Posts with tag daelo

Blizzard recently released a blog from Dave "Fargo" Kosak that acted as a post-mortem for Cataclysm's quest design. Following on its heels is this entry from Scott "Daelo" Mercer, the lead encounter designer for World of Warcraft. In it, Scott talks successes (Dungeon Journal, Raid Finder) and failures (difficulty level of launch heroics) in the dungeons and raids portion of the game's third expansion and shares what he's looking forward to with the release of Mists of Pandaria. I'm definitely with him in anticipating challenge modes and PvE scenarios.

Read the full interview after the break.

Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's online newletter, sat down with World of Warcraft Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer to discuss the upcoming patch, Rise of the Zandalari. The interview goes into detail about revamping the old dungeon content, what classic dungeons Blizzard would potentially like to tackle next, and the challenges of turning a 10- and 20-man raid into a 5-man heroic dungeon. Hit the jump for the full question and answer session.

Daelo (lead encounter designer for WoW) updated his post in the dungeons and raids forum last night announcing that the upcoming Ruby Sanctum raid would be back up for testing on Thursday the 20th. This is after a small update to the Public Test Realm client, which should hopefully fix some of the small stability issues and crippling lag.

With premade characters able to be copied now and the Lua errors gone from the new Real ID friends list, it appears some kinks have been worked out of the system. If you haven't done so already, be sure to copy over a character and try out the new features and the newest raid under Wyrmrest Temple.

Daelo

Now that the 3.3.5 patch is available for PTR testing, we wanted to have a round of focus testing for Ruby Sanctum. Only normal mode will be available, with Heroic testing to occur at a later date.

Everything related to this zone is implemented for this test, please note any issues with the trash creatures and sub-bosses, loot, achievements, and quests.

US Testing Schedule:
Thursday, May 20 starting at 19:00 EDT.

We plan to allow testing for an extended period. However since this is the Test Realm, unforeseen issues could delay or cancel testing at any time.

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Daelo hit the Dungeons & Raids forum this afternoon to announce some upcoming focus testing for Ruby Sanctum this Thursday. The blue post with scheduling is quoted below. Unfortunately, copying characters over to the PTR doesn't seem to be functional quite yet, only throwing a "Sorry, but there has been an error with your request" error. If you were planning on preparing for this in advance, no such luck. There's no reason to panic yet considering we have two full days before the testing is set to begin, but the closer we get to Thursday evening without the character copy system coming up, the dicier it's going to be as far as actually getting a character transferred.

Here's hoping that little orcish peon on the World of Warcraft website gets to work. Where's my booterang when I need it?

Daelo

Everything related to this zone is implemented for this test, please note any issues with the trash creatures and sub-bosses, loot, achievements, and quests.

US Testing Schedule:
Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:00 EDT.

EU Testing Schedule:
Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:30 CEST.

We plan to allow testing for an extended period on Thursday. However since this is the Test Realm, unforeseen issues could delay or cancel testing at any time.

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Far earlier than any of us had expected, Daelo has announced that the normal modes of Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King will no longer have limited attempts. The heroic modes of these encounters will still have limited attempts, however. To quote:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode.

We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A very interesting development, and I'm curious why they decided to lift the attempts system from normal modes entirely. Is it due to a relatively low number of guilds actually killing these bosses right now, or is there some other reason?

We do not know whether or not this was used in the Lich King kills we've seen so far (Ensidia's kill screenshot suggests they did), but Daelo hit the European forums to make the announcement that they've temporarily disabled Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. What does this have to do with the Lich King? Well, Daelo says...

We just made a hotfix that disables the siege damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. The siege damage of the bombs was causing the Frozen Throne platform to rebuild, which greatly decreases the difficulty of the encounter.

We'll reenable the siege damage in a later update when the issue with the Frozen Throne is fixed.

It is a longstanding tradition for end bosses to be exploited in the most hilariously awful of ways, so seeing something like this isn't all that surprising. Here's hoping nothing else like it crops up.

Update: Ensidia has released a statement regarding their use of this bug.

Update, take 2: Ensidia's raiding crew has received a 72-hour ban from the game (as well as loss of loot and achievements) for using Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics."

The latest edition of Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's very sporadic email newsletter (and no relation to our old name, WoW Insider) has been released. Issue 32 features a note that the Starcraft II: WIngs of Liberty site has been revamped, blurbs about the mobile Authenticator and the Armory app, and some calls to buy their merchandise.

