave there!
Kapselius, do you know how strict the mods will be on the new community site? I'm afraid to get banned too easily, for mistyping mods' names on purpose par example.
Dungeon Sets Preview – Cloth Armor Sets
Shanai posted an interesting posts on the forums a few days ago. The first dungeon sets have been added to the beta files and Cloth sets are now available.
They are dungeon sets (5-man gear), they are NOT class raid sets. These sets drop from 5-man dungeons and possibly aren’t even real "sets" with bonuses
Screenshots from Ravenheart.eu are pretty good, it looks like I’m not the only one in the world who is crazy enough to do that kind of stuff.
Cataclysm Beta Build 12604 – NPCs Transcripts (Spoiler)
I’m not a huge fan of spoiling lore and dialogues but the requests for transcripts of sounds files have been overwhelming. From now on, I will list new sound files after each beta build and try to provide a transcript for them. (In this case I also included a couple of audio/videos, courtesy of Tural)
Obviously, do not read anything below if you do not like spoilers
Thanks to Marla for the transcripts of this patch.
Deathwing
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event01.wav – "Lifebinder. Do you presume that I am at your beck and call? I have a world to unmake."
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event02.wav – "Ha ha ha ha. End? Me? Lifebinder. You think life is yours to take away? Life is weak. Mortal. Fleeting. Fragile. Death is final. Death is eternal. Death is my realm. Look upon me, and you see death incarnate. The unmaker… of worlds."
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event03.wav – "Then witness my new gifts! Bestowed by this worlds TRUE MASTERS."
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event04.wav – "Just as all life ends in death, all order must end in chaos! Come! Embrace the inevitable… as I have!
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event05.wav – "The sun has set on this mortal world. Make peace with your end, for the hour of twilight falls!"
VO_QE_Deathwing_Event06.wav – "Argh. You think to entrap me?!"
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_GIEvent02.wav – "Such a waste! That arrows poison was not meant to be spent on your whelp! We will meet again."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent01.wav – "Where is that ogre-headed buffoon."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent02.wav – "Ah. Speak of the devil."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent03.wav – "Warchief. So glad you could make it."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent04.wav – "With the death of the lich king, many more of the intelligent scourge… became unemployed. Those feens as you so put it, are mine now."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent05.wav – "And they are part of the reason I asked to see you."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent06.wav – "Very well, Warchief. I have solved the blight of the forasken."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent07.wav – "As a race, we forsaken are unable to procreate."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent08.wav – "With the aid of the Valkyr, we are now able to the corpses of the fallen, and create new forsaken."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent09.wav – "Agatha! Show the Warchief."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent10.wav – "Warchief! Without these new people, my people would die out. Our hold on Gilneas and Northern Lordaeron would crumble."
VO_QE_SP_Sylvanas_SPEvent11.wav – "Isn’t it obvious, Warchief? I serve the horde."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event01.wav – "I have not always been the Banshee Queen."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event02.wav – "And my people have always been the Forsaken."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event03.wav – "Long ago, this land comprised the Northern Kingdoms of Lordaeron, ruled by King Terenas Menethil."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event04.wav – "Terenas, had a son named Arthas."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event05.wav – "Arthas. Even saying his name makes my body quiver in rage."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event06.wav – "This manchild, "Arthas", took for himself a cursed blade, known as Frostmourne."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event07.wav – "Through Frostmourne, Arthas killed his own father, and raised this land along with every creature in it."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event08.wav – "My own death, came at the hands of Arthas. When he and his army <sacked> my homeland Quel’Thalas and murdered my people."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event09.wav – "In his vast cruelty, Arthas severed my spirit from my body, and raised me as a banshee to serve in his scourge army."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event10.wav – "A similar fate befell all that would die to the scourge warmachine."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event11.wav – "In death, they were reborn as mindless undead."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event12.wav – "But Arthas was not invincible. With each passing day, his power wained, his grip over the will of the damned loosening."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event13.wav – "It was when Arthas was at his weakest, that I struck."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event14.wav – "And though the hour of his atonement had come, the worm managed to escape his fate, returning to the frozen wastes of Northrend."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event15.wav – "With Arthas gone, so to was the control he held over the undead masses of Lordaeron after recovering my body, I freed the remaining scourge that were left behind."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event16.wav – "From the cruelty and mercilessness of Arthas the man who would be Lich King, the forsaken were born."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event17.wav – "Our goal, our sole purpose was to destroy the Lich King. We through our lot in with the Horde, and began our journey to redemption."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event18.wav – "Now, the Lich King is dead. And we have returned."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event19.wav – "The people that called the land their home in life, do so in death as well."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event20.wav – "But the Alliance does not recognise our rights, they claim this land is their own while attempting to invalidate the claims of the founders of this kingdom."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event21.wav – "I will never allow it. NEVER."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Event22.wav – "Lordaeron belongs to the Forsaken. Always and forever."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Hunt01.wav – "You can assure Garrosh, that this is a minor setback. Our victory in Gilneas will be absolute."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Hunt02.wav – "You do well to watch your tone, general. Neither you nor Garrosh have anything to worry about. We’ve ceased all production of the plague, as he ordered. We’d never deploy it without his permission."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Hunt03.wav – "Go with honor, General."
