World Of Warcraft To WOW Player

Robot Devil tells you how to portray emotion
In the episode of Futurama  titled The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings, Fry manages to swap out his sausage-like digits for a pair of sweet, sweet Robot Devil hands. Using these hands, Fry is able to compose and perform an opera. The problem is that the hands enhance his musical skills, but not the man’s imagination. So the writing for the opera is, apparently, pretty bad.

The Robot Devil is offended and screams, “Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel!” And then to provide an ironic counterpoint to his argument, the Robot Devil finishes up “That makes me feel angry!” However, when the Robot Devil finishes that exclamation, hopefully the audience is already quite aware of how the character is feeling. It’s useless, it’s just underlining the proof of “Show, don’t tell.”

It’s considered ineffective at best or vulgar at worse to simply have your character announce how they feel, especially if that exclamation is the only method you use to tell the audience about the relevant emotion. As such, you should be on the look out for how to convey emotions like grief or love to other players. Let’s review some tips for that.

Big emotion, big changes

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “you can talk the talk, can you walk the walk?” Or, similarly, “actions speak louder than words.” This is the essence of roleplaying. The things that define your character aren’t the things you spit out in /say or /yell while trying to be witty in Stormwind.

The things that define your character are the choices he makes in the face of difficult circumstance. The actions taken by your character will take him from being a cheap silhouette into being something three-dimensional and meaningful. It makes sense, therefore, that the best way to portray a deep change to your character’s emotional landscape is by big changes to your character’s actions.

For example, has your character become frustrated with the state of the realm? Think Varian’s not doing such a great job leading the alliance? You can portray that kind of ennui without having to paint a protest sign and picketing the royal chambers. Your character could start being rude to officials of the kingdom. Casually spit in the direction of Stormwind from time to time. Roll your eyes when people shout “For the Alliance!” You have options here.

How to have a crush

Let’s say your character has fallen in love. Even better, the object of his affection loves your character back. Great. Now you’re in an in-character relationship. But trust me when I say no one wants to see this conversation:

“I love you, pookie.”
“No, no, I love you, pookie. You’re the cutest!”
“No, snugglebutt, you’re the cutest! You’re the cutest pookie to ever gag on velour!”

See? It’s obnoxious. No one wants to see it. And while you might think you and your IC lover aren’t quite that obnoxious, trust me when I say you’re a sparkly chest away from Edward-level obnoxious crushes. You got to be more subtle. I sometimes feel like all of Azeroth is stuck at the Livejournal High School level of emotional relationships. Everything’s heap big announcements and cups overflowing. No one’s got subtlety.

Start with holding their hand in public. That’s all. Hold their hand. If you’re doing 5-man instances with your paramour, rez them first. (Let’s avoid healing them first if they’re not the tank; no need to go mucking about with group success for the sake of roleplay.) Wink at the character before pulls. Make a point of sitting next to your boyfriend or girlfriend.

These little clues will add up. Trust me, people will eventually get the point. And if someone doesn’t get the point, and hits on your IC mancrush? Even better; bust out the sword and challenge them to an honor duel. Conflict enforces roleplay!

Vengeance can take a while

I plan on doing a full article on vengeance soon. Vengeance is fun to roleplay. It’s awesome. It’s the very essence of emotion; the aftereffect of someone who’s been done wrong. But you don’t need to drop to your knees and scream “Khaaaaan!”

Instead, take your time. Do little things. Is the object of your vengeance about to join a military excursion to Southshore? Join them. Make a big deal out how you’ve forgiven them. Be subtle. It makes your revenge that much more delicious.

I will caution that if you’re roleplaying vengeance, however, that you need to make sure you’re cool with the other player. Much like hatred or jealousy, vengeance is a fairly negative and destructive emotion. If you’re taking part in it in-character, that’s good story; letting it seep to the out-of-character is probably a bad idea.

World of Warcraft Raids and Dungeons Panel

Hail to the King, Baby: In the upcoming Patch 3.3, Icecrown Citadel will be added to the game leading up to the final showdown with Lich King Arthas himself, and we got a look at what was in store. A surprise announcement came in that not only would Icecrown house the 10/25-player raid where the heroes of Azeroth take the fight to Arthas, but that Icecrown would add not just one but three 5-player dungeons to the game. These three dungeons would have a continuing storyline running through them (and would have to be initially done in order) and would allow players to battle alongside Alliance and Horde heroines Jaina Proudmoore and Sylvanas Windrunner.

As for Icecrown itself? While it wouldn’t house the (mind-boggling) 31 bosses previously rumored, Icecrown Citadel would boast an impressive 12 big bads, including “ultimate Frost Wyrm Sindragosa” and, of course, Arthas. The dungeon would have four floors, and a particularly cool sequence took place as players boarded an airship on the second floor. Alliance raiders would fight alongside King Varian Wrynn, while the Horde would accompany High Overlord Saurfang – and the two airships would race to the next floor in Icecrown Citadel, exchanging cannon fire and even boarding parties (using rocket packs, naturally).

