Call of Duty: Black Ops Developer Chat Transcript
Transcript for
Chat: 'Call of Duty: Black Ops Chat', Tue Nov 02
5:56 PM DavidVo: Hi all.
5:56 PM DavidVo: Did you know Dan Bunting is a member of SOG?
5:56 PM DanBu: That can't be confirmed.
5:56 PM DavidVo: Ready for launch Dan?
5:56 PM DanBu: What?
5:56 PM DanBu: We're launching?
5:57 PM DavidVo: I think the game comes out on 11.09.10 or something.
5:57 PM DanBu: Oh right.
5:57 PM DavidVo: Maybe you should tell someone at Best Buy.
5:57 PM DavidVo: They might want to get some copies in the stores.
5:57 PM DavidVo: They are doing to need "a couple."
5:58 PM DanBu: Don't tell anyone... I've got a few copies.
5:58 PM Josh-BBY: Hey Call of Duty Gamers! We're about to start the chat
shortly. Stay tuned, we have some awesome talent from Treyarch to give you the
low down on their latest title: Black Ops!
5:58 PM DavidVo: NO WAY!
5:58 PM DavidVo: Dan, Josh must be talking about me.
5:58 PM DanBu: Yeah, if he had said "lack of talent", that
would have been me.
5:59 PM DanBu: As long as it was "awesome lack of talent".
5:59 PM Josh-BBY: I don't know... I’m kind of partial to Dan's video
presence. He's got a lot of moxxy.
5:59 PM DavidVo: I'm already scared by chat user EpiiCFAiiLURE.
5:59 PM DavidVo: Be gentle, Epic, and we will do the same.
6:00 PM DanBu: I think I know some of these people.
6:00 PM DavidVo: the_FPS_KING is here to teach us something about FPSes,
I think.
6:01 PM DavidVo: They are trying to tell me not to curse. That's some
6:01 PM DanBu: What the **bleep**???
6:03 PM DanBu: Technical difficulties. Stand by.
6:03 PM Josh-BBY: Wow... let's keep it clean kids.
6:03 PM DanBu: Are you referring to me?
6:04 PM DanBu: Hi to all!
6:04 PM toughniko31HD: hi!
6:04 PM capzlol: hi
6:05 PM ThisGuy107: What is the hardest thing about making a game that
looks this great!?
6:05 PM DanBu: Great question ThisGuy107. I would say the hardest thing
about making games like this is having to cut features that you love. We had a
ton of fun making this game, and it's a lot of hard work. But there are always
those features that you really wanted to make it that didn't quite get there.
6:07 PM noobeffect: Will PC players see numbers or bars in the
ping/latency column on the scoreboard?
6:07 PM DavidVo: Hi Noob. PC gamers have a ping column on the
scoreboard. It refreshes really fast.
6:08 PM Jarsh019:
Are canadians in BO?
6:09 PM DanBu: Hi Jarsh. Only in the online lobbies.
6:10 PM karamvir: What level are you guys in Blackops currently
6:10 PM DanBu: Karamvir... I'm max prestige 15. But that's only because
I cheated.
6:10 PM DavidVo: Level 50, Prestige 15 of course on my main profile.
But, most others are in the mid 20s. We are always starting fresh profiles to
keep testing the rank progression.
6:13 PM Dispy: What took the longest time to make in Black ops (no
spoilys please )
6:13 PM DanBu: Hey Dispy... Adding the currency system to the game was
one of our biggest changes and took the longest time to implement and tune. It
was a big change, but it was worth the effort and time put into it for sure. Also, the Theater feature was over a year in
development.
6:12 PM apocalyptix81:
what server settings can we change on a ranked server on the pc side?
6:13 PM DavidVo:
I saw a recent version of RCON. It's a lot of settings for both rented ranked
and even more for unrented ranked. I am working with @pcdev to get the FAQ
updated. We haven't released the full list but I think most PC
server admins should be satisfied. Sorry, I mean a lot for rented UNRANKED.
6:15 PM the_FPS_KING:
I totally would teach you something about FPSes if you gave me a chance
lol...anyways, @David - Your twitter bio says "Just remember, when the
game comes out we thought of it first." Is this in reference to an aspect
of the game that hasn't been revealed yet? And if so, will you elaborate? Plz
6:16 PM DavidVo: I am sure you would. Honestly, I get asked this
question a lot but have never answered it. The truth is pretty simple. A lot of
people like to speculate and I like to wind them up. That simple.
6:17 PM chitownforlife:
Will barebones PC use pistols as a secondary weapon?
6:18 PM DavidVo: Barebones is no different on the PC than it is on the
consoles. Right now, we have all secondary weapons being available and most of
those weapons are pistols. But it's not specfically limited to pistols. Don't fret
tho. Most launchers need a lock on making them not so great vs infantry.
6:19 PM Lamonte:
is FOV changeable in the pc version?
6:19 PM DavidVo: Yes it is. The last time I looked at it personally you
could take it to 80.
6:20 PM BlackhawkDD:
Unranked or Ranked for tatical realism servers on the pc?
6:21 PM DavidVo: For a PC gamer, I would think you would be happier with
Unranked. Ranked does have hardcore and barebones, however. That's fairly
tatical in nature.
6:22 PM Josh-BBY: Hey everyone! We'd like to hear your general gameplay
and console questions too! Let your voice be heard!
6:22 PM satansspawn: On PC can we run 9v9 on all game types or are we
restricted for s&d
6:22 PM DavidVo: Absolutely.
6:22 PM F0dd3r: Would Treyarch be willing to balance perks, killstreaks
and weapons post launch if they are deemed overpowered by the community?
6:23 PM DavidVo: Most of the official ranked servers are set up this way
right now.
6:23 PM DanBu: Hey F0dd3r - Absolutely. It's always a controversial move
to balance features post-launch. But, Treyarch has always been a big proponent
of listening to the community and making changes that are popular.
6:24 PM ThisGuy107: Is there any new features or changes to the online
network that will either improve connection quality or make it easier for
friends to play with each other?
6:25 PM DavidVo: Many to help you play with Friends. All versions of the
game have a built in Friends list, for example. This can often be quicker than
using the PSN or Xbox versions (for example).
6:26 PM LevelUpAdrian: I've purchased a ranked server for the PC version
- if that's full on launch night, is there a way to remotely kick people?
6:26 PM DanBu: Yo Adrian! Yes, you will be able to kick and ban from
your ranked servers.
6:26 PM razdor: How will wager matches work on the PC? Will it use
dedicated servers that are up by Treyarch? If so, what will happen if all the
slots in those servers are taken at one point?
6:27 PM DavidVo: We have officially ranked Wager Match servers. Once the
6 fill up, the server doesn't allow anymore in. Think of it like a Dedicated
Server with 6 slots. Run by us.
6:27 PM Lionmouth: Will PC users be able to edit their MP configuration.
If so, how in-depth (edit crosshair placement, fov, tweak Aim-Down-Scope
settings)?
6:29 PM DanBu: You can edit the same
configs that you've always been able to edit, but those changes are not
supported by Treyarch.
6:28 PM Ovanite: What are the doing to keep the online multi from
becoming a knife fest with every one using the commando perk.?
6:28 PM DavidVo: Great question. We don't actually have the Commando
perk in Call of Duty Black Ops.
6:31 PM ABC_Darth_Rogue: Can we create mixed playlists such as CTF and
S&D on the same ranked server? Will the admin tool be included with the
game or third party like RCON? Will you be allowing Steam to permit users who
pre-purchase the game to pre-load the game files to avoid long download times?
6:32 PM DavidVo: You can tell the server which base Playlist and then
you can do exclusions. So as long as we have a playlist with mixed modes,
you'll be able to customize from their. For example: Ditching a map you don't
want in rotation.
6:33 PM capzlol: Im really only going to play this game if its
competitive and it probably wont be competitive until mod tools are out. So
what time do you think mod tools will be released?
6:33 PM DanBu: No ETA on mod tools release yet. The game will ship with
highly competitive modes like hardcore, barebones, and any number of custom
game modes that you create in the Custom Games editor. You've also got Wager Match
which is crazy intense! Most competitive I've felt playing a game in years.
6:35 PM papasmurf: I’m unsure about the reporting a cheat feature, how
will you be able to look at thousands of reports? and what do you have in place
for bogus reports?
6:35 PM DanBu: What up Smurf... So, we have people at Treyarch who have
a full-time job of monitoring all of the games you guys play. They also review
the stats for cheaters reported by the game and cheaters reported by other
players. There are all sorts of secret magical things happening behind the
scenes to track cheaters.
6:37 PM blackmamba18: So, I am more of a sniper...but I am really
aggravated when one weapon type is 10x better and easier to use. Can you please
explain how shotguns are being made into a balanced primary weapon?>
6:37 PM DavidVo: We have always felt that Shotguns are better as primary
weapons instead of secondaries so you have to give up any hope of winning a mid
or long range battle.
