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Posts with tag q-and-a

Ask your Scroll of Resurrection questions

Many players seem to be having a difficult time deciphering the intricacies of the revamped Scroll of Resurrection system. Whether that's because the Scroll of Resurrection Walkthrough support page isn't visible enough or the system is just that complicated, we don't know. What we do know is that Blizzard has offered us a pretty cool opportunity -- a Q&A about the Scroll of Resurrection system, with the questions coming from WoW Insider readers.

Are you not sure how the system works? Have you run into an issue that you don't quite understand? Aspects of the system that you think could be improved, perhaps? Drop all of that in the comments below, and we'll forward the most common questions on to Blizzard.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Arcane Brilliance: The Class Balance Q&A -- more Q's than A's for mages

female gnome mage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week we look at a few mage-related questions, and the answers to those questions, which end up raising even more questions, which then get answers that only provoke even more questions ... it's like an episode of Lost, only one in which the smoke monster was made of frostfire. I'm 99% sure Desmond was a mage, anyway.

So just a heads up in case you haven't seen it somewhere else: The latest build on the PTR is tagged as a release candidate, which means patch 4.3 is imminent. I'm expecting it some time in the next few weeks. I wouldn't be at all surprised to be eating turkey and pie while queuing for the Raid Finder. Although, disclaimer: I eat turkey and pie for every meal. In other news, my heart just stopped. No worries, though. That also happens every meal. It's nothing a good chest compression or two can't fix. Look for a mage patch prep column right here next week.

Now, on to the business at hand. On Wednesday, the developers allowed us to pick their brains with all of our most burning questions about our classes. The mage community asked some good ones, and some of them even got answered. And though the answers given are perhaps not as definitive as you or I may have preferred, there's still a great deal of enlightening information to be gleaned from what the developers did share. And no, my own question -- "If I turn a warlock into a sheep, then hit him with a Pyroblast, then add a bit of mint and some red potatoes, what should I serve for dessert?" -- wasn't answered. Though I think we all know the answer to that question is "pie."

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

Class Balance and Design Q&A transcript

Today's class balance Q&A has ended and went off without a hitch. With so many developers participating, the answers came fast and furious. (That's a good thing!) Every class was touched on at least a little, and we even learned a little more about Blizzard's intentions with inscription and other non-class topics that do ultimately impact balance overall.

If you're at work or otherwise away from your computer and were unable to attend the event, don't sweat it. We have a transcript of the entire event for you and we've broken it all down by class. Or if you want to read the whole thing in one go, no problem. Just click through the break below and you'll be able to read the entire transcript in all of its glory.

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Filed under: News items

Class design and balance Q&A session coming this Wednesday

Q & A
Hot off the heels of its wildly successful Mists of Pandaria live Q&A, the WoW dev team plans to hold another online Q&A, this time on the subject of class design and balance. Community Manager Zarhym's just announced that it will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 10:45 a.m. to noon PST. The chat will be held on CoverItLive, hosted by Bashiok and Zarhym. Answering questions will be Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street along with Celestalon, Koraa, Watcher, Wradyx, and Xelnath.

As with the last Q&A, the chat will use the CoverItLive system, so make sure you're signed up and familiar with it if you want to ask a question. Check after the break for the text of the announcement.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items

Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A transcript

Blizzard held a Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A this evening. It was moderated by Community Manager Zarhym, with most of the questions being answered by Cory "Mumper" Stockton and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The questions ran the gamut from serious to silly and offered a lot of great insight into the upcoming expansion and the inner workings of the development team. Highlights include, but are not limited to:
  • The new Pandaria faction hubs
  • New guild levels and perks
  • New talent system
  • Pet Battle system, including a possible spectator mode
  • The possible abolishing of prime glyphs
  • Ghostcrawler's feelings on #OccupyGregStreet
  • Matticus. Just ... Matticus.
The developers have already expressed interest in holding more of these chats, and I know I'm all in favor of it. For more information on the content of this evening's chat, check the official site, or stick with us after the break for a complete transcript.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Mists of Pandaria

Ask the Devs Round 11 answers your healing questions

Ask the Devs Round 11 focuses on healer and healer-related topics, as Blizzard wraps up this format of questions and answers. Blizzard gave some long and detailed answers for healers this time around, ranging from topics about the nature of the changed healing game in Cataclysm to the choices healers must make in terms of which heal to use in 5-man content versus raid content. The devs also made an interesting remark about a radical new type of healing class that could appear in a later expansion -- a radically different type of healer that might bring back players who have become burned out on the role.