On the third floor, the dungeon will be winged, with players able to tackle the bosses in any order they please – though they’ll have to vanquish all of them before moving on to the top of the Citadel. The Crimson Paladins may be making another appearance, along with a Plagueworks wing and the lair of the aforementioned Sindragosa.

Of course, the pinnacle of Icecrown Citadel will be simple: It’s you, the Frozen Throne, and the Lich King. Mercer cautioned that during the fight, the room might begin to fall apart and break away, and that if you fell, “it would be bad.” Naturally, if you win, Arthas is going to get something a bit more substantive than the normal “Death speech, gasp, die.” In fact, the way they spoke about it, there might be yet another cutscene…?

Raiders of the Cataclysmic Ark: Cataclysm will feature four 10/25-man dungeons: Grim Batol, Skywall, the Firelands, and a newly unveiled raid called Blackwing Descent – which, as the name might suggest, is a throwback to the Classic raid of Blackwing Lair.

Blackwing Descent will actually start from Nefarian’s throne room at the top of Blackwing Lair – with flying mounts, players will fly all the way up Blackrock Mountain to enter it – and somehow, the son of Deathwing has survived his encounter with players back at level 60. Beyond Nefarian, though, Mercer mentioned that there might be “a possible appearance from some old friends.” Can we say “Vaelastrasz,” anybody? I knew we could.

The Firelands will be an exterior raid zone in the elemental plane of fire, the home of Ragnaros – who after tearing up Mount Hyjal, is now on the defensive as players storm his homeland to get their revenge. Still, it won’t be so easy – Ragnaros here is in his element (literally), and will be at his full power, not summoned “too soon.”

There will, of course, be new 5-player dungeons, and we got a very brief glimpse at three of them – Abyssal Maw is a two-wing dungeon accessed from the Sunken City of Vashj’ir, where a giant vortex in the middle of the zone will pull players who get too close down into the elemental plane of water. It’s a very pretty, organic, coral-like room, with windows that look out to the ocean floor beyond.

The Halls of Origination are the first of two 5-man dungeons in the Titan city of Uldum (the other, the Lost City of Tol’vir, is an outdoor zone) and bring to mind similar dungeons back in Northrend – namely, the Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning. It has a very Egyptian feel – kind of like “Blizzard does Stargate” – and the halls are rumored to house an ancient superweapon that everyone and their mother wants their hands on.

Finally, we took a look at Blackrock Caverns, the new dungeon in Blackrock Mountain – Deathwing has bored a hole all the way to Blackrock Mountain from Grim Batol, and is using it as a forward base for his Twilight’s Hammer cult. It was their chance to “reinvent a fan favorite,” but they didn’t want to merely make Blackrock Spire a new heroic. Their goal was to make a completely brand-new dungeon that still continued the distinctive visual style of Blackrock Spire – tall spaces with dark bricks and metal that go on forever interspersed with rivers of lava. Blackrock Spire’s nefarious Beast may have a brother, teased Stockton.

LFG Level 80 Onyxia, Any Server: The Brood Mother is returning for WoW’s fifth anniversary as a little touch of nostalgia – she won’t be a completely new fight but will have new abilities and mechanics, and will drop an entirely new loot table based off of her old ones – new helms with the Tier 2 art, the Burnished Quel’Serrar and Raging Deathbringer. “Her Deep Breaths will be more randomized than ever,” and you will still need “More DoTs” than ever to bring her down.

The Onyxian Whelpling non-combat pet that all players will get for logging in during the anniversary celebration will attempt to Deep Breath like her mother, but will fail and blow smoke rings instead – apparently they’ve given the little critter some brand new unique animations.

A very interesting revelation, though, was the addition of “cross-server Looking for Group.” Similar to cross-server Battlegrounds, this will enable Pick-Up Groups (PUGs) to hit up 5-man dungeons with players from other servers. While the technology is only limited to 5-man groups, they said that it could easily be expanded to bigger raids, and that they’re shooting to get it into the game with Icecrown in Patch 3.3.

All this is as the next Introduct:WoW’s Lead Level Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer took the stage at BlizzCon 2009 to preview Icecrown Citadel and the new baddie lairs to come in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm Beta: Guild advancement Q&A
Blue poster Mumper was busy the past day or so answering questions about guild advancement  over at the forums. His answers are spread over several posts, so we’ve compiled some of the most useful answers for you. If you’ve been curious about how guild XP will work in Cataclysm, hopefully Mumper’s answers will shed a little more light onto the situation.

Polegara asked:

What exactly contributes to guild XP at the moment?

Mumper
Guild experience can be earned in any of four ways:

1. Completing quests / daily quests that reward experience
2. Killing any dungeon / raid boss with a guild group/raid
3. Winning a rated battleground with a guild group/raid
4. Earning a guild achievement (these are nice, fat chunks of experience so they feel great when you get em)

A guild group/raid is 4/5, 8/10, 12/15 or 20/25 members of the group/raid being guild members.
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Jarek asked:

1.) No matter how hard you work at your own guild rep, even if you farm it like a psycho, can a GM just “deny” you of the guild rep rewards?

2.) Are all the standard guild control functions staying the same (GBank control, inv and remove settings, etc.)?

