Project Lore

Deathbringer is one of the few remaining fights not previously tested on the PTR, and perhaps for good reason! The lore surrounding this fight connects right back to one of Wrath of the Lich King's most iconic events. If you've experienced it yourself, then you probably already know which one I'm referring to. If not, please be aware that there are spoilers ahead. Not only will I mention them in passing, but the recording captures the cinematic event that leads up to the encounter, as well. [caption id="attachment_8447" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Elder Saurfang, straight after an intense Gunship Battle."][/caption] If there's something to be said, it is that Saurfang is one tough mother. The attempt you'll find in video form below was only one of four that our meager group managed to squeeze in during the testing period (woeful disconnects and people randomly leaving because they don't seem to understand what a test is) was our best, and even then we could barely make a dent in his health. You see, the main mechanic of this fight is Deathbringer's ability to both dish out a lot of damage and heal himself in the process. It's like fighting a super-charged Blood-spec Death Knight, and considering what Saurfang has been turned into, that's not such a far-fetched comparison. In addition to this, you'll have to put up with some Blood Beast adds, whose attacks are both painful, and funnel some of their own damage back to their master in the process. After they start spawning, they will continue to do so throughout the fight ever 15 seconds or so. Dealing with them, as well as keeping DPS on the boss, will no doubt be the key to winning this fight. Check out what I managed to capture below:

Whether it was due to a bug or just over-tuning, I'm not entirely sure, but Saurfang also had an insane dodge chance, certainly above and beyond that of the average boss. Though we failed to kill him, I feel that we were in good company. It seems that few, if any, groups managed to down the Deathbringer in this round of testing. If he goes up again, I fully anticipate Blizzard changing a few things.

Nonetheless, he could end up being one of the toughest fights in Icecrown Citadel, and a good gateway encounter that leads into the second part of the dungeon.

The Escapist of the Warcry Network had the fortune to interview the VP of Game Design, Rob Pardo, in a sort of retrospective look at the past five years of design of World of Warcraft. Its a great interview, and Blizzard has been doing a lot of these sort of things recently, perhaps to hype up WoW's upcoming fifth anniversary on November 23rd. One question that was just asking for trouble was "What are you most proud of over the last five years? What was the biggest mistake you think you made?" Its not an easily answerable question, and there might have been a slight PR disaster with its answer. When addressing the "biggest mistake" portion of the question, Pardo responded:

As for the biggest mistake? There's a lot of them that I think, were ... they just "fell out" of things. One example: I wish the servers were more stable when we launched, of course - there's a lot of that sort of thing. We have a lot of excuses for that - we didn't expect nearly the response - but we can't say it wasn't a mistake. If I was going to pick on a game design thing that I look back on and think was a mistake? We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game; it was something that we decided to start tackling because there was such a desire and demand to evolve it in that direction, to introduce competitive arenas. I'm not sure that that was the right thing to do with the game. We didn't engineer the game and classes and balance around it, we just added it on, so it continues to be very difficult to balance. Is WoW a PvE cooperative game, or a competitive PvP game? There's constant pressure on the class balance team, there's pressure on the game itself, and a lot of times players who don't PvP don't understand why their classes are changing. I don't think we ever foresaw how much tuning and tweaking we'd have to do to balance it in that direction. Either I'd go back in time to before WoW ever shipped and change the rules to make the basic game more conductive for being an e-sport, or if not that, just say it doesn't make sense. Right now, WoW has a bit of a schizophrenic philosophy behind it, and we're trying to figure out how to guide it. It's tricky, now that we've gone down that road, because we have a passionate, large audience that enjoys it - the Arena, the e-sport - so we can't just chop off that head. We can't just say, "We fouled up and will go back to how it used to be before," because we have a really passionate audience that wants it in the game. If I could go back in time before we shipped WoW, I would have either made serious changes to basic class balance to facilitate that type of play, or if I went back to when we had the idea two years later, I would have said, "Maybe we shouldn't go there."

