Love is in the Air from February 5-20, and with these romantic feelings comes one of Azeroth?s many special world events! World events are a time for players to celebrate in-game holidays, acquire special vanity items or pets, and earn those much sought-after achievements. As these things are highly valued by our players, our support staff is available should things go awry. If you?d like to learn more about this event, be sure to check out our Community Blog.

There are some situations, however, in which there may be limitations to the assistance we can provide. While some of the policies below are primarily aimed at our world events, they are all in line with our other more general support policies. As always, exceptions may be made, particularly in the case of extenuating circumstances or bugs. Keep an eye out for such issues by visiting our Support Site and searching for the issue you are experiencing, or checking the Breaking News.

Event Item Purchases
Many holidays provide special forms of currency, usually tokens or other exchangeable items, with which purchases can be made from limited availability vendors. Many of the items from these vendors may be necessary to complete achievements associated with world events, so they are often highly coveted. The majority of these items are non-refundable, and this functionality is intended. As a result, make your purchases wisely, as Game Masters will be unable to facilitate such refunds.

Achievement Related Issues
For many, world events are one of the most convenient means to acquire achievements. Achievements represent overcoming extreme odds, having a bit of luck, and generally serve as a milestone for your character to proudly show off. Achievements are, by definition, accomplishments that require skillful effort and often a non-trivial amount of time to earn. Because of the intent behind achievement design philosophy and tool limitations, Game Masters are unable to grant, remove, or alter achievements in any way.

Limited Duration Events
World events can make time fly by quickly, so make sure that you get all your achievements, quests, and special events done before it?s too late! While availability may be limited, Game Masters are only able to provide restorations if they have accompanying logs to prove that a loss occurred. If the item was never acquired or the quest never completed, a restoration isn?t usually possible.
Also bear in mind that the event end date will always be listed in your Events Calendar in-game, and the deadline corresponds with realm time, not your local time. We highly advise making certain all your tasks are completed well in advance, and wish you all the best throughout your seasonal adventures!

January?s Darkmoon Faire achievement progress status was cleared prior to the launch of February's faire. Any achievements that were started but not completed have had their criteria reset. Completed achievements are unaffected.

However, any future achievement progress (February included) will be saved to your character and will continue to contribute towards progression of those achievements in subsequent visits to Darkmoon Faire.

Regrettably, we are not able to restore any progress you may have made during January's faire. We do appreciate the impact this may have had and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

WoW Raid Design
Some solid, constructive feedback and observations have been offered in this thread. But I think it?s important to point out that it?s incorrect to assume that there has been reduced development time put into raids.

If anything, over the years we?ve put increased attention into raids so that a wider breadth of players can experience them. There are a great deal more options for pursuing raiding now than say, in classic World of Warcraft or The Burning Crusade, when raid groups were a fixed size and only one difficulty setting existed. We realize that some players prefer to run with 24 other comrades-in-arms at the max difficulty setting (I?m actually one of them ), whereas others prefer more intimate raids or a lower difficulty setting.

In Mists of Pandaria, we plan to be able to continue to support a wide variety of raiding styles. And, from one player to another, if you?re eager for raid zones with an ?epic? feel, you?re going to really enjoy some of the stuff we have in store. We?ll have some further details on that front coming up in the near future, but know that we really do appreciate your passion for the game and your continued feedback. We are listening. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator
The intent of the talent calculator was to give players something to fool around with. We wanted everyone to get a feel for the idea we're going for in Mists so that it wouldn't sound as crazy or shocking when seen on "paper."

We've responded many times about talent calculator feedback, even pointing out we're not going to be able to discuss things point by point with players because the systems are rapidly changing while in development. The calculator itself is quite out of date.

So you're right. I took the time to respond to this thread when I could've responded elsewhere. But what did I say? I basically said things are looking awesome so far and I can't wait to be able to share more information.

Would you feel better if I found a thesis from you about the problems you have with the out-of-date Mists talent calculator for rogues, only to say, "A lot of the details you're discussing aren't fully fleshed out yet, so we'll talk again when we have updated Mists class info to provide"? Even if you think the answer to that is "yes," I wouldn't be surprised if you then came back here in two weeks to tell me how many amazing threads there are out there about the "REAL" issues that are going completely ignored. It's a neverending cycle and I'm not interesting in always looking for the squeakiest wheels to grease on the forums.

