BlizzCon 2009: Day 2 Round-Up

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Or, How I Fell Asleep and Missed It All

So today was Day 2 of BlizzCon 2009. The live Internet Stream schedule claimed that they would be showing only one World of Warcraft panel, the WoW Dungeons and Raids panel, which as you know is not my main interest in this game. *grin* Still, I would have liked to see it, but somehow I slept through my alarm … and some phone calls … and my husband mowing the lawn outside my window … and most of the daylight hours. *cough*

Anyway, there were actually several WoW-related panels today, so I figured I’d troll the web for people who were more on the ball than I was and collect the info that looks most interesting. Again, this is second-hand plus it’s filtered through my own special interest-filter, but I’ll give links to the sources so you can check out anything you like in more detail.

WoW Open Q&A

This was an open question and answer session, so the topics ranged wildly. I’m just going to list some of the most interesting stuff in bullet form.

Hunters:

  • Hunters may be getting more specific control of their pets, perhaps through waypoints or a teleport-back-to-you spell.
  • Pets will scale of all of your stats and allow buffs from raid encounters to affect them. In addition, pets will be affected by player-cast AoE effects (i.e. in PvP) but not by boss AoE effects. (This is coming in Patch 3.3, I believe.)
  • They have been doing some ‘soul searching’ on the idea of letting hunters choose their pets’ talent tree.
  • Hunters may be able to tame zhevras in Cataclysm.

Other:

  • Northrend will be impacted by the Cataclysm, but not as much as old Azeroth. It sounds like this will be more about quests and less about terrain, so we probably don’t have to worry about losing access to pets from Northrend very much. Outland will not be impacted, of course, although they will add things for Archaeology there. The Burning Crusade starter areas will be impacted, but again not so much on terrain as quests.
  • Blizzard will be introducing a race-change option (within a faction) in addition to the faction-change option they have already mentioned.
  • As part of Cataclysm, Blizzard will be revamping profession leveling flow as well as the relevancy of old-world faction reputation. Ore and herb nodes are getting re-itemized as well.
  • Troll and Worgen druids will be getting unique feral forms, include bear, cat, travel and aquatic forms.
  • They are discussing adding more character slots on each realm, but they sound pretty doubtful about it.
  • They are considering a mentoring system to let different-leveled friends play together. In addition, they are changing phasing to allow helping other players in different phases.

Sources:

WoW Systems Panel

I actually caught some of this on the internet stream when they started showing it later in the day. I just wish they’d mentioned it on the schedule so I could have seen the whole thing. Ah, well.

Rated Battlegrounds:

I’ve skipped all the details on rated battlegrounds. The only thing I noted in particular is that you can get titles and epic ground mounts from your battleground rating. (Yay, more mounts I will never bring myself to get! *grin*)

Guild Advancement:

I’ve also skipped the details on guild progression. It’s a neat feature, but I’m already familiar with most of the details from EQ2 guild progression. If you’re into your guild, I suggest reading up on this more. It is a neat feature. Kaliope (link below) in particular has more on the profession-related features.

Mastery:

Talent mastery removes passive bonuses from the talents themselves and instead adds them to the talent tree. The goal is to have more fun non-passive talents to choose from without removing the passive bonuses entirely.

Two examples that were mentioned: the Beastmaster tree may raise passive pet damage while the Marksman tree may raise passive focus regeneration.

There are also mastery buffs on equipment that buff whatever mastery bonuses you happen to have, and shift when you switch specs and such.

Path of the Titans:

Path of the Titans is an alternate advancement path for max-level players. Basically, you use Archaeology to find artifacts and turn artifacts in to new Titan-themed groups around the world in exchange for Ancient Glyphs, a whole new type of glyph. Ancient Glyphs are not associated with the Inscription tradeskill, and are also not specific to any class.