This was really a baited answer. Pardo really highlighted a lot of the incredible design that made WoW so successful, but his brutally honest answer here is a bit of a surprise. He comments later in the interview that as far as PvE goes, they have given up a lot of their preconceived notions of what an MMORPG should do. They stopped catering to "hardcore players" as much as they used to by reducing raid sizes and making content more accessible, among other changes. Going the "e-sports" route doesn't seem to fit in with the philosophy of recent PvE changes. Look at the players that get all of the attention. Guilds that get "world firsts" and "server firsts" get a lot more attention than players who get 2200+ rating. The arena reward system seems to get revamped and redesigned every season. WoW doesn't need to be a competitive PvP game to get attention or longevity. Its already extremely competitive on a PvE front. Arenas have failed to be accessible or rewarding to new and average players. Talent and class design is now all over the place, with buffs having to be carefully implemented and thought through to obtain balance in both PvP and PvE. Complaints would be quieter if the only PvP mediums were world PvP and battlegrounds, where winning conditions are much less dependent on the intricacies of class balance. For more, read the interview. Its a very good read and makes you realize how well-designed WoW really is.

Some of you may have heard that Las Vegas is going to be the home of BlizzCon 2010.  The odd change in location, to say the least, is far from confirmed.  The news comes directly from the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Not the most unbiased of outlets considering the topic.  A few moments ago Blizzard updated the community with a warning via Twitter. Warcraft tweeted: #Blizzcon We haven’t announced any details regarding our next BlizzCon, so please refrain from making any travel plans at this time. The company mentioned at BlizzCon 2009 that Anaheim was home to the convention, but it wouldn't hurt to shop around.  However, there's numerous reasons why the Las Vegas Convetion Center would lay claims to such a deal.  Blizzard may be shopping around the convention in an attempt to gauge the pricing.  Such an act could have lead the folks at the convention center to think a deal had been struck.  There's also the possibility that Blizzard may be forced to move from the Anaheim Convention Center due to size consideration, or booking issues. Assuming it does pan out, at least Las Vegas would be a better place to fly in to.  It's also more of a vacation destination for any spouses who would want to tag along, but not get all nerded out.  But who wants to go to the desert in July? Whatever the case may be, one thing is for certain, Blizzard has not made any official announcements about BlizzCon 2010.  Except the one regarding not making any announcements for the convention.  Does that count?

[caption id="attachment_8422" align="alignright" width="271" caption="That's Him Right? Love The New Look"][/caption] I know I had a little nerd rage in me yesterday during our polite discussion about the Pandaren Monk.  It turns out that Blizzard wasn't trying to be an evil corporation.  Just that somewhere along the lines Blizzard made a simple mistake when populating a database field, causing the item to sell out when it wasn't possible.  It took the situation a few hours to be rectified, but I'll give the web team a little leeway since I blew my lid while they were still counting sheep. After a guildmate saw me fly off the handle he pointed me in the direction of The Instance.  The long-running podcast managed to corner Tom Chilton for an interview, which went live as part of the latest episode.  In a case of near-perfect timing, the host pinged Chilton on the topic of the moment, Blizzard's non-combat pet microtransactions. According to Chilton, the inclusion of the pets in the Blizzard store are a result of the WoW TCG.  Initially conceived as a bonus to players of the TCG and WoW, the loot cards became a way for players to raise their pet or mount count directly.  The decision was made to offer these incentives directly, removing the randomness from the practice. It'd be naive of us to not think of the monetary/safety factor though.  Purchasing the pets and mounts required obscene amounts of money.  Money that Blizzard, nor Upper Deck, saw any part of.  By selling the items directly Blizzard not only gets its hand in the pie, but it can also police the transactions.  This lowers the amount of customer service calls from people who were scammed or hacked as a result of third party purchasing. How did the company arrive at the $10 slice of pie, you ask?  Chilton covers that as well.  The $10 price is no accident.  Not only is a Hamilton a president that Blizzard feels the market can bear, but the company needed to justify the efforts of the artists and animators that were involved in the project.  I'm sure we've all noticed just how complex and detailed Lil' KT and the Pandaren Monk are compared to the stable of vanity pets we already have. Chilton even offers a glimpse at the future of the project, one that he calls a "side project."  For starters, there is definitely going to be more items placed in the store, but none were detailed.  He did mention that there'd be "pet and plushie" sales.  These would offer a physical and virtual item of a stuffed mob.  We assume that the price point would be lower than purchasing them separate.  Chilton ensured listeners that normal WoW content development has not, and would not, be effected by the store.  He stated that new developers would be hired to produce its content, should the store continue to grow. There, now no one can call me anything but 'fair and balanced.' P.S. Kinda sucks for the Europeans out there that pay €10, which is ~$15.  Even worse is what UK players pay, £9, which turns out to be more than their subscription rate.  Not much more, but North Americans only pay two-thirds of our rate for a pet.