VO_QE_Sylvanas_Hunt04.wav – "What kind of question is that? Ofcourse we are deploying the plague, as planned. Let the Gilneans enjoy their small victory. Not even their bones will remain by tomorrow."
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent01.wav – "This better be important, Sylvanas. You know how I detest this place and it’s foul stench. Why have you called for me?"
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent02.wav – "And more importantly, what are those scourge beigns doing here?"
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent03.wav – "Get on with it, Sylvanas!"
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent04.wav – "What you have done here, Sylvanas. It goes against the laws of nature. Disgusting is the only word to describe it."
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent05.wav – "Have you given any thought to what this means, Sylvanas?"
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent06.wav – "What difference is there, between you and the Lich King now?"
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent07.wav – "Watch your clever mouth, bitch."
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent08.wav – "Gro’mash, you stay behind and make sure the Banshee Queen is well guarded. I will be expecting a full report when next we meet."
VO_QE_Garrosh_SPEvent09.wav – "Remember Sylvanas, eventually we all have to stand before our maker, and face judgement. Your day may come sooner than others."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Aggro01.wav – "I will show no mercy!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_ElEvent01.wav – "Don’t talk back to me Troll, you know who was left in charge here. Haven’t you stumped to ask yourself why Thrall chose me instead of you?"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_ElEvent02.wav – "You are lucky that I don’t gut you right here, whelp. You are foolish to think you can speak to your warchief in such ways!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_ElEvent03.wav – "And what exactly do you think you’re going to do about it? Your threats are hollow. Go slink away with the rest of your kind to the slums. I will endure your filth in my throne room NO LONGER."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_ElEvent04.wav – "You have sealed your fate, troll."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Event01.wav – "Hahaha! Yes I live! No Twilight dragon can keep this orc down!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Event02.wav – "Ah. There she is. The battle maiden of the Dragonmaw. Let me see your face."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Event03.wav – "Blood and honor, hero. The horde welcomes you. Your people will be put to the test, as we obliterate twilight’s hammer, and lay claim to this distant shore. But first, some unfinished business.."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Greeting01.wav – "Hellscreams eyes are upon you."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Greeting02.wav – "Leave by these words! Lok’tar ogar! Victory or death."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Greeting03.wav – "Only the strongest may dwell in Orgrimmar."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_Greeting04.wav – "You will serve the horde, or be crushed beneath it."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent01.wav – "What have you done, Grom’gar?"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent02.wav – "My command?!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent03.wav – "Was my command to murder innocent, Grom’gar?"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent04.wav – "Am I a murderer, Grom’gar?"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent05.wav – "Then I ask you again, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent06.wav – "I sent you into Stonetalon Mountains with an army, your orders were to secure this land for the Horde."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent07.wav – "Instead, you layed waste to the land. Murdered innocents. Children even."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent08.wav – "I spent a very long time on Northrend, Grom’gar. I learnt much about the Horde in that time."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent09.wav – "While there, a wise old war hero told me something, that I would carry with me forever."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent10.wav – "Honor, Grom’gar. No matter how dire the battle, never forsake it."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent11.wav – "Overlord Grom’gar, you have disgraced the Horde!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent12.wav – "You have brought shame to us as a people."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent13.wav – "By my right as Warchief, I hereby RELIEVE YOU OF DUTY."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent16.wav – "Mercy. Your wife and child were murdered. Your kin wiped out. Your home burnt to the ground."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent17.wav – "Mercy. Chieftain. On this day, I learn from you."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent18.wav – "Grom’gar’s army is no more. Your rank no longer has meaning. If you wish to truly help the horde, your considerable power could be used in Desolace, or in the Southern Barrens."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent19.wav – "The choice is yours to make."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_STEvent20.wav – "Let honor guide you. Do not forget that Hellscream’s eyes are always upon you."
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_TILEvent01.wav – "Fellow warriors of the Horde, hear me now!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_TILEvent02.wav – "Ahead hides our foe. Worshippers of chaos, who seek to remake our world. A new world is coming, friends. But it is not the world of their design. Together, we will crush the Twilight’s Hammer. Raise their stronghold. Raise the earth, and burn the bodies. All will tremble by our might. Then we will stand (upon?) this world as its masters. United at our conviction. Unrivaled in strength. Behold into no one! (?) Today we will make the world, our world! FOR THE HORDE!"
VO_QE_TI_Garrosh_TILEvent03.wav – "The Alliance steams in close formation without escort. Air guard, attack! Strike them now while they can not manouvre! Hahahahahah!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event01.wav – "Cho’gall, we’ll have your heads! All of them!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event02.wav – "The worms bleed well tonight!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event03.wav – "The burden of the damned falls upon you!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event04.wav – "AAAAAAAAARGGGHGHHHHH"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event05.wav – "AUUAUWUWWHWHWUW"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event06.wav – "Beast! Strike at our enemiiiieees."
