Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Hat Trick
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 9th 2012 at 11:00AM
This is my third Queue in a row. I wanted to say "Three-peat," but I think that's trademarked.
Sidvicious asked:
I didn't know you can transfer a LvL 80 character form one account to another. I have 2 accounts that I'm playing with the same credit card can I transfer a lvl 85 for one to another?
If both accounts are under the same name (personal name -- your name, not the account name), you can pay to transfer characters between accounts. Thanks to Cephas from the comments, who made my life easier and did the copy and pasting for me:
Character Transfers Between Accounts
"Characters may be eligible for transfer between accounts which are registered to the same user. To conduct an account-to-account transfer, you will have to answer the 'secret question' for the account you are transferring the character from (the source account), and the last name on both accounts must match. We do not support the transfer of characters between friends, guild mates, or family members."
Jason asked:
Where do you go to grind Steamwheedle Cartel rep now? Is it just endless farming low level mobs?
I've been asking this question myself, since those factions are some of the last that I have to really grind out. My first instinct was to go to Wowpedia and look up a list of mobs and quests that gave me Steamwheedle Cartel reputation. Check out this list, and get to grinding. I'm sure there will be plenty of answers and tips in the comments, because I'd love to know the answer as well.
uncletouchy asked:
Any guesses as to how "stat normalization" will work for challenge modes? Nerfing primary stats seems relatively straightforward, just reduce/increase by a percentage or to a given value. However, secondary stats seem more complicated since people gear to hit caps, haste plateaus, etc. If the the same percent nerf/buff rule is applied to these, we'll end up above/below caps.
I do not know how the exact mechanics work, but currently in game, there is a mechanic to bring relative power levels in line with one another and scale down people's gear. You probably saw the buff (or debuff, in our case) on the test realms, especially during our epic fail Queen Azshara run during testing when she was nigh impossible to kill. Our characters had vastly overgeared the fight, but because of the zone-wide debuff to our item levels and stats, things were at a controlled difficulty.
Challenge modes will most likely work the same way. If you're overgeared for the content, the game will apply a debuff to you much like the one on the public test realm. If you are appropriately geared, nothing should happen. This is all theory, however. We have no idea how these challenge mode dungeons will work yet.
Batleth responded to my answer yesterday:
"I think there will be massive server migrations and merges in the future, but we won't see it. It will all happen behind the scenes."
Maybe I'm not fully understanding this sentence...
Do you mean that one day, in an attempt to balance or populate a server, Blizzard will move toons around without the consent of the paying customer? Please tell me I'm crazy and I'm not understanding.
What I am saying is that I believe the radical move Blizzard will make is that you won't ever leave your realm, but other realms will merge into yours. For example, let's say that three realms, A, B, and C, are all experiencing population problems. My theory is that you would still log in to server A but share the same virtual space with people from realms B and C. Towns would feel fuller, Auction Houses could be merged for low-pop realms, yet you would never know that you actually moved -- because you technically didn't. Does that make a bit more sense? It's a long shot, but it's the least invasive idea I could think of, and it really cuts down on the "WoW is dying, look at all these realms that are closing" rhetoric.
matt responded to my answer yesterday:
Mat said: "Personally, the last thing that I want is to have the old instances and raids to be challenging again in any fathomable way. In fact, I like those places because of how easy and fun it is to farm at my heart's content"
then why do you support the notion of an item level squish? Are you not aware that the impact of that will be to reduce your relative power compared to older raids? From the graph posted in the blue on the topic:
Post-squish @ 85 in DS epics your comparative power vs. Kara would be comparable to a lvl 70 in sunwell gear zoning in today, good luck solo farming that mount.
While I understand that post-squish my relative power will decrease significantly, Blizzard has said that the rest of the game would follow suit. We would have comparable power against level 60 or 70 bosses to we have now, since everything is getting squished, bosses included. I am hopeful that Blizzard can act on an item level and stat revamp successfully with minimal turbulence.