The only inevitability in community management I've found is that, whenever we post ANYWHERE on the forums, someone will be sure to tell us where we should be posting, and which part of the community is really being ignored. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In February 2005, World of Warcraft arrived here in Europe. It?s been seven years and Azeroth is still buzzing with excitement! Players have been through incredible trials in dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.

And now, in honor of World of Warcraft?s Seventh Anniversary in Europe, we?re offering the biggest discount ever on the entire WoW game range! From now until February 19, all boxed games and digital upgrades are available at half price, as well as two in-game collectibles. Don?t miss your chance to join in Azeroth?s anniversary celebrations by snagging Wrath of the Lich King for just ?10/£7.50 and Cataclysm for only ?15/£12.50.

The doors to Ahn?Qiraj have been opened. Onyxia has manipulated mortals and dragons alike. Sargeras has attempted to unleash the Legion upon Azeroth and beyond. The Lich King has vowed to destroy life itself. Armies of elementals have left their realms to conquer our world. The Cataclysm is now upon us and the battle between the Horde and the Alliance is becoming ever fiercer. For seven years, countless horrors have sought to destroy Azeroth and its heroes. But never before have they been confronted by an offer such as this!

Never played World of Warcraft? There has never been a better time to join and become the latest hero in a world filled with orcs, gnomes, dragons, magic, and murlocs! Already a fan? Here?s your chance to upgrade your account or invite friends to take part in the most epic adventure of all time. Visit the Blizzard Store to take advantage of this amazing special offer. You can also benefit from these discounted rates on digital games via your Battle.net account!

In addition, we?re offering two in-game collectibles at half price. Want to travel Azeroth in style? The Celestial Steed will bring you wherever you want to go, for half the cost! Always dreamed of a terrifyingly cute undead companion? Get a Lil? K.T. pet for a lil? price!

So come and join the in-game celebrations today ? we?ve already put the cherry on the cake!
Happy Seventh Anniversary!

General
General

• Mass Dispel should once again dispel up to 10 friendly or enemy targets.
• Resilience should now properly reduce the damage over time effects for targets affected by Mind Control.

Dungeons and Raids
Dragon Soul

• Lord Afrasastrasz no longer offers the option to disable the Power of the Aspects buff in Raid Finder mode.
• The Spine of Deathwing
  • Corrupted Bloods should no longer maintain threat after reconstituting themselves from residue.

Events
Darkmoon Faire

• Soothsayer's Runes and A Treatise on Strategy should now drop from all appropriate Heroic and raid bosses.
• Murozond's Temporal Cache now has a chance to contain Monstrous Egg and A Treatise on Strategy.

Quests and Creatures

• Players who inadvertently disconnect during Tailgunner! should now find themselves able to complete the quest.
• Baby Crocolisks have been given tiny teething rings, and Tiny Teeth! should no longer transfer to other players.
• Players should no longer encounter any invisible Young Crocolisks during the quest The Pit of Scales.

Items

• Cunning of the Cruel will now trigger its Shadowbolt Volley approximately three times as often, but will deal approximately one third as much damage. This results in the tooltip for the item being incorrect, but should moderate its burst damage in PvP.

A 64-bit client is once again available for use with Patch 4.3.2. Before being able to launch WoW in 64-bit mode you will need to download the 64-bit client for PC/Mac (using one of the links below), and unzip it into your World of Warcraft directory. Once you extract the files you can start the 64-bit client by opening the Launcher as normal (Run as Administrator if applicable). To switch back to the 32-bit client, go into Options -> Game Preferences, and check the Launch 32-bit client setting. The game will display which version you are using at the bottom left hand corner of the login screen. ex: Version 4.3.2 (15211) (Release x64)

Build 4.3.2.15211 - PC link, Mac link

**Important things to keep in mind**

• The 64-bit client is being distributed separately from the Retail version as it is not yet supported for use with World of Warcraft.
• Launching the game in 64-bit mode can only be done after patching the game to version 4.3.2, downloading and extracting the necessary files.
• The game?s built in voice chat does not currently work when using the 64-bit client.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client does not currently support the in-game movie recording functionality.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client iTunes' Remote feature does not work at the present time.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client does not currently support the customized LCD display for the Logitech G15 series of keyboards.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client is currently not supported on 10.5 systems. You will need 10.6.8 or later for this version.