The goal of Path of the Titans is to be accessible to all max-level players, regardless of play style. It may take longer for people like me — a solo player who won’t group or raid, doesn’t do PvP, and doesn’t play that many hours a week — but I will be able to get all my Ancient Glyphs eventually.

Sources:

WoW Raids & Dungeons Panel

As I expected, this panel didn’t have a lot that I personally was interested in. There was, however, one interesting thing: cross-realm LFG and rewards for the leader of a successful pick-up-group (PUG). This should be out in Patch 3.3.

In addition, Blizzard mentioned that the upcoming +310% flying mount from the revamped Onyxia encounter is going to be a very rare drop.

Sources:

WoW Classes, Items & Professions (Take Two)

The presentation part of this panel was the same as yesterday’s, so I had initially ignored it. But there were different questions asked and answered, and so some different things to learn. I’ve compiled the stuff I found neat into bullets again.

Hunters:

  • Blizzard doesn’t want to turn hunters into ranged rogues. The class should be less cooldown-locked and more about choosing your abilities. Aspect of the Viper may not go away (a clarification from yesterday) but will definitely be different. Or maybe all the aspects may go away.
  • They’d like to integrate the concepts of the old hunter epic quest line at a lower level (since it will be going away with the changes to Onyxia). Actually they want to add more class quests to Cataclysm in general.
  • The notion of hunters taming a mount is cool, says lizzard. Whether that means they would ever consider it or not is an open question.

Other:

  • Archaeology will give lots of vanity items, including (jokingly?) a fedora and bullwhip.
  • They’d like to change fishing to be more like fishing in Aminal Crossing, but it’s unclear how far along they are in this thinking.
  • More fun potions are on the way for alchemy.

Sources:

52 thoughts on “BlizzCon 2009: Day 2 Round-Up”

  2. “They have been doing some ’soul searching’ on the idea of letting hunters choose their pets’ talent tree.”

    This is THE most exciting announcement for me, except maybe the hunter resource changes. I’ve missed my wind serpents…. and having the same wolf as every other hunter in Dalaran was getting a bit old. =p

    The possibility of taming a mount is pretty cool too, I was sure they’d just say no but it sounds like they might consider it (though it would be tricky to implement. Maybe a rarespawn that drops a mount but can also be tamed and then ridden?) It’s not like matching mounts and pets isn’t already possible, though–and on that note, I’m staying up late tonight so I can get my ravasaur mount as soon as dailies reset. I can’t wait!

  4. “They’d like to change fishing to be more like fishing in Aminal Crossing”

    …what IS fishing like in Animal Crossing? O_o;; I kinda like fishing the way it is now, though I realise I’m in the minority! :P

    I’m kinda ticked off about the schedule not being accurate (*grumble*) since I used it to schedule a nap during the ‘Starcraft only’ segment of today’s content. (I’m in Australia, so the Blizzcon coverage kicked off at 4am my time and I am DEAD here…) Thankfully my handsome fiance wasn’t sure what time I wanted to get up and woke me up earlier than planned, so I did get to see a good chunk of the WoW panel. *yawn*

  5. Delayed versions of the live stream will be available in their entirety with start times set to correspond with time zones in Europe and Asia.

    just click on the replay

  7. No, no no no no stance like aspects- it’s bad enough they’re giving us an energy bar. I JUST GOT USED TO MANA ON ALL MY HUNTERS AND FOUND GOOD SYNGERY- hell half of the time even in battlegrounds on the hunter I’m currently using AV for powerleveling with, she doesn’t NEED mana, and anyways by the time she’s oom she’s dead.

    So I’m up in the air about energy :/

    Unless we ALSO benefit from pet+focus talents? Possibly?

    ‘They are discussing adding more character slots on each realm, but they sound pretty doubtful about it.’

    Doubtful? Blizzard SHOULD do this, they allow you what a maximum of 50 characters per account? How many people really play 50 characters right now, mean even with my alt itus I’ve only got half that made, and again only 1/3rd to half of that amount do I play. I don’t enjoy really playing all by my lonesome.