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 6)
Noyou Mar 9th 2012 1:24PM
Make a little log for yourself on which items may be more in demand now, such as mageweave, a particular ore, herbs, stock up on those if you can. Chances are they will be scarce when people want to power level in mists. I would say sell off your mats that you gather in Mists but there are a few factors to look at. In Cata, we could fly to gather, right out of the box. This means that you could take a level 80 toon into higher areas if need be. In Mists, good luck with that. Being on the ground for the first 5 levels is going to impact the economy bigtime. It is also going to make it harder to level your professions if you are depending on an alt to gather.
Jordan Mar 9th 2012 11:14AM
"We would have comparable power against level 60 or 70 bosses to we have now, since everything is getting squished, bosses included. I am hopeful that Blizzard can act on an item level and stat revamp successfully with minimal turbulence."
But this can't be precisely true because right now the ilevel scaling is essentially exponential with character level, and they are trying to squish down to something resembling a linear scaling. Hence, whatever way they implement the squish will have to be very non-linear with level (1-60 will be barely affected, while 80-85 or 85-90 will be tremendously affected).
I think squishing is necessary to prevent stat inflation which will render meaningless the concept of "big stats", but there's no possible way soling Molten Core/AQ will be the same post squish for an 85 then pre squish.
Luotian Mar 9th 2012 11:26AM
You're missing the basic concept. Bosses will also be squished. They should remain in relatively the same position for us now as they are, but with smaller numbers. They HAVE to do this, or it would be impossible for BC geared and level characters post-squish to beat bosses.
zEagleEye` Mar 9th 2012 11:43AM
@Luotian
If bosses are squished the way level 85s are, how will they be the same challenge to appropriate level players?
Isn't it a case of trying to eat your cake and have it too?
Jordan Mar 9th 2012 11:45AM
"You're missing the basic concept. Bosses will also be squished. They should remain in relatively the same position for us now as they are, but with smaller numbers. They HAVE to do this, or it would be impossible for BC geared and level characters post-squish to beat bosses."
And you're missing the point of what was discussed. The context was max level characters doing lower level old-content raids pre and post squish. Since the item squish more than likely will be highly nonlinear with level, there's no possible way soloing Molten Core or AQ can be the same post squish as pre squish.
Of course, at any given level the monsters and bosses of equal level are squished equally, but that's not what I was talking about. Read posts more carefully before you accuse people of missing the point!
jmccance Mar 9th 2012 11:45AM
To expand on what Luotian said, remember that the only thing that's changing is what the numbers LOOK like. The squish will probably be implemented something like this:
1) Make every point of every stat ten times as effective.
2) Divide the amount of EVERY stat that EVERYTHING has (bosses, gear, you, your pet frog) by ten.
Ta-da! The relative power of everything stays identical, but we shaved a digit off all the numbers in the game.
Math: It's Not Just For Tax Forms.™
Luotian Mar 9th 2012 11:49AM
@ZEagleEye:
Let me see if I can explain it the way it was explained to me. All they're really doing is changing everyone's numbers to the way they would have been if they had kept on track with Vanilla item levels. This means where the bosses would have had to be as well as where we are. Everything should feel exactly the same, its just those little numbers that (at least in my experience) aren't paid that much attention to are going to change-- your power level should feel the same at all levels because its all scaling relative to each other.
Jordan Mar 9th 2012 11:52AM
"To expand on what Luotian said, remember that the only thing that's changing is what the numbers LOOK like. The squish will probably be implemented something like this:
1) Make every point of every stat ten times as effective.
2) Divide the amount of EVERY stat that EVERYTHING has (bosses, gear, you, your pet frog) by ten.
Ta-da! The relative power of everything stays identical, but we shaved a digit off all the numbers in the game.
Math: It's Not Just For Tax Forms.™"
Again, you are misunderstanding me here. Of course monsters/bosses equal to your level will receive an equal scaling in the squish. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about higher level characters doing lower level raids. Since the very definition and intent of this squish means that higher levels get squished more than lower levels (think of the ludicrous gear inflation from 80-85 compared to 1-60 or 60-70), then an 85 player and a 60 raid boss are not going to be squished equally.
