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One year and three months after the Lich King was set loose upon World of Warcraft's Azeroth, he has finally been defeated. But can the King of MMOs keep its crown now the arguably most infamous villain in Warcraft lore is dead?As Blizzard pointed out after the announcement of Wrath of the Lich King, Arthas isn't the only bad guy in Warcraft's history, not by a long shot. And in terms of lore, he only appeared in the chapter directly before WoW. So to players who've been with the Warcraft series since its RTS days, Arthas was admittedly a big deal, but his death isn't.
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After reviewing several items available from the Lich King encounter, we've decided to re-optimize certain weapons that didn't meet with our expectations and the quality that the Lich King expects. The weapons listed below, both their Normal and Heroic versions, will now better represent their respective roles and present more intriguing options to players.
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| The esteemed tuskarr of the Kalu'ak are proud to introduce to Northrend the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby, a test of fishing skill with a healthy dash of luck! Every Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. players can try to catch the elusive Blacktip Shark. Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him the first catch of the night. This champion fisher will be rewarded in-kind for his or her fishing expertise. Those who aren't able to return with the first catch will still receive a just reward for getting the Blacktip Shark to Elder Clearwater before he takes his leave. It is said that these sharks' favorite meal are the bite-sized Pygmy Suckerfish. Perhaps a hook in their waters will do the trick. Because of the increased concentration of fish, you have a higher chance to catch a shark from fishing pools. The derby winner will receive a substantial chunk of experience (or money at maximum level) and gain 5,000 reputation with the Kalu'ak. In addition, the champion will be given a choice between two unique rewards: |
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| Now that Icecrown Citadel has been fully unlocked, allowing players the ability to progress in 10- and 25-player formats to defeat the Lich King, new raid weekly quests have been unlocked! These quests are specific to the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon and do not correspond with the standard random raid weekly quest offered in Dalaran. Here's an overview of what you need to know. One of five quests will be randomly available each week in both 10- and 25-player versions of the dungeon. This means each player has the opportunity to complete two Icecrown Citadel raid weekly quests each week if the dungeon is run in both versions, however, these quests have to be completed within the raid version (10- or 25-player) in which they are offered. If a player obtains one of these quests but does not complete it that week, the quest will automatically be removed from the player's Quest Log the next time Lord Marrowgar is defeated under a new raid ID, or when zoning into an instance with a new raid ID where Lord Marrowgar has already been defeated. This only applies if the random raid weekly offered when the player enters a fresh Icecrown Citadel raid instance happens to be different from the one already in his or her Quest Log. Players can otherwise simultaneously have both the 10- and 25-player raid weekly quests in their Quest Logs and complete either of them at any time during the week in their respective raid versions. The quests given each week in 10- and 25-player versions of Icecrown Citadel will be randomly determined once Lord Morrowgar is killed, or once a player zones into an instance where Lord Morrowgar has already been killed. The Quests:
The Reward: Completing any of these quests will reward each member of the group with a Sack of Frosty Treasures and a healthy chunk of gold. The sack will contain Emblems of Frost and other potentially valuable items! |
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WORLD OF WARCRAFT: STORMRAGE by Richard A. Knaak will be released on eAudio through the Simon & Schuster, Inc. website on February 23rd, 2010. This is unabridged and will be read by award-winning narrator Richard Ferrone. This is the first World of Warcraft book available on audio.