VO_BT_Halfus_Event07.wav – "Dragons to my side!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event08.wav – "Drakes! Your master calls for you!"
VO_BT_Halfus_Event09.wav – "Whelps! Wash over our enemies as a swarm of death!"
Ignacious (Bastion of Twilight)
VO_BT_Ignacious_Event01.wav – – "You will die. For your insolence!"
VO_BT_Ignacious_Event02.wav – – "Ugh! More fuel for the fire!"
VO_BT_Ignacious_Event03.wav – – "BUUUUUURN!"
VO_BT_Ignacious_Event04.wav – – "The fury of the elements!"
VO_BT_Ignacious_Event05.wav – – "Behold your doom!"
Monstrosity (Bastion of Twilight)
VO_BT_Monstrosity_Event01.wav – "Behold your doom!"
VO_BT_Monstrosity_Event02.wav – "Annihilate!"
VO_BT_Monstrosity_Event03.wav – "Eradicate!"
VO_BT_Monstrosity_Event04.wav – "Impossible!"
VO_BT_Monstrosity_Event05.wav – "Feel the power!"
Siamat (Lost City of the Tol’vir)
VO_TV_Siamat_Intro01.wav – "I AM UNLEASHED!"
VO_TV_Siamat_Event01.wav – "Cower before the Tempest Storm!"
VO_TV_Siamat_Event02.wav – "Suffer the storm!"
VO_TV_Siamat_Event03.wav – "Your city will be buried. Your lives forfeit to the elements."
Theralion (Bastion of Twilight)
VO_BT_Theralion_Event01.wav – "The master was clearly speaking to you, Valiona. I am far to busy to attack anyone."
VO_BT_Theralion_Event02.wav – "How dare you call me worthless? You will see why I am mother’s favorite child."
VO_BT_Theralion_Event03.wav – "Bare your soul to me, mortal!"
VO_BT_Theralion_Event04.wav – "I knew I should’ve stayed out of this!"
VO_BT_Theralion_Event05.wav – "You’re not the boss of me, Valiona. I will engulf as I please."
VO_BT_Theralion_Event06.wav – "There is no escape from the fury of the Twilight Flight!"
VO_BT_Theralion_Event07.wav – "Writhe in agony! *cries*"
Sinestra (Bastion of Twilight)
VO_BT_Sinestra_Aggro01.wav – "We are fools to entrust an imbecile like Cho’gall with such a sacred duty. I will deal with you intruders myself!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Phase01.wav – "I tire of this! Do you see this clutch amidst which you stand? I have nurtured the spark within them, but that lifeforce is and always will be mine! Behold, power beyond your apprehension!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Phase02.wav – "This will be your tomb as well as theirs!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Phase03.wav – "Enough! Drawing upon this source will set us back for months. You should feel honored to be worthy of this expenditure. Now die!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Losing01.wav – "You mistake this for weakness? FOOL!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Winning01.wav – "My brood will feast upon your essence!"
VO_BT_Sinestra_Death01.wav – "Deathwing. I have fallen. The brood is lost."
Class Development Status
I’d say that at this point in time, the trees that are farthest along are mage, rogue, shaman and warrior. Paladin would be close except that things have changed so much that we still have to move talents around quite a bit. (Source)
DPS Classes Overhaul
Sure, and Fury is the kind of tree that needs a lot of adjustment because so many of the talents are "you do more damage" of various kinds (and there are still some we haven’t been able to prune quite yet). But I’ve also seen a lot of posts where say a Shadow priest or Feral druid imagines they are getting a paladin-level overhaul with half of their spells new. Neither the Shadow or Feral trees are done yet, but the bones are there. You’ll see talent slide around or maybe one or two new ones added, but they aren’t getting new resources (unless you call the orbs a resource), and we aren’t removing say Lacerate or Mind Flay. (Source)
Raid Buff Costs
The thing is, Rampage is a sizeable dps increase for 1 talent point. If all you ever do is raid and you know you’ll always have another version, then I guess you’re safer skipping it. If you ever solo or run 5-player dungeons, it’s a nice benefit to have. If you have the luxury of spending your dual-spec on your solo Fury build, then again, Rampage might be a luxury. This is one of the reasons though that we are hesitant to offer more specs. At one talent point, Rampage should be a no brainer. If it cost 2 or 3 points for a buff someone else might bring, then I could see skipping it in a raid.