Additional System Requirements:
Windows XP Professional ?x64 Edition? / 64-bit Windows Vista / 64-bit Windows 7 (latest service packs).Mac OS 10.6.8 or newer.Mac Computer with Core 2 Duo or better2 GB or more of RAM. [...]

Mists of Pandaria and a Change in Attitude
It's great to see some positive discussion and speculation about where this game is headed.

We're definitely very focused on opening the doors a little wider to new ideas to really grasp onto what will make this game as fun as possible. It's 7 years old after all. We're not going to reinvent the wheel in Mists of Pandaria, but we want to introduce new types of compelling content with meaningful reward structures so your progression paths don't feel quite as redundant.

You'll get a captivating story, breathtaking new lands to explore, a wide array of new and awesome good/bad guys (from what I've seen, REALLY awesome), a slew of new dungeons and raids, a new playable race, a new class, many outstanding systems improvements, etc.

We hope these features are more or less to be expected with virtually every expansion. But this time we're also pouring our heart and soul into some really fun new features that'll allow you to progress in slightly less conventional ways.

I get so excited every time I meet with Greg Street, Cory Stockton, Dave Kosak, and Tom Chilton to discuss everything they're working on each week. It's even got me logging into some of the characters I haven't played in a while more often lately, just because I want to be fully prepared to diversify my gameplay and explore different avenues of content on different characters.

I think it's really going to be about playing the game the way you want to play it, without feeling entirely like you're missing out on valuable rewards.

[...] Yesterday we discussed low-population and faction-imbalanced realms with our developers. They have some pretty bold and spectacular plans for addressing this in anticipation of implementing some of the features we plan to in Mists. I just don't have a lot of information to share with you at this stage of programming and development. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pandaren Mounts
The pandaren mount is still being finalized, so what you?ve heard (or seen) are just rumors at this point. Obviously we want the mount to be something awesome, which will take some time to perfect. In addition to the pandaren mount, expect to see a ton of new mounts in Mists of Pandaria. In fact, if any of the new creatures being added in the next expansion look up to the task, I?m sure the developers are looking for ways to throw a saddle on them so they can adventure through Azeroth with our heroes. Though I?m sure some are more comical looking than others. :P Anyway, once the information is ready, we?ll get it out to all of you. Trust! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Future Mists of Pandaria News
We'll be keeping everyone informed. Don't worry. We can't give time frames right now. As you know, we usually say it will be ready when it's ready. That said, I can reiterate that we are pushing forward very well on the next expansion and again point out that we were able to show so much at BlizzCon for a reason. I am not going to reassure you of when we intend for this to come out since I don't have that authority or permission to do so as of yet.

We're completely aware of how quickly players consume content. We're also aware that not all players have consumed all of the current content either. Does that make us less aware that there are many who are ready for more? No. But, we want to make sure we deliver our best with Mists of Pandaria and it won't be long until you start seeing a lot more of what we have in store for it and for you.

There are a lot of misconceptions floating around and being repeated that are based on what you believe is correct information or at least suppositions. Again, I am not in a position to clarify or negate those misconceptions beyond what I've said here. At least not yet. Hopefully, it won't be long before you will get that "big picture" look that you've been hoping for.

We do have a plan to update the calculator with all of the changes that have been made (thus far based on constructive community feedback and internal testing) in the near future. I don't want to promise any particular date as of yet, though it could be mid-month that we're able to make those updates. As always, this is not a firm date/promise right now, it's just a guesstimate of when we may be able to update again. When we do update, we'll make sure to let you all know.

We did have a lot to show during BlizzCon including zone fly-throughs, the starting area for the pandaren etc. (It was definitely a lot.)

I can't give you an update on where we are currently (that has to wait for the media), but I think the media event will be a great way for everyone to get a good look at it again and see for themselves. The female pandaren model is in progress. We're just not quite ready to show her yet though or discuss her. I can say though that it will not be the male model with a title over her head that says, "I'm a girl" any longer though.

We are most definitely not dismissing concerns. We have regular meetings and do reports each week specifically to point out the current concerns and issues the community is discussing. Perhaps it may seem dismissive if we aren't agreeing with an idea or sentiment, but that doesn't mean that we aren't still discussing it in some way.

You have no need to ask for forgiveness for wanting to know more. We fully intend to deliver more and we did cover a lot of it during BlizzCon as well. We'll be refreshing that information however and moving you all forward with us by letting you know how things have advanced/changed and developed since then though.

