Patch 5.4 patch notes
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The latest patch 5.4 newsThe Queue: The Underdome
by Alex Ziebart 
Sep 21st 2011 at 11:00AM
I think the voice actor of Borderlands' Mad Moxxi is the only person alive who can say "om nom nom nom" out loud and sound adorable rather than horrifically obnoxious. Well done, Brina Palencia.
Didax asked:
With transmogrification and void storage being fairly expensive services to use, is this enough of a gold sink to handle late-Cataclysm inflation?
Or do we really need yet another version of Traveller's Tundra Mammoth?
My personal take on the topic is that at this stage in the game, there is very little Blizzard can do to get gold inflation under control, short of resetting the economy. That would be a very special flavor of shitstorm, so I don't expect Blizzard to do it. The gap in gold between what a casual WoW player might have and what a hardcore WoW businessman might have is absolutely massive. There are people in my guild who only have 1,000 gold to their name. There are also players who have multiple millions of gold spread across multiple characters.
How do you create a money sink that will take an Auction House fanatic's multi-millions out of the economy? You don't, really. If you did create some incredibly amazing thing that removed those millions from the economy, it would be completely unattainable for everybody else -- and that's not much fun, is it?
The people who have ludicrous amounts of gold tend to be the most frugal players, too. The guy with 3,000,000 gold probably isn't going to buy a mount that costs 1,000,000 gold, but the guy with only 5,000 gold is going to see that price tag and get angry that it's not accessible to him. What would be the point of that? You could go down to a more reasonable number: 30,000 gold. That's still a lot of gold. Some players have never had that much gold at one time, ever. Yet a number like that is insignificant to the millionaire.
Gold sinks hurt the people at the bottom of the game's economy, not the people at the top. Gold sinks can't fix WoW's economy. In fact, I would say they're more damaging to the game as a whole -- you know what that guy with 5,000 gold is going to do to attain that 1,000,000 gold mount? He's going to go buy it for real money. Where does that gold he's buying come from? Stolen accounts. Oh boy, I'm sure glad Blizzard added that gold sink!
Andre asked:
I've got a level 50 rogue that I've been leveling recently. I just got back to WoW and my Druid main isn't really raiding, although he's geared enough that I can do Firelands on him. I don't really have as much fun on him as I do my Rogue, and with the news of the legendaries come out, it makes me really want to push my Rogue to level cap. My friend has a bunch of grantable levels left from RaF, so I can easily get this Rogue to 80 in the next few days. My question is: How hard would it be to gear up on him? It was easy for my Druid because he's a tank and I got fast dungeon queues to farm JP and VP. Will it be harder to gear my Rogue?
I leveled my rogue recently as a temporary escape from my retribution paladin after I quit raiding. It was extremely easy to gear her. Queue times for DPS can be long, especially if you're used to the instant queues that tanks have, but they're not as bad as they used to be. I wait about 15-20 minutes for a dungeon as a DPSer at the level cap now, rather than the previous 30-45 minutes.
Between what you can find on the Auction House, instance drops, and the items you can buy with justice and valor points, you'll put together a decent set of gear in no time at all. My only real problem was weapons. Getting two good daggers together was a real pain in the butt.
It will be harder to gear the rogue than it was to gear the tank, but I still would not define it as hard. Just harder, relatively.
Esgarzer asked:
I dont know if it has ever been mentioned before... But has there ever been talks about making bear and cat forms for druids more ZulAman-boss-like? Like only the heads and limbs going feral and not the whole body?
I've never heard anything about this, no.
Because those Trolls look dumb and so would you.
undeadgoat asked:
Q for the Q: Hellllllp! I started playing WoW over the summer, and now that my classes have started up I somehow have time to keep up on WoW Insider but I haven't logged on in almost three weeks! Also now I'm writing a paper about WoW which mentions WoW Insider (as an example of a "metanetwork") so WoW Insider is a tab in my "homework" window and I'm distracted from my actual paper!
