Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzCon 2008: WoW Raids and Dungeons Panel
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 11th 2008 at 2:58PM
12:59PM Panel is over! Thanks for reading!
12:58PM Q: "Can you mix teir bonuses from old sets, like tier 2 and 3?" A: "I don't like to see that. If you feel compelled to actually wear gear that is 5 years old, that's a sign something is messed up."
12:57PM Q: "Is there a story line for Ashbringer? What is happening to the old Naxx legendary items?" A: "Get your old naxx items within the next two days, because then they're gone." Lots of boos at that.
12:56PM Q: "Will there be a Sunwell version of Wrath where only the top end guilds defeat the encounters?" A: "Naxx is going to be blown through by the top end guilds. Will there be a raid at the end that only the top of 1% will be able to beat? No, I hope not. I want a raid that is more accessible than SWP was."
12:55PM Q: "When do you think top ends guild will have beaten the xpac?" Crowd yells "Two weeks!" Real answer: "Less than that. The expansion won't be done until you take your sword out of Arthas' Chest."
12:54PM Q: "Are you going to keep dropping tokens? Any way to help when one token won't drop?" A: "We're dropping more loot from bosses, so that should help. We're not looking at dropping one of each token. What we did do to help this is allow the purchase of tokens with badges. I think you can buy the shoulders and chest [with tokens]."
12:52PM Additional answer: "We want to create an epic five-man eventually. [Creating larger dungeons] is definitely something we're looking at doing in the future." Crowd applauds at that. It appears this crowd is filled with some "hard core" raiders.
12:51PM Q: "The dungeon design in BC was different from classic because there are no super dungeons like BRS. Going to do anything like in DM where you could go from wing to wing via passages and not have to go outside the instance?" A: "Great question, that's something we think of often."
12:49PM The crowd appreciated the presentation. But they're not enjoying the answers coming out of the Q&A session. A lot of grumbling around me about "not having a raid as difficult as SWP." A guy just told the devs: "I think you're wrong, btw." Next guy up says "Kil'Jaden is a wonderful encounter, thanks for that by the way." Lots of applause.
12:47PM Q: "UBRS was truly puggable. If you were a new player it helped bridge the gap. Kara really missed that. Is there a plan for 10-man raids that have no lockout or a shorter lockout?" A: "The issue of a lockout is due to items. If there is no lockout, we can't give as good of rewards in the dungeon. It's something we've discussed and we might do in the future. But for right now, no."
12:46PM More A: "We don't want to push the players too far. We don't want to push them to things that are negative to their guild."
12:45PM Q: "In BC after HKM and Mag was fixed, things wrapped up in SWP which is hard. Naxx is easy. Going to be a SWP difficulty level raid in WotLk?" A: "You'll see more difficult encounters as you go on. We won't get to the level of difficulty of SWP."
12:43PM Q: "Can hunters tank a 5 man with my pet?" LOTS of boos. A: "Goal is for any defense specd pet to be able to OT, not MT."
12:42PM Q: "What are you planning to do with keys in WotLK?" A: "You have to be level 80." Pause. Boos. Crowd wants keys. Additional answer: "But with Malygos you have to get a thing from Naxx, so that's like a key."
12:41PM Additional note: Badges can be used to purchase additional set pieces to help fill out sets.
12:40PM Q: "As a moonkin you solved a lot of gear problems, but now 70% of the raid is going to be rolling on my caster weapon. Going to solve this so we don't have to see the same weapon drop 30 times?" A: "You should see the same proportions of caster and melee weapons drop." They didn't really answer the question in my opinion.
12:39PM Q: "Going to open up Uldum and the other dungeons?" A: "They haven't falled off the map. They just need to fit with the story we're telling. We've got this huge queue of dungeons we can choose from." More answers: "The plan right now is no."
12:37PM Q: "Whats going to happen with legendaries?" A: "Time for caster legendaries again...don't want to do random drops. Like the old Naxx way of doing legendaries."
12:36PM Q: "People fall asleep at night while raiding. We're screwed until they DC completely and are forced to zone out. Any way raid leaders can force people out?" Crowd ERUPTS in applause. A: "It's something we've looekd at." Doesn't look like they're going to do it, despite the fan approval.
12:35PM All done with the main part. Now Q&A.
12:35PM Any ratio of 10-man sets and 25-man sets will allow the set of gear to be completed, and you'll get the set bonus. Ie: 2 pieces from 10-man naxx and 2 pieces from 25-man naxx will give you a 4 piece bonus.
12:34PM They also wanted to address the way the badges play out in WotLK. They wanted to give incentives to get better rewards - hence the multiple new badge types. We already knew this, but nice to hear the thought process.
12:32PM We'll see loot that is "flat out better" than what normal 80 dungeons give. More applause.