We love your questions. We just may not be able to answer them all when or how you want. We may on occasion be a bit more silent about things than you (or we) might like, but as I've said in the past, there is a method to the madness.

What we always want to make sure of though, is that if people are asking questions or sharing feedback, that it be done constructively. We don't mind negative or viewpoints that aren't shiny and happy as long as they are done in a way that is constructive and doesn't become defamatory toward other posters or Blizzard employees. This is a place for discussions and it's important that when we come here to discuss, we do so with some thought and care for the people sitting behind the keyboards on both ends of the spectrum.

In short, we care. We care a lot. We may not always show it perfectly, but we love the community we have and we love the work we do.

Neth, I don't suppose you have any comment on how beta invites will be working for Annual Subs?

I can't comment on this yet, but we will be putting together information on how everyone will be getting into the beta including those that signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass. We know it's something people are concerned about and we want to make sure that we're as clear as possible on the process. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blacksmithing and Epic Gems
This is only the case if you assume that everyone is fully decked out in the epic Jewelcrafting gems. Due to the drop-rate being quite low and the cost to buy them quite high, it is not really feasible that the average player will be able to acquire enough of these gems while the 4.3 content is still current to create an issue. We feel the benefits that Blacksmithing offers balance out very well when compared to the difficulty of obtaining epic gems, as such we do not currently have any changes planned in regards to this. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Transmogrification and the Future
Remember that Transmogrification isn't 'done', and that more changes might come in the future. At first, we had concerns that if we allowed non-ranged weapons to be transmogrified into completely different weapons that they would lose a sense of flavor and identity. Our perspective may be changing on that front, though, and over time the current restrictions could be eased further.

Anyway, it's because hunter ranged weapons each make a distinct sound that they were a bit more loosely restricted in this first pass. I'm sure that the hunters in the audience can explain why that's valuable.

We really, really want to avoid accidentally going to far then find ourselves in the position of having to take options away. There's not really a specific timeline established, no. I think it's reasonable to look forward to incremental changes, as we have time to implement them, and as they make sense. We're also looking at finding new ways of making Transmogrification fun and rewarding.

On the other hand, I don't currently see a future where all restrictions are dropped completely, but I've learned that it's also generally wise to avoid the word "never".

What about lightening up on restrictions?
We still want Transmogrification to evolve, so that's still likely.

Why aren't there anymore 2H caster maces? Or strength polearms?
We've moved away from making really "wacky" decisions about item stat assignment to make weapon selection more intuitive. These aren't rules that are written in stone, of course, just general guidelines we've been following to make it more clear which classes a particular type of item is likely to be good for.

How about the main hand weapons, is there any reason we cant mog these?
The one hand/main hand/offhand restriction is also something we're looking at. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Glyph Inscription Leveling
The Book of Glyph Mastery is actually a topic we?ve been discussing in our meetings. I can?t make any promises just yet but can at least acknowledge that we?re tossing around ideas for the book and for researching new Inscription glyphs. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Changes Made to WoW
Take LFG. Yes, convenient, it's quick, it's good! But at the same time it destroyed server communities and turned the whole experience of going to dungeons from a fun adventure into a mini-game grindfest. Overal? Bad change in my opinion.
The option to manually find people for your group and travel to the dungeon is still there, so you're totally free to continue doing it that way if you wish. But LFD is a very handy and convenient tool for most people, its popularity demonstrates that beyond a doubt.

Having said that, we're very aware of these concerns, and we're working hard on ways to get players out of the cities and back into the world again in Mists.

Take talent trees. They are forcing us to choose. Okay, neat, that's a bit more interesting. Downside? Only 6 points, means levelling will be even more boring. Can't really judge this one yet though.
So currently you get to pick a new talent point every two levels. If, like me, you?ve researched your optimum spec online, gaining a point simply means selecting whichever talent my favoured guide tells me to choose. This could mean, for instance, a very small increase in the effectiveness of one particular skill, which isn?t terrible exciting, and doesn?t always make a huge immediate difference to your game play. With the new talent trees, every time you get to spend a point, it should be on something very significant and useful.