... That doesn't seem to be a question at all.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 11)
droknar Sep 21st 2011 11:56AM
yeah, 7200 if I recall.
Noyou Sep 21st 2011 12:15PM
The problem is not getting weapons at 85 for a rogue, it is getting 2 daggers at say lvl 20. As long as you can get at least one heirloom dagger you can do OK. For that reason alone I would never level a rogue as my first toon on a server.
Scuac Sep 21st 2011 12:50PM
Apparently you have to earn 7200 honor points on this season to be eligible? I saw a mage in my guild that just dinged 85 and a few days later he was buying pvp gear left and right, including the caster dagger. So I guess that getting those 7200 honor points is not difficult (although my recommendation above needs to be amended, you do need to pvp, unless transferring JP to honor counts as earning honor?).
LinktheHero74 Sep 21st 2011 1:07PM
Yes you need 7250(not sure on this number but it is close) honor in order to buy the weapons but it also counts the honor you were earning while leveling. My recently leveled hunter was at 4000ish honor earned for the season when she got to 85.
Blazing Rain Sep 21st 2011 11:21AM
QftQ: My question isn't EXACTLY WoW related but, in the usb that was included in the SC2 collectors edition you recieved Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War, is there a way to connect these with my battle.net?
Secondly, I met a korean exchange student who also plays Starcraft 2, can I add his korean battle.net address to my friends list, or will it not work because of the language difference? Thanks for your time!
Starsmore Sep 21st 2011 12:11PM
IIRC, when you go through the install process, it gives you a license key to add to your Battle.net account.
At least, I think that's how it went. I got the SC2:CE, got the USB, and installed it once. Now I have Starcraft on my account.
Dunno about the cross-region thing, tho.
Didax Sep 21st 2011 11:21AM
Does anyone else feel that the nerfs to the Alysrazor encounter were a little over the top?
From what I noticed, Fieroblast is cast less often, the Phoenix Hatchlings tantrum less often, and those tornadoes are SLOOOOOOW. All of those changes in addition to the overall damage and boss/add health nerfs just seems to have made this encounter a complete joke.
I'm fine with almost all of the changes EXCEPT for the change to the tornado speed. Primarily because those who never got to experience the original speed tornadoes barreling towards you like a fiery freight train now never will.
I can understand nerfing the damage so it's not quite so dangerous when you get hit...but nerfing the damage and reducing them to a crawl? It's just too much...
MattKrotzer Sep 21st 2011 11:28AM
Alysrazor was almost boringly easy, to the point that after I killed my hatchling, I scooped up some extra feathers and went to whack at Alys, despite being the tank.
Staghelm is almost laughable now. It was just ridiculous.
Kylenne Sep 21st 2011 12:30PM
We full cleared last night and didn't see a single druid even start a Pyroblast cast, that's how fast they were dying.
Rhyolith is really the one that gets me though, as he was already made a pushover during the last round of hotfixes. The whole thing is a joke now, tbh. :\
Nina Katarina Sep 21st 2011 12:50PM
We had to scream, "Stop DPS, they haven't eaten all the worms yet!". Came close to a wipe. And then I did run into some tornados because they were so damned slow. I mean, I knew it was nerfed, I wasn't prepared for how different it would be.
Honestly, I would have been much happier if they started a month or so in and nerfed it 5% a week every 2 weeks. This sudden severe change is unsettling.
Kylenne Sep 21st 2011 12:58PM
@Nina: Oh, you guys too? XD
Nina Katarina Sep 21st 2011 1:34PM
Yeah. Our other DK tank grabbed three feathers and went off to play with Alys, while the rest of us stood around on the ground wishing we'd thought of that, taking potshots as they flew by.
adamjgp Sep 21st 2011 1:42PM
My guild just went 6/7 on the first night, oneshotting Staghelm. I wasn't in on the Alysrazor kill, but I was on vent and it sounded like the biggest problem they were having was that the hatchlings were dying before all the worms could be eaten.