12:32PM "In WotLK we decided to take the heroic dungeons up a tier from the level 80 dungeons." Lots of applause at that.
12:32PM "One of the things we didn't really like the feel of was the way heroic dungeons played out as far as itemization is concerned."
12:31PM All done with EoE. Even though the demo messed up, some good footage we'll get you soon.
12:31PM Demo is bugged. Apparently being a GM in the raid instance made it not work right.
12:30PM They had a "Design Menu" that they pulled down and made themselves no longer invincible.
12:29PM We just got a look at the developer view of WoW!
12:29PM EoE is a great looking space area. You're on a platform in space. Looks a lot like StarCraft, in some ways. Nothing new here either, we've seen all these screenshots before.
12:28PM Eye of Eternity is the home of Malygos, Aspect of Magic.
12:27PM All done with CoA. Next up is Eye of Eternity.
12:27PM They're not expecting people to get the twilight drake mount from the hard version of this until a patch or so after release. "But you guys are smart, so I'm sure you'll find a way."
12:26PM The hard way is to not kill the twilight drake (the sub-bosses), and just kill the main dragon. Nothing new again, but nice to see this.
12:26PM Main boss is a black dragon, and the sub-bosses are also there. The sub-bosses will drop a badge only, no other loot. Kill the main dragon for all the loot.
12:25PM Lots of great red and black lava going around.
12:25PM Looking at CoA now. It's a huge outdoor area with the feel of MC and Blasted Lands.
12:24PM Learned a lot from ZA too - they want to continue to keep that challenge format where both low-geared raiders and high-geared raiders want to run it.
12:24PM CoA is an intro to raiding. They made a mistake in that Grull and Mag was really really hard when they came out. "You went into these rooms and you got your ass kicked."
12:23PM First raid dungeon up is Chamber of the Aspects.
12:23PM Going over already known material... 10 & 25 person versions, everyone can raid depending on your social situation you have (ie: how many people you can get to raid with you).
12:22PM All done with Ak. Next up - raid zones. Everyone is applauding. Getting loud.
12:22PM If you're an elemental shaman, you'll fight a elemental shaman in the mirror world.
12:21PM Think of this mechanic as a modified version of Leotharas the Blind in SSC.
12:21PM This boss send you eventually into the shadow world - where mirror images of your party kill you for a time.
12:20PM The final boss of Ak is in a big room near the top - grand on the scale of the dwarves in LotR. The final boss is a faseless one.
12:19PM "Vampire lore with the Blood Prince boss in Ak."
12:17PM Lots of great looking buildings. The buildings are heavily influenced by original naxx art style, since KT pulled Naxx out of these buildings. Interesting.
12:16PM Back to the live gameplay in GM view of Ak. For those of you that haven't been to the dungeon yet, think of the imagery given to us by Salvatore in his Dark Elf series of books.
12:16PM The goal of Ak will be to help tell part of the story of Northrend.
12:15PM Ak is underground, and is using new technology that makes the dungeon itself be completely in a cave. It mixes both indoor and outdoor spaces in a way that hasn't been done before.
12:15PM Ak will re-introduce the faceless ones.
12:14PM Old gods will be an ongoing story in Northrend. First old god was C'Thun, and there will be more.
12:14PM Done with HoL. Crowd starts clapping and really likes the instance.
12:13PM They're able to do very custom mini-cinematics, like those near Loken in Halls of Lightening. Check it out in the beta if you haven't already - very cool and very deep in lore. Lots of moving lights and patterns, and lots of characters.
12:12PM And BWL.
12:12PM They also want to allow people to see the outdoors from dungeons. He's talking like it's new... but we've seen this since Kara...
12:11PM They were pushing tons of custom models for WotLK. Ie: things that look unique. Crowd is happy and applauds. Lots of agreement from the people around me.
12:10PM They want to give the impression that everything is very scary and show the bosses before you hit them. They want to give you a sense that this is an epic place.
12:09PM Yup, a GM view. They're moving the in-game camera around the entire dungeon at will, looking at everything.
12:09PM They'll be running us through the Halls of Lightning now, showing gameplay footage. Very neat view. Perhaps a special GM mode?
12:08PM Moved up and sitting right next to the stage now. Audio problem solved.
12:04PM They need to fix the audio. People can't hear!
12:03PM Okay. Live blog is setup! And the panel is starting. Lots of applause.
12:01PM Test live blog entry. This is only a test.
Filed under: BlizzCon
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
shinken Oct 11th 2008 5:13PM
@sunwell difficulty QQ
Sunwell was a drum/heroism/shaman/warlock spam fest
The only difficulty was recruiting said shamans
Jarnis Oct 11th 2008 5:18PM
Well, if all of WOTLK is even *easier* than Sunwell... that's somehow good?