6:38 PM Linage: In the FAQ thread on the forums in the PC section it
said the Max players have not been finalized but that was some time ago. Is
there now an answer to the Max amount of players we can have in Ranked and
unranked servers on PC?
6:38 PM DanBu: Hello Linage... It's true they are deadly at close range
for sure. But that doesn't mean you can't win if you have an assault rifle or
smg. Current player counts are set to 18 players max on ranked and 24 on
unranked, but these numbers are always tunable post-launch. We'll be
aggressively supporting the title post-launch. Remember they often have far
less ammo or they have the rechamber time. Also, shotguns have fewer
attachments than other weapons available to them.
6:40 PM the_FPS_KING: Will you reveal some of the pro perks, that we
haven't seen, to us tonight? @Dan Sly Stallone impressions don't port to
text well, just an fyi
6:40 PM DanBu: I don't know if I should reveal such secrets yet...
6:41 PM DanBu: But okay... So you've probably heard about the Hacker
perk - it allows you to detect enemy placed equipment in the map. When you
upgrade to Hacker Pro, you can actually hack their equipment to switch it to
your possession without them knowing.
6:42 PM falcon3131: what gun do you think will be the most liked gun in
the game?
6:42 PM DavidVo: The one that you have the highest K with! I am hoping
that lots of guns will be most liked. The Famas is pretty popular. As is the
MP5k.
6:44 PM Harderstylez: How long we need for lvl50 (Playtime) And when can
we reserve our clantags? (sorry for my bad English)
6:44 PM DavidVo: What's up Harder. It's tuned for about 24 hours of
playtime. The best players in the building can do it in 20 or 21. Make sure you
do the Challenges and it goes quick.
6:45 PM xJollyLlama: Will "spawn-tubing" (firing a grenade
launcher from one team's spawn to the other) be changed, gimped, or completely
blocked in Black Ops? If so, how?
6:45 PM DanBu: JollyLlama... love the name One of our tier 1 perks is
called Flak Jacket. It protects you from explosive damage. I roll with this
perk all the time to frustrate noob tubers.
6:46 PM dazzy2010: general Gameplay Question : Why did you make the
decision for SCAVENGER not to REPLENISH Tubes and Flame thrower? me
personally i love using the MASTERKEY shotgun.
6:46 PM DanBu: As to spawn tubing... we've added a grenade launcher and
grenade delay to the beginning of every match to reduce noob tube spam. I love
the Masterkey as well. But, hey, balance trumps my love. So even if people fire
them, they won't detonate for the first 5-10 seconds depending on the size of
the map. At this point, if you have Masterkey, Flamethrower, or Grenade
Launcher, you are carrying A LOT of Firepower. We did it for balance reasons.
6:48 PM Sean-K: Have Treyarch made any changes to the melee attack? I.e
range, speed, crazy aim-assist on consoles (comparing a non-commando melee
attack of modern warefare to that of the one in black ops)
6:48 PM DanBu: Sean-K... great question. A lot of people want to know
about melee. You have probably heard by now that we don't have the Commando
perk in the game.
6:49 PM Morilec: Any possibility of downloading some of the game files
before release on Steam? I preordered and really want to be able to play this
on the release date.
6:49 PM DanBu: So, everyone has the same melee distance, range and speed
to keep it all on an even playing field.
6:50 PM DavidVo: Indeed. I'm almost positive we will have pre-load. I
wish I could give you an exact date but I don't have it yet.
6:51 PM ThisGuy107: Can you give us any total numbers for the amount of
guns, reticule colors, maps, emblems or anything else that would be cool to
know?
6:52 PM DanBu:
ThisGuy107... sorry for the delay. We have over 40 unique weapons, including 2
special weapons that only appear rarely in Care Packages... the Death Machine
and Grim Reaper. There are 16 camo patterns, over 500 emblems, 14 maps... I
could go all day on numbers. Custom red dots are about 30-35
6:51 PM TheProf82: What weapons can we use on unranked servers? The ones
we've unlocked in ranked? How do you see people playing on unranked servers if
they miss out on all the unlocking and prestiging stuff thats so great about
ranked servers?
6:51 PM DanBu: Hey Prof. You can play with all weapons on your unranked servers...
ranked is where you'll experience the full rank progression of competitive
play.
6:53 PM DavidVo: I have a question. Do you think Best Buy will give me a
free Prestige edition for answering questions?
6:54 PM Josh-BBY: David, let's talk after the chat. I think we can work
something out.
6:54 PM PDE_PaulKersey:
For PC, Is Ground War Mode (TDM+DOM) returning (hope not), or will TDM and
Domination be separate?
6:54 PM DavidVo: I just gave @PCDEV a version that does not have Ground
War. TDM and DOM are seperate playlists with 18 players. That's the current
plan. As a playlist, we can modify and change them over time easily.
6:55 PM dbNibbler: Will I be able to export my theater mode clip as a
video file?
6:55 PM DanBu: Hey Nibbler... yes, you will definitely be able to export
your videos to the web. There are still many more details to come on that, so
stay tuned.
Josh|Community Connector | Best Buy® Corporate
6:56 PM donovanmill: Are there any special bonuses for prestiging in black ops? And what is the FOV on consoles?
6:56 PM DavidVo: Many. Custom Classes; Colored Clan Tags; 15 bonuses; 1 for each of the 15 prestige levels. Including some unique backgrounds for your personalized emblem. Including one that so hot your keyboard would catch on fire if I told you what it was. Guess you'll have to get to level 15. Prestige level 15, that is.
6:58 PM XcLuSiv3: Are you guys planning on supporting Black Ops as much as World at war in the terms of DLC? Also, do you guys know if Activision is going to set the price at 800msp like Cod4 and WaW or 1200msp like MW2 or even more?
6:59 PM DanBu: We will absolutely support Black Ops DLC after launch. We plan on promoting the game post-launch this time even more than on World at War. We love you guys and want to make sure you keep playing the game.
7:00 PM abenjim: If you do a lot more damage to an enemy will you get more points for the assist like in WaW or is it a set assist score no matter what?
7:00 PM DanBu: Yeah, it's just like in World at War... you always get more assist points for doing more damage... We hate feeling cheated when someone else takes your kill!
7:01 PM Jinchuuriki13: Do all weapons have gold camo and what does it take to unlock gold camo?
7:01 PM DanBu: All primary weapons have gold camo. As to what it takes to unlock them... you'll have to Prestige to find out!
7:02 PM satansspawn: any chance of going to 24 slot ranked server??
7:03 PM DanBu: We will continue to look into supporting higher player counts post-launch for unranked servers, but when it comes to Ranked games, we keep it the way the game was designed to be played. The maps, game modes, and gameplay mechanics are all very fine-tuned over months and months to play a certain way... so when it comes to competitive ranked servers, it's going to be determined by the playlists.
7:05 PM razer4488: Would you ever contemplate of doing cross platform for the game so players can finally see who are the top dogs out of xbox,PC,ps3? (which would be PC no doubt)
7:05 PM DavidVo: I would! But this is something that will need to get settled between PS3 and XBOX before we can even get it near it.
7:06 PM Odis360: When will the servers be online?
7:06 PM DanBu: Odis360... Why? Do you have an early copy of the game?
7:06 PM DavidVo: I have one.
7:06 PM DanBu: I have 3.
7:06 PM DavidVo: Can you turn the servers on for me?
7:07 PM DanBu: Just for you Vahn. But you'll be lonely.
7:07 PM DavidVo: Because I want to school some n00bs before they get to good and I have to play in shame.
7:07 PM DanBu: Okay, just you and me then. Wait... did I just call myself a noob?
7:07 PM ortizrock666: Is host migration in MP/Zombies.?
7:08 PM DanBu: Yes, there is host migration in multiplayer.
7:08 PM GamerOfFreedom: Can we connect via IP to a server, will the FPS be limited and why did you decide to only let us use playlists and not free maprotation?
7:09 PM DavidVo: Using a playlist is something that it relevent for rented ranked servers. Unranked servers will give you more control. Even then, you'll still have a ton of control over the Playlist. It's like a nice suggestion and you modify (eliminate) what you don't want.
7:10 PM sagar-04: Can you elaborate on the Private match setting we can set? And, any date set for the LE unboxing videos?
7:10 PM DavidVo: I think people are going to be blow away by the things we've done with Private Match in this game. Let me give you some examples. You can make up to 10 classes loaded out with what you want and only what you want and then the players of your game will pick between those load outs. You can customize what killstreaks are in your game mode variant. Dan and I like to player Pistols + Shotguns only. In Nuketown. Of course, I win. Always.
7:12 PM DanBu: And I win. Only one of us is telling the truth.
7:12 PM Josh-BBY: And I win.
7:12 PM TheScissors: Is there 2 different zombie modes available?
7:12 PM DanBu: What have you heard Scissors?