As a raider, I think the best answer came for the question about raid healing being hard for healers and why it sometimes feels like damage is unhealable. The devs commented that raids are not meant to be unhealable, and in most circumstances when the fight seems unhealable, players might be taking the wrong approach to the mechanics. Translated: It might not always be the healer's fault.

Check out all of the questions and answers after the jump.

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Filed under: Blizzard, Cataclysm

Round 2 of Ask CDev questions answered

Ask Creative Development is the developer series that gives WoW lore buffs answers to their most pressing questions. The answers for this particular Ask CDev session took a pretty long time, but they're finally ready for primetime.

We've got some pretty good answers this time around, and the questions range from serious and heavy lore discussion to some of the more fun or interesting, like, "where do the Forsaken get their ships?" Some key things to take away are that the "there must always be a Lich King" mantra is specifically talking about how the scourge would run rampant otherwise; that death knight characters have an addiction to causing others pain, and that Elune is definitely not a naaru (to the night elves, at least). Super lore nerds might take particular interest in the fact that Blizzard does not consider all of the expanded universe and the RPG books canon. Hit the jump for the full set of questions and answers.

Ask CDev Round 2 questions answered
The moon recently sent some irate emails to our Creative Development team, threatening to vacate Earth's orbit if we didn't divulge the answers to the "Ask CDev #2" thread soon. Rather than calling the moon's bluff, the CDev team stepped up its timetable and is now ready to present the answers to your questions!

In an effort to efficiently disseminate as much information as possible, many of these questions are amalgamations of several slight variations asked by the US, EU, Korean, and Chinese player bases. In addition, a few unanswered questions from "Ask CDev #1" are included as well. Enjoy!

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Filed under: Blizzard, Lore, Cataclysm

Cataclysm dev chat on Best Buy forums this Thursday

Want to ask Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack questions about Cataclysm? Well, you can, this Thursday on the Best Buy gaming forums. Straight from Best Buy:
This Thursday, Nov 18 at 4pm Pacific (12am GMT) Best Buy is hosting a live chatroom Q&A with Blizzard's Tom Chilton (Game Director) and J. Allen Brack (Production Director) about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The event is open to the public but is limited to 500 participants.

The chatroom will be hosted on the Best Buy Forums here: http://bbyurl.us/CataclysmCHAT. A forum account is required to participate. If you don't make it in under the 500-user limit, check out the overflow broadcast on Ustream: http://ustream.tv/channel/wowdevchat
Might be a good time to ask about your pet issue, like worgen females, ret paladin DPS, or cosmetic slots.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

Spiritual Guidance: What few shadow priest highlights BlizzCon 2010 could scrape together

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Even weeks when your shadowy messiah, Fox Van Allen, is nursing one heck of a headache -- along with, presumably, everyone else who's still suffering from the non-stop party atmosphere of BlizzCon 2010.

Let's start by saying that BlizzCon 2010 was an absolute blast. I met most of the WoW Insider crew, got to smell Mike Sacco's hair yet again, got some amazing swag and got to eat at Jack in the Box no less than five times. The best part, though, was probably meeting Orkchop (pictured above with WoW Insider's moonkin blogger Tyler Caraway, who can only aspire to be as amazing as Orkchop). The dude is an internet celebrity. For real.

But enough about how awesome Orkchop is. Let's talk shadow priests, and how awesome they are.

Now, I'm not good at sugar-coating things, so I'll just come out with it: BlizzCon 2010 was pretty disappointing in terms of World of Warcraft-related content. The biggest news out of the convention was the new loading screen for Cataclysm. Really. That was the big news. Seriously. And it's just a palette-shifted version of the Sindragosa loading screen.

Despite the lack of earth-shattering news, I made sure to take note of all the shadow priest action. There wasn't a heck of a lot of it, but what little ground was covered was hugely important to the future of the spec. The good, the bad and the non-answers -- we'll go over it all after the break.

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Filed under: Priest, BlizzCon, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

Breakfast Topic: What was your favorite moment at BlizzCon?