3.) I understand there is going to be an XP cap per day, but as per reward and ability, will this at least be the determining factor that 10- and 25-man guilds are not equals?

Mumper
1. GM’s have no control over the guild rewards. As long as your guild has unlocked the item via the achievement and you have the required guild rep, you can purchase the item.

2. Yes, most all of the guild control functions are remaining the same. We are however introducing a new ui for guild ranks that will allow you much more control.

3. The experience cap is in place to help balance out the experience curve between large and small guilds. We tuned the cap to be be high enough that in most cases, you will never hit it. (when I say most, I mean average size guilds which make up the majority of wow’s guilds)
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Youcoulddie asked:

I don’t know why i can do this but I can be at war with my guild. It doesn’t seem to do anything but I thought I’d point it out.

Mumper
A lot of the UI for the guild advancement system is in progress. The “at war” box will be removed from the guild faction at some point in the future.
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Sodd asked:

I belong to a guild with over 5,400 toons in it (Taint on Proudmoore) and the guild pane functions break because of our size. Officers have to write custom macros and use custom mods to perform basic operations. Will this be taken into account with the expansion? I’m guessing that guild advancement will encourage more guilds to aggressively grow in size for a time, though (perhaps) not to Taint’s size.

Mumper
We are doing everything in our power to make sure that the guild advancement system works for guilds of every shape and size.

I don’t want to say anything without talking to our UI programmers first but I can tell you that we have discussed this limitation and what we can do about it.
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Pelican asked:

1. At what level do you start gaining guild rep?

2. What is the minimum level of quests that can be done to earn guild rep? For example, if my character is at level 83, what is the lowest level of quest I can do to still earn guild rep?

Mumper
Any quest that rewards experience to you will also reward guild experience. The amount of guild reputation earned is based on the amount of guild experience rewarded. Note that daily quests will also reward guild experience.

All guild reputation is gained as a factor of guild experience.
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Eloderung asked:

Does anyone else (think that the Dark Phoenix mount) reward seems a bit too … amazing to be given out for free to anybody who joins a guild?

The Phoenix is easily one of the rarest and most desired mounts in the entire game. I know of several groups that run Tempest Keep weekly just for a minuscule chance of obtaining this thing. People on my server form groups just to pay others 200k gold if the mount drops.

Why is a near-clone of this amazing mount being given out to everybody who joins a guild that has been around for a small amount of time?

If you keep putting neat mounts like Celestial Steeds and Phoenixes available to anyone with the slightest bit of effort, then what incentive (mount-wise) is there for the majority of your playerbase to tackle challenging content? Why should I go and get the next new raid mount from doing the hardest heroic modes when I will get a significantly cooler mount by clicking “Accept” on a guild invite and waiting a few days/weeks until my reputation is high enough? For that matter, why would I bother to run any holiday content or strive for any other mounts in non-raiding areas of the game when I can just use the Dark Phoenix?

I feel that the flying mount reward for being in a guild should be more in line with the Lion mount. You see lions everywhere. Sure, the mount is neat, but it’s nothing compared to the rare raid land mounts like the Amani Warbear and Invincible, or the rare holiday mounts.

Mumper
The guild rewards you guys are seeing in game are not hooked up yet. Guild rewards have 3 requirements that must be be met before you can use them. First and foremost, they must be unlocked via a guild achievement. Let’s just say, that for example, you need to complete the new guild achievement “We are Legendary” in order to unlock the Dark Phoenix. That achievement requires the guild to gain access to all 6 legendary weapons currently available in the game. (note that all guild achievements start on Cataclysm launch, so anything you have now will not matter, it must be done with your guild after launch)

So, let’s say that your guild get’s this achievement and thereby unlocks the Dark Phoenix on the guild vendor. At this point anyone in the guild can see the item on the vendor, but they will need a specific amount of guild faction to be able to purchase it. In this case, let’s say exalted. Now, once you have the guild faction, you can purchase the item for its gold price. (prices will vary based on the reward)

I am using the Dark Phoenix and the We are Legendary guild achievement as examples here but you should get the idea. Don’t worry, we wont be handing out all the goodies so easily. =)
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Sappa asked:

The guild vendor seems to sell heirlooms. Thus, it seems they should be guild heirlooms, right?

But the tooltip clearly says “Bind to Account”. So, are these Guild Heirlooms with a mismarked tooltip or are they new 1-85 BoA items that are simply in the wrong vendor?

Mumper
The heirlooms on the guild vendor are just like other heirlooms in the game except that these must be unlocked via a guild achievement and you must have the required guild faction to purchase them. After that, you can use them just like normal heirloom items.

We did have thoughts of making these items guild bound a long time ago but we came to the conclusion that that was just too limiting of a design. Imagine leaving a guild and losing all the guild rewards that you worked so hard to get? Taking items away from players is something that we would like to avoid at all costs.
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Mumper also asked some questions about bugs but noted that the entire guild system is being overhauled at the moment and asked for players in the beta to be patient while the developers sort the kinks out. At the same time, some bugs were easily corrected through hotfixes. Finally, he calls upon all beta testers to give their feedback on the guild leveling process.