    Blizzard should atleast introduce 2 new character slots :/ they’d make ALOT of people happy!

    ‘Aspect of the Viper may not go away (a clarification from yesterday) but will definitely be different. Or maybe all the aspects may go away.’

    Again, why? What is wrong with them as they are now? If they’re so trigger happy about fixing this, why not give us a bar- no wait. Skip that. How about they fix PET BARS INSTEAD of focusing on aspects and possible removal, imo Aspects are fine the way they are. And Viper could possibly be changed for I dunno a chance to cause a random sting on the target. Cause mean we’re getting energy and they compare us to rogues and casters so lets get the poisons flowing since we’re being rogue-ized this expac!

    Anyways.

    Pet bars.

    Pet bars need fixing.

    Cower bug needs fixing.

    Pet pathing is getting bugged again; I’ve had several pets starting to pull the good ol’ lets zig zag forth and waste 8 seconds trying to find a way to the mob, aaaah.

    This is part of what they should say they are GOING TO BE FIXING :/

  9. Race change sounds cool, and honestly, I contemplated that for my NE hunter to go Worgen. But I like my NE being, well, NE. Even though I put alot of work into her, I think I’ll be starting from scratch with Worgen just for the new leveling experience.

    Not to mention that race change to worgen probably wont be available til after a month of cataclysm’s release (to be fair for the real “realm first Worgen” achievement getters) just like they did with Wrath.

  10. @Ryai-

    As with the additional pet slots for Hunters, the number of characters per realm is related to software that isn’t directly related to the game world. This may require a rewrite of the server software or the server structure. The problem may not be so much that they cannot do it, but that it is going to take longer to arrange than the next year.

    Do NOT be surprised if they do another realm shutdown like they had to do with TBC. Word is that Blizzard is having massive issues with the servers which are now a couple of years old. This is a lot of the problem with the instance part of the server set up. This may be when they can do this, but it is still not an absolute.

  11. If Zhevras are tamable, won’t other steeds be, too? Maybe we can finally tame those FelSteeds in SFK :D

  12. @Rottingham-

    Worgs and Sabercats are already tameable. Raptors (of a sort), Dragonhawks, Bears, Silithids, Nether Rays, and Turtles are also all tameable, but in slightly different forms. So, probably not. Besides, a Fel Steed is a demon not a beast.

  13. MelRedcap, fishing in Animal Crossing, from what I remember: You see a fish-shaped shadow in the water, so you cast your fishing pole and wait for the fish to show interest (you can scare it off accidentally), then as soon as you feel a tug you tap the screen or press a button and you pull it out of the water. Then you get an awful pun based on whatever you caught, and it’s kept in a record.

    Not too different from WoW fishing, I think.

  15. I still have a HUGE problem with every race being able to roll a hunter. In a word: Undead.
    Seriously, you want me to believe that something rotting, smelly and decayed that can cannibalize is going to easily tame a Living animal? And what if the wolf is feeling a bit peckish? He’s just going to reach over and gnaw on the hunter’s femur?

    I can kinda rationalize everything else, but I can’t work this one. It just doesn’t fly straight. Its not that I don’t want Undead to have hunters – although honestly I don’t – Its just that in terms of suspension of disbelief and logic – i have a hard time with this working.

  18. @Rottingham,

    Given how fast ghost wolves and other such spirit/demon ‘beasts’ have gotten changed, how fast do you think it will take for those horses to go away?

  20. Undead Hunters don’t sound that far fetched to me. Back when it was just an unconfirmed rumor, I didn’t think it would be implemented. But really? Think about this way. Whenever you have a large society of people, there will be those that will form about new religions, tasks, etc. Why wouldn’t some of the Undead learn the ways of a Hunter if possible?