The High Inquisitor is a regular column at Project Lore that seeks answers to the greatest mysteries of Azeroth. Each installment, the inquisitor will attack a previously unanswered question and attempt to explain the unknown. But she won’t rest until all plausible explanations are explored. The best, most probable comment(s) will be highlighted with the next edition’s inquisition. Welcome, dear readers, to another installment of the High Inquisitor. This time, I want to take a look at the spirit healer's role in our adventures. But first, let's take a look back at some of your submitted answers to the last question, when I asked where all the kids are in Azeroth. We got a nice range of answers, from pointing out that there are kids running around, they're just sometimes hard to find, to the thought that Azerothians have stopped having kids during wartime. The idea that I like best, however, is that our toons, before we start playing them, are the kids of the world. I thought Phanttas described it best:

I think that over time the children of Azeroth evolved to become safe from all those gigantic spiders, raging elementals and opposing faction members by turning invisible. The children stay like this while they train to become adventurers themselves, but do it in a safe way, because the creatures they are trying to take [enlarged spleen]s from can’t see them. Some of the children realise that they aren’t going to every be good enough to be an adventurer and stop being invisible to live their life running round Stormwind free of the perils of adventuring. The other children however, once they have been training for several years, suddenly get a calling to run to a certain place to start their true lives, where they become visible at last: the starting zones. If you hang around them for long enough you can see this miraculous act happening.

Now moving on, let's explore this week's question a bit. I'm sure you're all familiar with Spirit Healers, those celestial beings who await adventurers who enter the astral realm between life and death, ready to guide them back to the land of the living. While I appreciate the life that my toons can continue living, I also am aware that these spirit healers also must be the reason for respawning foes in areas that we so painstakingly clear out while questing. So here's the question: How can any side ever truly win? Be they members of the Scarlet Crusade, tribal leaders atop Darkcloud Pinnacle, hostile centaurs or quirky murlocs, our enemies will simply run back to their corpses and respawn a few minutes after their defeat. How can any group ever claim victory when neither side's numbers wane? In the case of PvP, we at least have an objective that will determine the winner; Capture the flag, defend the keep, gain the most resources. In the rest of the world, our objectives are outlined in quest form: Kill 10 of these and 20 of those; gather 8 shiny items scattered throughout the enemy village. But the world is static, and so the outcome of our endeavors is less defined. After we leave, the world goes back to the way it was before we ever came. Generations later, our alts can perform the same quests. Once again, game mechanics come into play. This is an essential aspect of MMO gameplay, and the only way around it that I've seen is through phased events. But phasing the whole world would be quite a task, and wouldn't necessarily give us anything better. Regardless, I'm interested in how we can use the lore to explain the situation. I say we need to appeal to the enemy spirit healers themselves, and convince them they're on the wrong side. Then, we'd get somewhere. How do you think we can get past this dead heat?