7:12 PM DavidVo: This is the most customizable Private Match ever seen in a Call of Duty. I can't wait to play custom made game mode variants with fans.
7:12 PM DanBu: That's classified information. Maybe.
7:15 PM EpicLegion: Will Black Ops have a Coop campaign similar to World At War? And question about PC version of game, pings in scoreboard are going to be numeric format or bars(like in MW2)?
7:16 PM DavidVo: Two forms of co-op in Black Ops. Combat Training (play vs Practice Dummies) and Zombies (play with your friends). Both are games where you fight AI Campaign co-op wasn't something we decided to persue because it didn't make sense for the type of story we were trying to tell.
7:16 PM Josh-BBY: Since we've already responded to a lot of PC related questions is there any questions you have about the global playability or features in multiplayer in general? There've been absolutely zero single player questions FYI kids!
7:17 PM donovanmill: What other than kill/deaths and score will be visible through the leaderboards?
7:18 PM DavidVo: I heart Donovanmill. We actually totally ditched the old leaderboard systems and started over. In Black Ops, we use a Score per minute Average on weekly, monthly, and all-time leaderboards. This has a lot of advantages because it doesn't reward just the players who play a lot, but those who play the best. You can still check all those stats that were in the old leaderboards in something new we have called the Combat Record. It's an in-game stats viewer. You'll dig it.
7:20 PM Glorin: Do headshots matter, particularly with the more powerful assault rifles? In mw2 stopping power created a situation where many guns killed in two hits regardless of whether or not you aimed for the head. Since BO does not have stopping power, do any of the full auto weapons have damage that is this high?
7:21 PM DavidVo: We certainly have a hit multiplier for the head. So, it matters. But since we don't have Stopping Power so most guns are 3-5 shots. Only less if a headshot. One final point. A headshot is NOT ALWAYS a one shot kill. But it does matter. A lot.
7:22 PM FriendlyFire: What would be the single best feature of COD:BO?
7:22 PM DanBu: Why, Wager Match, of course. And especially Sticks and Stones... love that mode. *cough* One in the Chamber… Mainly throwing a tomahawk at Vahn's head and bankrupting him.
7:23 PM DavidVo: /ignore DanBu
7:24 PM DarkD75: How can I get into the launch party tomorrow night? I am in the San Fernando Valley area.
7:24 PM DanBu: Send $5000 to my PayPal account. I'll send you the details offline.
7:25 PM Josh-BBY: Wow. Swiss bank accounts have become PayPal accounts.
7:25 PM tornado: You said wager matches are hosted by Treyarch , however how does this really work? Am I going to get a good ping only if I live in the US?
7:26 PM DavidVo: Ok. So, we have servers all over the place. Not just the US. And we can re-configure them however we want as demand dictates. Most of the servers are under my desk at work so I can ping sub 10s. But don't tell anyone.
7:27 PM Lamonte: DLC for mw2 was just maps are we going to get more stuff in blackops DLC? (weapons, emblems, attachments, etc...) [Also ALL NEW maps and not old ones please]
7:28 PM DanBu: Lamonte... So, I can't really go into too many details about DLC plans. I mean, c'mon... the game's not even out! But I will say to stay tuned for exciting details. And also... lot's of NEW maps.
7:31 PM iNCQRiT: Will there be a votekick feature (console, pc)?
7:31 PM DavidVo: Ite depends on the server but the vote kick feature works for PC. How we do that for OFFICIAL RANKED we are still kicking around (on/off by default) Unrented Rank will be admin controlled/option. Consoles do not have a vote kick… They do, however, have a 3 strike rule. Finally.
7:32 PM tyshoun123: Can quick scoping be allowed in private matches? And will friends be able to join a started zombie game if someone leaves?
7:34 PM DavidVo: Sorry mate. You can't join a Zombie game in progress.
7:33 PM cameron23: Just curious but out of all of the team at treyarch who is the best? (at multiplayer) and will you guys be playing online when the game comes out or just sit back and watch?
7:33 PM DavidVo: Private Matches on consoles can disable people from joining. If you do that, you don't have to kick someone. Shew. Mouthful.
7:33 PM DanBu: Cameron... WayneNoobton is teh best. pwns DJVahn.
7:34 PM dazzy2010: Do the team think it was a good idea to have FMJ a perk instead of an ATTACHMENT ? Its great to see BLING making a return as WARLORD
7:34 PM DavidVo: Long inside story just for you. We had them as attachments. We had them as perks. We went back and forth so many times that I think engineering wanted to kill me. In the end, I am happy with putting Deep Impact as a Perk instead of an attachment. It made more sense for how our perks worked. The total number and what we were trying to do with them.
7:36 PM chriscooke327: Is there going to be a game list where players can see and join custom games or does the creator have to invite people?
7:36 PM DanBu: chriscooke... Really glad you asked that question because it's not something that we've talked much about. When you create a Custom Game, you have the ability to save it to your own personal File Share. Once it's in your File Share, anyone in the community can search for it and place it in their File Share as well. Your friends will be able to look at your File Share as well. Things other than Custom Games that go into your File Share: Films, Clips, & Screenshots.
7:38 PM jj2gamer: Is TWar back in codbo? And if not whats the reason for removing it?
7:39 PM DavidVo: You are trying to make me cry, is that it? I've previously announced that WAR will not be returning to Black Ops. We talked about it a lot. We fought about it even more. In the end, it didn't fit. War has it's fans and I love those people. Sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions for the best intrests of the game production. And, I'm positive we will find a way to re-imagine it in a way that makes sense for whatever game we do.
7:42 PM XReDBuLLEnErGyX: In Theater Mode you can record gameplay..but can we also record others voices through there mic (IN-GAME CHAT)
7:42 PM DanBu: No, you cannot record other players' voice chat in your Films, unfortunately. There were too many privacy concerns, and even if we wanted to do it, there is no technical way to pull it off on the consoles yet.
Josh|Community Connector | Best Buy® Corporate
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The developer would know, at least they should help troubleshooting.
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PC MINIMUM System Requirements
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• Video/Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT 256 MB / ATI Radeon X1950Pro 256 MB Or Better/Faster
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• Sound card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
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Call of Duty: Black Ops III at Best Buy
A CALL OF DUTY CAMPAIGN UNLIKE ANYTHING BEFORE IT
Co-Op Campaign: Treyarch elevates the Call of Duty® social gaming experience by delivering a campaign with the ability to play cooperatively with up to four players online, using the same battle-tested network infrastructure and social systems that support its world-class Multiplayer and Zombies game modes.
Cinematic Arena-Style Play: Designed for co-op and re-playability, players encounter all the epic cinematic gameplay moments Call of Duty is known for delivering as well as new open-area arena-style gameplay elements designed to allow players to approach the game with a different strategy each time they play.
Character Progression: And now, every player is completely customizable: from weapons and loadouts, to abilities and outfits, all with full progression systems and a personalized armory to show off accomplishments, providing a constantly-evolving campaign experience.
PREPARE FOR A LEVELED-UP MULTIPLAYER
New Movement System: With Black Ops III, Treyarch premieres a new momentum-based chained-movement system, allowing players to fluidly move through the environment with finesse, using controlled thrust jumps, slides, and mantling abilities in a multitude of combinations, all while maintaining complete control over your weapon at all times.
Tailored Map Design: Maps are designed from the ground-up for the new movement system, allowing players to be successful with traditional movement, as well as advanced tactics and maneuvers.
Specialist Characters: Black Ops III multiplayer also introduces the new Specialist character system, which allows players to rank up and master each specific character’s battle-hardened capabilities and weapons. With this addition to Traditional and Weapons XP progressions systems, Black Ops III multiplayer gives players three different ways to rank up.
FIGHT THE UNDEAD IN AN ALL-NEW HORROR STORY
All-New Narrative: No Treyarch title would be complete without its signature Zombies offering – a full-game experience with its own distinct storyline right out of the box.
XP Progression System: Black Ops III Zombies is the most immersive and ambitious Call of Duty® Zombies to date, with a full XP-based progression system for players that adds depth and re-playability to the engaging gameplay Zombies fans have come to expect.
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Brian|Senior Social Media Specialist | Best Buy® Corporate
Private MessageIf they were going to do a Blops III limited edition console I'm sure they'd have announced it by now. Thing is, what would they do? I mean, the colouring for Blops is black and orange... the PS4 is already black, and it has an orange light. I am however very surprised that they haven't (as of yet) done one though. Given all the limited edition PS4s that exist for other games that Sony have strong tie ins with, like MGSV, Batman and Destiny, I'd have thought a Blops III limited edition console was a shoe-in. It is after all the biggest franchise in gaming.
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Can I use a PS3 controller to play Call Of Duty Black Ops for Mac
Is it possible to use a playstation 3 controller with call of duty black ops bought from the app store running on mountain lion 10.8.3 (without 3rd party software)
I think Call of Duty doesn't support controllers due to the balance implications in multiplayer.