Likewise, if like the Frost mage, every Survival hunter, Ret paladin etc. decides that someone else will bring Replenishment, then nobody will have it. 🙁
Talent builds are supposed to be about evaluating the pros and cons of every talent. If you can quickly tailor your talent build to the other folks you are playing with, then you are just avoiding the cons. Situational talents can be skipped until you’re in the situation that needs them. Dual spec was conceived so that players could tank or dps or raid and PvP, not so that you could skip over situational talents and yet still be able to use them as needed. For all the good that dual-spec has done, it has done some harm too. (Source)
Vengeance
Think of Vengeance like the way Tricks of the Trade works on live. It isn’t the silver bullet that is supposed to solve all your threat problems. It’s there to make sure that other classes don’t outscale you as you keep piling on Stamina and they keep piling on damage.
Your normal threat rotation should be sufficient to keep aggro in most situations. Vengeance falling off periodically shouldn’t be a big deal. Offtanks without Vengeance shouldn’t be a big deal. We want you so still care, insofar as tanks ever care, about the damage you’re doing. Vengeance is a cushion, not the solution to threat management. (Source)
Tanks and DPS Talents
It is particularly a challenge with tanks once they are ready to sub-spec into other trees. A Prot warrior for instance looks at the Arms and Fury tree and sees all these dps talents, and assumes he has to get all of those to hold threat. Yet, we can’t very well make the top two tiers of Arms and Fury with no dps talents. Hopefully the way it will work out is that tanks will need "some" dps and can decide whether to get those talents in Arms, Fury and Prot, but won’t feel the need to get them all.
There are some tanks who get some things "for free" while others need to talent into it. As long as the end result is similar it should feel okay. Part of what we are dealing with is all these brand new talents or old favorites that have changed a lot. You don’t have the years fo experience and theorycrafting to fall back on so you don’t know (yet) if say Thunderstruck is mandatory (it shouldn’t be).
There will be some amount of dps talents in all trees. Some players will call any dps talent that doesn’t require them to click something "passive and boring" but we also think there is a limit to the number of procs, stacking buffs, and using base spells in unusual ways that a player can manage. We’ll have some of those talents for sure, but not 20 of them per tree. (Source)
Death Knight (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) Death Knight Rotations
One thing I’ll throw out there is we’re definitely trying to keep the feel of Unholy with a more predictable rotation and Frost with more of a priority system, since what ability to use next can’t always be guessed in advance. DKs seem to like those play styles for the two trees respectively. (Source)
Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) Hunter Redesign?
No, hunters are not undergoing any kind of massive redesign. We have spent our efforts lately on trying to make sure focus works as intended in both aspects and at low and high level. We’re not there yet. We’ll work on the talent trees a little more when we feel like focus is where we want it to be, since that will affect the talent design. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy Power as Protection
It’s entirely possible there isn’t enough Holy Power to go around for Prot yet. We want you to be able to consider things like Inquisition and Word of Glory. Remember too that it’s only 15% block. If it falls down from time to time, you’re unlikely to drop dead. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) Raging Blow / Fury in the Blood
Raging Blow — We want this to be an ability that can’t be used 100% of the time. We don’t want Fury to have very static (and boring) rotations. We’re going to try to keep Fury enraged a lot without it being 100% up time (somehwere in the 75% range sounds better). As such, we’re not crazy about a design that lets you hit Raging Blow whenever you want. It just waters down the ability. (In fact, we feel the same way about Execute and are considering redesigning Sudden Death for Arms). We think we can make Fury’s use of enrage predictable enough without being totally under player control that your dps won’t fluctuate wildly from fight to fight.
Fury in the Blood — I think a little bit of the "we won’t be able to use our utility abilities correctly" is a little overblown. For starters, you don’t need to use Bloodrage and Berseker Rage all that much. Fury has a lot of other ways to generate rage, and fears just aren’t super common in PvE and you have other ways to break them in PvP. In those situations where they do come up, we think it’s an interesting choice. Is the boss going to fear? Maybe you want to save your Berserker Rage for a few seconds and use it then. There are going to be very, very few fights where it’s a true dps loss to delay or save your Berserker Rage for the right time. Frankly, we’d rather have encounters feel more different like this, where abilities are more valuable or have to be used differently sometimes. I compare it to Arcane’s mana gem talent. Sometimes you want to use the gems for mana and sometimes spellpower and sometimes both. That makes the decision on when to use the gem deeper than just "on cooldown." (Source)
Now all of that is really just an endorsement of Raging Blow, not Fury in the Blood. In fact, with Raging Blow being the primary reason to stay enraged, we’re just not sure we also need the bonus damage from the Fury in the Blood abilities. With say Enrage and Death Wish providing the enrage sometimes, you should have to fall back on Bloodrage and Berserker Rage less often, which should let you save them for emergencies more often (but not always, as I said above).
In short, we like Raging Blow, but not Fury in the Blood and will likely redesign the latter. (Source)
Intended use of Bloodrage
If you have to pop Bloodrage on cooldown for rage, then we’ve failed. It’s there for emergencies, not as the primary way you gain rage. Hitting things is the primary way you gain rage.