Likely in accordance with the raid testing today, 3.3 has been updated yet again. Though it's a full 181 MB, the documented changes are minuscule, as they have been over the past few builds. I'll be the first to tell you that I'm happy about the changes being made to Murder. The description below isn't just Blizzard being cheeky, it's a legitimate concern. A talent whose chief functionality is providing extra damage when faced with a variety of enemies is rendered impotent when nearly an entire raid instance is filled with nothing but the undead. And it may be one piece of the puzzle as to why Rogues have seen their DPS dip a little bit when testing encounters in Icecrown Citadel. [caption id="attachment_7705" align="alignright" width="240" caption="He's waiting for you..."][/caption] Of course, this makes the talent a flat damage increase, which is exactly the kind of thing Blizz has said they want to shy away from in Cataclysm. This is almost certainly a stop-gap measure for Icecrown Citadel alone and Murder may yet be evaluated again when expansion time comes. Other than that, there are some other small class changes, another nerf to the Oculus, and that's about i-- oh, wait, what's this? Could that be where most of the 181 MBs went?! Readers, it seems that Blizzard has done something I didn't entirely expect them to do: open the Halls of Reflection. As of the time of this writing, you still can't enter the dungeon, but it's assumed that it will be open very shortly. 4PM PST sounds good, as that's when the raid test content will be available as well as when PuG With The Blues (Take 2) will be occurring. If you didn't get in on the action last time, now's your chance to run an instance with a company employee, as long as you make use of the new Dungeon system to do so. If you don't have the PTR client at the moment or haven't transferred any characters, you may not be able to make it online in time to participate, but if you're more or less up-to-date, it's a really cool opportunity. A couple of us bloggers might be around, so don't be afraid to say hi (or tell us how much we suck) if you happen to see us! By the way, something else I noticed (and it may have been there since I haven't visited the ICC 5-man area in a few weeks), is that there is now a Meeting Stone smack dab in the middle of the three new dungeons. Convenient, huh? Here are the rest of the notes:

General

• Icecrown Citadel
  • All three wings of the 5-player dungeon are currently available for testing.

Dungeons and Raids Oculus

• Azure Ring Guardians aggro distance changed from 50 to 40 yards.

Druid Restoration

• Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

Paladin

• Sanctified Light - Reverted due to changes being made to Lay on Hands.

Rogue Assassination

• Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.

Warrior

• Glyph of Victory Rush: This glyph now increases the critical strike chance of Victory Rush by 30%, regardless of the percentage of the target’s remaining health.

That's it for the documented changes today (though there may be more lurking beneath the surface). If you're antsy about Halls of Reflection and can't make it onto the PTR, don't worry. Project Lore will be bringing you coverage in one form or another in the near future! Stay tuned!

[caption id="attachment_8390" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Pandaren Monk Endangered Even In Azeroth"][/caption] Really Blizzard?  Really?  You've sold out of an item that doesn't even exist?  One that doesn't need to be manufactured, doesn't require materials or any labor to reproduce?  Folks, as of press time the charity helping Pandaren Monk is officially "Sold Out" on North American shores.  The paradox of selling out of a virtual item kind of boggles the mind doesn't it?  He's been on sale only a week! Okay, deep breath.  Perhaps Blizzard meant the Panda to be some sort of limited pet.  Only 10,000 copies were to be sold on a first come, first served basis.  To bad the company failed to inform anyone, including the web team.  Players who were on the fence about the purchase have had the decision made for them, at least temporarily.  For the moment, they are no longer stuck between their need to own all pets, and the shroud of fel energy that could consume their very soul should they be tempted by the darkside a microtransaction. If the monk is truly limited, not some sort of database error or mix up, then it'll go down in microtransaction history.  The Champions Online limited 6-month/lifetime subscription package "shortage" will go out the window.  The new winner of the "Most Boneheaded Move" in the short AAA MMORPG microtransaction era will go to Blizzard and its disappearing monk. /me cleans the anger spittle from his keyboard I have no problem with microtransactions, especially aesthetic ones, in a subscription-based game - I am so tempted to drop $20 - but I do have a problem with misinformation, and false advertising. In the spirit of Helen Lovejoy, "Will someone please think of the children?"  I wonder, does Make A Wish keep track of the donations made to them?  Could we get dig through the information to see how much Blizzard donated to calculate how many pandas were created? I'm also curious as to who's buying the pets and why.  Are you a pet collector, or did the extra animations and interactivity sell you on these pets?  Did you grab just one, or both?