    And once fully tame, why would a wolf go against it’s master? Especially since it loves it’s master unconditionally ;)

  21. Belladonia:
    Hey, I don’t like the idea of Forsaken Hunters too. I mean in lore (I don’t care about Nathanos Blightcaller, even *HE* broke the lore of the game!) the whole point of Sylvanas being pissed off at being undead and becoming a Dark Ranger was because the realm of nature would never listen to her!

    BUT!!!!

    After having killed an Aspect, possibly about to kill another one, killing a Death-God that was tied to the land of Azeroth itself, and after finding a spaceship and being ahead and behind modern technology at the same time….. well… I’m a tad bit more open minded about just what is “logical” for WoW.

    So to all you future undead hunters, I will still gun you down mercilessly, but NOT because I hate you (ok I kinda do hate all forsaken, but some of them are crazay), but because that whole undead-with-my-tongue-hanging out model really freaks me out.

    Sei:
    Absolutely right. We might get to tame Zhevra, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on taming other steed beasts. Now, will Blizzard make a mistake somewhere and the Hunter community will find a way to tame something we shouldn’t? Yes. Yes it will happen again. The only reason we didn’t keep our worgen was basically cause well now its a playable race and with race-change service coming up….worgen witha worgen pet miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be a little wierd….

  22. In case peapole are wondering,here is what fishing in animal crossing is:In the water,there are otlines of fish.You have to walk slowly,or the fish will hear you and run.So cast your line silently,a fish will bite,what to look for,I forgot.Reel it in and bingo!Got the fish.

  23. Walk slowly? So anything that’s not a rouge and can’t stealth is basically not going to be a good fisherman…

  26. @Rikaku-

    Of course. If they do Zhevra, they should do Stags as well. Maybe they’ll count as the same pet.

    As for the Forsaken Hunters, well, the way I see it is that they eventually found a way around it. I don’t know, maybe the right kind of pheromones?

    Still, I’m planning on a Goblin Hunter. I want a itty bitty Goblin with a BEAR pet!

  27. Sei:
    If I had my way, it’d be the Equine family (I know I’m using it improperly but this is wow!!!). And it would include the Zhevras, Stags, and Giraffe. Their family skill….warstomp? XD

    I just want a damn giraffe!!!

  28. Re: Undead hunters.

    I’m curious now. Tirisfal is a bit low on tamable beasts; it always has been since Forsaken couldn’t be hunters anyway. You’ve got bats (cunning), spiders (also cunning), and some extremely low level wolves… and that’s it.

    The ‘runed darkhounds’ became tamable in Wrath… maybe, just MAYBE… other instances of the ‘darkhound’ model will become tamable come the expac.

    YES! YES! YES! *cough*

  29. @Nachtwulf
    Don’t forget that every zone in Azeroth is being remodeled… even If it’s just a little bit. Brehaps the new trisfal glades will have the worgs from silverpine migrate a little closer, and maybe a new beast might even show up there.

    Also, about the undead being hunters. I think that since the humans are hunters, they should still be hunters when they come back from the grave. However, this doesn’t work for those saying “Then why can’t undead be pallies?” Well, paladins are the enemies of the undead, and although the BE pallies have fought along side the forsaken for a little while, it doesn’t mean that the paladins would still accept the undead as their own.

    I find that the undead being hunters is very poor due to lore, but never-the-less Blizz has changed many things do to lore in the past, so if people have wanted undead hunters, why not? I know for sure I’m getting rid of my lvl 12 druid if we don’t get more character spaces and making one.

  30. dont forget the bears from silverpine.i wouldnt be supprised if we get some of the diseased skins from the plaguelands to.if the dark hounds get made into wolves i may have to tame that pink rare bayne..

  31. The easy fix (not from a programmer standpoint mind you) would be to have undead hunter pets take on an undead skin. Who’s to say their pets can’t be undead. I would love to have an undead hunter being accompanied by his skeletal cat.

    It would make the most sense but I would take some doing on Blizz’s part.