Cataclysm Beta: Healing priest talents and abilities
As the Perseids scattered across the night sky and some 500,000 people shuffled off to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the priests who stayed home last night were treated to their own entertainment, courtesy of Blizzard: a new patch for the Cataclysm beta. A new patch, with big changes for priests.

Everything you thought you knew has been defenestrated.

At least, with Chakra it has. The big news of the build is that Chakra got redesigned. Probably not a surprise to some; it was a bit of a surprise to me. (I regret never getting to try out the original incarnation of it for myself. Sigh.) Anyway, here is the redesigned Chakra from the patch.

Chakra
Instant, 1 min cooldown
When activated, your next Heal, Renew, Prayer of Healing or Smite spell will put you into a corresponding Chakra state. Lasts for 30 sec.

* Heal — Increases the critical effect chance of your Heal spell by 10%, and your Heal refreshes the duration of your Renew on the target.
* Renew — Increases the healing done by your Renew spell by 10%, and reduces the global cooldown of your Renew by 0.5 sec.
* Prayer of Healing — Increases the healing done by your area of effect spells by 10% and reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing by 2 sec.
* Smite — Increases your total damage done by Shadow and Holy spells by 15%.

This should resolve all the complaints of the old Chakra’s being “impractical” or “clunky.” It’s definitely going to be far easier to get started, and the big problem of “ramp-up time” is gone. Now, though, I’m wondering if you’ll be locked into one Chakra state after activating it. (Someone who knows, leave a comment for us, please!) If so, you’ll need to pick your Chakra state wisely, based on your knowledge of the fight’s mechanics and what’s coming next. If you play reactively, you might get stuck in the wrong stance and not get the full benefit of the buff for the spells you need to cast. Granted, this does support the idea that good strategies and preparation are going to be what lead to success in Cataclysm, something we’ve been speculating on for a while now.

If you’d like some further info on Chakra, Derevka over at Tales of Priest (who is in the beta) wrote up a nice summary on the build, and more importantly, posted a nice video you all will want to check out. He linked it to me this morning; it’s shiny.

Moving along, the other big news in addition to Chakra is that holy priests get a new ability to replace Desperate Prayer when they spec into the tree. Though, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) says you won’t be getting it at level 10 like you would have gotten Desperate Prayer (more on that below). The new ability looks something like this:

Sanctuary
5 min cooldown
You sanctify the ground, causing all allies to be healed for 525 to 619 every 2 sec and have all threat from enemies reduced by 90%. Enemies within the sanctuary who attack allied targets within the sanctuary will heal the targets for 5% of their total health instead of dealing damage. Lasts for 15 sec.

At this rank, you can think of it as half a Circle of Healing every 2 seconds for 15 seconds, except there is no cap on how many friendly players it can affect. (Circle of Healing caps at five players, or six with a glyph.) No clue on the range of the ability yet, nor the exact mechanics on the threat reduction, but for now, the spell sounds extremely powerful when you round it up with the rest of the holy priest toolbox, Divine Hymn, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing and Sanctuary. I’m sure every holy priest is saying, “Yes, please.”

My first thought on Sanctuary is that this ability delivers a Power Word: Barrier-like ability to the holy tree, which seemed necessary given the speculation on Cataclysm raid encounters and PvP. (I also thought the whole thing sounded a lot like the AoE heal holy pallies were begging for a while back: a healing version of Consecration.) The long cooldown certainly seems warranted for raiding and PvP, but I’m not sure how this ability is going to be implemented. I’m quite curious how the threat mechanics will work and whether it will be in the interest of a tank to stay out of it and build a threat lead, or hop in it for the heals and immunity. This will largely depend on if the damage conversion to healing will work for bosses or not, and if so, will it be just melee attacks or all attacks? If it works against everything (or even most things), holy priests are looking at a tactical, raid-wide shield wall that may even trump a Power Word: Barrier with shammy rain inside. The healing effect would just be icing on top. When I know more, I’ll let you all know.

By the way, I guess this is what Blizzard meant when they said holy priests could reverse damage in the new talent tree introductions:
By now, some of you may have thought, “Hey, what about Desperate Prayer?” Worry not, it’s still around. Ghostcrawler says it will be back in the talent trees. That means discipline priests will continue to have access to it. Whether the reduced cooldown (45 seconds, down from 2 minutes) will stick around as it goes back to the tiers is unknown.
Ghostcrawler
Desperate Prayer isn’t gone. It’s just back in the talent tree. We don’t have a new level 10 Holy ability in this build (it’s not Sanctuary).
source
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That’s the biggest news out of the latest build. There are more details, which I’ll toss into a future Spiritual Guidance when I can get them from a more reliable source. Until then, hearts and heals.

World of Warcraft Rookie: Loremaster, a completist’s dream
For those of us who are leveling up or even digging into a fresh 80, there’s never been a better time to fold in The Loremaster to the ol’ to-do list. Flying your Loremaster title proves you’ve been around the block; it’s not like The Explorer, which you can hoof your way through even at level 1. Earning your Loremaster title means grinding out literally hundreds and hundreds of quests over every step of your journey through Azeroth, Outland and Northrend, from level 1 through level 80. It’s the completist player’s dream, a title that shows you’ve paid your dues in every zone at every level of the game.