Overall the nerfs made the 6 encounters we cleared absolute jokes. I didn't think that the nerfs would impact my satisfaction when killing Staghelm, but when I noticed he was almost dead I felt a bit cheated because it was so easy. We had wiped on him for 2 hours the week before the nerfs. Guess We'll just have to be better at WoW and down bosses before the nerfs.
On the other hand, it'll be nice to get my newly dinged 85 hunter alt into firelands for some easy gear drops.
Mummrah Sep 21st 2011 6:14PM
C'mon guys and gals does Captain Obvious need to make an appearance? These nerfs SHOULD make the fights trivial at best for groups who have been working on the content for awhile. These nerfs have NOTHING to do with you and you groups who are currently raiding the content. They are there for those who have yet to even step into Firelands. Complaining because things seem 'too easy' probably means that your group needs to make a foray into the heroic fights if that was the initial plan.
Skarn Sep 21st 2011 10:22PM
@Mummrah
It's just that the difference is so ridiculously VAST. Last week on Alysrazor, we were pushing up against the limit on killing Hatchlings. They'd usually die just as the tornadoes were starting. The Initiates would get off 2-3 casts. The fight wasn't too hard, it wasn't too easy, it was "just right" to quote a girl that steals food from bears. It's just amazing how different it is. It's one thing to make it easier with the nerf bat, it's another thing to smash it over the head and leave the candy on the floor before anyone even gets there.
Anyway, Ragnaros can still rip you up if you mess up on Sons or Seeds. We're still learning him, but with the nerfs we'll probably have him down on our second raid day, which is tomorrow. Next week we plan to go for Heroic modes because...wow. Normal is just...wow.
RS Sep 21st 2011 11:22AM
wow, they look like they would cause back pain.
Listened to the podcast last night. Why is Sacco seem so mean to McCurley? Mat was talking about something, and Sacco told said something like "why don't you shut up?" It didn't sound as friendly as it was probably meant. But I've caught that on a couple occasions.
Yes Mat can get wound up, part of his personality it sounds like, but still, at that point Mat seemed pretty mellow.
Any way, The WoW engine is old, granted. Other than Blizz "band-aiding" things on, like the upcoming Deathwing fight, do we think they will ever just say, "we need a new engine for wow." and go all Guild wars 2 on us? It would almost have to be an expansion without any content, I'd imagine. We see that type of upgrade in the business world where the main ERP system (enterprise resource program/planning..whatever) gets new code behind the scenes, making it faster, lighter..etc, and the users get visually nothing new.
It would be a bear to implement, but then future patches/content could possibly be orders of magnitude better.
Just a thought,
RS
Sunaseni Sep 21st 2011 11:23AM
It's obvious that in order to solve wealth inequality that we must enact a tax on the wealthiest 1% of the population. The poor are the ones farming up the materials and providing the items that the rich exploit to make a profit. The poor are the ones working their butts off to keep the economy moving, and they deserve a break so they can afford essential goods and services.
Redistribute that wealth by means of tax refunds for the poorest of our players, so they may buy essential services like repairs and enchants, in order to stimulate the economy. With wealthier populations overall, more demand will be created for said enchants and gems, so more people will step up to the plate to provide the goods, diversifying the options when buying said goods and therefore lowering prices of the goods. In this way, goods prices will be low, while income will be high.
This is the only way to save Azeroth. Otherwise, the bourgeoisie will completely control and dominate the economy and shut down all trade.
RS Sep 21st 2011 11:36AM
I say we shall picket the auction houses! Picket the banks! Let the bourgeoisie know that downtrodden will not be stepped on!
No more bail outs! We need to stop subsidizing the Mammoth traders and Gigantic bag sellers of the world! Money to the people who need it!
Tax the wealthy "into the ground!" as they say!
"This message brought to you by the Scared Commission Relations for Economic Wealth Union, (The SCREW-U)"
RS
Grak Sep 21st 2011 11:47AM
We should start with a tax on multi-person mounts carrying only one rider!
Aragelessar Sep 21st 2011 12:03PM
Keynesian econimics DOES NOT work. Case in point, the United States.