Instantly learning abilities as you level up without a need to visit a trainer. Convenient? Yes. But also completely ruining what little experience you had left of living in an actual world of warcraft. BAD change.
Bearing in mind how quickly it?s possible to level, it?s not always fun to break from questing just to take a trip back to town when you gain access to a new skill. Personally speaking, I tend to wait until I need to return for a few reasons, such as using the Auction House, bank, visiting the profession trainer etc. meaning I will sometimes go for a few levels without picking up that new skill. There are still plenty of things to keep you travelling to the cities and back while levelling, but when it?s convenient for you to do so, not when you ?should?.

You're basically telling us that we're wrong for not liking these features of WoW, because the numbers are against us. A lot of people use LFG, so that must mean it is fantastic?
No I'm not saying that at all, but it's clear that many people appreciate it. The point you make about a path of least resistance is true, but it's a fine balance. Make something too easy (such as a free gear vendor) and it's no fun, no challenge. LFD keeps the challenge part (the dungeon) but alleviates the often-long-winded group-finding part, allowing people to quest or gather mats, just go about other tasks while a group is found for them. Granted, it's not for everyone, some people enjoy putting a group together personally but, again, we're not forcing anyone to use it.

As I said just now, we've acknowledged people might have issues with some of the changes LFD made to the game. We're hearing it loud and clear, and we're working to address some of these in the expansion. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The bug where paladin Seals could sometimes cause excessive damage has been fixed. This bug came as a result of a hotfix we put in to fix an issue where some attacks, such as Scatter Shot, were still causing Vengeance in PvP situations. While these things may seem totally unrelated, it has to do with our proc system, which is an extremely complicated mechanic under the hood. We reverted that hotfix, meaning you may sometimes see Vengeance in PvP. But we don?t think that will present a major balance concern at this time.

To be clear, we have no current plans to take action against players who experienced this bug last night unless we come across any extreme cases. The error was ours and we haven?t seen any evidence -- so far -- of players excessively exploiting the bug. We reserve the right to take action if we do find evidence of players crossing the line to repeatedly exploit this bug for major in-game advantages.

We're aware of this issue and looking into it right now. It's likely we won't have further updates for you until we're back in the office in the morning PST.

Just as a reminder from the Terms of Use:

C. Rules Related to Game Play.
(i) Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players.

A Break in the Mists: Alert the Press!

Since the announcement of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria at BlizzCon 2011, we?ve been hard at work on all of the new game features, environments, dungeons, and other content that awaits adventurers. Today, we?re inviting members of the press worldwide to get an updated sneak peek and some hands-on time with the latest version of World of Warcraft?s fourth expansion at an event taking place March 13 - 15.

If you want to know more about what lies hidden within the mists of Pandaria, wait for the season?s end?.

Resetting Cooldowns in PvP
I think cooldown resetting is the definition of cheesy gameplay, it only promotes zerging and the game would be better off without it.

Abilities that reset cooldowns create potential choices for classes to refresh their cooldowns on demand so that they can be reused; the timing on using this can often result in their victory or demise. Using them for simply zerging in and blowing all cooldowns twice will often not result in the best of outcomes as this can quite often be countered by your opponent.

You have to remember that having an ability that resets cooldowns on demand such as Preparation, Cold Snap or Readiness does not make a class overpowered or provide them with a greater advantage over others. It is simply another part of their toolkit and it comes with an innate choice, "Should I use it now or save it for later?? this adds an additional skill factor to their class. Do you pop it now to increase damage output and possibly secure that kill? Should you may maybe be save it just in case you need that second defensive cooldown or crowd control in a tight spot? Maybe you should wait until everything is finally on cooldown?

Knowing when and where to use these abilities is a very difficult thing to be able to assess. These are the decisions that make or break and separate the good players from the great ones. Just because some classes can refresh their cooldowns on demand every now and then does not mean that the ability allowing them to do so is overpowered or needs to be changed in some way, it's simply another part of their class, as is the same for other abilities for anyone else. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dungeons & Raids
Dragon Soul

• Yor?sahj the Unsleeping
  • The Shaman spell Unleash Life now properly only triggers Deep Corruption on its target. Previously, this affected both the caster and the target.
• Spine of Deathwing
  • Burning Tendons health has been reduced by 15% in 10- and 25-player Heroic mode. This change eases the burst damage requirement to complete the encounter, which should allow players to make use of more varied raid compositions.
• Madness of Deathwing
  • The Priest spell Leap of Faith is no longer usable while under the effect of Carrying Winds.

Items

• Maw of the Dragonlord can now have its effect triggered by healing from Holy Word: Sanctuary.