More interesting for WoW fans, though, is an interview with Scott Mercer (Daelo), WoW's lead encounter designer, and Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), a crab who needs no introduction. They discussed the arc of Arthas and the Lich King from Warcraft II through World of Warcraft (congratulations again to Blood Legion on their 10-man world-first).

Please note that here there be spoilers for some details about the Arthas fight, so stay away if you want it all to be a surprise.

Come, my tan-faced children. Follow well in order! Get your weapons ready! Because Icecrown Citadel raid testing is back on track for both the US and EU, according to Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, AKA Daelo.

His post on the official forums has scheduled the following encounters for testing on the Patch 3.3 PTR, barring any unforeseen difficulties, including build changes, server status, or capricious developer whims.

Friday, November 6 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Valithria Dreamwalker

Saturday, November 7 at 4PM EST / 1PM PST – Icecrown Gunship Battle

Friday, November 6 at 19:30 CET – Lady Deathwhisper

Saturday, November 7 at 19:30 CET – Professor Putricide

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Daelo has posted this week's raid testing schedule for the patch 3.3 PTR, and we're going to get more looks at what the Icecrown raid has in store for us:

US Servers
Monday, October 26 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Festergut
Wednesday, October 28 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, October 29 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Sindragosa
Friday, October 30 at 7PM EDT / 4 PM PDT - Valithria Dreamwalker

EU Servers
Tuesday, October 27 at 19:30 CEST – Lord Marrowgar
Wednesday, October 28 at 19:30 CEST – Lady Deathwhisper
Thursday, October 29 at 19:30 CEST – Professor Putricide
Friday, October 30 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface

A little bit of analysis about the schedule after the break.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad -- Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today's testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we're not sure if that means it's also canceled on the North American realms, but we'll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment's notice), we'll let you know.

As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all -- delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though -- it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live.

Update: Apparently the gunship battle is live right now (4:40pm Pacific) on the test realm. If you want to see what it's like, get yourself a raid and head on in.

Lead Encounter Designer Daelo has posted over on the forums that the testing of Icecrown for patch 3.3 will begin tomorrow, October 15th, with the Lord Marrowgar encounter. Blizzard will also have the trash before him up and working as well -- the Icecrown raid preview describes the fight as an army of undead guards, commanded by Marrowgar, "a monstrosity fused together from the bones of the undead." Sounds like good times to us.

Stay tuned -- we'll definitely have a few players available to test the encounter and give you some impressions from the PTR tomorrow, and if we can get enough folks together, we might even stream it again. As Daelo points out, the testing schedule will be extremely flexible, so Blizzard will likely pull bosses up and down at a moment's notice -- they've got a lot to test and probably less time to do it than they'd want. Note also that this is for US PTR servers only -- the EU will have a seperate testing schedule that will be available on their forums when it's ready. To Icecrown!

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, a.k.a. Daelo, posted an updated testing schedule for the Crusader's Coliseum on the Patch 3.2 PTR today. The good news is that EU players get to try another set of bosses -- this time the Faction Champions. The bad news is that the US PTR instance servers are still broken following last night's aborted testing attempt. Not good.

The updated schedule is as follows, with Daelo's full post after the jump:

Here's the current schedule for Trial of the Crusader PTR testing:

On the European test realms:

Faction Champions - Saturday Night, July 11, starting at 19:00 CEST.

The issues that were preventing raid testing on the North American PTRs are still not fully resolved. We're looking into alternative means of enabling testing on these realms. I'll update this thread when I have more information.

I was just bemoaning that we haven't gotten a chance to see patch 3.2's new raid content yet. It looks like that chance will come sooner than I expected: tomorrow night!

Daelo has just posted a testing schedule for Trial of the Crusader (a.k.a. Crusader's Coliseum).

• North American realms: Lord Jaraxxus, Thursday, July 9, starting at 7 PM EDT
• European realms: Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane, Thursday, July 9, starting at 19:00 CEST

Both of these fights will be available in normal mode (10 or 25) only, not heroic. The new 5-man, Trial of the Champion, will be open "later in the PTR cycle."

He also notes that Koralon, the new Vault boss, will be up, and you'll be able to access it if your side has Wintergrasp. Tanking and DPS Patchwerks will make a return. Unlike the patch 3.1 PTR tanking Patchwerk, this one just hits really hard ("as hard as Algalon"), all the time (instead of ramping his damage up over time).

Oh, and one more thing: there is, apparently, no trash at all in this raid. Woot?

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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