We’re not bringing this up now as just one more item to chuck into your pre-Cataclysm bucket list; indeed, The Loremaster won’t be going anywhere in Cataclysm. While none of the numbers of quests required for completion have been adjusted yet to accommodate Cataclysm material, Blizzard has assured players not to worry about it. The Loremaster quest count has been updated before, so we should be confident that it will be adjusted again.

Still, if you’re playing through the old content anyway, it simply makes sense to run through quests that will be disappearing when the expansion cracks Azeroth apart at the seams. Sure, there’ll be plenty of new quests to do — but you’ll never get the chance to run all of these particular quests again.

What’s involved?

There are four parts to achieving the overall The Loremaster title:

* Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms
* Loremaster of Kalimdor
* Loremaster of Outland
* Loremaster of Northrend

Your reward: the Loremaster’s Colors and the title Loremaster <Name>.

The strategy

Before you even think about beginning, make sure you’re up on the tricks of the trade when it comes to questing. Click that link right this very moment! We’ll wait for you to get back.

OK, now that you’re back … If leveling up in a logical fashion is your first priority, your plan of attack will probably be different than that of players who’re already at the level cap. There are many, many more quests in any given zone than you’ll need to level up enough for the next area. Completing every single quest in every single zone along the way will leave you over-leveled for most zones and instances long before you reach them. Think ahead, keep an eye on your XP bar and the level ranges of upcoming zones, and make sure you don’t ruin your own fun.

If you’re not particularly worried about tackling every area (or certain areas) at a level-appropriate moment, then you’re free to attack this achievement with zest. As you move into new zones with your pumped-up levels, you may find the XP a little less rich — but the cash and cumulative XP will flow like wine.

Be sure to turn on low-level quest tracking on your minimap before you begin. Finish each zone before you move to the next. A questing addon (more details, below) can help you make sure you haven’t missed anything. Stay organized, and don’t head into any expansion material until you’ve completed everything from the previous portion of the game.

Sort out the details with addons

Keeping track of which quests you’ve done and which are available still to do used to be a nightmare. Unless you literally played with a notebook and pencil at your side, tracking every completed quest, you had no way of knowing where you stood. Today, the game keeps track of completed quests under the hood. All you need to do is install an addon that will show you what’s done and what’s left in an easy-to-read format.

The big name on the block these days seems to be EveryQuest; download it here, as well as this handy addition that shows all the quest givers and their available quests right on your map.

Another popular alternative worth investigating is Loremaster.

Know your lore

The entire Loremaster project will be even more entertaining if you can keep the storylines in context. Bone up! We’ve got a huge range of lore resources right here at WoW.com:

* Lore 101 How exactly do you find all of WoW’s story elements when they are literally scattered across several different games, comics, manga and novels? How do you know what should be taken as official lore and what to throw away as mere speculation? We’ll show you the ropes.
* Know Your Lore Our wildly popular series peers more deeply into the epic figures, key zones and movers and shakers of Azeroth, Outland, Northrend … and beyond.
* WoW.com’s Guide to the Lore of Warcraft Here it is: the lore of the WoW world, indexed and at your fingertips.

Happy questing – and may we see that new title over your head (relatively) soon!

Rookie tip of the week

Reader Rekoor is right — it always pays to RTM.

With the new(er), built-in quest-helper mechanic in the game, it is easier than ever for players to just pick up quests and go without ever stopping to actually read the quests. However, there occasionally comes a time when just knowing where to go for your quest isn’t enough. So before you go asking in general or guild chat, read through the quest to avoid chances of a public flogging. Not only will the quests provide you with further details you need, but each one has its own bit of story to follow along with and perhaps give you a greater sense of purpose as you progress through the world.

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Develop:Twitter developer chat for April 16, 2010

Yesterday,Blizzard twitter developer chat focus on the recent changes announced for the world of warcraft Cataclysm,what the wow player also focus.Now the next,is the organized by category.

This twitter developer chat will focus on the recent class changes announced for Cataclysm. These chats go on for about an hour, and we’ll be bringing up updates as they happen. You can ask questions to the class designers by tweeting to @warcraft.

Table of Contents

* Death Knight

* Druid

* Hunter

* Mage

* Rogue

* Shaman

* Paladin

* Priest

* Warlock

* Warrior

* Other tidbits

Update: The dev chat is now over.

Death Knight

Q: With the change to death knight tanking, Blood being the tank spec, what AoE aggro moves (besides Death and Decay and Pestilence) will we have to use?

A: We think Death and Decay and Pestilence are pretty good. We’ll add another ability if we think it’s needed, but remember, the “round things up and AE them down” strategy isn’t going to be as effective in Cataclysm until you out-gear instances.

Q: Will Dark Simulacrum work on bosses? or at least be useful in PvE?

A: It will work on any spell you can Spell Reflect, which is actually quite a few bosses. Remember, Dark Simulacrum doesn’t cancel the incoming damage so in that sense it is easier for us to balance letting death knights use it in PvE.

