Warlock's green fire is not coming at release in MoP, no timetable
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 27th 2012 at 10:00AM
This is no doubt a disappointment for many, especially for warlocks when combined with the news from last night that a demonology tanking spec isn't in the cards. It is, however, important to keep in mind that Blizzard still has done a lot with the warlock class, and all is not lost. There's a ton of changes to the way each spec will be played, and the talent revamp only has a few holdovers from current-day methodology.
The full blue post clarifying this situation after the break.
Wryxian -- Warlock green fire
So we've obtained some additional insight about what exactly lies behind the use of the word "hope" in regard to our efforts to achieve green fire for warlocks. Essentially, we want this updated information out so that we can better manage expectations, especially as the announcement created such a flurry of excitement.
Unfortunately, dear warlocks, those of you who retained a modicum of skepticism were right to, as it would seem that the chance of green fire for warlocks is even less as likely as the wording of the original information indicated.
Since spell effects are not as simple to change around as - for example - druid forms are, we need some additional technology implemented in order to allow the use of red or green fire to be a player choice and not a permanent change that is put in place for all warlocks.
Also, technology aside, we want to do the introduction of something like green fire in the right way. Implementing it in "a quest" doesn't really explain our stance here. We want something as substantial as this change to be an epic accomplishment for you.
So though we have definitely heard your thoughts on the matter, and we've explained what we want to do from our side, green fire will not be available with the launch of Mists of Pandaria. And we haven't a timeframe to commit to, or communicate about, at this stage.
It is with regret that we were unable to clarify these details more when we first mentioned our intent - "our hope" - and we wish we hadn't caused such excitement and raised expectations for those that didn't instantly take the news with an "I'll believe it when I see it" pinch of salt. It seems, as many of us said at the time here and on Twitter and fansites, the proof of the (green fire) pudding really was in the eating.
Unfortunately, dear warlocks, those of you who retained a modicum of skepticism were right to, as it would seem that the chance of green fire for warlocks is even less as likely as the wording of the original information indicated.
Since spell effects are not as simple to change around as - for example - druid forms are, we need some additional technology implemented in order to allow the use of red or green fire to be a player choice and not a permanent change that is put in place for all warlocks.
Also, technology aside, we want to do the introduction of something like green fire in the right way. Implementing it in "a quest" doesn't really explain our stance here. We want something as substantial as this change to be an epic accomplishment for you.
So though we have definitely heard your thoughts on the matter, and we've explained what we want to do from our side, green fire will not be available with the launch of Mists of Pandaria. And we haven't a timeframe to commit to, or communicate about, at this stage.
It is with regret that we were unable to clarify these details more when we first mentioned our intent - "our hope" - and we wish we hadn't caused such excitement and raised expectations for those that didn't instantly take the news with an "I'll believe it when I see it" pinch of salt. It seems, as many of us said at the time here and on Twitter and fansites, the proof of the (green fire) pudding really was in the eating.
It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!Filed under: Warlock, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Nyold Mar 27th 2012 10:06AM
If they're not sure it would ship with Mists, why did they announce it at all? Didn't they learn the lesson from dance studio?
Luotian Mar 27th 2012 10:15AM
They didn't 'announce' it. It was simply a 'something we would like to do' which, I've noticed recently, has meant to players that it is coming omgrightthisminute!
MikeLive Mar 27th 2012 10:15AM
They didn't announce it. That was the entire point. They said they'd like to, and have a plan in place for it to come about, but they explicitly *didn't* make any guarantee. All they're doing is clarifying progress, (unfortunately) informing people of the option that nobody wanted. But, and most importantly, it was always an option.
Paul Mar 27th 2012 10:18AM
They announce things they would like to work on and put into the game. Sometimes it just doesn't work out, if they waited to be sure they wouldn't be able to announce something until midway / after the beta. They haven't cut anything else yet but once it's in the beta there are other things that could be cancelled or delayed because of balance issues or whatever reasons. They are working hard to put in everything that they promised or want to put in but it just doesn't always work out that way.