Just because rage won’t always be unlimited doesn’t mean that it will go to always being limited either. If that was the case then we wouldn’t need abilities like Heroic Strike or Inner Rage. (Source)
Ok Starcraft fans, here’s a challenge. As soon as you get the game, or if you’re heading to one of the many launch events, make sure you snap some photos of yourself at events or with your spanking new copy of the game..
We opened the Community Launch Pics event gallery last week, and as the game is going to be released within 24 hours, get your pic snapping fingers at the ready. You can simply add your pics to the gallery via this link once logged in. Let’s see what you got! Blog
Two class specs, both alike in dignity,
in fair Azeroth, where we lay our scene,
from ancient expansion to ICC,
here circles, bubbles, mischief all convene. Spiritual Guidance updates each Sunday with all the essentials on healing as a priest.
You would think that a priest could dispel bleeds. We can restore people from death and protect them from incoming attacks, yet we can’t plug up one gushing wound? Seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? Are we not masters of healing?
Anyway, today’s column actually has nothing to do with dispelling or bleed effects (other than the author writing today’s column while under the effects of a non-dispellable bleed debuff). It has to do with leveling a priest from levels 40 to 70. Hit the jump and we’ll get to it.
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty is going live this Tuesday! If you’re serious about being among the first to hit the virtual battlefield, Blizzard will be holding midnight launch events as well as allowing pre-downloaded copies to be insta-activated.
If you intend to buy a digital copy of StarCraft 2, you might end up with a small edge on everyone else, as the full StarCraft 2 client, weighing in at a healthy 7GB, is available for download through your Battle.net account.
Who should download StarCraft II in advance? If you intend to purchase StarCraft II digitally, downloading the client now will allow you to simply pay and play when digital copies of StarCraft II go on sale.
Will digital copies of StarCraft II be available as soon as the game is released in stores? No. They’ll go on sale slightly later, on 07/27/2010 10:00 AM PDT in North America and Latin America.
While the game is already available for download, we can safely assume it is fully encrypted. On 07/27/2010 10:00 AM PDT, gamers will be able to run the installer and activate their digital copy via their Battle.net account management console.
Blizzard will be celebrating the launch of StarCraft 2 in multiple select retail stores around the world, hosting midnight parties with StarCraft 2 developers in attendance – signing copies, hosting competitions, having awesome giveaways and just mingling with their most devoted fans.
Midnight parties are expected to take place in:
London
Berlin
Paris
Stockholm
Moscow
Singapore
Mexico City
São Paulo, Brazil
Brisbane, Australia
Throughout its development, StarCraft 2′s regional segregation has been quite an issue for gamers around the world, especially in the eSports community. With just a few days left till launch, Blizzard decided to grantfull North American server access to Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand!
North American Server Access for Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ Players FAQ highlights:
Q: Who is eligible to play on the North American servers?
A: All players, including those in the regions of Hong Kong and Macau, who purchase the English Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand Standard or Collector’s Edition of StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ will have the option of playing on the North American Battle.net® servers in addition to the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand servers if they prefer.
Q: How much will this cost?
A: The option of playing on North American Battle.net servers will come at no additional cost to all players who have purchased the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of StarCraft II.
Q: How will access to the North American servers be granted?
A: Our intention is to ensure that within 60 days after the launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, all players with a copy of the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version will automatically gain the ability to also access the North American servers — this will be handled through Battle.net account management.
The latest Cataclysmscreenshot from Blizzard is shown above. This image makes me think of good old Zangarmarsh. I’m happy to seem some of the foreign, alien landscapes returning to the game.
If you’ve missed any of the previous Cataclysm screenshots of the day or you want to see a high-res version of today’s image, check out the gallery below.
Okay, I am just about to go to bed now. It will be my last sleeping period before I (hopefully) get my hands on StarCraft II, and I'm likely to stay up all next night playing.
And if you haven't already answered 1Thorshammer's question of what YOU will do, it's the campaign. I'll definitely start the campaign first.
If you like any spoilers, check out the portrait article and the new trailer article. Read comments as well.
Feeling hyped up, hard to sleep. How do you guys feel?
Guardian Angel just IMd me saying it's 24 hours to go. Well, for me it's 25, and my only comfort is that west coast Americans have 33 hours to go. We're not even talking to Australians any more, with just a dozen hours left. Bastards!
Wee! The day we have been waiting for since May 2007, and secretly been hoping for since 1999 is about to come upon us! Blog
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.
This week I’m dual wielding topics. Neither one was enough to keep you entertained, my lovely and intelligent readers, for a full week’s worth of enhancement, but combined together I think we can accomplish something. Consider a Stormstrike post with fire elemental mechanics in one hand and Cataclysm changes in the other.
If you’re firmly in the “don’t tell me anything about Cataclysm” camp, then just read the first section and skip the rest, though all I’m talking about are the recent changes to the shaman talent trees. If you don’t mind a sneak peek at enhancement 4.0 as it stands now, then enjoy!