This year's BlizzCon was a little more sedate than last year's, but there was still a fair amount going on. We found out a little about patch 4.1, saw the cutscene that's been missing from the worgen starting area and the new Cataclysm login screen, and are perhaps still a little farshikkert from the reader meetup. As with any BlizzCon, there were some intriguing, thought-provoking and funny moments, and we're interested in hearing your favorites.

For me, it's a toss-up between the following, both of them from the general World of Warcraft question-and-answer session yesterday:
  • Ghostcrawler's quip about the new alchemy two-person mount in Cataclysm: "Have you heard about the new alchemy mount? It'll be hard to get but fun to see who gets it first. It's awesome ... Who doesn't want to mount their friends?"
  • A question came up on faction balance from an Alliance player on a Horde-dominated server, and the developers felt that more needed to be done to make the Alliance "cooler," that the "mythos and psychology" among players had developed to favor the Horde for PvP prospects. As the developers' answers ended, someone in the hall screamed, "Give us Saurfang!"

BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, BlizzCon

BlizzCon 2010: World of Warcraft Open Q&A liveblog

Aaaaaand we're back with another liveblog! The open World of Warcraft Q&A session will start in about 20 minutes, so we'll see you back here for that. With any luck we'll have ... um ... I don't know how to put this politely. Less whining than the last panel. We'll settle on that.

Seriously, folks, don't fly all the way to BlizzCon just to be a jerk at a mic. You can be a jerk on the forums for free! I probably shouldn't be encouraging that.


BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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Filed under: News items, BlizzCon

More Cataclysm change details for druids

Fear not, my fellow druids; your feral analysis post is going live later tonight, and resto sometime tomorrow. Daniel Whitcomb and I have been talking about the incoming changes to the spec, and particularly the decision to change the tree of life from a constant form into a cooldown. I honestly didn't know how to feel about it at first. But before we get to that, Ghostcrawler stayed up hellaciously late last night to answer questions from druid players about the Cataclysm changes currently planned, and we've collected all of them here for you.

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Filed under: Druid, Cataclysm

Breakfast Topic: Your favorite news from the Twitter dev chat

Like its last incarnation, the latest Q&A from WoW developers over Twitter was full of some great information, both about the current expansion and what's coming next with Cataclysm. Even better, you didn't even need to be on Twitter to read it, for those still hemming and hawing over social networking being a big fad they don't get.

We found out a few choice tidbits about Cataclysm, including what's going on with the Blasted Lands revamp, the possibility of more old-world heroics like Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines, and the state of the Plaguelands after Arthas' defeat. How Tol Barad will (and won't) be like Wintergrasp also came up.

We also learned a bit about Wrath's design philosophy, including what Blizzard liked about Wrath (questing), what they didn't like (limited attempts on bosses), and what's sticking around for Cataclysm (Dungeon Finder).

And that stuff's only the tip of the iceberg. What was in the Q&A that spoke to you personally? What are you excited about now that some of these questions have been answered?


Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Day two of BlizzCon 2009: Round-up


Well, readers, BlizzCon 2009 is over and done, and our staff is slowly but surely beginning to make its way home in celebrated zombie-like fashion. In the meantime, we've outsourced article production to our household pets, so be gentle with your criticism of Toonces' efforts today (stupid cat can't even spell QQ correctly). Anyway, here's what happened on Day 2 of BlizzCon:




Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Events, Fan stuff, WoW Social Conventions, Blizzard, News items, Expansions, BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Worgen, Goblin

BlizzCon 2009: Class panel #2, the good parts version

The second and final class, item, and profession panel has concluded. Disappointingly, the presentation part of the panel was mainly a re-run of yesterday's, but the Q&A, of course, was all-new. There were even a few new tidbits in the presentation. Here are some parts of the presentation that are not repeats from yesterday:

  • They didn't give any new classes to Draenei because there are too many of the space goats already.
  • There's a chance that Hunter Aspects will go away entirely.
  • New tidbit on Archaeology: putting pieces of artifacts together sends you to "face some sort of challenge" out in the world.
  • They like the way fishing works in Animal Crossing, and might look to that for inspiration on how to rework the process.

And here are the good parts from the Q&A:

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Filed under: Fishing, Draenei, Classes, BlizzCon, Cataclysm, Archaeology

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