Filed under: Blizzard

If you didn't notice this weekend's big show over at the Battle.net World Championship, you missed a lot of cool World of Warcraft stuff. The folks over at MMO-Champion snagged one of the coolest, an interview with Ion Hazzikostas, Lead Encounter Designer. It's a big interview, so we'll just pick out one part to showcase it.

Q: Patch 5.1 contains an extremely interesting questline involving the Black Temple and a lot of warlock lore, is there anything more you can tell us about this? Is this quest for all classes or just for warlocks?
A: The Black Temple thing in Patch 5.1 is a Warlock specific class quest and it is building up to something. It was datamined as a scenario, but it is not a scenario. It is just a small one off class quest for Warlocks. When it makes sense for the lore and assets we are trying to introduce, it is cool to have these little one off quests like we added for the Monk as they level up with skill challenges. It is just something nice we thought we would do for the Warlock class. It is not a big deal.

I'm very sad I won't get to see any of this. But I do like having it clarified. Head on over to the interview to read a lot more about what's coming in patch 5.1, about how Blizzard feels the return of world bosses has played out, and lots more.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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This weekend, some of the most competitive PvP and PvE players in the World of Warcraft (alongside players from Starcraft 2) will be engaging in the Battle.net World Championship. The event, taking place at the Shanghai Expo-Mart in Shanghai, China, is the largest competitive event focused specifically at Blizzard's games. So, in case you're wondering what's going on, where the live streams are, and how to find the events you're interested in seeing, Blizzard has you covered with this extensive survival guide to the event.

Our old friend Zarhym breaks it all down for you. With links to profiles of the players, a schedule of events and everything else you'd need to find the events you're interested in, this guide should help you find the challenge mode, arena, or live raid you want to watch. The event lasts from November 17th to the 18th.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Lately I've seen some forum posts that confuse me. Perhaps it's because these posts themselves seem confused. Posts like this one, where Librily the worgen mage accuses Blizzard and World of Warcraft's development team of soliciting feedback that they don't actually look at. I find this especially odd on a forum where community managers regularly engage with posters, and I wanted to address what feedback is, how it works, and why it matters now and going forward.

Frankly, it is impossible to look at the design of Mists of Pandaria and not see how much player feedback has influenced the design of the expansion. The 85 to 90 game is everything Cataclysm was not -- it all takes place in a seamless new land, it removed flying in order to provide player immersion, it works the Horde/Alliance conflict into the storyline. It is in every way the result of player feedback being constructively weighted and utilized responsibly. By that, I mean that the game's developers clearly looked at what players were saying they liked and disliked and worked to find ways to address player concerns.

What they didn't do -- what they have never done and cannot ever do -- is simply go to the forums, see who yelled loudest, and give them everything they wanted. That would be absurd design by mob, it would produce an unplayable game full of broken classes and most importantly of all, it would not be fun to play. Games require a ton of work to produce, especially a game like World of Warcraft, and the amount of effort behind the scenes to bring what we get to see and experience does not allow for that kind of design even if it were desirable, which it is not. Game design is not about giving the players everything they say they want, nor is it about doing everything they say as soon as they say it.

Let's talk about how good feedback works, the difference between opinion and fact, and why taking the time to make a well constructed argument is worthwhile even if you don't see any signs of it changing anything.

The Battle.net World Championship will be kicking off Friday, November 16. If you're interested in World of Warcraft there's going to be quite a bit going on for you. One of the highlight events will be a Challenge Mode Dungeon tournament, similar to the match between Blood Legion and the Blizzard UX team during the Mists of Pandaria launch event.

Arena PvP will be represented as well with the Arena Global finals, and top guilds Stars and Supreme Quicksand will be engaging in a live raid of Heroic Mogu'shan Vaults. Keep your eyes peeled for more announcements and get ready to watch some of the best World of Warcraft players in the world.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Law firm Carney Williams Bates Pulliam & Bowman, PLLC have filed a class action lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment, and its parent company, Activision Blizzard, on behalf of "millions of American customers who have been harmed by Blizzard's negligent and deceptive practices related to its customers' account security".

Representing Carney Williams, Hank Bates, in the law firm's press release, summarising the complaint, states that:

"Blizzard requires all of its customers to establish accounts with its online gaming service, Battle.net, but it fails to disclose to consumers, prior to purchase, that they'll need additional products called authenticators to keep information stored in these accounts safe. Even though the company frequently receives complaints about accounts being hacked, it simply tells the customer to attach an authenticator to their account. Blizzard doesn't inform people about this requirement when they purchase the game, and that amounts to a deceptive trade
practice. Worse still, Blizzard has failed to maintain adequate levels of security for its
customers, time and again, which led to a significant loss of private data in Blizzard's
safekeeping."

Blizzard has responded to the allegations raised by Carney Williams &co., stating that "This suit is without merit and filled with patently false information, and we will vigorously defend ourselves through the appropriate legal channels."

See Blizzard's full response after the break.

As with the Cenarion Hatchling of years past and the tsunami that devastated coastal Japan, 100% of proceeds from the sales of the oddly late Cinder Kitten will be given to the Red Cross' Superstorm Sandy relief efforts. Blizzard will be updating us with info on when the $10 gato en fuego will be available for sale in the weeks ahead. Classy move, Blizzard.