Ever since Blizzard announced that you could merge your World of Warcraft with your Battle.net account, we knew that some day they'd make the change manditory. And why, you ask? Battle.net has been a mainstay of Blizzard's online community for years and it's about to receive its biggest upgrade ever with the release of Starcraft 2. The problem is that its services have always been kept separate. Starcraft players have never been able to communicate with Diablo 2 players, and the company hasn't released a significant online game that makes use of the match-making system since then. WoW required something more robust than what B.net could offer at the time, but now the time is right. Battle.net 2.0 has taken all sorts of cues from Facebook, Xbox Live, and everything in-between. In short, it has out-grown everything that has come before it. And it's time for WoW to grow up, too. Not only is it beneficial to people who currently play the game, but it will be almost crucial for those who intend to play future releases alongside their favorite MMO. Now we approach the zero hour. Blizzard warned us not even a month ago that we would have to merge our accounts by November 11, 2009 or else! Of course, there are two very good reasons for doing so if you haven't made the jump yet:

• Chilly the Penguin -- Who can say no to a free vanity pet? Though they've been threatening you with a specific date for the merger, they haven't yet set one for when you will no longer be able to receive the pet, though it will likely be in the very near future.
• You get to continue playing World of Warcraft! -- Of course, this is the most important of all. Unlike Chilly, Blizzard is keeping very strict with this one. Don't merge your account by the end of today? Starting tomorrow (the 12th), you don't get to log-in to WoW until you do.

The new Battle.net also sports some other neat features, like purchase tracking on the Blizzard store and the ability to input your games' CD Keys so you always have a digital download available even if you lose your physical copies. Now some people have expressed concern that having a single account for all your games makes it easier for you to get hacked (imagine having both your Diablo III and Warcraft character ganked, or worse!), but there's no evidence as yet to support this idea. It would be foolish to assume that any system is out of the reach of a really dedicated hacker, but it's be equally stupid to think that Blizzard isn't going to ratchet up the security because there's so much more at stake. If you're truly concerned, you might as well go ahead and purchase an Authenticator (or just download the app if you have an iPhone). Personally, I think Battle.net 2.0 is only going to make things better and more connected. I'll be playing Starcraft 2 and Diablo III even when I'm tackling the latest raid content in Cataclysm, and I fully anticipate some people being tempted to drop WoW altogether when either of those games come out. The new community is going to keep everybody in the loop, and that makes me very happy. You can create/merge your accounts here. Make sure to check the FAQ if you have any questions. Have you merged your account yet, and how do you think Battle.net will affect your game-playing behavior in the future?

There is a recent fad among top-level Rogues. Its a throwback to the old weapon swap + Shiv that was so popular in the early Burning Crusade days. Thanks to things like Cut to the Chase and Glyph of Envenom, its becoming easier and easier to keep 5 stacks of Deadly Poison (DP) on your target at all times. Practically always within a couple seconds, that 5 stack of DP gets refreshed pretty fast. If only there was some way to use Instant Poison or Wound Poison when you don't need to refresh your DP stacks. Well, its a common desire by many Rogues. Weapon swapping does just that. If you are Assassination specced and use Deadly Poison on one dagger and Instant on the other, you can put Instant Poison on a third dagger, and swap it in whenever you get a 5 stack of Deadly Poison. Whenever your Deadly Poison has only a few seconds left, the Rogue then swaps the Deadly Poison dagger back in to refresh the stack, then swaps back to Instant Poison. This same setup works for Combat and a Wound/Deadly/Wound configuration on swords/axes/fists/daggers. Sounds complicated? Its getting easier. There is now a mainstream addon that manages all of this for you. Whenever you have a 5 stack of Deadly Poison with more than 5 seconds remaining, it equips your Instant/Wound poison weapons. When the debuff falls below 5 seconds remaining, it swaps for a Deadly Poison weapon. Now, without any micromanagement, any Rogue can achieve this previously complicated task. Keep in mind that changing weapons triggers the GCD. Using this technique, you'll be swapping weapons about every 7 seconds. However, the makers of PoisonSwapper claim a 300 DPS increase for top-tier combat Rogues and a 600 DPS increase for top-tier Assassination Rogues. If a Rogue is putting out 6k DPS, that is about a 10% increase in DPS. I've heard many Rogues claim that the Envenom effect of increasing Instant Poison applications makes Envenom much more powerful than Rupture, and they have abandoned Rupture all together. I personally am messing with a script that one of my guildmates wrote, or at least discovered:

-- $EVENTS TIMER UNIT_COMBAT local dp_name="Deadly Poison IX" local switch_time = 5 if UnitAffectingCombat("player") then for i=1,40 do local n,_,_,s,_,_,x,c,_=UnitDebuff("target",i); if n==dp_name and c=="player" then equip = ( x-GetTime() > switch_time and s == 5 ) end end else equip = false end

By using this script with an addon like Outfitter, you can achieve the same effect as PoisonSwapper. It seems ripe for a nerf, but I don't know how Blizzard can directly prevent this. Blue posters have said that it seems non-essential for Rogues right now and they do not believe it gives significant DPS increases, and they see no reason to nerf it. Take advantage of it now, and see if it helps you sweep the deeps!

And we're back to a robust week of testing in Icecrown Citadel! If you had seen this schedule earlier, either on a different news site or on the official PTR forum itself, do note that the dates have been shifted. There will no longer be any testing done tonight (Tuesday, 11/10), and the encounters that would have been are only being pushed back a day or two, so we'll essentially still get to test everything as originally planned. There's at least one potential spoiler below that you may want to watch out for if you intend or reading any further (not mine, it's in the schedule itself):

We are scheduling raid tests in Icecrown Citadel for November 11-14. The schedule is as follows: EU Servers Thursday, November 12 at 19:30 CET – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Rotface Friday, November 13 at 19:30 CET – Blood Princes, Professor Putricide Saturday, November 14 at 19:30 CET – Lord Marrowgar US Servers Wednesday, November 11 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Lord Marrowgar, Festergut Thursday, November 12 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Deathbringer Saurfang Friday, November 13 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Icecrown Gunship Battle Saturday, November 14 at 4PM EST / 1 PM PST – Sindragosa Only normal difficulties will be tested, although 10 and 25 player raids will be available. The Icecrown Citadel raid test schedule will be very flexible, and can change at a moment's notice due to build status, bugs, and server issues. Remember that this is the test server, so things can, do, and will break from time to time. Check this forum for the latest Icecrown Citadel raid testing schedule information in the weeks to come.

I noted on the last schedule update that there were only four more bosses to be tested. After this week, three of those will be knocked out (Blood Princes, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Deathbringer) and only the big, bad guy at the top will remain. We have it on good faith (and a little bit of experience) that the Lich King will NOT be available on test servers, and will rather continue to be evaluated in-house. The case has been similar for end-bosses in past raids, and with an extra helping of lore and spoilers plopped on top of Arthas, I highly doubt Icecrown Citadel is going to be any different. Likewise, I anticipate Blizzard testing all hard modes internally, which shouldn't much of a problem considering they'll have extra time to do so. Even when 3.3 goes live, players will have to wait for the Lich King to be unlocked and defeated before they can even begin to tackle any bosses in their more difficult forms. As for the encounters being re-tested? Some like Professor Putricide presented with rather large bugs the first time around (you couldn't target him again after engaging him for the first time!), while others seem to be on their way to receiving their final coat of polish (Lord Marrowgar). By my estimation, this places the patch about three weeks away at Dec. 1 (right after Thanksgiving), though that may depend on whether or not they postpone holiday-week testing to the next (assuming they even need it in the first place), which could push 3.3 back to Dec. 7 at the latest. We'll keep you posted here on Project Lore and, if all goes as planned, there will be some videos of all the new encounters being tested on the US servers this week. So stay tuned!