Also be careful considering new spells for old encounters. The encounter designers will make the new encounters with the new spells in mind.

Q: I still don’t get the motivation to redo the death knight rune system. It’s been a couple years and now that it seems close, why do it all over?

A: Many death knights felt like they didn’t have enough global cooldowns (GCDs) to use their abilities. In some cases, the rune system started to matter less than the GCDs to hit the right button. We want death knights to have to make choices about what abilities come next. When you see DKs play today, it looks like they’re playing the piano – hitting buttons so fast. We need to buy them some room in their rotation to be able to take advantage of say procs or runes coming back sooner than expected.

Q: Did the developers learn anything from the death knight release that they plan to keep in mind for any possible future classes?

A: Um, maybe we won’t listen to community feedback about how classes need more abilities, damage and survivability? (Just kidding.)

Adding a new class is very challenging, which is one reason we don’t want to do it every expansion. It’s a really good question though, and we’d like to give a little more thought to how to answer it (when we aren’t fielding so many Twitter questions).

Druid

Q. Why are Restoration druids the only spec in the game not receiving a new spell?

A. Restoration druids are actually getting a fair bit. For one, Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War) and will also “morph” some of your spells to do crazy things while in the form, such as cause Regrowth to be instant, or Lifebloom to apply two applications at once. Tranquility will be raid-wide. We’re also touching nearly every Restoration druid spell to make sure each has a niche and feels good. In general, playing a Restoration druid should feel a lot different (better!) in Cataclysm than it does today.

Hunter

Q. Will there be any new pet families added, or will we simply see more additions to existing ones?

A. We’re not sure yet whether we’re adding new pet families or not. It’s possible. Expect to see some monkeys, foxes and other new pet possibilities though!

Mage

Q: Why are you giving Mages more Crowd Control?

A: We like for classes and specs to have themes. Part of the mage kit is control. Part of the warrior kit is mobility. We like to reinforce those designs rather than give classes new abilities that remove their weaknesses. Weaknesses are supposed to be something you keep in mind while you’re playing. I’m sure Ret paladins would love Heroic Leap and warriors would love Polymorph, but that plugs a hole really, really well where you risk being a one person army who doesn’t need to be supported by other players in PvP or PvE. Obviously it risk homogenizing all the classes as well.

Rogue

Q: Is Smoke Bomb going to be usable in boss fights? Because it looks like it could cheat a lot of mechanics.

A: Potentially, yes. It essentially follows the same room of line-of-sight. If standing around a pillar lets you avoid a boss ability, then Smoke Bomb would too. Lady Deathwhisper’s adds for example, would run up to melee you if you were in a Smoke Bomb.

Shaman

Q: Are there any plans to separate the mana regeneration mechanic and the damage reduction mechanic that is in Shamanistic Rage?

A: It’s a drawback we’re aware of and one we’re looking at. We don’t have a change that we’re ready to announce.

Paladin

Q: Will healing hands be a paladin-centered tranquility, or something we have to run around to keep people in range of?

A: The idea is that it matters where the paladin is, so it won’t be raid-wide like Tranquility will be in Cataclysm. We will make sure the magnitude of the heal is sufficient that it’s a button the paladin wants to use. The cooldown and duration aren’t set in stone either.

Q: Now that paladin’s Holy Shock is baseline is there any plans to change the Art of War talent?

A: We like Art of War, so we don’t expect it will go away. We understand the concern that Holy Shock might compete with Art of War a little bit in terms of role (an instant damage spell) and that’s something we’re going to have to addres

Q. What information/ideas can you share on PvP utility in the Retribution tree? Mandatory gap closer/interrupt question. Not having a cleanse will hurt. :\

A. Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt.

Priest

Q. Could the Shadow priest’s Mastery bonus instead be something more distinctive from shaman shield orbs (like shadow ravens)?

A. The original “fantasy”; behind the Mastery bonus is that you’re storing shadows through combat with you, that you can unleash out using Mind Blast or Mind Spike for more burst damage. We’re not sure about ravens or how that relates to a Shadow priest, but we’re definitely going to do some unique art for them.

Warlock

Q. With all the new changes to Demonology warlocks, do you plan to implement any threat reduction talent unique for Demonology?

A. Threat is something that we want to be binary. You should only really ever worry about pulling threat from a tank during the first thirty seconds or so, when the tank is still establishing threat, not two minutes in because your DPS was too high. In a nutshell, we’ll make sure you don’t have to stop DPS during a fight because of your threat level (ala Hodir).

Warrior

Q: Will Protection Warriors have improved AoE tanking in Cataclysm?

A: We will make sure they don’t feel gimp compared to the other 3 tanks. We’re not going to give them an ability that they can just spam endlessly to maintain AE threat. We think Thunder Clap and Shockwave already work well for that. We want you to have to manage threat, but we don’t want it to be insanely hard to manage. (You also might be doing less AE tanking in Cataclysm overall.)

Q: Any plans to give Fury Warriors more hit from precision or another talent due to the removal of Heroic Strike as”next weapon” hit?