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Will you guys have anymore of the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Juggernog Editions for Xbox One?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/call-of-duty-black-ops-iii-juggernog-edition-xbox-one/4281800.p?id=bb4281800&skuId=4281800
I wouldn't count on a restock, but they wouldn't be able to tell you anyway if they were going to.
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Call of Duty Black Ops III Limited Edition Console
I am wondering if Sony will ever decide to make a Call of Duty Black Ops III Console design? 1. I think it would be funny to annoy the butthurt crying xbox fanboys who are stupidly want to riot.2. It will boost their sales by trying get xbox fans to get a ps4 What do you guys think
If they were going to do a Blops III limited edition console I'm sure they'd have announced it by now. Thing is, what would they do? I mean, the colouring for Blops is black and orange... the PS4 is already black, and it has an orange light. I am however very surprised that they haven't (as of yet) done one though. Given all the limited edition PS4s that exist for other games that Sony have strong tie ins with, like MGSV, Batman and Destiny, I'd have thought a Blops III limited edition console was a shoe-in. It is after all the biggest franchise in gaming.
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Call of duty black ops has come out on mac, and the system requirements say 2.4ghz is needed, i only have 2.3ghz, do you think the game will run okay? thank you
This is too generic of a statement. They are working on support for the 2012 MacBook Pros and because of the better architecture in the 2012 machines a 2.3GHz machine may perform well.
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Gamecenter error: connecting to online services on call of duty black ops zombies for iOS.
So I got this new app 3 months ago called Black ops call of duty : zombies. And I LOVE it!! But every time I try to join an online game, wether it be map vote, single map, 2-4 players, restarting my phone... What happens is it takes me to the gamecenter connect page, where it connects me with another player, but after a few seconds, it takes me into the multiplayer lobby, and then pulls up a message saying "connecting to online services" and it does that for a minute before saying "error joining room" and makes me quit the online game, leaving the other person kicked off the server because the other person (me) left or was kicked, I do NOT want to jailbreak my iPhone for this problem, and I am very experienced with iPhones and other electronics, both apple and Microsoft, if there is anyone who knows how I can fix this problem WITHOUT jail breaking my phone or paying money.. (Maybe ill pay money, it depends...) then Please tell me! It has done this to me EVERYTIME for the past 3 months, and still does... So please help!
I don't think it's an issue on the phone. you may need to contact the app developer. Make sure that the app you are using is not associated on your game center account.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops extreme performance issues
I got this game and installed it on my iMac using Bootcamp. You can see my specs below, late 2009 model iMac. I've been doing a lot of gaming on my iMac with Bootcamp, I played Modern Warfare 1 & 2 and I've been playing some games that came out this year like Starcraft 2 without many issues, so I'm feeling like my rig is still pretty good, obviously not the best it could be... it's only a year old after all.
After playing around with the graphical settings extensively, I can't get Black Ops to run at an acceptable level. Even with everything set to lowest and resolution on 800x600 resolution, the FPS is still horrendous. The strange thing is it runs almost as poorly in my monitor's native resolution (2560x1440). When I try turning the other settings to higher levels, however, my computer can't even begin to handle it.
Any ideas? I'm about to return the game this feels so hopeless. If only I could afford an xbox or playstation...Have you taken the graphics updates? are you really still running 10.6.2? I ave seen posts with people having issues with 10.6.5 but tbh iMacs are not stunning gaming machines, a windows pc at the same cost would have been a better choice for gaming. I use a PS3 for my games and would not consider the iMac an appropriate machine for gaming, that's just my view. Yes you can game on them but its never going to be as good as some other choices for less cash.
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Quick question for all of ya.
I have an early MBP - 2.66 GHz - 4 GB Ram
What graphics settings are working for those of you with the same? I mostly play multiplayer.
Thanks,
CLMNo reply.....???????
Wat is tis happening?????? -
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Developer Chat Transcript
Transcript for Chat: 'Live Chat: WoW Mists of Pandaria', Tue Sep 18 18:04:25 CDT 2012
Zarhym: Hello, all, and welcome to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Developer Chat, presented by Best Buy! Blizzard community manager Crithto and I will be helping facilitate the discussion today and filter as many of your questions as possible for our developers to answer.
Crithto: That’s right! Thank you, Zarhym, and welcome everyone. On the panel to answer your questions today we have World of Warcraft lead designers Greg Street, Cory Stockton, Dave Kosak, and Ion Hazzikostas. Questions are pouring in and our developers are preparing their initial responses, so let’s get started!
Guest-47: Is the second son of DeathWing going to be the Second Prince? The achitvment two Princs says that Wration and another 'Prince' will settle something important, is that true?
DaveKosak: To Guest-47 "Two Princes" is a placeholder name that may or may not reflect the final achievements in later patches. Suffice it to say, Wrathion's story will continue!
Guest-101: What was the idea with Monk healing? what mix of elements inspired it and defined it?
GregStreet: To Guest-101 Mostly we wanted it to feel different from existing healers, so there is an emphasis on a channeled spell as the main heal. We also wanted to emphasize movement and damage-dealing to heal, because those were core to the monk class.
Guest-51: Do you feel the way of nerfing Dragon Soul, by nerfing the bosses. Was more successful than the Icecrown Citadel version, by buffing the players health and damage?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-51 Yes, one of the awkward things about the Icecrown Citadel buff was that, over time, it caused players to feel weaker when they were doing anything other than raiding Icecrown. It also had some potentially distorting effects, benefiting some specs and roles more than others. Weakening the enemies instead, as we've done in Dragon Soul, is more in keeping with how we've traditionally handled our tuning adjustments, going all the way back to Vanilla raids.
Guest-43: Where is N'Zoth? He was mentioned at Blizzcon, then was talked about in Dragon Soul. What is going on with him?!
DaveKosak: To Guest-43 N'zoth is still lurking. The Titans couldn't defeat it... maybe someday we'll get our chance? Don't expect to hear anything about him in Pandaria, though!
drwuky: Hello. If someone from a CRZ hits Level 90 as first player on my realm, will he get the Realm First! Level 90 achievement for my realm or for his realm?
IonHazzikostas: To drwuky His realm
parrjj01: It seems like PVP never gets much attention from the devlopers during these type of events. As a hardcore lover of PVP and the many people that are in my guild, we have really gotten frustrated, bored, etc with how PVP is handled. Will you guys ever be implanting anything like how LFR system works. Were there will be healers on each side, for a better chance of your team succeeding? I don't know about anyone else but I really hate being on my side with 0 healers and the horde have 4 in E...
GregStreet: To parrjj01 Our BG queueing system was built a long time ago. Since that time we've engineered the much more powerful system that we use for Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder. We'd now like to reengineer that system to work for BG queues as well, which would give us the ability to better balance healers, item levels, and perhaps even premade vs. PUG. No promises, but it's something we're working on.
Guest-46: The Theramore event was a little... Underwhelming. Developers have previously stated they spent more time on the content in Pandaria than the Theramore event. Will we see more diversity and excitement in the scenarios in Pandaria?
DaveKosak: To Guest-46 There's a LOT of diversity in the scenarios. For example. there's a monkey pirate island where you're running around fetching up brew and fighting randomized bosses, and other insanity. We really tried to experiement with some different mechanics, and we got bolder as development continued.
Gehn: Any chance we will ever see attunements or rep based dungeons again or is that strictly a in-the-past type thing?
IonHazzikostas: To Gehn There's something a bit like a traditional attunement in the 5.0 raids: Players must defeat Grand Empress Shek'zeer in the Heart of Fear raid before they may begin the Terrace of Endless Spring raid. It's definitely something we're open to exploring further in the future.
Guest-30: Hi. I've had a lot of concerns regarding hit / expertise with tanks. Currently in MoP it seems tanks would reforge most their defensive stats into hit / expertise. It's extremely annoying design
GregStreet: To Guest-30 We felt like previously tanks could just ignore even hitting targets because threat was easy to maintain and survivability was based entirely around cooldowns. Now you'll need to hit the target, but you'll gain resources for doing so, so we hope the experience is more engaging to tanks. More *fighting* less standing there.
Guest-98: Will the ability to obtain legendary mats on LFR mode make it required for raiders, at least until they complete the quest?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-98 "Required" is one of those tricky words. We understand that for many players anything that gives even an incremental power gain is seen as mandatory. Progress on one portion of the early steps of the legendary questline may be made in LFR mode, so players who want to obtain their gem from Wrathion as quickly as possible will likely benefit from doing LFR alongside their Normal or Heroic raiding. LFR wings will unlock incrementally, after Normal mode, so when someone in a top progression guild is defeating up to 16 bosses when Heart of Fear and Terrace open, doing LFR will only add 6 to that total (from Mogu'shan Vaults LFR). While in the long run, we'd like to minimize players' obligation to run LFR if they are part of progression raiding guilds, that's challenging at the start of an expansion when everyone is using the same dungeon blues. We hope it'll be different for future tiers. Finally, the true power of Wrathion's gem lies in the combined effect of the weapon and the gem itself; an LFR player's Sha-touched weapon will be significantly less powerful than a Heroic raider's.
