Blizzard Q&A with Warcry

[Severian]

Q: Many players disagree with the new "Raid Schedule" in 1.9 I understand that you put it in place to stop cascading. However, you are now dictating to players when they "HAVE" to raid, which is never a good thing. Is this change something that you feel is temporary or can we expect to see this stay in place permanently? As more raid content is added to the game this "Schedule" is going to be more and more of a problem for raiding game.

A: I think initially the guilds will have to adjust to the new raid schedule, however, the change is an overall good one for the game. For the most part, the raid schedule will feel seamless to a lot of guilds. We try to schedule resets during off hours and during server maintenance. The reality is, most MC guilds can clear the zone in under two days.

Q: <Legorol> Has asked: Could you comment on how much attention in general is Blizzard paying to UI modifications and AddOns, and how important a segment of the customer base are the AddOn users and especially the AddOn developers? (Lot of whom get at least half of their enjoyment of WoW by tinkering with it)

A: We constantly read the UI sites to see what our players want. Not only that, but we use those mods ourselves to enhance our own play experience. Obviously, if we feel anything is absolutely *needed* to play the game, we try to encorporate it into the WoW UI. But we've been loving what the community has produced thus far.

Q: Do they have a concise reason for the buff of dispel spells (mana-wise), and the disabling of the mod decursive? A PvP balancing issue that greatly effects a PvE enviroment seems a tad wrong.

A: We felt that the mana cost for the dispel abilities was too high in general for both pve and pvp. Although this wasn't a significant balance problem in solo or small group pve cases, the cost was simply too low for the raid and pvp cases. That being said, we feel that the new costs are also quite reasonable for solo use too.

Q: The Hunter Demon quest appears to be uniquely designed in comparison to other encounters in the game. Triggered effects based on attacks used and an AoE explosion to prevent intervention by other players. I found this a creative change to the game, but inconsistent with the rest of the gameplay. Will future zones have more encounters like the hunter demons? Why or why not? - <AlexanderYoshi>

A: The Hunter and Priest quests had some pretty unique elements to them. As always, we're trying to develop new and interesting ways for people to complete quests. We'll always be evolving our quest theory and trying new things out. The funnest stuff will get repeated in newer and cooler ways.

Q: It's been mentioned a few times at blizzcon and in magazines that cross-server battlegrounds are something that Blizzard very much wants to implement if at all possible. Have cross server battlegrounds gotten any closer to being a reality?

A: Yes, I can say that cross server battlegrounds have gotten closer to being a reality. However, even assuming no other obstacles come up it'll still be a while before they're ready.

Q: Hello from Darkspear, and thanks for coming today. A lot of the WoW population is very sad with the de-emphasised spontaenous World PVP and the need to grind in the Battlegrounds to find any sort of PVP action. I hear there are plans to bring this aspect of the game back to life (perhaps ridding us of those pesky DK's and increasing the Honor for kills outside of the BGs?). Could we get any details on this at this time?

A: Yes, there are plans to add outdoor pvp objectives. Although we don't intend for it to happen in the form of endless beatdowns of questgivers, we do intend to give players specific pvp objectives related to towns and other outdoor locations.

Q: Nefarion Phase 2 "once per day", however there never was a timer and Nefarion solely respawns after an instance reset (meaning you can actually retry it after 30 minutes waiting outside the instance). I would like to know if this is a bug or working as intended.

A: There's been a lot of debate over Nefarian lately. Technically, in the current build on servers, you should only be allowed one try per day once he takes flight. However, people have been flipping the instance to get more tries. In an upcoming patch we'll be changing it so that you won't have to flip the instance to get additional tries. We don't want to punish people for having flipped the instance to beat the encounter, yet we don't want to force people to do something wonky like that in the future.

Q: How do developers argue the fact that the paladin class - renowned for low DPS - is now the only tank class in game whichs tnaking is based on its damage? Also, several protection tree talent require to be crit in order to work, which is in direct contradiction to tanking (= not wanting to be crit). Are there any plans to change this? -Assassinette

A: It's important to us that even when different classes share a role, that they share that role in a way where the gameplay feels different. I understand that many paladins would like a "snap agro" ability, but we're very leary of the dangers of making the classes too similar to each other, since it's not something that can be easily undone. So, for now, we'd like to tune the abilities the paladin has now to ensure that they can be as effective *as necessary* to fulfil the role of tanks in a 5-man instance. If more changes are required in order to meet this objective, then we'll continue to make changes.

[Q: <Xen> Are they planning to add back story for gnome race explaining origins of the gnomes like Uldaman does with dwarves?