Math: It's only meaningful if you understand to what the numbers are referring.
Jordan Mar 9th 2012 12:02PM
"1) Make every point of every stat ten times as effective.
2) Divide the amount of EVERY stat that EVERYTHING has (bosses, gear, you, your pet frog) by ten.
Ta-da! The relative power of everything stays identical, but we shaved a digit off all the numbers in the game."
Actually if you were as good at math as you claim you'd realize this is just a change of units. 85's would be walking around with 10,000 health and level 1 characters would have decimal health of 0.01 or something silly. Dividing everything by factors of ten just shuffles decimal points around.
jmccance Mar 9th 2012 12:07PM
I know it's just a change of units. That's exactly the point I was trying to get across.
I've been assuming a unit shift was all the squish would be. Did GC say somewhere that it would be otherwise?
Killik Mar 9th 2012 12:12PM
I get what you're saying, Jordan. I've spent the last 5 minutes struggling to come up with a way to convey your point in a way these guys will understand... :/
Our ability to solo old content comes from the vast inflation of player power in later gear. The item squish is aimed at curtailing that inflation. Content will be nerfed to remain relevant for the various player levels it's aimed at, but, for example, a level 85 will no longer be 6x stronger than a level 80 so level 80 content will consequently be more challenging to solo at level 85.
Sunaseni Mar 9th 2012 12:13PM
I'll try and mathematically work out how simple a solo would be. Consider, after the squish, we'll still be one expansion ahead of Dragon Soul. We'll be doing roughly double the DPS needed to down the boss, because that's generally how the power works out at the start of the expansion. It was pretty easy to down the Lich King back in 4.0, so in a similar way, it'll be pretty easy to down Deathwing. While the bosses before Deathwing will be relatively stronger since they won't be 2+ expansions of ilevel scaling below us, they'll still be easy.
Let's work out how much people you need like this: half the number of people you'll need at 85 (since you'll have double the DPS, healing, etc.) times a linear proportion for bosses below 85 times the size of the raid. This won't be exact, but just bear with me.
Ragnaros = (.5) * (60/85) * 40 = 14
Kil'Jaeden = (.5) * (70/85) * 25 = 10
Lich King (10/25) = (.5) * (80/85) * (10 or 25) = 5 or 12
This is, of course, assuming that they'll be scaled as if they need the original number. It leads to some really wonky difficulty curves with Ragnaros needing a ton of people due to being a 40-man raid, with Lich King needing only a few due to smaller raid sizes. Assuming they'll be scaled to need 10 raiders:
Ragnaros = (.5) * (60/85) * 10 = 4
Kil'Jaeden = (.5) * (70/85) * 10 = 5
Lich King = (.5) * (80/85) * 10 = 5
This works out to about generally how many people, plus a bit more, you needed to down the bosses. This is all, of course, just me doing random math. It may not happen that way, but it makes the most sense to preserve a uniform difficulty curve.
No matter what happens, though, I'm pretty sure some classes (i.e. Death Knights) will still be able to solo most things.
Jordan Mar 9th 2012 12:20PM
"I know it's just a change of units. That's exactly the point I was trying to get across."
Ok, I'm sorry for misunderstanding your point! (and sorry for being snarky, not having a good morning and I reached my enrage timer early.)
"I've been assuming a unit shift was all the squish would be. Did GC say somewhere that it would be otherwise?"
I think it's much more than a unit shift. GC explains it very well (and with lots of humor and clarity) here
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585/Dev_Watercooler_-_The_Great_Item_Squish_or_Not_of_Pandaria-11_4_2011
enjoy!
dirtygringo Mar 9th 2012 12:28PM
If you look at the last graphic in ghostcrawlers post that Jordan has linked it very clearly illustrates the difference in relative power of a lvl 85 against early level bosses post item squish.