Guest-28: As the Cataclysm Expansion is now over. As a team what were your take aways both good and bad?
DaveKosak: To Guest-28 From a quest perspective, we thought that the storytelling in Cataclysm was very strong, but that the zones were very linear. For Pandaria, we wanted to swing the pendulum the other way and open up the game more, rewarding exploration. I think we found a much better balance. Kun-lai Summit, for example, is pretty open-ended, even though it's got some great stories in there. That's just one example - we're always learning from expansions. The other big takeaway was that we wanted more things for players to do, depending on what sort of challenges they want. Challenge Modes, Pet battles, and the new Daily Quest structure all appeal to different people, hoepfully with the goal of giving everyone more content no matter what your playstyle!
Guest-124: How much game time do you think will we get in exploration of the continent of pandaria?
CoryStockton: To Guest-124 We really packed in the content with Mists, that being said the amount of time it takes you is really going to depend on your playstyle. We have so many different things for players to do. Quests, reputations, dailys, sceanrios, pet battles.... The idea is to let players make progress doing whatever kind of activity they like best.
Amd11394: Prior to patch 5.0.4, When we still had the cataclysm 'revised' talent trees, Elemental shamans gained an addition to one of their talents entailing that when flame shock was dispelled we gained a temporary buff entitled 'Lave Flows' This most recent patch, with the new Mists 'revised' Talent trees highlighted the removal of the cataclysm talent system, and with it went Lava Flows, what is your reasoning for removing this valuable ability?
IonHazzikostas: To Amd11394 Defensive dispels are significantly more limited in 5.0 than they were previously. Passives like Lava Flows were designed as an answer to an environment in which defensive dispel magic was spammed constantly, and it was nearly impossible to get a buffed Lava Burst off against an attentive dispeller who could remove your Flame Shock while you were casting the spell. With an 8-second cooldown on dispels now, a healer who dispels a Flame Shock may find that they are unable to dispel the Fear or Polymorph that targets another teammate immediately thereafter. We'll keep an eye on the evolving PvP metagame in light of the new dispel changes, and consider re-adding something like Lava Flows if it proves necessary.
drwuky: Will the storyline of the Sha continue with Patch 5.1 or later patches?
DaveKosak: To drwuky For the most part, the Sha issues will be tackled by players in 5.0. BUT... not everyone wants to let sleeping Sha lie. Someone might start stirring up trouble beginning with the patches...
samich: Can we expect mailboxes on the wandering isle on release? was the removal of the one that was there for quest testing purposes?
DaveKosak: To samich Pandaren Neutrality caused a lot of design issues we had to solve. Mail ended up being a headache. What was easiest -- for us AND for our users -- was to remove mail entirely until you choose a faction. That's nice and clean and prevents a lot of issues people saw on the beta. So, no mailboxes on the Wandering Isle - sorry!
Guest-114: I know you guys recently changed the LFR loot (weapons) from the last boss in a LFR instance, are you guys going to do any other changes to LFR to make heroic raiders not feel as they have to raid 2 formats a week to be competitive?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-114 As I mentioned in reply to an earlier question, it's a goal of ours but it's a tough one to realize in a world where everyone is starting out in dungeon blues and looking to get their hands on any and all epics. It's our expectation that by the time Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR unlock, most heroic raiders will have replaced their dungeon gear and have less to gain from also running LFR mode. In future raid tiers, people who are already in Heroic gear from the prior raid zone should not find the next tier's LFR gear to be an improvement over what they have.
Guest-260: Will there be an appearance of the Burning Legion in the end of MoP?
DaveKosak: To Guest-260 The threat of the Burning Legion is still out there, and it's very much a threat to Azeroth. The mortal races are mostly focused on the current war, but not everyone has forgotten about what's out there and the challenges to come... Wrathion, in particular, is already trying to look ahead.
Guest-271: Would say that the new challenge mode dungeon gold times are going to be the "Gladiator" equivalent of PVE?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-271 That would be our hope. Seeing someone sporting a set of challenge mode armor in town should be akin to seeing someone on a Gladiator mount -- you know they did something extremely skillful to earn it, and it's not the sort of reward you can outgear and obtain later on.
CoryStockton: To Guest-271 That's probably a pretty close comparison. Beyond gold times we will have server and guild leaderboards too. That's probably where the highest level of competition will be.
Guest-160: Christie Golden mentioned in an interview that she worked closely with the quest team when she wrote Tides of War to make sure everything was very close. However, there are some notable differences between the book and the scenario during the Alliance side of it. Did the storyline of the scenario change late into the book's writing?
DaveKosak: To Guest-160 We worked hard to sync with Golden during development. The Alliance side of the scenario went through LOTS of iterations, including when it happend (before the attack? During the attack? After the attack?) Ultimately we went with the one that gave us the greatest gameplay. We want the events of the book and game to match as closely as possible, but we want the best book possible and the best game possible, so they won't be word-for-word identical. This can create some fun arguments. "Well, according to this book..." "YEAH, but I WAS THERE, MAN!" We work hard to make sure the discrepancies are minor, but we definitely don't struggle for perfection.
Guest-292: Will we ever see cross-server mail or non-boa cross faction mailing phiesibly within the 5.0 content?--Gorebane of Eonar (P.S. Wa
CoryStockton: To Guest-292 It's on our list and something we really want to do. It's really just a matter of the engineering time it takes us to get it in.
im_a_rockstar: WoW has always been a mostly raid or die game. The changes in MoP to Justice Points, the item level difference on gear obtained outside of raid, are kind of steps backwards away from alternatives, pushing us back to having our only choice to be a raid. Are there any plans to give the non-raiders / people with random avaiabilities any form of meaningful character progression in terms of player power, besides only raids?
IonHazzikostas: To im_a_rockstar We have a number of gear acquisition routes that do not involve raiding. We've broadened the avenues for acquiring Valor Points, which can now be earned by doing dungeons, daily quests, scenarios, and so forth. That gear will be at least item level 489 (compared to 476 from LFR). There's also crafted gear. And of course future content updates will continue to provide upgrades outside of raiding. All of that said, I'd encourage you to check out the new raids as well -- the addition of the LFR system makes them more accessible than ever.
NinjaFox: To Dave Kosak: The reddit AMA gave some teasers that Sylvanas, Vol'jin, and Thrall (specifically in 5.1) would be integral parts to the story. Rexxar and Koltira were also mentioned. On the Alliance side, other than Varian, Anduin and Jaina are there any notable leaders/lore figures we can expect to see active through the Pandaria storyline?
DaveKosak: To NinjaFox Great question! Many of the Alliance leaders will come into play. Tyrande has a couple of moments in 5.1. We also want to do more with the dwarven storyline (we're still kicking around ideas of how best to do that.) The trick is making sure those characters have meaningful moments. We'll definitely spend a lot of time with Jaina and King Wrynn.
DeathFish1: With the creation of the farms at Halfhill, the base structure for player and guild housing has subsequently been created as well. Is this the direction you have chosen to go with for player housing or was this even considered as an option. One very good point about this option is that multiple locations for housing can be placed thoughout the game world, preventing the issue of removing players from the world.
CoryStockton: To DeathFish1 It's certainly a baby step in that direction. We are really excited to see how players react to it in Mists. We already have lots of ideas on how we can expand this kind of content in the future too!
DaveKosak: Regarding DeathFish's question (Love the name, Deathfish!) when we think about things like player-housing, we really want to look at how this can contribute to gameplay. The farm is awesome because it ties into a lot of systems, it creates some fun crafting opportunities, it impacts the economy, etc. It's a great experiment for us because if it's popular, it gives us a lot of data into how to create this type of content in the future.
Gosu: What is the design philosophy behind PvP balance and how satisfied are you with PvP balance in Mists of Pandaria?
GhostCrawler: To Gosu One of the main ones was to allow more cross-over of gear at the lower end but not the upper end of content. (In 4.0 it was more of the opposite.) It's not fun to die in PvP over and over until you get decent gear.
Guest-134: How come with this expansion you choose to go with Pandas and not something that was already in the game, such as The Emerald Dream, maybe going into the Dragonflights, or even something more with The Demonic legion.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-134 The pandaren are a race we've been looking to introduce into the WoW universe for some time now, since their introduction as a neutral hero back in the Warcraft 3 expansion. They were originally a top contender for the Alliance race back in Burning Crusade, but we ended up going with the draenei at the time because they better fit the Outland-focused story we were trying to tell, and because it didn't feel right forcing a historically neutral race like the pandaren into one specific faction. When we were looking to make an expansion centered around themes of exploration and discovery against a backdrop of Alliance-Horde conflict, the pandaren just seemed like the right fit: Noble and enigmatic race caught in the middle of the war between the Alliance and Horde as it spirals out of control, forced to choose sides as the outside world descends upon their homeland.