After the release of StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past pre-launch trailer for Wings of Liberty™, the Dominion’s propaganda is now complete with two final StarCraft Lore Videos. The empire’s citizenry can breathe a sigh of relief until the day after tomorrow, when Blizzard newest RTS gem will be revealed in all its glory, around the world, at midnight. StarCraft 2 release is a highly anticipated event for the most successful real-time strategy in history, StarCraft.
Starcraft 2 Release: Official Beginner’s Guide (on Battle.Net, RTS basics)
Starcraft 2 Release: Jay Cooper’s Guide (be the very best at StarCraft II)
Starcraft 2 release on Amazon (buy the full game)
Starcraft 2 release on Battle.Net (download the game client; get into StarCraft II faster!)
StarCraft 2 was announced more than three years ago and was in production even before that. Will the StarCraft 2 release secure RTS supremacy? We will live and see, two days from now…
Rather than derail threads on individual classes or specializations, I thought I would address some common questions or misperceptions in this one thread.
We don’t consider "bloat" a bad word. Players typically say that when there are more talents than they can possibly get. That’s the whole idea. When you run out of interesting talents, then that’s when we think we have a problem.
Related, if we do our jobs right, you are going to run out of dps talents (or healing talents if you’re a healer, or mitigation talents if you’re a tank). We don’t want every talent to feel mandatory since you are prohibited from getting them all. We want you to have choices.
We don’t consider every talent that doesn’t directly lead to higher dps to be a "PvP talent." Survivability is a big deal in Cataclysm. In that vein, talents that keep you alive (or help healers conserve mana) are indirectly dps talents. 🙂
Related, many trees lost a lot of true PvP talents, such as dispel resistance or mechanic duration reductions. These are the kind of talents I describe as "arms races," where you need a counter to the ability someone else is using to try to counter you. We’d rather reel the whole thing in a little and make things like crowd control or dispels as powerful or as weak as they need to be baseline rather than assuming you have talents that make them less powerful.
We are providing some damage talents for healers. For the most part, those are optional talents for leveling, soloing, PvP or times in dungeons or raids when you don’t need to heal.
Likewise, we don’t assume tanks need to pick up every single dps talent in order to generate sufficient threat. You’ll likely need some threat talents, but since you’re probably dipping into a dps tree to get some of those, you’re going to find way more than you can afford.
In most cases, raid buff talents are cheap and often have selfish bonuses. If they lack a selfish bonus, it’s because we consider the talent so compelling that you’d probably want it when solo anyway. We see a lot of "I’ll skip that talent, because someone else will bring that buff," but obviously that logic starts to fail when everyone comes to that conclusion. Also make sure you’re familiar with how some of the buffs and debuffs have changed for Cataclysm. We are trying to make it even easier to get the big ones, especially for 10-player raids.
We aren’t designing PvP vs. PvE trees. Ultimately, we consider a talent specialization to be a stylistic choice. However, given the challenges of nailing both PvP and PvE balance, as a consolation prize it’s nice when at least there are no dead trees. If Frost and Arms weren’t raiding juggernauts, at least they did have a place in the game in Lich King. But Cataclysm represents an opportunity to try again, so we hope to see Arms and Frost raiding, and Fury and Fire in PvP.
We aren’t overhauling every single class. We are changing paladins quite a bit, and the resource systems for hunters and warlocks and Balance druids have changed. I get the sense some of you are waiting for that magical build in which half of your talents have been scrapped in favor of new ones, and in many cases, those changes just aren’t coming. That’s not to say we’re done with any tree.
We haven’t been super concerned about numbers yet, and we aren’t at all concerned about glyphs yet. It’s helpful if you note abilities that seem to have lost a lot of damage compared to live, just so we can make sure it’s intentional (as it is for many AE abilities). If you think you won’t use some core spell just because it doesn’t hit or heal for enough yet, then it’s fine to bring that up, but you can also assume that the numbers just aren’t quite right on it yet. Of course this also means that you may feel underpowered (or rarely overpowered, though players almost always feel underpowered) compared to someone else. This does not mean you’re doomed in Cataclysm or that you need to SCREAM REAL LOUD to make sure the developers don’t overlook it. Numbers are much easier to adjust once we’re happy with the basic mechanics.
We’ve gotten a ton of great feedback already, and I want to personally thank you for that. We make changes every day that are the direct result of the feedback we receive, and that certainly includes this forum, the live forums, and many of the great websites out there were players discuss World of Warcraft design.
Quality of Beta Posts on Official Forums
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
(Source)
I hate to go all forum moderator on you guys, but we’ve seen a recent downward spiral in the quality of some of these threads and posts here on the beta forum.
Story time: I started posting heavily in the Lich King beta forums. It was a great experience and lot of players enjoyed the opportunity to be able to have intelligent conversations directly with the developers. I’ve heard over and over ever since then what a positive experience that was for a lot of players. It’s for that reason that I am going to be fiercely protective of the quality of posts here in the Class Discussion forum.
If you see a locked thread, chances are we thought it crossed the line. If you keep making the kinds of threads that get locked, then you’ll be removed from the beta and we will replace you with someone who can provide intelligent feedback. Sorry to sound like a jerk — I hate making these kinds of posts. But we want participating in the beta to be a positive experience.