  33. “They have been doing some ’soul searching’ on the idea of letting hunters choose their pets’ talent tree.”

    Originally I was totally against “mix n’ match pets!” – the idea of a DPS turtle was about as appealing to me as the thought of a tauren rogue, but… since they standardized pet stats, I guess they’re already halfway there. It still feels a bit like change for the sake of change though.

  34. I think that the new pet talent tree idea is real good. It is better to have a pet you like, but you never used it because it was a tree you didn’t want or have a skill you didn’t want.

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  36. Scott:
    This change has been needed since day one. Ever since pet standardization started with patch 2.0, pets have needed to be more “viable” choices. Now, granted, no matter what there will always be a “max dps” pet that beats everyone else, and that just comes down to family skill vs family skill of the pets. But in reality, that’s for the best.

    No matter what, min-maxers will always take a pet that’s “best”. Blizzard, honestly, doesn’t care about that in the pet-field. Their goal was to make it so its not just “cats, wolves and raptors” that get chosen as it has been for the most part of the past 4 years. When wolves are the top dps pets, you still see alot of raptors and cats being chosen, and even Spirit Beasts and Devilsaurs. The reason being that alot of hunters aren’t min-maxers, but would rather use those particular pets then gain pet dps.

    GC said it best when he stated that even if the best pet in the game was just an untextured cube, there’d still be the min-maxers who’d use it, while a great deal of other Hunters wouldn’t.

    Alot of Hunters agreed with me on a feedback thread for 3.1 PTR that Hunters needed to be able to choose the talent tree of their pet in order to truly make pets “equally viable”. This change is needed. Just because you want to Hunt with a rhino (which would make a great ferocity pet given its family skill use in a raid) doesnt mean you should be shunned by groups cause you didn’t bring a ferocity pet.

    The Rhino is a perfect example of what I mean. That family skill would be much more awesome in a raid setting. Corehounds, personally I think they’d be badass if they could be cunning too. Ferocity Bears? Hell. yes.

    When you get down to it, suddenly alot more pets seem like they’d be so useful in a raid or group when you look at their family skills and match up a new talent tree for them.

    …..I want a ferocity bear so bad now…..

  37. Tenacity Spider FTW!
    I would love TO finally make a bat Tenacity, that way not only does it web, but It does charge, too, and have inproved health! It would be a perfect pvp pet for lower levels! Ferocity Spider would be a good pvp pet for higher levels. Also, who wouldn’t want to see a feroicity Worm or bat, huh? This will actually have hunter get the pets that they have wanted forever, but wouldn’t do it because they had poor skills or talents.

  38. ……I hate people. So I just hopped in this 10-19 Warsong on my little shadow priest for a little fun. Well, some jerk calls me out in BG chat for not healing him. So I tell him “For one, I didn’t see you. For another, I think I was out of mana. And lastly, I am shadow. I am still trying to heal, but it’s not really my focus.” At which point three other people feel the need to bash me for saying that.

    The sad part? I was top of the healing chart in that BG. I think that is only the second battleground I have ever just left.

  39. ‘GC said it best when he stated that even if the best pet in the game was just an untextured cube, there’d still be the min-maxers who’d use it, while a great deal of other Hunters wouldn’t.’

    Cube pets already exist 8) just don’t install Wrath.

    AT Any rate tho, I am atleast looking forward to this [still hating the expac atm tho], cause for solo bosses[old world 8D], I could use my Devilsaur, ROARSTOMPDED. Erebus would unfortunately still be best off as Tenacity :< ah well, my Hydra loves to munch multitudes anyways at once.

    But this would be epic; I could move Dragonhawks or Wind Serpents OUT of being cunning, and to tenacity or ferocity as those two offer more survivability atm for pve; and even pvp. I'm able to rez a ferocity pet and not have to feed it. Yet rez a poor cunning pet and it has to be fed which is impossible IC.