A: Part of the problem is that Fury warriors undervalue hit as it is because of the way Heroic Strike works today. We’ll make sure they do appropriate damage with the new model, but that probably won’t be with a talent that says “I don’t have to worry about getting hit for my gear.”

Q: Can you go into more detail on Vengeance? As it stands it sounds like off tanks will be at a significant disadvantage.

A: We want Vengeance to have a long enough duration that off tanks won’t lose their damage bonus. In most situations, the off tank is doing some tanking along the way. The worst case scenario would be say a fight where the off tank needs to tank in phase 3 but not phase 1. Remember, even in that case though you have tools to generate high threat. Vengeance is there to keep DPS from pulling off you late in the fight.

Other Tidbits

Q: How will haste affect channeled spells. Will it be similar to DoTs and HoTs?

A: They will channel faster but their duration will remain unchanged. You will get more ticks on the same cast.

Q: Do you intend to have all 280% flying mounts scale to 310% when a 310% mount is earned, or will only purchased mounts do so?

A: Our current plan, is that in Cataclysm, you can learn a new rank of flying that lets all flying mounts move at 310% (even current 280% mounts). That will probably be as fast as mounts will ever get. We don’t like it that when you get a 310% mount that you stop using your old ones.

Q: When does the homogenization of classes stop? Paladins are starting to look like priests. Where is the diversity?

A: We want the challenge of beating PvE encounters or enemy teams in PvP to be how awesome you are at strategizing, not how often you are at recruiting the right classes. While it is very, very important to us for classes to feel different, it’s also very important to us that friends get to play together.

Q. Is every healer supposed to be able to tank-heal efficiently, or will we still see specs excel in it more than others?

A. Each healer is intended to have a different niche, and different strengths. Such as Restoration druids with HoTs, or paladins at direct healing, Discipline priests at absorption/prevention, etc. That said, each healer should be able to keep up a tank and have some deeper “tank healing gameplay” as they do now.

Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?

A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.

How to make wands and relics a bigger part of gameplay is something we’ve had many, many discussions on. Ultimately though we’d rather see warlocks, mages and priests casting their spells, not zapping someone with a wand. In Cataclysm we don’t expect to see much wanding, even at lower level.

Q: What will happen to our gems and enchants on gear that give us stats that are being removed in Cataclysm ?

A: We are going to change most gems and enchants that have obsolete stats like armor pen and defense.

Q: Can you make crowd control in raids and 5-mans an important aspect of the PvE game again?

A: An emphatic yes.

Q: What are your plans to eliminate the pollution problem in Azeroth? Motorcycles, planes, methane from Kodo gas, venture company????

A: Well on the one hand, there will be more druids with trolls and worgen joining the ranks. On the other hand, there will be more goblins, and you know, goblins just don’t care. They have this section in Orgrimmar where they have their little beach chairs set up to look out on a view of oil drums floating in the lake. On the third (?) hand, you’ll be cleaning up the toxic waste in Gnomeregan if you can retake it!

Q. Thanks for having this chat! I have to say that I feel many changes are PvP-oriented. Is the game shifting more toward PvP?

A. What we’re trying to do at this point in the game is make abilities more niche and interesting, rather than adding Sinister Strike with a different name. A lot of talents and abilities we add initially only seem to have a PvP role at first glance, but eventually also prove useful in PvE situations too (examples are Dispersion, Body & Soul, or Typhoon).

Q: If 310% speed is becoming trainable, does that mean we’ll be able to fly in Azeroth from the get-go?

A: We have considered the concept of “Old Weather Flying.” Just kidding. More than likely, you’ll just be able to fly from the beginning.

Q: With armor class bringing mastery bonuses, will players never want to “downrank” from, say, leather to cloth?

A: That’s the idea, really. They still can wear the older armor, but they’ll lose some stats from doing so.

Q: Where is my moose?

A: Well, we’re looking for a zone where moose would really fit. Unfortunately we did the perfect zone for them, Grizzly Hills, already. On the other hand, let’s just say we have a large, Egyptian-themed desert zone in Cataclysm….

Q: How will “active spell is more powerful” be handled with no more dot clipping?

A: How about we get rid of “a more powerful spell is active” altogether? If you have some bonehead overwriting your more powerful buff or debuff, we’d rather you handle that issue socially.

Q: Compared to some third mastery bonuses (radiance etc) others are a little boring (+crit damage etc) Intended? Comments?

A: The mastery bonuses are obviously a really new concept. The risk on the one hand is that they’re too boring and don’t affect gameplay and on the other extreme they take specs which already have a lot going on and just make them overcomplicated. For now we wanted to implement a range and see what feels the best in beta. We expect to iterate on these a lot.

Q: Can you allow points spent in your off tree give a diminished amount of mastery bonus toward your main tree so as to not nerf hybrid specs?

A: Does the Elemental shaman really want more melee damage though? Does the Shadow priest really want to heal better? If anything it feels like it would be a nerf to hybrids, since a warlock would get more damage from any tree, while a DPS hybrid might only get more damage from their tree.

If hybrids end out coming a little short, we’ll compensate in other ways (such as more oomph in talents) instead of doing hacky things with the mastery system.