ImSteevin Mar 27th 2012 10:21AM
Especially when it's something that sounds soooo easy to make. I mean I can understand the character models taking time... But this?!
Nyold Mar 27th 2012 10:22AM
I know they didn't officially "announce" it, but saying that they'd like to do right when all the pandaria info are coming out is as good as announcing it, from the PR and marketing's perspective. It's all about managing customer expectations.
For example, I never thought new player models for old races would make it into pandaria at 5.0, nor did I think that was their intention all along. They just said they're working on it, and the timing is unrelated to all of the other news.
Bottom line, I'm not nitpicking over the actual wording of what they said, but the timing of the announcement that could be construed as a promise by the players, which sounds like bad marketing IMO.
Imnick Mar 27th 2012 10:41AM
It's not as easy to implement as it sounds.
Blizzard don't currently have a framework in place that allows a spell's effect to be swapped out for another spell's effect, but leaving the actual mechanics of the spell in place.
This is possible for things like Shadowform or Bear Form because those change the player model rather than a spell model and there IS a system in place that allows that to happen.
To implement a glyph or tickbox that changes between red and green fire (they don't want to force all warlocks to have green fire, else yes it would be trivial) they would have to develop an entirely new spell graphic managing system to allow the graphic of any one spell to be swapped with any other model. When coding the ideal is to replicate as little code as possible, so coding a one-off solution purely for warlocks would be wasteful and bad practice. This obviously takes time, and that time is better put to other things for now.
Some people say "well there's a glyph for shadowbolt that changes its graphic already!" and yes that is true, but the glyph also changes how the spell works. In theory Blizzard could well just duplicate every warlock spell, change the name slightly and apply a different graphic but not only would that be bad coding practice (never ever copy and paste code) it would also really just be asking for trouble from bugs. Think of how many procs, passive effects and tier bonuses are affected by your spells that use red fire. Blizzard would have to go back and tinker with every one of these (some of which were never designed to check for more than one spell) just to implement a glyph that applied a cosmetic change!
This is one of those things that sounds like it should be easy from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with programming, but due to the way that everything is connected to everything else would actually be much more challenging than it sounds.
I'm sure we will get our green fire eventually, there are just far more important things to get done first.
vocenoctum Mar 27th 2012 12:46PM
If they had never made the comment, then the discussion would never have popped up the way it has. They didn't promise anything, but they brought it up and threw fuel on the fire.
They could possibly have just wanted to gauge reaction to see if it was worth the time to code though. Could have been handled differently, but no biggie.
By contrast, didn't they say Incubi were being worked on and coming soon quite some time ago? I could have sworn that statement was a lot more concrete, though now it has returned to the land of "we'd like to see"ness.
kaosgrace Mar 27th 2012 3:07PM
@Imnick: Why can't they just add duplicate spells with different spell IDs and spell effects? You do your epic quest, you unlock these new abilities, they're green and have slightly different names but do the same damage and have the same mechanics, you add them to your hotbar or your macros. Presto, green fire as a player choice.
Alternatively, if you don't want to clutter up players' spellbooks with duplicates of every spell, or if you want to force warlocks to color-coordinate their casts, have the spell unlock one ability that functions like a priest chakra. In Demon Chakra: Red, Immolate turns into Immolate (Red); in Demon Chakra:Green, it turns into Immolate (Green).
Zenith Mar 28th 2012 8:09AM
I'm going to play a little devil's advocate for both sides here(ending with my own thoughts on the subject), but there are some additional points to be made.
As someone said in another reply, paladins are getting a glyph that changes their judgement visual depending on their weapon. Apparently this is still NYI in the beta, but I cannot think some dev just said "hey here's a cool glyph idea!" and it went as far as partly in beta without someone trying to figure out how it should work.
In the case of copying and pasting code, as a programmer myself, I have to agree on this, but they have already done so - look at the variety of Mage learnable spells for Polymorph(max rank if you want to go back to vanilla) - they are ALL identical except for their visuals and accompanying sound effect - and there are glyphs for changing the spells as well! Another example would be Dalaran Brilliance, which works in the exact same way as Arcane Brilliance with a different visual. Of course being guilty of copy pasting code does not mean it's ok to do it again...