We’re working on the basic Prot rotations right now, and with Shield of Righteousness in addition to Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecrate, Avenger’s Shield and Holy Wrath, there was just a lot going on. Shield seemed like the least interesting of those abilities — really Shield and Hammer just seem to be single-target and multitarget versions of the same ability, especially without block scaling. Shield also felt like a duplicate of Shield Slam, which doesn’t help in trying to differentiate the two Prot trees. Frankly, we’d rather make Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of the Righteous cooler than they are today.
It’s too early to call this a permanent change. We still have a lot to consider, such as the damage of Hammer vs. Shield, how different we want the AE vs. single-target Prot attacks to be, and how much Holy Power considerations occupy a Prot paladin.
If we keep Shield of Righteousness, we need to figure out its role relative to Hammer. We don’t want it to be just swap one button for another for AE fights, and we don’t want you to have to use both on cooldown since we are giving Prot paladins more things to manage in Cataclysm. (Source)
Paladin Gameplay
As far as the paladin changes go, we have made no secret that we haven’t happy with the paladin gameplay on live, of all three trees, and the class was headed for a pretty radical redesign. There can be very few sacred cows as part of that process or we’re not going to have the design space we need to fix the problems.
The current Cataclysm rotation is far from static and was in fact so frenetic that we had to scale back on some of the random procs and Holy Power generation or paladins were never going to have the bandwidth to do things like position the boss. It was far away the most complex tank rotation, and that’s not what we were going for.
We’re trying a lot of new ideas and it’s going to take some iteration before we’re happy with them. The current snapshot you are getting in beta is just a snapshot — it’s whatever the data happened to look like at the time when we made a build. (Source)
Righteous Fury / Threat
We recently made a change, that I suspect you don’t have yet, to make Righteous Fury improve all threat and not just Holy threat. It’s also possible attacks like Judgement, Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous just don’t hit hard enough yet. You lost a lot of passive Strength and damage in the talent trees and we haven’t baked all of that back in yet. (Source)
With only two more sleeps to go (at least here in the U.S., I know that it’ll be one sleep to go across the pond when most of you see this), we here at StarCraft.IncGamers want to know what you will do first once you’ve actually installed the full game.
Will you jump right into the expected awesomeness of the new campaign?
Will you go online in competitive ranked matches and start slaughtering your foes?
How about those new challenge modes? Do you feel like you need to brush up on your skills?
Or maybe you’ll try to see if there are any fan made maps up yet.
What’ll you do? Sound off in the comments below. Blog
Goblin cheesecake calendars — now those are three words you never want to see together. But apparently the goblins at Bilgewater Port in Azshara decided that their troops fighting the Alliance needed something to fight for, and commissioned this … erotic masterpiece for their bunkers. Do we really want to know why the calendar is dripping blood and green Ecto-Cooler? No, we don’t. (Thanks to Runeral of <Redefine> on Bonechewer (US-H) for the pic!)
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wow.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include “Azeroth” in the subject line so your email doesn’t get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.
You may remember that back in February it was revealed during Toy Fair that DC Unlimited was going to be releasing action figures based on StarCraft II. At the time pictures of the action figures were not allowed to be taken. Thankfully that’s not the case anymore as prototypes for the figures are on display at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.
Figures.com have a number of photos of the figures in the first wave. They include long time StarCraft character Jim Raynor, the Protoss character Zeratul, and a Terran Space Marine. The action figures, based of course on Blizzard‘s RTS game, should be available for sale in spring 2011.
Rather than derail threads on individual classes or specializations, I thought I would address some common questions or misperceptions in this one thread.
We don’t consider "bloat" a bad word. Players typically say that when there are more talents than they can possibly get. That’s the whole idea. When you run out of interesting talents, then that’s when we think we have a problem.
Related, if we do our jobs right, you are going to run out of dps talents (or healing talents if you’re a healer, or mitigation talents if you’re a tank). We don’t want every talent to feel mandatory since you are prohibited from getting them all. We want you to have choices.
We don’t consider every talent that doesn’t directly lead to higher dps to be a "PvP talent." Survivability is a big deal in Cataclysm. In that vein, talents that keep you alive (or help healers conserve mana) are indirectly dps talents. 🙂
Related, many trees lost a lot of true PvP talents, such as dispel resistance or mechanic duration reductions. These are the kind of talents I describe as "arms races," where you need a counter to the ability someone else is using to try to counter you. We’d rather reel the whole thing in a little and make things like crowd control or dispels as powerful or as weak as they need to be baseline rather than assuming you have talents that make them less powerful.
We are providing some damage talents for healers. For the most part, those are optional talents for leveling, soloing, PvP or times in dungeons or raids when you don’t need to heal.
Likewise, we don’t assume tanks need to pick up every single dps talent in order to generate sufficient threat. You’ll likely need some threat talents, but since you’re probably dipping into a dps tree to get some of those, you’re going to find way more than you can afford.