Guest-179: ogue's shadow blades visual effect is lacking, and needs more of a pop. Paladins get ashbringer; could rogues get something equally cool looking?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-179 We agree that some rogue visuals (Shadow Blades, Shadow Walk, etc.) could use some more love. That's something we'd like to do in a future patch.
bocasha: In Pandaria will we see another 9 month period where we will have no new stuff coming out?
CoryStockton: To bocasha We are doing everything within our power to avoid this. We all feel that 9 months without content is pretty much unacceptable to our players. A glimmer of hope: we are already knee deep into both patch 5.1 and 5.2. Our plan is to deliver these much faster than anyone is expecting.
Guest-432: When will we see Sargeras, it's one of the reasons I've stuck around for so long...
DaveKosak: To Guest-432 Sargeras would be one monstrous raid boss! He's one of the most iconic, key villains of the franchise. Believe me, when he comes to Azeroth, you're going to feel it LONG before he even gets there.
khalanil: Have you thought about implementing zones or battlegrounds where players are normalized by level, similar to the gear level normalization in the upcoming challenge mode dungeons? This could allow players to quest or PVP with lower-level friends, and it could be fun to see a trio of level 20s take down a level 90.
DaveKosak: To khalanil This is a tremendous question, because it's something we've been talking about and exploring. With Challenge Modes, we now have tech to scale your item level, so that we can guarantee the right level of difficulty. Having this tech opens lots of doors for us down the line. We don't have anything to announce, but it's a step toward a lot of the features you're describing.
parrjj01: I really love the real ID system, which has helped me communicate with my cousin who lives in Hawaii. The only downfall is, he's horde. Neither of us want to change fractions but we'd love to run toghther doing something. Will you guys ever considor letting us 'group' toghther and duke it out in battlegrounds, but disabling chat (even in real ID terms) so the no communcation rules still apply?
GhostCrawler: To parrjj01 We don't have huge design problems with letting you play with friends from other factions. The biggest challenge is the game was never designed with the concept of letting you be allied with the opposing faction, so it would be a tremendous amount of work. I won't give up hope for it though! (We always joke about a tauren having the Hallow's End 2D gnome mask when you're grouped with him.)
Guest-184: Can one stand anywhere in Orgrimmar(including right next to the questgiver that sends you to the gunship) when MoP is activated or do we have to be outside the Garrosh building? Good to know for us who are rushing as fast as we can!
GhostCrawler: To Guest-184 If you are online, you should get the quest pushed to you no matter where you are. We don't want to over-promise though. This is technically challenging stuff and it might be the case that we need everyone to relog. /crosses fingers
Guest-37: The story of Tides of War is really interesting. I don't think players can get engaged if they have no idea what's happening, the bomb dropping is really anticlimactic. I felt a bit disappointed so little got included in the scenario. Was this because of lack of time, of developers or because you rather keep all that info in the novels.
DaveKosak: To Guest-37 I've been watching the Theramore feedback closely, and this comment seems pretty universal. We tried to keep everything all in the scenario, to make it really self-contained, but not burden it with lots of story that you have to slog through every time you played the scenario. It's pretty clear from the feedback that people wanted more story. We should've surrounded the scenarios with more quests or explanations to help round out the story for the people who wanted to know what exactly was happening. Lesson learned!
Dude7198: Will there be a Realm First achievement that involves Pet Battles?
CoryStockton: To Dude7198 We did not make any realm first achievements for pet battles. Our intention for the feature is that its more of a casual activity and a realm first just did not feel like a good fit.
Guest-261: Nobody I know is impressed with the promise of an extra piece of loot for normal 25 mans. What we would be impressed with is separate realm first achievements for each raid format. Any chance of seeing something like this?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-261 Possibly. On several servers that have one top 25-player guild that's far above the rest of the server in progression, that might turn into incentivizing them to split up the week after their 25-player Realm First to snag the 10-player one. Not sure that's great gameplay for anyone. That said, we recognize that there's interest in making it a bit easier to distinguish between 10-player and 25-player kills in statistics or achievements.
Guest-257: Were the stained glass windows in Ulduar forshadowing of the Sha? They look very similar to the Sha.
DaveKosak: To Guest-257 I'd like to say we planned that. [Long pause] But I would be lying. I think it's just a happy coincidence that fits wonderfully into our lore.
Guest-174: When will transmog rules be loosened up a little. Main hand/one hand weapons, for instance.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-174 If I had to guess, we will loosen them at some point. We would probably wait until some time after the MoP launch when players will appreciate it more. It's easy for smaller features to get lost when there is so much new content. The designers will discuss it soon (tm).
Guest-88: We saw some of the animations on the challenge mode gear, will the druid set animations be visible when the druid is shapeshifted?
CoryStockton: To Guest-88 The custom effects are based on the armor itself so they will only be visible when you are in caster form.
Guest-306: Will content come at a faster rate in MoP? It seems that we might be pushing thought content at a much faster rate.
DaveKosak: To Guest-306 That is definitely our goal! As we speak the quest team is simultaneously working on patches 5.1 and 5.2. Our hope is to keep the story and content rolling forward. It's definitely a focus for the team - I can't make any promises, but I guarantee we're trying and I hope you'll notice the results!
CoryStockton: To Guest-306 I know we sound like a broken record on this but we are really pushing hard to deliver content to you guys faster than ever with the Mists patch cycle. As Dave mentioned, we are already making awesome progress on the first set of patches.
Zawani: Hey, I had a question regarding arms warrior pve rotation. It feels like there is to much rng involved with the rotation very rarely do I get more than 2 stacks of taste for blood and sometimes I can use overpower 5 or 6 times without a single proc of it, which then will leave me rage starved and without buttons to press, I was wondering if you could lower the damage bonus of the buff or damage of OP while also increasing the proc chance as well.
GhostCrawler: To Zawani Think of getting a high stack for Taste for Blood as a random bonus, much like getting enraged from a bunch of crits in a row. You shouldn't hold your whole rotation waiting for a 4 or 5 stack, because it won't happen that often. If you're at risk of rage capping, try to Slam. If you don't have the GCD to Slam then it's probably worth just using the Heroic Strike unless you think you'll be able to Colossus Smash really soon.
Guest-43: Will we ever see Magni Bronzebeard return from being frozen under Ironforge?
DaveKosak: To Guest-43 Magni is like the definition of BLING. If we continue his story, we'll make sure to handle it in-game. I wouldn't count on seeing him return during the Pandaren story arc, though.
Guest-313: Greg just said on twitter that the 25s versus 10s situation was handled in the AMA a lot, but nothing came from that apart from an understanding that 25s do have it harder now and could use some more compensation, Don't you have concrete plans for that, more than the tiny bit of extra loot 25s will have? The issue will only get even more pronounced the next weeks during progression.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-313 It's something we discuss frequently internally. We don't have anything final to announce just yet, but we love 25-player raiding and intend to do what we can to preserve it.
Guest-6: Windwalkers have been very upset with a couple things in particular with their spec. The first is Fists of Fury, we don't like being rooted and channeling an attack when our kit is supposed to be mobile. Can we please get this mechanic revisited? As well, we don't have literally any useful raid utility. Zen meditation is very weak. Will this be addressed at all post-launch?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-6 "Mobile" doesn't mean "never, ever stops moving." Like many specs, Windwalkers will do more damage when stationary but can still do some damage when moving. Deciding when you should FoF and when you can't is one of the decision points that separates good monks from great ones. We're not inclined to change it at this time. As far as raid utility goes, we're really reluctant to hand more "must have" buffs. We don't want Windwalkers to be mandatory, especially for smaller, 10-player raid groups. If they are never taken at all, we'll take some kind of action, but I'd be very surprised if that's the case.
Guest-531: Are there plans on fixing the broken Engineering Flying Machine that has been broken since patch 4.1?
CoryStockton: To Guest-531 We will look into this and make sure we get it fixed.
Guest-413: Is there a chance we might see class specific factions developed more? Kirin Tor, Ebon Blade, Argent Bros, Ravenholdt...Could we see something similar arise for Warriors, Hunters etc?
DaveKosak: To Guest-413 We're cooking up some cool Warlock stuff we can hopefully announce soon. In a more general sense, we LOVE class-specific content, but to do it right takes development time (believe me, I have to somehow schedule all this stuff.). When it came down to deciding between more zones of content and more faction content OR class-specific stuff, we opted to create more content for everyone. But, again, we love class-specific content, we'll try to squeeze in some cool challenges for the various challenges in the patches to come...
Guest-74: Are we going to get more story-telling in scenarios? The Theramore scenario was lackluster compared to the book, key story elements haven't even been address in-game yet.(Kirin Tor leader)
DaveKosak: To Guest-74 I addressed this earlier, but keep in mind that we want scenarios to be replayable. We definitely didn't want to burden them with tons of story that you have to wade through every time you play it. As I said for Theramore, people obviously wanted more context, which probably was best served by some one-time quests on either end of the scenario. That's a lesson we're pulling forward.
