Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Let us cling together
by Michael Sacco 
Mar 3rd 2012 at 12:00PM
My PS Vita has given me the opportunity to revisit (or in some cases, just regular visit) PSP games I never got around to playing, thanks to the absolute ton of PSP games available on the PlayStation Network for play on the Vita. My best find so far is Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, a remake of the same title from the days of Sega Saturn. It's a strategy RPG in the Final Fantasy Tactics vein, and with a localization by Alexander O. Smith (FFXII, among many others), you know it's got to be good. Couple that with great music, lovely art design, and a story worth caring about -- well, that's a must-buy for me, especially at $19.99.
Skarn asked:
Who ARE you sending to the MoP press event from WoW Insider anyway? How did you decide who gets to go?
WoW Insider bossman Alex Ziebart will be attending the press event. He gets to go because he's the boss, and also because there are very limited invitations. It's not quite the same as BlizzCon, where we're usually able to bring several people to work the event.
Everclear asked:
Do you think Blizzard will be looking at Transmogrification data to see what the player's tastes are in terms of the kind of gear look they enjoy? Considering Tier design reveals are always controversial, I would think checking and comparing this kind of data would be invaluable to use when taking into consideration future styles.
I'm sure Blizzard has the data, but I'm also sure that the devs are smart enough not to create new tier sets based purely on nostalgia for old sets. Basically, if people want to wear Judgement, congratulations, they can. There's no reason to design a new Judgement-alike.
Rue asked:
Why are they getting rid of spell resistance? I understand how it can be very confusing in PVP (especially with spell pen too) but why not keep it for pve only? I really liked being able to toss up Aspect of the Wild and help my healers out on massive nature aoe fights (like hagara or rotface) and it never seemed difficult in that situation. At least it isn't as confusing as expertise is looking to be
Spell resistance as a game mechanic hasn't been relevant since The Burning Crusade at the latest. The bottom line is that it just isn't fun to sacrifice your "good" stats for resistance, so resistance just doesn't exist in new gear anymore. Not only do a lot of bosses simply bypass spell resistance now, but the resistance buffs are so guaranteed that it's not even worth checking for anymore. Resistance is archaic and just doesn't work for WoW anymore, and I'm happy it's gone. It was vestigial at best.
Philster043 asked:
Do you think the Darkmoon Faire will possibly have more mounts and pets to come in Mists of Pandaria, with the possible influxion of exotic animals from the islands? Come this week, I'll probably get the last mount, and start working on pets. But I wouldn't mind seeing additional mounts at a later date to keep interest up in doing the Faire. More variety in the games/dailies on a everyday basis would be nice, too.
I'm sure the Faire will expand in Mists of Pandaria. Blizzard has already all but confirmed it. The whole place is clearly meant to be modular.
Masarah asked:
When armor is damaged due to death, how is it decided which piece gets what amount of damage? Is it just a random dice roll on each piece?
Every piece of gear takes a flat 10% durability loss when you die. No special distribution method involved. If you see some gear that has more than a 10% durability loss, it's because gear can also take durability loss from normal combat wear and tear.
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 3 of 5)
cloudhopper013 Mar 3rd 2012 12:33PM
I came back to the game for the first time after months of innactivity the other day to "test the waters." I went in to my first random, we pulled a trash pack, and the first thing that died dropped a BoE purple for me to wear.
Does the game want me back?
Terence Mar 3rd 2012 12:45PM
Yes, Yes it does
RogueJedi86 Mar 3rd 2012 12:35PM
What happened the MMO Roundup? I haven't seen the Massively recap topic on WoW Insider for a couple weeks. I sure like to read them, especially the comments, to see WoW fans' opinions on news from the bigger MMO world.
Shuckles Mar 3rd 2012 2:40PM
This site seemed to have stopped shortly after Massively started up the same sort of weekly article. If I had to speculate, I'd say Alex, or who ever was writing it, decided to let Massively take care of it since it is most definitely their type of thing. That being said, I really enjoyed the individual perspectives the two articles brought. I could be totally wrong on all this, though, and this site has just been busy or there hasn't been too much news elsewhere to warrant it. /shrug
Ylinae Mar 3rd 2012 12:44PM
When and why did Varian go from wielding two swords to just one? Did I miss some important lore development, or did he just respec from fury to arms to seem more civil?
razion Mar 3rd 2012 1:06PM
I suppose she's as civil as the next guy who carries around a sword-bigger-than-an-entire-person *can* be...
With a split personality...
And blind hatred for an entire race...
And a history of decapitating full-sized black dragons...
I'm sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face throughout any of that.
Arrohon Mar 3rd 2012 1:45PM
I think that his swords merged into a single weapon. The things that happen to super saiyans are amazing....
SaintStryfe Mar 3rd 2012 1:48PM
Him having two swords was actually a mistake by a developer - they wrote it into storyline that basically as his personalities (Varian the king and Lo'gosh the Warrior) merged, so did his sword. It was never intended that he be a dual wielder.
razion Mar 3rd 2012 2:33PM
Ugh, "he's," Raz, "HE'S." Why do you do this to me, auto-correct? Why? Did I do something cruel to you in another life? What must I do to return to your good graces? This is going to eat at me all day.
Henry Mar 3rd 2012 1:03PM
I got a Vita last week and it's been a really amazing system. The games that I've played so far (mainly Super Stardust, Lumines: Electronic Symphony, and Touch my Katamari) are really great. The Netflix app is really amazing for it, I've watched shows in bed a couple times while waiting to get tired. With the screen resolution it has, it doesn't feel like a compromise.