Jarnis Oct 11th 2008 5:19PM
And for the record, I think it's good that the need for tightly class-optimized raids with constant need to swap people between bosses (SWP) is gone. It still doesn't mean that everything has to be so easy that a flock of monkeys bashing their head at the keyboard can complete it all in couple of weeks.
Mnaz Oct 11th 2008 5:26PM
Frankly who cares if the top 1% get bored? They aren't a big fraction of the player base, Blizzard can afford to see them go, and their influence on game design has been very negative. The old policy of pandering to them was very much at the expense of the other 99%. I'm glad to see Blizzard being sensible about it and making content accessible to the majority of players.
Jarnis Oct 11th 2008 5:40PM
The top 1% can be very loud. They also tend to be the ones that push the envelope. If it's all soft, fuzzy, easy and accessible to all, *what is the point?*
I'm personally in a guild that has cleared all but KJ in TBC. We are a month away from expansion - if we don't get KJ this week, we'll get it the next week with the nerfs coming to SWP. For us, SWP was perfect - it was hard, it required practice and it required perfect execution in the last few fights. Once we finally do get KJ (even if it needs a nerf first), then we are "done" with TBC content.
IF at that point any new content would be 6+ months away, vast majority of my guild would cancel their accounts. Why subscribe when you've seen it all? We already have people on extended leaves because they thought that fighting M'uru and KJ was kinda pointless, because what loot they would drop would be useless - there would be no further ladders to climb with those items, and you could level with kara/badge gear no problem.
What if, say, 25% of playerbase suddenly is burned out because they have cleared every bit of content in the expansion one month after launch. If they hit cancel, Blizzard is in deep doo-doo.
Everything doesn't have to be attainable. It's not the goal that matters, it's the way there. Epics are mere tools for inching towards goals. If you get to the goal too easily, and there are no further goals, the whole thing becomes pointless.
Joelock Oct 11th 2008 6:39PM
I believe this comment confirms that 3.0 is coming on tuesday: we've all seen the s4 warnings, but I dont think (aside from this) theres been a difinitive answer that 3.0 is coming tuesday.
12:57PM Q: "Is there a story line for Ashbringer? What is happening to the old Naxx legendary items?" A: "Get your old naxx items within the next two days, because then they're gone." Lots of boos at that.
bigjonno Oct 11th 2008 8:09PM
I think a smoother raiding progression and multiple 10-man instances will make removing lockouts unnecessary.
The problem with BC raids is that there is a huge jump from Kara to ZA and it means that 10-man guilds have to farm Kara for a long time to get ZA geared. Without that jump, it won't matter that you can only clear a raid once a week.
rice1@ Oct 15th 2008 10:53PM
Nobody commented on how the events were listed upside down? I blasted through it just trying to get the facts (didn't read times) and was confused as hell.
wookievomit Oct 12th 2008 5:13AM
I have no problem with them making some of the raids "easier". If some of the new encounters are less of a gear and class setup check I give them credit. However if the actual STRAT of the encounter is easier then a lot of the things we have seen in BC (kael is one of my favorite fights) I will be sad.
Obviously the gear check can't get so weak it enables you to skip encounters. This is why I don't like the idea of not having "keys" to new content. So many players after the ability to skip kael did so due to the difficulty of the STRAT of the fight.
Caribez Oct 12th 2008 8:58AM
About this: "12:24PM Learned a lot from ZA too - they want to continue to keep that challenge format where both low-geared raiders and high-geared raiders want to run it."
Does that mean more Kara difficulty than ZA difficulty in 10-mans? Personally I didn't like ZA because it was so damn hard when you didn't have 9 others with "natural" gaming skills. Didn't matter they had the gear mostly.
My guild have the problem where everyone wants to run ZA but not everyone is geared but we got more than 10 ppl geared for it. Of those only a few were gifted enough to allow the guild to make progress in there. So in the end we decided to scrap ZA from weekly raiding and only do it now and then when we felt like it and had time. So some ppl think there should be more Sunwell stuff in Wrath, while some ppl like me thinks there should be less hardcore stuff like ZA. Ironic isn't it?
From my point of view ZA has always been a playground for t6 raiders and a meatgrinder for casuals.. Our guild did bear, eagle and lynx (could probably do dragonhawk if we had tried it long enough but as I mentioned we didn't chose to put more effort into ZA)
Now I do hope 10mans to get increasingly harder in Wrath but not in the way ZA slaughtered groups who didn't come with at least maxed kara/badge gear. In 25mans in BC it's very possible for someone who isn't maxed out in t4 to go and have some luck in t5.
If you want to flame me for sucking please keep in mind I'm only in a casual raiding guild.
vine Oct 13th 2008 8:19PM
the feed is in reverse >.<
Good read though