Guest-335: Will Wintergrasp ever be added as a max level battleground?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-335 Potentially, if there is enough demand for it. We would introduce it as you suggest as a true Battleground to avoid faction imbalance issues.
Guest-28: Beside the lifting on the mist with the clock strikes midnight on the 25th. We have come to expect events to complement the expansion. They have been fascinating and very fun. Should we expect events over the next 6 days? Or was the Scenario it?
CoryStockton: To Guest-28 The Theramore scenario is intended to be a preview of what players can expect from scenarios in Mists. It is by no means a launch event and thats intentional. We made a call early on to put that time into developing more content for Mists that will last and not be over in a week.
Guest-33: I loved the "Visions of the Past" quest-line in Vashj'ir. Will we see anything similar in upcoming content?
DaveKosak: To Guest-33 This is the "Battle-Maiden" questline, where you got to play as a naga badass for a while. I think these are a great break from the standard gameplay if they're well-designed, but we would want to use them sparingly. (After all, it's not WoW if you're not playing your class and kicking butt!) That said, there's a couple fun moments in Pandaria that have similar gameplay. In the Valley of Four Winds, you get to play as Chen Stormstout for a little bit. After kicking around a lot of ideas, we ultimately decided to give you a single 'Chen-Fu' button that makes him randomly do awesome kung-fu moves. It's a short sequence, but it's fun for storytelling and gives you a chance to Chen it up.
Gehn: Any updates on future guild leveling past 25?
CoryStockton: To Gehn We are totally open to increasing guild levels and the associated rewards but only when the game feels like it needs more of that content. A large number of guilds are still nowhere near level 25 so Mists did not feel like a good fit to add more guild levels.
Guest-214: Mists of Pandaria features an ambitious number of 18 raid bosses and I'm very excited about that. Im curious though as to how many bosses we can expect to see in future tiers? Firelands and Dragon Soul felt like small tiers with only 7 or 8 encounters in the tier.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-214 We like big raid tiers too, and will do our best to continue delivering them. We're planning for the next tier after Heart of Fear/Terrace to be a fair bit larger than Firelands or Dragon Soul were.
Guest-197: Whats would your answer be to the players who feel that by making multiple classes bring similar buffs and abilities, that the classes are losing their 'uniqueness'? Introducing combo points to ShadowPriests/Ret Paladins for example
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-197 Ultimately, there are only so many distinct resource mechanisms, and many of them are not great from a gameplay perspective. We'd rather differentiate our classes and specs on the basis of their overall feel and unique capabilities such as Death Grip for Death Knights or shaman' totems. I don't think many people are likely to mistake a shadow priest for a rogue just because they build up a resource and then consume it to deal damage.
Guest-395: Will the gear in Theramore's Fall 85 version be available in the 90 version?
CoryStockton: To Guest-395 The gear and the rewards for the 85 version are only available now. The 90 version has standard scenario rewards (Valor and a chance at a dungeon blue)
Lansuer: Where do you see races that are neutral leaning like the Blood Elves going within the Horde? They seem rather separate from the Horde story since Cata's launch.
DaveKosak: To Lansuer Stick around for patch 5.1 - we pick up the Blood Elves' story and propel it forward. Finally, a chance to interact with Lor'themar! Most players don't even know who he is.
Guest-121: What are your thoughts on healing classes in MoP? Are you seeing the type of balance you want in the new expansion between all classes/specs? I ask because we are seeing a lot of blending of healers into one unit, instead of variety. All healers can do everything now to state it plainly which is making certain classes stronger choices than others for non-healing reasons. Sure some do slightly better in certain situations, but the classic archetypes are no longer as valid. It removes the need fo...
GhostCrawler: To Guest-121 We strive for harmony with the healer design. If healer niches are too well-defined, then you are encouraged to stack Resto druids for one fight and then Holy paladins for the next fight. We'd rather see a diversity of healers. As far as healer balance is currently, we're pretty happy with it at 90. We still need to see Disc priests really figure out all of the nuances of Spirit Shell and we want to make sure all of the healers are really strong for Challenge Mode gold runs.
drwuky: Will you guys decrease the experience needed from 88-89 and 89-90 or increase the experience gained in Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes before release? At the moment you can NOT hit Level 89 if you start with Level 88 and 0% experience in Townlong Steppes (~10% experience missing) and also Level 90 is impossible with Dread Wastes quests only (~5% experience missing). These are datas with the 10% experience guild perk and yes, I've got both zone completed achievements.
CoryStockton: To drwuky We are still actively tuning the XP. We will look into it.
Velenor1: Question for Dave Kosak. I have always wondered why the Alliance has continuously frowned upon the Scarlet Crusade. Their main purpose was to simply eradicate the undead. With their return in MoP, we are tasked with eliminating them -again- with the aid of Lillian Voss. Why is it that we have turned their organization down for so long when we more or less have the same goals in mind?
DaveKosak: To Velenor1 The complexities really aren't in the game, but the Scarlet Crusade was very much a rogue organization. Great priests and warriors who would've otherwise served the Alliance disappear into the crusade, who serves its own ends. (In Northrend, it was clear their leadership had succumbed to demonic influence. It's hard to make up for that.) To be honest, the main reason to revisit the Crusade in 5.1 was a gameplay reason and not a story reason - it was a favorite dungeon that we really wanted to revisit with new mechanics. We didn't think a lot of story was needed.
Guest-553: Question from Munich, Germany. As the Octoberfest here and Brewfest in WoW are coming up, I wondered whether anyone at Blizzard did "field research" for designing Brewfest at the real Octoberfest ? The costumes and music are done really well.
CoryStockton: To Guest-553 We do field research on Brewfest every Friday.
DaveKosak: Sorry - meant to say 5.0 in that last question
Guest-235: Why is the theramore event so boring? Its way too easy and if you didn't read the book then you have no idea what's going on, you also wouldn't know why jaina isn't dead and why azeroth isn't completely destroyed. Do you think it would've been smarter to put more lore in the scenario and would've made it more fun?
Zarhym: To Guest-235 Dave already spoke to the story part of your question (if you missed it Best Buy will be providing a full transcript after the chat). To address your concern of difficulty, we agree it was too easy on release. We pushed a hotfix recently that increased the HP of all enemies in Theramore's Fall. The fact is that Scenarios in Mists will be more tailored for players in quest gear and dungeon blues. But players at level 85 were steamrolling through it in Dragon Soul gear, and the hotfix was to compensate for this a little.
Guest-494: Do all designers use the same in-house editor? Or do you have different tools for different jobs? How do you handle collisions in your edits?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-494 We all use a massive proprietary tool called WoWEdit, which has been showcased a couple of times at Blizzcons in the past. We all use this tool to create and edit everything from creatures to spells to quests, and our level designers use it to actually shape the terrain of the outdoor world. At the end of the day, there are countless columns and rows in tables that define the properties of the game world and the players and monsters that inhabit it. We're only able to do the work that we do because of our amazing Tools team, a dedicated group that is constantly refining and updating our editor to enable us to create content more quickly and with fewer bugs.
Guest-186: On the World of Warcraft website, it lists tradeskill patterns, plans, etc. that the player is missing. Some of those items are no longer in game. Are there any plans to reincorporate those missing plans back into the game so the players have an opportunity to try to get all of their missing tradeskill plans?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-186 I'd hate to add back plans with no real game purpose just for sake of completeness. To be honest, I'd rather get rid of more of the older recipes that don't have a strong purpose.
Guest-160: Compared to designing dungeons, how difficult is it to design scenarios? Does it take more or less resources to make scenarios?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-160 The biggest challenge for us was just figuring out what scenarios should be. How long should they last? Should they be hard? How much variability should they have from run to run? Now that we've gone through that process, they should take much less time to design than dungeons. The biggest time expenditure on dungeons is the amazing art that goes into them.
Amd11394: Considering Dispels remove ALL magic effects, even if they dispelled Fear the Flame shock would go with it, regardless of if they intended to dispel it or not. Would this not constitute it's reinstatement?
IonHazzikostas: To Amd11394 Guessing this is a follow-up to my earlier reply. I meant that if you dispel Flame Shock off yourself, or off Teammate A, maybe you can't dispel Teammate B's Fear or Polymorph a few seconds later, and now they're stuck in CC for its full duration. In general, we expect that players have to be much more careful about how and when they use their magic dispels.