It's a really solid system. My favorite feature is the ability to take screenshots with it. I highly recommend this system.
I also have a question for the Queue: At the bottom of the queue, there is a quest giver's question mark. Where was that picture taken and is there a full/uncropped version of that picture?
Everclear Mar 3rd 2012 1:05PM
Does Cruise Control work in reverse?
Pyromelter Mar 3rd 2012 1:42PM
No reason to design another judgment? You gotta be kidding... there's the original and a purple recolor. So many more color options, how about a white recolor for a more "holy light" look? Maybe a forest green recolor for a more nature-ish look, or a light blue look to really make the designs pop. So many possibilities, especially considering you have some wrath tiers with 3 different color schemes alone. Having a 3rd or 4th judgement recolor would be a great thing imo.
shotiechan Mar 3rd 2012 1:55PM
Actually, there is a teal-green Judgement knockoff, but it was only available during the Zombie Invasion event some time ago.
My priest has this set. :)
Revynn Mar 3rd 2012 3:07PM
I'd totally sport a white Judgement set.
That said, the Challenge Mode dungeons coming in MoP are supposed to reward vanity items including stat-less gear purely for Transmog. This would actually be a fantastic place to introduce stuff like recolored tier sets. If they were to go the route of "You dawg, we heard you like Judgement. So we recolored Judgement for T14. Gratz. " . . . That would just be lazy and I'm sure Blizzard knows that.
Regarding the original question asked in the Queue, I have no doubt that Blizzard is going to use their Transmog data in designing future tier sets. Not so much that they'll say "Hey, you guys liked Warlock T5, so here's T5.5!", but rather to say "T5 and T6 are the most popular Tier sets for warlocks, what is it about those sets that appeals to players? Well, T5 is very dark and sinister while T6 has the wings. Shaman T10 is also very popular and has the ghost things from the shoulders and Rogue T8 had the little blades. The extra visual effects seem to go over well. Maybe we can do something's for Druids where the shoulders occasionally bloom colorfully".
RetPallyJil Mar 3rd 2012 3:46PM
It is one of the great griefs of my gaming life that they didn't make a helmet for the Undead Slaying set. (cries)
Cos Mar 3rd 2012 4:03PM
Revynn, that is exactly, 1000% the point I was trying to get across yesterday, thank you for wording it better. :) It wasn't so much the "they like it so lets recolor", as "what about it makes this stuff so popular so maybe we can learn from it"?
/Highfive, +1 internets for you :P
Paul Mar 3rd 2012 6:34PM
When TBC, the first outcries of "recycled content" began. They began because of the recolouring of vanilla tier sets. How things change :)
Recolouring existing sets is one thing (if they can get around the design issues and let us have control, that would be amazing), but what Michael is getting that is that the Raid Tier sets in Mists and beyond should continue trying to be unique.
eel5pe Mar 3rd 2012 2:08PM
Re: durability
There are three "normal" ways to take durability damage:
1) Your equipped items have a small chance to take durability damage every second you are in combat. This includes all forms of combat, even target dummies.
The remaining two ways apply only to PvE and not PvP:
2) Every time you get hit by an NPC all your equipped gear has a small chance to take durability damage.
3) Every time an NPC or the environment deals a death blow you lose 10% durability on equipped items- 10% of the total durability rating, not 10% of the remaining durability points.
There are of course other ways to lose durability, most notably spirit rezzing which reduces the durability of ALL the items in your bags (not just equipped) by 25%.
Random durability trivia:
-Durability is one of the two major "gold sinks" in the game, ways Blizzard takes money out of the game to fight gold inflation. The other major gold sink is, of course, the auction house cut/deposit.
-As you can see PvE combat is more "expensive", to make up for the fact that there are significantly less monetary rewards in PvP. Also, it should be evident that tanks have larger repair bills, so be nice to them =)
-It used to be that as you scaled up in armor type (cloth-leather-mail-plate) items would have more total durability points, for example plate gloves would have 100+ points of durability while cloth gloves would only have around 50. Since durability damage on death is dealt as a percentage of the total durability, and repair costs are flat across armor types per point of durability loss, this meant that plate items would cost a LOT more to repair; a holydin could spend hundreds of gold a night on repairs while your healing priest would have a total repair bill of maybe twenty gold. This was normalized in Cata with the lower durability items being adjusted upwards.
-If you want to add insult to injury, when PvPing try to make sure the death blow is dealt by a guard or the environment (falling damage). You still get your honor, the enemy player has to make a spirit walk, but he also loses a small chunk of gold too =) Note that this does not apply to battlegrounds; you will not take durability damage no matter how many times you get t-stormed off lumber mill.
The more you know! (tm)
Drakkenfyre Mar 4th 2012 11:05AM
At one point during the beta, res'ing at the graveyard did 100% damage to all of your items. They changed this to 25%, but with the additional affect of it affecting your inventory items, too.
And for anyone who complains about durability, be glad this isn't Diablo. In Diablo 1 items which broke were destroyed, they were deleted. In Diablo 2 this was removed, but an additional catagory of weapons, Ethereal, was added with improved stats, but the inability to be repaired.
Greg Mar 3rd 2012 2:15PM
Why is PvP so unprofitable? I'm constantly going broke getting gems and enchants for gear upgrades. This never happens while I run PvE content.
The entire game is about the war between two factions. PvP provides a greater potential for social interaction than dungeons, questing, and (arguably) the looking for raid tool since it brings great numbers of players together. So if the main points of the game (faction war and social interaction) are emphasized in PvP- shouldn't the rewards for participating be of commensurate value?