    Though unfortunately, I think this could ultimately be Blizzards fix, for Cunning.

  40. my post was eted I think O_o

    and yeah Palla I can understand you wanting to leave :/ and mean I can understand HOW hard it’s to heal even when NOT shadow, when I still had my priest I tried to heal and it was just oh god, it was a struggle as it was even as a belf for arcane torrent- but against twinks?

  42. That’s because I just saved it from the spam queue. :> If you have a post not show up like that, it usually means it’s been inappropriately flagged. If you e-mail me I’ll save it as soon as I get the e-mail; otherwise you have to wait until I remember that I need to check the queue.

  43. I think it was more just being underappreciated, and then being attacked by other people that I had just kept alive that got to me. I was the ONLY healer on alliance side, and that wasn’t even my spec. So here I am, trying to alternate between doing what I WANT to do and keeping people alive and doing pretty good at both ((Fourth in damage, first in healing)) and this jerk has the gall to say I suck because I didn’t heal him. And when I try to explain myself, I get jumped on for not healing as shadow, just because it’s the 10-19 bracket. And this was even though I WAS healing.

    People just make me angry.

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  45. Well then they’re people who are a bit well, I’d say something but yeah. I was in an AB match and while admitedly I was on my belf pally, I charged to the farm cause as per usual there was a squishie clothy all on his lonesome. So I ride up. WHAM hammer of justice the rogue. Go and zerg DK, get them all eating my face.

    I manage to kill the rogue or DK I forget which, but by that time I’m oom and dealing with the final one and it’s kinda like wham wham mana for strike, strike, wham wham fit, then just when I have like 1k hp left, all a sudden this FLOOD OF GREEN.

    It was the healer I saved and two other priests! I cackled, actually cackled cause this was the first time in a long time, that I recived heals and well proceeded to smite :)

    tbh I don’t care if you’re shadow, balance, resto, ench, whatever for whatever class, if you can heal, and you heal me, even if I die, I do appreciate it because alot of people don’t try, like you did Palla, or don’t group up to keep one person alive like those priests did.

    :/ more people need to be more appreciative of the ones who go out of their way.

  46. Finally became exhaulted with both Exodar and Ironforge! As I was jousting, however, I was wondering what it would be like to joust on the new mounts… If they have them even, or if the achievements will change in which you need to be a champion and exhaulted with the new races in order to achieve them again…

  47. oh god what when did I get an avatar D:

    And they probably will have it Rottingham, tho it may take some time as they have to develop four new mounts, two for each faction, decide which will be tourny mount which will be able to be bought with gold + seals and all that.

    For the life of me I can’t see someone jousting in a goblin go-kart. I am hoping, sorry people really am, that they get a different, racial mount.

    Seriously tauren in go-karts?

  48. Well, a race in Ogrimmar with go-karts would be funny! Maybe a vid of it on youtube would be good. and of course the tauren would win… the guy who is way to big for the go cart in the first place…

    Anyways, I hope they kinda make a new mount in a way, too. Though I love the idea of go-karts, I don’t liek how they are horde only… Maybe engineers hould make them like motorcycles and they can bash into eachother like bumber cars or something… idk

    But I was hoping for a new animal/mechanical mount for the Goblins. Gnomes have the mechanostrider, so maybe the Goblins can have a mechanical Raptor or something native to the Lost Islands.

  49. Oh the new avatars are so cute but mine looks psychotic lol. Me likes ;)

    Sorry those people were jerks to Palla. Unfortunately those are everywhere and can’t be avoided :S
    I’m only level 71 but I would love to play with you. I need some battleground buddies. I’m on the Eitrigg realm though.

  50. Anyone with a level 30-39 twink please contact my twink, Twinkmiser…
    Anyone wanting to be a 70-80 bg buddy please contact me…
    Realm, Muradin (Or however you spell it… the raid place with the fat princess at the end…)

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