On the other hand ... look, this might sound crazy, but have you noticed that whenever there's a big natural disaster, Blizzard just happens to be ready with a Pet Store pet to sell for charity? I'm sure intelligence will prove that Blizzard owns HAARP, the weather-controlling device array used by the Illuminati to maintain the New World Order. Clearly Blizzard stands to benefit from this by *incoherent mumbling* and *something about chemtrails*. Wake up, sheeple.

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During today's Activision Blizzard investor call, it was announced that during third quarter of calendar 2012, World of Warcraft claims over 10 million subscribers.

The given number is not as precise as we've grown accustomed to during these calls, but even the general number of 10 million gives us a good idea of the game's current climate. World of Warcraft subscriber numbers saw a dip to 9.1 million subscribers prior to the release of Mists of Pandaria, shedding 1.1 million subscribers in the pre-expansion lull.

Mists of Pandaria is still a fresh release as far as these investor calls are concerned, so its overall effect on World of Warcraft's playerbase will not become clear until 2013.

Edit: Correction made to account for the 1.1 million dip earlier this year.

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Last year, Blizzard started an experiment with the Guardian Cub, a pet store purchase that could be bought and sold in game with gold as well, since it was Bind on Equip. At the time, a lot of WoW players (including us) saw this as an experimental foray into Blizzard finding ways to allow people to get extra gold using real life money without directly selling gold. In part, that was because Blizzard came right out and admitted that's what it was. Since that time, we've seen no new Blizzard Store purchases that were BoE in this fashion.

Since then, we've heard a lot of complaints about botters who use hacked accounts to not only steal all the gold said account possesses, but also then use it as a farming bot for as long as they can keep hold of it. Some players are even suggesting that Blizzard should simply sell gold itself, cutting out the middleman and putting gold sellers out of business. Why isn't this a good idea?

Last year Blizzard held a World of Warcraft Student Art Contest, with their University Relations and World of Warcraft teams picking entries from art students challenged to design an piece of 3D art that would appear in game. Today we discovered that they're doing it again with this year's contest asking for student artists to design an original character piece and/or an environment piece.

The prizes up include a three month internship with Blizzard artists and a free year of WoW, and the deadline for entry is Tuesday, January 15th 2013. You can enter the contest here. So if you're eligible (you have to be an enrolled college student) and think you have what it takes, get to work.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Fresh off the Twitter-sphere today is news that the next expansion will be "awesome." What kind of awesome? Well, the kind of awesome that Rob Pardo (Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard) delivers. And no matter what, awesome is better than Pardo announcing the next expansion will be terrible. So there's that at least...

Its been pretty fun getting deeply involving with WOW again. The next expansion is going to be awesome :)

- Rob Pardo (@Rob_Pardo) October 26, 2012

All jokes aside, it is notable that Pardo is tweeting his involvement in this, even though he's always had his hand in WoW's expansions. Pardo does go on to say as well:

@officrnasty Oh don't worry... we will go plenty slow lol. This is Blizzard after all :)

- Rob Pardo (@Rob_Pardo) October 26, 2012

Pardo's announcement would have been a little bit cooler if he said it in Yoda-style.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Nethaera has just posted an update to the raid schedule and for those of us waiting with anticipation, it's worth knowing that only Heart of Fear will be launching next week. Terrace of Endless Spring will not be launching at the same time.

Nethaera - Updated Raid Schedule Heart of Fear & Terrace

To help raiders prepare their schedules for next week, we wanted to give everyone a brief heads-up that the Normal mode Heart of Fear will be debuting alone on Tuesday, and the Normal mode Terrace of Endless Spring will now open two weeks following the release of Normal Heart of Fear.

To help players focus on tackling these new encounters without feeling overwhelmed, we've decided to stagger the release of the two remaining raid zones. Heart of Fear should prove to be a challenging zone that will take the typical group some time to master, and players must defeat the Grand Empress Shek'zeer at the end of Heart of Fear before they may move on to Terrace of Endless Spring once that zone unlocks.

The unlock schedule for Looking For Raid modes for Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring is unaffected by this change. Heroic Heart of Fear will still be accessible to players who have cleared the zone on Normal difficulty.

source

Our own Anne Stickney asked Nethaera on Twitter if LFR Heart of Fear will be launching next week, and Nethaera was kind enough to answer, clarifying even more. Normal mode Terrace of Endless Spring will open two weeks after Heart of Fear goes live, as well.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Blizzard took the opportunity at the New York Comic-Con this week to announce a slew of projects including the eagerly anticipated novel Shadows of the Horde by Michael A. Stackpole, featuring Vol'jin, chief of the Darkspear trolls and unofficial Horde 'loyal opposition' to Warchief Garrosh Hellscream. Now we have details on the various projects from the official site, and they're pretty tantalizing.

In addition to learning more about Shadows of the Horde (bad stuff happens to Vol'jin, I can say that much without spoilers) we also learned more about other upcoming books and eBooks, such as the World of Warcraft Tribute: Art Book, produced by UDON, the collected Diablo III: Heroes Rise, Darkness Falls eBook that gathers all the class short stories from the Diablo III website (the Barbarian one was really good), and Richard Knaak's upcoming Dawn of the Aspects eBook dealing with the history of the Dragonflights and their fate in the post-Cataclysm world.

Definitely go check it out.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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