User Interface

• Fixed a bug that caused the Mature Language Filter to reset on exit.
• A notice is now displayed 15 minutes prior to the player being disconnected by parental controls.

We previously introduced the ability to form cross-realm parties with Real ID friends, and now with Patch 4.3.2, we're adding the ability for players to use that same functionality to form raids to run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds!

This will allow you to join up with your Real ID friends from other realms and:

• Form a cross-realm raid and use Raid Finder
• Jump in to any classic dungeon or raid and be automatically placed in the same instance
• Join forces and dominate the Battlegrounds

Please note, you will not yet be able to run normal or Heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm Real ID raids.

As we look forward to the BattleTag system, it?s a very exciting time for World of Warcraft. No matter what realm you and your friends are on you?ll be able to team up and take on group content throughout the game.

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the ?Power of the Aspects? spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you?re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn?t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we?re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

With the 4.3.2 patch we?ll be testing some new file optimization tech. As you may be aware, with previous major expansion patches (2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc.) we?ve carried out a time-consuming process to reorganize the game files currently installed on your hard drive to integrate all previous patch files, essentially ?cleaning up? what?s on your computer and reducing the full installation size. This process used to require an amount of free hard drive space double that of the entire installation size to complete, which is why we?ve reserved them for large expansion-sized patches.

The new tech we?re testing with the 4.3.2 PTR will process these cleanups with no additional hard drive space required beyond what the patch is adding. Because of that you may see them appear more frequently with patches.

While the cleanup is occurring you?ll see a specific message on the launcher informing you the process is currently taking place. If you encounter any issues with the new process please be sure to visit our support site at http://www.battle.net/support/

Classes: General

• Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
  
• Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
  
• Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
  
• Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
  
• Pyroblast damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Adrenaline Rush no longer triggers a global cooldown.

Dungeons & Raids

• You can now form same-faction raids with Real ID friends, allowing you to enter Raid Finder in groups larger than 5, run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds. You will not yet be able to run normal or heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm raids of Real ID friends.
  
• Several typo fixes and clarified descriptions have been added to the Dungeon Journal entries for Dragon Soul.
  
• Players can no longer win multiple copies of the same item on a single Raid Finder boss kill. For example, a player who chooses Need on two set piece tokens or two weapons and wins the first, will not be eligible for the second on that particular boss.

Baradin Hold

• The roaming Eyes of Occu'thar have been replaced by hateful creatures who serve Alizabal.

Dragon Soul

• Warmaster Blackhorn
  • The visual warning for Twilight Elites' Blade Rush should be easier to see.

Items

• Vial of Shadows damage (Lightning Strike) has been reduced to approximately one-third of previous damage. However, it will now trigger approximately 3 times as often. This is intended to keep overall DPS the same while reducing burst damage, especially in PvP.

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to present the latest entry in the "Leaders of Azeroth" short story series: In the Shadow of the Sun!

Lor'themar was not any surer of his thoughts by the day Aethas was scheduled to arrive. As he made his way through Sunfury Spire to the front hall where the archmage would appear, Halduron stopped him, holding out a small bundle of soft crimson wool. Lor'themar took it and held it up as it unfolded, beholding a regal golden phoenix upon its field: the Silvermoon City tabard.

"No," he said curtly, shoving the garment back at his friend.

"You should wear it," Halduron pressed.

"What does it matter?" he answered, striding forward. "Anyone in the service of Silvermoon may bear it."

"It is the symbol of state," Halduron called after him. "You are the head of state. You should look the part."

"I am the regent lord," Lor'themar said, continuing to walk away. "Not the king."

Written by Sarah Pine, "In the Shadow of the Sun" is the 2008 Global Creative Writing Contest winner. To view this story in its original format, head on over to Blizzard.com.

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the ?Power of the Aspects? spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you?re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn?t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we?re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons.

The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Regardless of anyone?s rankings past or present, the process of learning and striving to improve never stops: it helps even the most battle-hardened gladiator remain able to go toe-to-toe with their fiercest opponents.

In team-based combat such as Arenas, pressuring an enemy in order to go for a kill or striving to protect your comrade from being the brunt of a focused assault are part of the experience, no matter what classes are driving to get the job done. Most matches are an incredibly complicated dance between combatants: a push and pull of offensive and defensive tactics, of coordinating switches, interrupts, dispels, crowd control, and of learning when to use your particular cooldowns or abilities, and when to change your tactics on the fly. Depending on who you ask, what class they are, what brackets they are in, and what team compositions they run, you are likely to get a totally different answer as to what particular class gives them the most trouble at any given time.