In most cases, raid buff talents are cheap and often have selfish bonuses. If they lack a selfish bonus, it’s because we consider the talent so compelling that you’d probably want it when solo anyway. We see a lot of "I’ll skip that talent, because someone else will bring that buff," but obviously that logic starts to fail when everyone comes to that conclusion. Also make sure you’re familiar with how some of the buffs and debuffs have changed for Cataclysm. We are trying to make it even easier to get the big ones, especially for 10-player raids.
We aren’t designing PvP vs. PvE trees. Ultimately, we consider a talent specialization to be a stylistic choice. However, given the challenges of nailing both PvP and PvE balance, as a consolation prize it’s nice when at least there are no dead trees. If Frost and Arms weren’t raiding juggernauts, at least they did have a place in the game in Lich King. But Cataclysm represents an opportunity to try again, so we hope to see Arms and Frost raiding, and Fury and Fire in PvP.
We aren’t overhauling every single class. We are changing paladins quite a bit, and the resource systems for hunters and warlocks and Balance druids have changed. I get the sense some of you are waiting for that magical build in which half of your talents have been scrapped in favor of new ones, and in many cases, those changes just aren’t coming. That’s not to say we’re done with any tree.
We haven’t been super concerned about numbers yet, and we aren’t at all concerned about glyphs yet. It’s helpful if you note abilities that seem to have lost a lot of damage compared to live, just so we can make sure it’s intentional (as it is for many AE abilities). If you think you won’t use some core spell just because it doesn’t hit or heal for enough yet, then it’s fine to bring that up, but you can also assume that the numbers just aren’t quite right on it yet. Of course this also means that you may feel underpowered (or rarely overpowered, though players almost always feel underpowered) compared to someone else. This does not mean you’re doomed in Cataclysm or that you need to SCREAM REAL LOUD to make sure the developers don’t overlook it. Numbers are much easier to adjust once we’re happy with the basic mechanics.
We’ve gotten a ton of great feedback already, and I want to personally thank you for that. We make changes every day that are the direct result of the feedback we receive, and that certainly includes this forum, the live forums, and many of the great websites out there were players discuss World of Warcraft design.
Quality of Beta Posts on Official Forums
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
(Source)
I hate to go all forum moderator on you guys, but we’ve seen a recent downward spiral in the quality of some of these threads and posts here on the beta forum.
Story time: I started posting heavily in the Lich King beta forums. It was a great experience and lot of players enjoyed the opportunity to be able to have intelligent conversations directly with the developers. I’ve heard over and over ever since then what a positive experience that was for a lot of players. It’s for that reason that I am going to be fiercely protective of the quality of posts here in the Class Discussion forum.
If you see a locked thread, chances are we thought it crossed the line. If you keep making the kinds of threads that get locked, then you’ll be removed from the beta and we will replace you with someone who can provide intelligent feedback. Sorry to sound like a jerk — I hate making these kinds of posts. But we want participating in the beta to be a positive experience.
We’re working on the basic Prot rotations right now, and with Shield of Righteousness in addition to Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecrate, Avenger’s Shield and Holy Wrath, there was just a lot going on. Shield seemed like the least interesting of those abilities — really Shield and Hammer just seem to be single-target and multitarget versions of the same ability, especially without block scaling. Shield also felt like a duplicate of Shield Slam, which doesn’t help in trying to differentiate the two Prot trees. Frankly, we’d rather make Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of the Righteous cooler than they are today.
It’s too early to call this a permanent change. We still have a lot to consider, such as the damage of Hammer vs. Shield, how different we want the AE vs. single-target Prot attacks to be, and how much Holy Power considerations occupy a Prot paladin.
If we keep Shield of Righteousness, we need to figure out its role relative to Hammer. We don’t want it to be just swap one button for another for AE fights, and we don’t want you to have to use both on cooldown since we are giving Prot paladins more things to manage in Cataclysm. (Source)
Paladin Gameplay
As far as the paladin changes go, we have made no secret that we haven’t happy with the paladin gameplay on live, of all three trees, and the class was headed for a pretty radical redesign. There can be very few sacred cows as part of that process or we’re not going to have the design space we need to fix the problems.
The current Cataclysm rotation is far from static and was in fact so frenetic that we had to scale back on some of the random procs and Holy Power generation or paladins were never going to have the bandwidth to do things like position the boss. It was far away the most complex tank rotation, and that’s not what we were going for.
We’re trying a lot of new ideas and it’s going to take some iteration before we’re happy with them. The current snapshot you are getting in beta is just a snapshot — it’s whatever the data happened to look like at the time when we made a build. (Source)
Righteous Fury / Threat
We recently made a change, that I suspect you don’t have yet, to make Righteous Fury improve all threat and not just Holy threat. It’s also possible attacks like Judgement, Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous just don’t hit hard enough yet. You lost a lot of passive Strength and damage in the talent trees and we haven’t baked all of that back in yet. (Source)
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