<font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/druid.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> <b>Upcoming Feral changes, Part II</b></font><br /><div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span><div class="blizzquoteheader"><span>Quote from: <b>Ghostcrawler (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/12891010295-upcoming-feral-changes-part-ii.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</span></b></div><div class="blizzquote">This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes.<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>ARMOR</b></span><br />As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier.<br /><br />We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals).<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>FERAL ATTACK POWER</b></span><br />We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.<br /><br />These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/12891010295-upcoming-feral-changes-part-ii.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)</div><span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div></div><br /><br /><font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b>Blizzcast: Episode 6 is out!</b></font><br />It seems that the next episode of the Blizzcast was released early in Europe, you can&#39;t find it yet on the US official site but it&#39;s definitely here on the <a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml" target="_blank"><b>european one</b></a><br /><br />The WoW part of the podcast is an <b>interview with Monte Krol (Lead Tools Programmer for World of Warcraft)</b>, you won&#39;t find any big announcement here but it&#39;s still a <a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml" target="_blank"><b>good read</b></a><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml" target="_blank"><img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/november/blizzcast6.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><br />Also, there is a Community Q&A where Alex Afrasiabi (Furor, WoW Lead World Designer)) answered a few questions.<br /><div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span><div class="blizzquoteheader"><span>Quote from: <b>Blizzard (<a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</span></b></div><div class="blizzquote"><span style="color: white;"><b>First up from the player Akercocke on the European Turalyon realm. Will there be a new line of class quests in Wrath of the Lich King, aside from ones that are for the Death Knight?</b></span><br />Not at release. We do have some things planned for the upcoming patches but for release nothing. We love to do more there is just some trickery involved with class quests, the main problem being that – at least we’ve learned in the past – that we don’t want to roll these things out piecemeal, so a couple classes at a time. We did that with the hunters and the priests and the fan reaction wasn’t really good. Although they did like the quests it’s just that I think everyone wants their own class to get a quest and we agree we think that should.<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>The next question is from Preliatus on the realm Kirin Tor. Are there any updates as to the whereabouts of General Turalyon?</b></span> (<a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Turalyon" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">WoWWiki</span></b></a>)<br />So Turalyon, last I heard, he was locked away in some legion home world but you know that’s just a rumor. But really there are plans for Turalyon, it’s one of those things that we keep every content patch we try and work out something. Invariably it goes another way and so we’re hopeful that eventually we’ll get to him.<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Some players are particularly interested in quests that will involve these famous lore heroes, do you find these quests more challenging to implement than others?</b></span><br />Oh yeah, they are way more challenging to implement. The main hurdles basically are that our established lore characters have histories and stories, there’s memories attached to all those characters so players remember them from not just World of Warcraft but all the Warcraft series. So we have to be really mindful of giving them the proper due respect. We’ve done things in the past where they weren’t received as well and even doing something as simple as changing the appearance of a hero that currently exists causes some uproar. It’s definitely getting that entire questline or storyline built up is a challenge more so than just introducing a new hero. &nbsp;<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>What do you think of the new Sylvanas model?</b></span><br />I personally like the new model much better than the Night Elf that we had but we are getting a new custom built model which looks amazing. (<a href="http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Is there any particular storyline from the original game that you are excited to be picking up again in Wrath of the Lich King?</b></span><br />Several. It’s been a nice expansion, it was a good break from Outland where things got a little… different I guess is the best term for it. Anything that involves Arthas, Lich King, we’re all over, we love that stuff. Expanding Tirion Fordring’s line and roll rather in the expansion is huge for us. A personal favorite of mine if the Forsaken’s involvement in the early zones with their plague, their blight, that’s something we’ve been forming for years with the old world and we obviously paused it for Outland and we’re coming back. I think we’re just releasing some new stuff in this next build that will kind of bring all that to a head that I’m pretty excited about.<br /><br />Aside from that there’s also a whole lot of new stuff that we’re also excited about, so Vrykul and Brann and his involvement with the Titans. The power struggles in the Horde, we’re going to start seeing some of those in the next upcoming beta pushes that I’m really excited about. The whole Wrathgate series which we’re just getting ready to release that movie and I hope the fans will love it, I know I love it, so I’m pretty confident they will. <br /><br />I think the good thing with Northrend is the whole atmosphere of the world just lends itself to a more natural storytelling environment. I think myself and all the other designers really kind of attached to it. <br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Another thing is, we talked in the past about is how we plan for Arthas to play a bigger role in this expansion, a bigger role than Illidan did in The Burning Crusade, so without giving too much away how well would you say this has gone so far? </b></span><br />I think it’s gone really well. If you start as a Death Knight, the first person you see is the Lich King. Going through our zones, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly [Hills], Zul’drak, I think almost every zone has at least one encounter with the Lich King, some with Prince Arthas himself - the Alliance get a series in Dragonblight for that - so I think it’s gone really well. Then in Icecrown again, you’ll get several interactions with the Lich King and then going forward in patch 3.1 and beyond there will just be more.</div><span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div></div><br /><br /><font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b>Blue posts</b></font><br /><div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span><div class="blizzquoteheader"><span>Quote from <b>Blizzard staff</b></span></div><div class="blizzquote"><span style="color: white;"><b>Tanking in WotLK</b></span><br />The goal is roughly equivalent. The goal is not identical. Identical would mean making all abilities identical, down to things like Divine Shield and Innervate. I also want to caution you all that there are plenty of players who are concerned about the degree of homogenization we’ve done to get the tank classes as close as they are. It’s cool for everyone to have their different visions for what the game should be, just make sure not to impose your vision on everyone else. There are eleven million people playing WoW….<br /><br />As far as the other arguments are concerned…<br /><br />-- You can argue that our design is for warriors to be the best tanks. But I can debunk that right here. It&#39;s not. They will probably be superior in some cases and inferior in others, but never to the extent that you bench the warrior and bring in another class for a certain fight.<br />-- You can argue that some classes need to tank worse than others to compensate for their other abilities or degree of hybrid-ness. But that is not our design.<br />-- You can argue that some classes end up being better tanks for some reason or another. This is a totally legit concern. I don’t think we have any evidence that this is really happening yet, but it is something we pay a lot of attention to.<br /><br />-- In Classic WoW there was really only one tank, the warrior.<br />-- In Burning Crusade, we added two other tanks, but the design was that they were typically used in an OT role. There were exceptions of course.<br />-- The design for Lich King is four tanking classes. You should be able to raid in Lich King without a warrior tank, or without a warrior period. You can replace “warrior” in that sentence with 9 other classes. One of the reasons we spent so much time on the warrior Prot tree is we wanted to compensate t...</div><span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div></div>


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