A: There's actually a gnome backstory in place. Gnomeregan used to be their home city. When the Trogg invasion began, they tried to develop a weapon of mass destruction and failed. Instead of nuking the Troggs, they nuked themselves! =[ You probably just missed those questgivers because they are so short

Q: In end-game raiding, almost every class can be replaced--albeit with difficulty. Enough Paladins/Shamans/Druids can make up for a lack of Priests, enough Mages or Warlocks can compensate for the lack of the ther if there are enough Warriors present to offtank adds that would normally be banished/sheeped etc... however, the Warrior class is absolutely irreplaceable. Is there any reason behind that design choice?

A: Actually, in raid encounters we generally intend that all classes be present. While it's true that some substutions are easier than others, it's also true that in the vast majority of encounters needing one warrior doesn't always mean all subsequent warriors are absolutely essential. In patch 1.9 we actually added a few encounters that cannot be tanked by warriors >=] We understand that everyone wants to feel "necessary" in a raid, but the reality is that most of a player's contribution comes from how well that player plays that character, regardless of the class (since there's room for all kinds of characters).

Q: any hopes of adding Darkmoon Faire profession turn-ins for alchemy, tailoring and enchanting?

A: We hope to expand on many things in the Darkmoon Faire. We se that event as an opportunity to expand in the future. We have a lot of ideas of things we'd like to add. It's just a matter of finding the time. The cannon is a good example of something we added later

Q: I find that 5 man instances can be the most enjoyable of all, and can be very challenging. Unfortunatly none of the current instances offer any wards worthwhile to characters at level 60 who have progressed to molten core and onyxia. Are there any plans to add anything of that type in the future.

A: Yes. We plan to introduce some cool new quests that introduce a new armor set that is a step above the current dungeon armor set. These quests will involve both solo and 5 person instances, with a few new twists.

Q: <Giolon> Tigole mentioned that he felt the panther and tiger bosses in ZG were a tad on the hard side. Is there any opinion on the difficulty of Jin'do the Hexxer, who is considered by many players to be far tougher than anything else in the dungeon?

A: The Tiger and Panther bosses are part of the core progression of the zone. You must kill them in order to kill Hakkar (or at least, killing them makes that more possible). But Jin'do is an *optional* boss. We feel that with an optional boss like that, we can make the encounter more difficult yet reward you for it at the same time. Jin'do's loot is pretty phat =P Actually, the Bloodlord was intended to be harder than he currently is... because he too is optional.

Q: Are there any plans to fix rogue poisons to stay applied across instance lines or has that been scrapped due to technical issues? - Murr from Hyjal

A: Yes, we plan to allow rogue poisons to persist accross instance boundaries and continent crossings. Unfortunately it's not as simple as we'd like it to be (getting "temporary enchantments" to persist like that), but we are working on it. "we" being the programmers (go team!)

Q: <Geek33> What's the lore behind the Black Morass?

A: The Black Morass used to be the area where the Dark Portal now is in the Blasted Lands along with the Swamp of Sorrows. That used to be one region of Azeroth. But the tumultuous opening of the Dark Portal by Medivh caused the Black Morass to become the Blasted Lands. We're hoping to revive the Black Morass in the Burning Crusade through the Caverns of Time.

Q: My question is simple: When the mage review arrives, will the trees be revamped so all of our magic schools will be addressed properly? Via putting all of the damage bonuses in 1 tree, the utility bonuses in another, and all of the other talent options in a final tree...as they exist now, wouldn't that be similar to having the warrior trees look like swords/Axes/Maces?

A: My answer is simple: no. To elaborate a little... We don't put "all the damage bonuses in 1 tree" for any class by intent. Also, while we do plan to make some improvements to mage talents, they're not going to get "revamped" by and large. Not all classes were in need of the same degree of improvements, and it happens that mages have pretty solid trees by and large (with some stuff that can use further improvement).

Q: <Olaff> The Deadmines are by many considered their favorite instance because of the way it's a climax to the story which is built up in the entire zone of Westfall. Are there any plans to introduce upcoming dungeons in the same way, lorewise?

A: As we work on the Burning Crusade, we're working harder to encorporate the outdoor zone lore into the dungeon lore. It's funny that you brought up the Deadmines because we often use that as our example here of how to tie zone lore into dungeon lore. We've been doing a lot of lore build up like that for Hellfire Pennisula funneling into Hellfire Citadel or Netherstorm lore building up toward Tempest Keep -- just to name a few examples.

Q: I would like to ask why priests didn't get a new rank of flash heal in 1.9?, seeing as all other classes get new offensive spells/abilities, flash heal is really the only heal used in pvp because it could keep up with the damage. How is priest healing going to be affected with the new ranks of offensive capabilities but no new rank flash 'pvp' heal?

A: We certainly plan to look into improving some of the slower heals (probably by making some of them "less slow", particularly greater heal). However, we didn't really choose which spell to add a new rank of arbitrarily.