As far as the current balance of various classes: it?s something we are, as always, keeping a close watch on. We welcome you to post constructively about your observations in the appropriate threads, and the more focused and on-topic you can keep it, the better.

While it's not possible to address every individual thread or concern of the community, rest assured we are listening, regardless if you see us post within a particular thread or not.

Hot off the presses and fast on the heels of the recently announced 2012 Battle.net World Championship event set for later this year, Team Liquid took the time to interview Ilja Rotelli, director of global community and eSports at Blizzard Entertainment. The interview looks deeper into the new structure of the Battle.net World Championship and the future of Blizzard eSports. Here?s a brief snippet from the interview to whet your appetite.

At the national qualifier level, do you hope to hold some tournaments that are completely open to anyone who wants to compete?

Ilja Rotelli: That is precisely one of the design philosophies we originally adopted. The idea is that we want to make a more aspirational and participatory eSports environment for StarCraft. The idea that there are superstars that seem so far away, that one can't hope to become; this makes eSports very restrictive.

Blizzard has a slightly different goal from eSports companies. If you think very frankly about the business goal for Blizzard as a company, we gain when more people play the game, and a strategy that makes sense to achieve that goal is to go grassroots. We don't have plans in place yet, but in my dreams, this is the beginning, where we go as grassroots as we can for the first year. Then, in 2013, we would love to add an additional layer to the bottom of the structure, to be even more grassroots than now. This is just a philosophy, not a practical plan that we have in place, but certainly that is one of the design principles we have been using so far.

Visit the Team Liquid site to read the complete article.

Allow Players to Turn Off Enchant Effects
I realize this thread has been around for a while but the topic is still relevant. As many of you may or may not know, weapon enchants have been a feature of World of Warcraft since the beginning. Providing iconic and recognizable looks to various enchants is something that?s added an element of uniqueness to the game and to your character. However, we do understand they can sometimes overpower the aesthetics of the awesome weapons you can obtain in game now. It?s certainly something we have discussed with the developers recently and we?ll be looking into potentially allowing an enchant toggle. If and when such a feature is introduced, we?ll be sure to let the community know as soon as possible. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Damage in Arenas
As you already mentioned, in the upcoming patch there is a change to Vial of Shadows that should reduce some of the burst damage you are experiencing in PvP.

Dying in openers certainly isn't fun, and can be incredibly frustrating if you're the one on the receiving end of such a coordinated attack, but don't give up! In addition to perhaps taking some time to focus on other activities such as Rated and unrated Battlegrounds where you have more people to watch your back, you might also consider browsing some PvP videos from other members of the community to not only help inspire you, but to also arm you with a further arsenal of tactics that you can use to your own advantage against opposing teams.

Also, from my own experience, when I was having a lot of trouble against a certain class or spec that I felt countered my usual tactics, I found it helpful to sometimes grab a friend that played that class and spent some time dueling them so that they could critique me on areas where I could improve my skills, including my timing on using certain abilities, and how I could counter some of their own tactics. That way when I stepped back into arenas, I was more confident in my own skills and felt better-prepared for how to expose the weaknesses of my enemies.

Keep at it, and remember there are players out there equally as scared to see you step out onto the Arena floor.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Expansion Name
It's not irrelevant, particularly given almost everything that happens after the Cataclysm and Deathwing's demise is centered around the discovery of this new continent. These forgotten lands, as well as the way the Horde and Alliance go about exploring them, are central to the overall story line (much like Illidan and the Burning Legion were to The Burning Crusade, the Lich King and his Scourge were to Wrath of the Lich King, and Deathwing's destructive return to Azeroth was in Cataclysm).

I'm not sure I understand your argument. It feels like you're claiming we're naming the expansion after a new race's starting zone (not true) and arguing that's "jumping the shark." If you're only taking issue with the title, I don't think that qualifies for such a label at all. More importantly though, I get the sense you learned only two bulleted details about the expansion (new race and new land to explore) before deciding to post this thread. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Encounter Designers Who Worked on Ulduar
What a coincidence! We happened to talk about raid design and results with Ghostcrawler and Mumper yesterday, and everyone looked back fondly on Ulduar, among others. Yes, the same designers and artists who worked on Ulduar are still working on raids.