It could be that the above mage examples are ok because they all apply 'different' buffs or debuffs (different icon), but this can also apply to Immolate(green burning effect) and possibly Soul Fire for destruction(which has a DOT component? -at least change it to the Chaos Bolt visual). This leaves Incinerate, Demo Soul Fire, Rain of Fire and Hellfire to be speculated on.
I recall that in both the Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 map editors, a unit had a number of abilities assigned to it. This ability had a specific visual and then an effect(s) was assigned to that ability(50 damage,stun, whatever). If WoW works the same way it would be almost trivial to have a different ability with different visual to apply the same effect for all the other fire abilities. Since WoW is a completely different genre and the devs haven't already added a green fire glyph makes me think it is more complicated than that.
Another issue could be that the mage spells have either no 'modifiers' that have to be changed for all different spells or very few(so adding a new spell with different visual is easy). Currently the Brilliance spells have no talents and only one glyph decreasing mana cost. Polymorph spells have improved polymorph, major glyph to remove DOT effects and the variety of visual minor glyphs which all should be accounted for when adding or changing an effect. But if this is the case the dev's are reinventing just about every ability every expansion so there would be no excuse not adding something like Fel Incinerate to every ability or talent that modifies Incinerate
An argument could be made that polymorph is just a different kind of shapeshift, but if applying a certain buff/debuff is all it takes, it would still be possible(take x fire damage would be an instant debuff/effect that's invisible, assuming that's how damage works as well)
Apologies for any typos I may have made and horrible paragraphing, but since I'm typing this on my phone with the mobile website, I'm NOT reading through that wall of text where I can only see 8 lines at a time
tarvish_harcassle Mar 27th 2012 6:34PM
All I can think of is how CoH/V is older than WoW and has had the ability for players to change the colors of every power effect in their arsenal for years now... and they have no where near as large a player base or dev team.
mdumoulin.home Mar 27th 2012 10:07AM
*insert 2 pages long furious rant here*
Decadent Mar 27th 2012 10:56AM
I was definitely in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp on this one.
Nate Mar 27th 2012 10:15AM
Looks like Hot Topic's back in business.
Jeff (Not that one ^ ) Mar 27th 2012 10:16AM
But how many cosmetic glyphs are there for Druids available at launch?
Imnick Mar 27th 2012 10:42AM
Druid glyphs change how your form works. There is already a framework in place that allows player models to be swapped out, and hundreds of items and effects that change your player model to demonstrate it.
There is no such existing framework for swapping spell graphics for other spell graphics, and this is what Blizzard would have to implement in order to add green fire to warlocks. It really isn't as simple as it sounds.
Jeff (Not that one ^ ) Mar 27th 2012 12:03PM
I understand that. This will they or won't they doesn't bother me too much. I stopped playing my warlock when Cata shipped--it just wasn't fun anymore for the specs I liked to play--but it seems that they, at least publicly, give more attention to some classes than others.
Think about it: Glyphs of Stars, the Orca, the Chameleon, and the Stag all took a LOT of work, but they can't find a way to let individual players change the color of their fire?
Snuzzle Mar 27th 2012 12:25PM
Also bear in mind: beta is beta, and in Cata beta there were several glyphs purported to be able to change a person's cat or bear form. None ever made it to live.
Daedalus Mar 27th 2012 1:18PM
We're still getting the coolest damned cosmetic glyph in history: the Glyph of Nightmares.
Demon horse, running on water, leaving a trail of fire in it's wake? Yeah, I'll settle for that.
Artificial Mar 27th 2012 5:25PM
"Think about it: Glyphs of Stars, the Orca, the Chameleon, and the Stag all took a LOT of work..."
Sorry, but this proves false your previous statement, "I understand that." You clearly didn't, since the point of the post you claim to have understood was that those glyphs did not, in fact, take a lot of work.