Q. You mentioned at BlizzCon that all races would be getting revamped racial abilities. Care to shed some light on any of them?

A. We’re going to do something similar to what we did in Wrath of the Lich King, where we just refresh them to make sure they’re balanced and feel cool. Something you could see is dwarves getting a bonus to Archeology, or undead getting a new activated racial ability that will be more useful in PvE.

Q. Will there be as much effort put into making tanking specs viable in PvP? Will Vengeance be useful in PvP?

A. Our goal is to make all specs as viable as we can in as many aspects of the game as possible. Currently some tank specs are not so much viable as they are overpowered (because their damage is competitive and survivability is off the charts), so that issue will have to be addressed when we start to flesh them out as more attractive and mainstream PvP spec options.

Q: Can you give us some more information on how and what Path of the Titans will reward you with? Talent points? Unlock talents?

A: The Paths unlock a new kind of glyph called an Ancient Glyph. These don’t enhance class abilities, since they are designed to work with any class. They do grant bonuses that might be useful to a wide variety of characters as well as offer some actual new abilities as well. If you think your action bar is full, then you may want to head for the passive bonuses instead of the active abilities.

Q: With more players raiding in Wrath of the Lich King than ever before, do you plan to raise the difficulty to accommodate our new skill/experience?

A: The heroic difficulty is designed for the players looking for more of a challenge. One of the things we learned from Icecrown is that we unlocked the heroic modes so late that players had tons of practice on the encounters on normal mode, so the step up was smaller than it was in say Ulduar when players on hard mode were still learning some of the encounter basics. (In our defense though, because of the time of year we released Icecrown we made a conscious decision to not ask players to choose between holiday events and hard-mode raiding.)

Q: Will Ragnaros have a new weapon in Cataclysm, considering that we stole and reforged his? I’m sure he’s not happy about that either.

A: Oh come on, it never actually dropped for you.

Then again, is there really much demand for a Strength, Stamina, Fire resist, cosmetic Fireball proc weapon?

Q: Will the new guild perk system kill a lot of smaller guilds?

A: Our goal is not to encourage players to have to change their existing guild. We realize some players like smaller guilds and some like larger guilds and we don’t want to ask you to change that.

Q: What improvements to the UI are being considered (particularly for raid healing)?

A: We would like to update the default Blizzard UI. It has some fatal flaws, such as not being able to show buffs and debuffs simultaneously. We probably won’t ever go as crazy as some of the mods out there just because they provide a ton of customization, which is one of the things players like about them. We do think players deserve a raid UI that is fully functional for those players who just don’t like to install a lot of mods. We hope to get this change in for Cataclysm, but we’re changing the UI for the spell book, talent pane, professions window, character stats, guild, friends and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting, so it’s just a matter of how much time we have.

Q: What kinds of UI updates are planned for Cataclysm. Eclipse and Soul Shards are two, but any others?

A: We have already moved professions from the skill tab to an awesome new page on the spell book. In fact, in the absence of weapon skills, we got rid of the skill tab entirely. We have a new talent tree UI that shows all of the talent trees without scrolling and provides the passive bonuses as well. We’re changing the glyph UI to support Paths of the Titans. We’re changing the PvP queue UI to support rated Battlegrounds. We’d like to improve the V-nameplate feature. We’d like to provide more information when you level up about what new spells or features are now available to you. We’re experimenting with better ways to organize buffs and debuffs and communicate procs and cooldowns too.

Q: What change are you most excited about?

A: We are changing the old zones probably more than most players realize. A place like Stonetalon is virtually unrecognizable. It has all new quests and item rewards and dramatic changes to the landscape. A zone like Western Plaguelands has actually been updated to reflect the fact that the Scourge are in retreat (which is not to say that the zone is without its dangers). Everywhere you’re going to see something new and surprising. I think a lot of players are excited about the level 80-85 experience (as they should be!) and the goblin and worgen zones (which if anything are better than the death knight starter zone, if you can believe that), but I think a lot of players are going to want to reroll new character of existing races and classes just to see how much everything has changed.

Q: I’ve been playing since vanilla. The consciousness you’ve applied to make this game grow is praiseworthy. Thank you.

A: You’re welcome!

One of the challenges of Cataclysm is to change enough to be exciting but not so much that the game feels unrecognizable to long-term fans. A lot is changing, but it’s still World of Warcraft.

Q. Any plans for an untalented spell to help warlocks deal with stuns?

A. Possibly. It’s also possible we may take a look at stuns in general. But overall stuns will feel less impacting in an environment where players have significantly more health than they do today.

Q. With the emphasis moving to Battlegrounds, have you looked into rogue cooldown dependency issues?

A. We definitely want to give rogues a considerable boost in the passive damage reduction department, and then tone down some of their active cooldowns in the process. We still want the rogue to feel twitchy and exciting to play, but not to the extent that you can’t deal with another class toe-to-toe without any cooldowns up. Oh, and Cloak of Shadows now provides 100% resistance.

Q. What change are you most excited about?

A. Some of the new Balance talents for druids, like Solar Beam, which works like Freya’s spell where it instantly silences a target and they have to move out of the beam to get rid of the debuff.