Here's the thing -- Ulduar is an example of a raid where lots of players got to enjoy the first few bosses, and very few players ever saw the last few. Yogg Saron and Algalon were among the least-killed bosses ever, and not because they were exceedingly difficult. Rather, clearing the dungeon all the way to Yogg took up a big chunk of a raiding week (and you only had an hour to kill Algalon), and the ability to extend raid lockouts came later in 3.2.0 (but extending raid lockouts means getting less loot overall). Raid Finder partially resolves the length-of-raid problem, so we can consider designing longer raids, but that's not always an easy call. Long raids mean longer development time, and while some players might be willing to wait, we understand why others might get impatient.

Of course, having multiple raids in a tier (like the combination of Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent) has the advantage of giving players different environments to play in while potentially making scheduling and logistics easier.

Pushing a big red button for Mimiron was very cool, and again is fondly remembered. We have created something like 40 raid bosses since the creation of those encounters however, and we cant help but think that it would start to feel really gimmicky and forced if every raid encounter had its difficulty set by pushing a button, (or not killing adds, or changing the order you kill the bosses, or the other mechanics we used in Ulduar). We think Mimiron would feel less special if there were six more bosses in the game with big red buttons, and we?re just not sure the design space is there to have a near infinite variety of means by which players launch a heroic mode in game.

Nonetheless, because there are so many requests for those style mechanics, we are considering doing a few bosses with optional modes (in the same way Mimiron, Freya or Sartharion had them) in Mists of Pandaria. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Talent Trees
One of the problems we're specifically trying to address with the new talent system is getting back a little to the sense that there are 10 classes in the game (soon 11) instead of 30 (soon 34). A common complaint we saw about the Cataclysm talent design was that hybridization was greatly downplayed. Now it?s easy to dismiss going down two trees as never really having worked out, but it?s clear that many players are in love with the idea of doing so.

We also just want to keep the total number of talents under control, since the intent is that they have pretty big effects. If you're facing a Frost mage in PvP in Mists of Pandaria, you?ll have even less of an idea of what is in their toolbox than you do today. If you're a raid leader, you won?t be so certain what abilities your Discipline priest has to deal with the upcoming boss. A little of that keeps gameplay feeling fresh, but too much of it can be overwhelming. If each of the three mage specs, for example, had different talent choices, then we would have 612 total talents in the game instead of 198. Even 198 is a lot to learn. We also have the suspicion that coming up with 612 really awesome talents will be much more challenging. One of our design philosophies is concentrated coolness: have a few awesome things instead of a lot of mediocre things.

Now in some ways we are strengthening the concept of a spec by really pushing rotations and some other signature spells to specific specs. Immolate is Destruction only. Backstab is Subtlety only. Given that, talents are a great vehicle to make sure that your character still feels like a warlock or a rogue at the end of the day.

We really want to avoid talent synergies where only one talent on a tier makes sense for your character. This would be the case if say Fire mages did bonus damage with only Fire spells, or there was one healing talent on a tier competing against two DPS talents for your priest. Please continue to bring up concerns you have in this regard (though not necessarily all in this thread) and we will try to address them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Intellect on Plate
The situation with intellect plate is an ongoing discussion among the designers, but we have yet to come up with a solution that's better than just continuing to make intellect plate.

• Let Holy paladins wear Strength plate ? This would require a lot of conversions. Does hit become Spirit? What happens to expertise? Do all Strength items convert or just actual armor pieces? Can paladins mix and match with Intellect jewelry and trinkets? Do Holy paladins also hit really hard in melee, or do they lose that ability? Does it make paladins too effective as hybrid classes if they can share much of their gear across three different roles?
• Let Holy paladins wear mail ? Our mail is designed to look like shaman or hunters, not paladins. It?s cruel not to let a paladin wear the paladin tier armor, and also weird that a given tier piece could be plate or mail even though it looks identical.
• Let priests wear plate ? We like the design for priests as cloth-wearers, we would not want to drop less cloth overall (since only mages and locks would need it at that point), and we don?t want priests to look like warriors, DKs or paladins.

Individually these aren't difficult problems, and we have the ability to solve each of them, but at the end of the day the designers don?t think any of those solutions are preferable to just keep on making Intellect plate for Holy paladins. Maybe someday there will be a new class that also uses Intellect plate. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)