It will be much harder for max level characters to solo old content if they carry out an item aquish
TimR Mar 9th 2012 12:28PM
Everyone is making good points, but all are assumptions about how the squish will work. The fact is that we just don't know yet.
I personally lean towards Jordan's view of a non-linear squish (creating a more linear leveling experience), which could theoretically make old content more difficult to solo. If they were to just divide everything by 10 or something similar, gear scaling will remain exponential, and we will run into the same problem down the road.
jmccance Mar 9th 2012 12:34PM
Hm, I think you're right. It's been awhile since I looked at that article, but the sample chart does suggest a significant change to the shape of the curve that will probably affect our ability to solo low-level content.
I also apologize for getting snarky. In hindsight, the tax-form joke comes across as more abrasive than it was intended.
Ultimately, I suppose I'm just not too concerned about low-level content getting harder. To me it's always been sad that all this great content gets trivialized over time. Sure it's funny to run in and zerg former Big Bads, but I think it'd be more fun to be able to re-visit the mechanics as they were originally designed.
Puntable Mar 9th 2012 12:36PM
The squish does not happen linear like that. Only the item growth of "max level" gear gets squished. For an example I will make up some numbers. Let's say when you hit level 60 in vanilla you had an ilvl of 75 with your quest gear. After 4 tiers of vanilla raiding you entered TBC with an ilvl of 150, so TBC gear in the starting zones had an ilvl around 150 to compensate. The squish would only effect the ilvl 75 to 150 gear.
Say you level a new character after the squish, Your ilvl up to level 60 will still be 75 as before, but when you enter TBC, the gear if Hellfire Penninsula is going to me ilvl 85 instead if 150. Vanilla raids are made easier by the same amount of squish. AQ gets more squish than MC, making then close to the same difficulty. Expand this forward to work the same way for the gear jump of every expansion. Leveling a character after the squish will happen without all the big jumps in the ilvl of gear that happened every expansion.
Homeschool Mar 9th 2012 1:05PM
If you go back to the original post (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585/Dev_Watercooler_-_The_Great_Item_Squish_or_Not_of_Pandaria-11_4_2011), the item squish is of grave concern to soloing old content... but really only until you start to get raid gear for the relevant expansion.
If you notice the squish chart, the power of 1-60 will remain essentially the same, while expansions previous to the current (ie. Burning Crusade and Wrath) would be dramatically flattened. Look at the levels - they're talking about making Wrath raid gear and raid bosses about the same power that Molten Core is.
In other words, if they squished today (in preparation for Mists), soloing old raids would be impossible. Dragon Soul would be nerfed, yes, but it would be nerfed to only slightly harder than Molten Core. A person could essentially walk into current raids in Sunwell or ICC gear instead of Cataclysm heroic gear.
However, as soon as you start to get end-game gear, it goes back to normal. Looking again at that chart, if they'd squished BC/Wrath gear for Cataclysm, Dragon Soul gear would be the item level that Naxx currently is - and Kara would be weaker. In fact, if you look at it that way, it will make it easier to solo BC/Wrath raids, since they'd be losing about 1/3 of their power.
The end of it all is, it really only matters when they do the squish. If you could solo classic raids in Wrath gear, you'll be able to do it in end-game gear, but you'll probably have to wait if you're leveling.
Shinae Mar 9th 2012 11:13AM
A note about Steamwheedle Cartel rep:
If you ever want to get "The Insane" (which is easier than ever now), be sure to get the Bloodsail Buccaneers portion of the achievement completed before doing anything for the Cartel. This is because you become hated with the Cartel when you become friendly with the Bloodsails, so all that you've done for the Cartel will be for naught.
Most people already know this, but this is for the few who don't.
cronos12 Mar 9th 2012 12:17PM
Raimondas the Insane has a great guide for the cartel reps (and other aspects of the Insane in the Membrane grind) over at http://raimondastheinsane.com/