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| Crygil: We are making some adjustments to tank survivability based on what we’re seeing in Icecrown Citadel. We feel this is particularly important in preparation for upcoming Heroic attempts. This is tricky and occasionally subjective, so we might very well make more adjustments as we get even more data. Paladin:
Death Knight:
It’s important to note that we aren’t trying to single out paladins here. We like the tank balance of warriors and druids at the moment, and we have a larger sample size of warrior tanks that we can compare. Another solution would have been to buff warriors, death knights and druids and then increase boss damage accordingly. Obviously, that would have been a much larger change with greater risks and a longer delay. Though Ardent Defender is always a possible target for changes, we like that this talent provides such a distinction between warriors and paladins. Rather than have all the tanks have the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns, we’d rather have four unique tanking classes rather than just superficial or artistic differences. Yes, that design is harder to balance, but we think class distinction is ultimately more interesting, which is better for the long term health of the game. The goal remains to have all four tanks be viable for any encounter, assuming sufficient gear and skill, and any differences in performance on individual encounters to be minor. “Minor” is obviously a subjective term. Please note that the death knight change will result in a small survivability increase in PvP, which we think is appropriate. We chose it partially with that in mind. |
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| After further observations of the recent changes made to resilience and healing in PvP, we are making an additional change via an in-game fix so that the PvP healing debuff in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp now also lowers the effectiveness of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield by 10%. The majority of other strong shields or damage absorption mechanics are already affected by the healing change, so we feel this new adjustment is an appropriate step in balancing the effects of resilience versus healing. The ultimate goal is to find a better median between PvP encounters feeling too quick from burst damage, or too long from heals, shields, and absorption effects. We will continue to monitor the way these changes play out and let you know if we feel any further changes are needed. As always, feedback based on your PvP experience with these new changes is welcome. |
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| Daelo: We just made a hotfix that disables the siege damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. The siege damage of the bombs was causing the Frozen Throne platform to rebuild, which greatly decreases the difficulty of the encounter. We'll reenable the siege damage in a later update when the issue with the Frozen Throne is fixed. So are you going to ban Ensidia now for 3 days and remove their achievement like you did Exodus when they did Yogg-0? Or are you going to show double standards here. I mean we know they did it and I really doubt they accidentally brought the entire circle back. Valnoth: It is not our policy to discuss disciplinary action for exploitation. With that said, we take exploits very seriously and will action players that use exploits to overcome an encounter. We continue to closely monitor all 25 player Lich King attempts and will take action if we deem players blatantly exploiting the encounter. |
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Medievaldragon: What is the developer or GM stance on fightning the scourge at the ledge in Halls of Reflections while Arthas walks past players? Is it an exploit, or is it intended / condoned? Game Master (GM) Response: Greetings! Thank you for taking the time to petition in about this and for being patient during the long wait. I wanted to let you know that if an event in the game is intended to work a certain way and doing something that is obviously not intended would probably not be ok. If it is meant to be done a certain way, for instance running away from Arthas - that would be the way to do it  Thanks again for letting us know. =) |
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| Blizzard Entertainment has not announced any details about the next BlizzCon. We recommend that players refrain from making any BlizzCon-related travel plans at this time. | ||
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| Drain Life isn't affected. Nor is Fel Armor, Death Coil, Haunt, Devouring Plague or Spirit Bond. It's a little technical, but things that are actual drains are not affected. Heals that get proc'd by other effects are affected. Currently the nerf is only 10%, so I don't expect the impact on a lot of these lower healing effects to be a big deal. Vampiric Embrace will be affected by the nerf. Unfortunately, there isn't going to be a hard and fast rule that determines what is affected and what is not. It just depends technically on how the spells are created. The tooltip often suggests what is happening behind the scenes, but isn't 100% reliable. Remember, the magnitude is currently small. We can't imagine too many PvP encounters that are resolved differently based on 10% less healing from VE. This was a blanket solution, and the problem with blanket solutions is that you have very little room to handle special cases. In this case, we didn't want to wait for the elegant solution that affected say just the true priest, paladin and druid healing spells, because that would have delayed the change possibly until Cataclysm (where I suspect it won't even be needed). It's a little technical which abilities get hit and which do not. If your ability procs a heal on you, then that is affected (such as VE). If you are doing a straight out drain, like Death Coil, then it will not be affected. It's just 10% (for now) so I don't think the effect on a lot of these secondary heals will be very noticeable to be honest. Really we were trying to hit the big healer-based heals like Penance, Flash / Holy Light, Lifebloom, etc. |
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| Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we've been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they're not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch. While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we're designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what's available in-game. Players have been requesting -- and we've been hoping to implement -- a feature like this for a long time, and we're excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible. This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don't have an exact release date yet. It's important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we'll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won't disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won't release it until it meets the quality standards that we've set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We'll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release. |
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| 1) Our goal wasn't to make certain all tank dps was identical. Even though it's not in parity, we don't think this is a huge balance problem. The situations where it really would make a difference are pretty rare. 2) However, we none the less buffed warrior dps a little. Given that Fury warriors are close to overpowered in PvE, and Arms warriors and occasionally even Prot warriors are close to overpowered in PvP, we have to be careful about things like this. (You may not care about PvP balance, but a lot of players do.) 3) We don't want to buff warrior AE. We don't want to buff anyone's AE. AE tanking is too easy right now, which then promotes a strategy of just AE'ing everything. 4) That said, Thunderclap and Shockwave are amazing for establishing initial aggro or handling new adds. No they won't do the entire tanking job for you. We also don't see tank threat overall as really a problem in most fights, certainly compared to pre-LK content where it was a major mechanic for many encounters. 5) Heroic Strike is something we've addressed many times. I don't fault you for being grumbly over Heroic Strike, but saying we've never addressed the issue rings a little hollow. On next swing attacks are bad and they are all going away (except for perhaps Cleave, which is situational). That is a very big change though and not something we can just plop in the game without changing e.g. rage generation and dps rotations quite a bit. |
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