Guest-399: Rogues are famous for using daggers, and that's all that we seem to be able to use, but I like to play Combat Spec, and it's described as being a swashbuckler spec. As such, I'd like to use 1handed swords along with daggers, but there are next to no 1handed rogue compatible swords, will we ever get to use swords as part of a rogue's arsenal? Afterall, there is no longer a block on what weapons a rogue can use on their abilties.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-399 It's less of a design concern and more about how many different items we can drop. Things like e.g. Intellect axes don't have a lot of customers, so we just don't make them very often. This might be the kind of thing that transmog can eventually help address too.
basketballer259: I assume I ask this question on behalf of thousands of vanilla WoW fans: Do you ever plan on bringing back "Server-wide" Events? An example would be the Opening of AQ, which allowed the entire server to collaborate their efforts. An event of the same theory would be an incredible experience for all players to witness. It was incredibly rewarding when the whole server gathered enough materials for the opening ceremony!
DaveKosak: To basketballer259 From the standpoint of, "Everyone gather at the same place at the same time to see a big event and if you miss it its gone forever assuming you all don't crash the server," then no, no more events like that. BUT, we love the feeling of server progression, similar to the Isle of Quel'denas. Is there a way to build that progression into the game such that players who come in a couple months later don't miss out on all the fun? We think there is. And we're planning something that we'd like to try in the 5.0 patch cycle... so stay tuned! [No guarantees here, but we're actively tinkering with something.]
Shnitzel: With the pet battle system, pets which you can acquire multiples of, have lost the 'Already Known' tag. This is pretty annoying when shopping for pets for example, as you constantly have to search through your journal ("Do I have the red tickbird or the white one?"). Will this be changed? perhaps add an 'Already Known' tag in a different color?
CoryStockton: To Shnitzel Sorry for the inconvenience on that, we have already redesigned the tooltips to fix this in patch 5.1.0. Tooltips will display if you already own the pet in addition to how many.
Guest-892: Have you thought of introducing titles to reward realm 1st times for the new challenge mode dungeons. Something similar to how the PvP titles work now.
CoryStockton: To Guest-892 We actually have! The idea was that you would only have the title for as long as you held the top time. Main issue we ran into was that the title could be changing hands so fast that you might only have it for a few seconds. It's an awesome idea though and we want to explore it more.
Guest-489: Can we have a rough timeframe on when we can expect the Trials of the High King questline to be implimented? Are we taking around patch 5.1 or something closer to the Siege of Orgrimmar patch?
DaveKosak: To Guest-489 Varian Wrynn's first trial will happen in 5.1. But to set expectations, the development of Varian's character happens across the entire patch cycle and beyond - it doesn't all happen in one event or one scenario. His trials are many.
Guest-776: Transmog has become a very important part of my gaming fun. Will we be able to farm Dragon Soul LFR recolor gear at level 90, since the LFR tool won't work for it at that level ? This goes for future expansions and MoP content, of course.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-776 We aren't going to support Raid Finder for content that is much lower level than your character, but we are going to allow you to enter old raids solo without being in a raid in a future patch (ideally the next major one, but standard no promises). That should facilitiate a lot of transmog farming.
Guest-727: The Reliquary is an interesting faction (at least in my opinion), but it hasn't been really visible in Cataclysm. Any chance we'll see them in Pandaria, as a counterpart to Brann ? Or at least some way to get their tabard ?
DaveKosak: To Guest-727 No plan for a tabard, but starting in 5.1 they're going to start poking around Pandaria for relics...
Guest-763: Were Orges ever thought of as a playalbe race, at one time? (Greg marry me /kiss) Irth
GhostCrawler: To Guest-763 Yep. We considered them for Cataclysm instead of goblins. Figuring out the females and the two-headed mages would be (fun!) challenges. Maybe someday.
Zarhym: Way to ignore that marriage proposal follow-up, GC. ;p
Cueball: First: Hi guys, including Zarhym (didn't know you'd be here). Anyway, is there anything to Jaina's words that it is "time to bring Dalaran down" to the land and that she is still in support of fighting against the Horde?
DaveKosak: To Cueball Jaina's story will continue starting in patch 5.1. We'll try to catch players up with where she is at the end of the book, and then move on from there.
Guest-571: With the introduction of Pet Battles, do you think we can see pets dropping in raids again? There hasn't been a pet drop in a raid since Karazhan IIRC so a prime example in today's standing could be Ragnaros dropping Mini Ragnaros instead of it being on the store.
CoryStockton: To Guest-571 I don't see why not! We just need to make sure it's a good fit with the content.
Guest-736: Is there any plans to allow players to have more then one Death Knight per server?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-736 We agree that it feels like an antiquated rule at this point. We'll see how hard it is to remove that restriction.
sdk: I am wondering about the incentives to 25 man. This game is a social game so why does it seem that 25 man guilds are dieing off and they are going to 10 mans. Paragon recently posted that they were going to 10 man. Is there any other way to fix it so that people are drawn to do 25 mans because they want to raid with friends and get the good gear?
IonHazzikostas: To sdk In Paragon's specific case, I suspect they'd find no lack of capable people more than willing to raid with them, but maintaining a Finnish-speaking roster is a core part of their guild culture, and they've made what was no doubt a very difficult decision to scale down to 10-player raiding rather than compromise that culture. As I noted in the Reddit AMA, ultimately there are heavier logistical burdens, particularly placed on the officers and raid leaders, in sustaining a 25-player roster versus only needing 10 players. We're actively discussing ways of ensuring that 25-player raiders feel properly incentivized and rewarded without necessarily elevating one raid size over the other. We definitely welcome ongoing community discussion and feedback on that topic.
Alablaster: As Developers, what was your biggest hurdle in building the new features we will see in Mists and how did you overcome them? Also I want to send kudos out to the art team - the beta was visually stunning!
CoryStockton: To Alablaster Our biggest issue with new features is adding more complexity to the game. It's somethign we struggle with every expansion. I will pass your kind words on to the art team too!
Wamogri: Will the baby shark pet ever get added back into the game?
CoryStockton: To Wamogri Yes! That's what those sweet new water bubbles are for!
Guest-525: Recently in Twitter Ghostcrawler mentioned the possibility of making subraces such as Maghar orcs and Wildhammer dwarfs available with the player character model updates, how high chance is there that this would also allow us to play as Broken or Taunka?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-525 If we ever opened up more races, I suspect we'd be pretty liberal about it, but to be clear, that feature is no more than a twinkle in some designer's eye at this stage.
artimadours: Are there any plans to allow for heirloom items to be sent cross realm?
CoryStockton: To artimadours We want this as bad as you guys do. It's on the list and we are looking into it.
Nize: You mentioned in a previous Q&A that legendary weapon components would be done in a manner to lessen drama within in a guild. One step was the implementation of components achievable through LFR. My question is how will components from normal and heroic raids be distributed. Will it be distributed similarly to how Deathwing's essences or new LFR are, or will the raid leaders still choose who to give those components to?
GhostCrawler: To Nize In 5.0 it's not a competitive issue at all. In Raid Finder, it's a random drop for some players. In Normal and Heroic there is a chance of a drop, at which point it is multi-lootable and every player on the quest will get it.
Guest-787: There has been some speculation as to whether Turalyon and Alleria might make a triumphant comeback in Mists of Pandaria. Any comments on this, or are they saved for a later expansion pack? The Alliance sure could use something to turn the tide of war.
DaveKosak: To Guest-787 ...and also, I think the Alliance can take this!
DaveKosak: To Guest-787 There's no plan to continue their story in Pandaria.
DaveKosak: (Reverse the order of those replies.
Guest-212: Are we going to have the ability to remove players who dc or log off from scenario groups and add in new players from the queue?
CoryStockton: To Guest-212 Not at launch but we hope to have it in for the 5.1 patch. We understand the concern.
lilm123: Do you guys plan on giving out title for challgenge modes, like how you do for PvP (0.0% - 0.5%: Gladiator 0.5% - 3%: Duelist 3% - 10%: Rival 10% - 35%: Challenger)
IonHazzikostas: To lilm123 If and when we move on to future challenge mode "seasons", titles to recognize players' past accomplishments are definitely something we'll consider.
Guest-913: With all these new changes to get players out into the world (great idea), is it a goal of the development team to possibly bring back World-PvP? Coming from someone who plays on a PvP Realm, I would love to relive the old days of huge scale open world PvP battles. I'm sure many others feel the same way.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-913 We are trying to encourage it. Spots like the Black Market and the shrines (the faction "cities" in the Vale) will probably have a lot of PvP on PvP servers. Remember, guards are much weaker on PvP servers now and there are no sanctuaries in Pandaria.
Guest-883: At the end of the Klaxxi questline, the mantid mentioned that at one point in time, they worshipped Y'shaarj, an old god. However, he was slain by the Titans and was split into "shadows of his former self". Is he, in some way, in relations with the Sha and will we see Y'shaarj in future content patches?
DaveKosak: To Guest-883 Y'shaarj breathed love and exhaled hate, inhaled peace and breathed violence... Plus, his name was y'SHAarj. It's pretty safe to connect the dots. But Y'shaarj itself is very, very, very dead.
Guest-728: WIll we see a Heroic Version of Ragefire Chasm?
CoryStockton: To Guest-728 Certainly not out of the question. Heroic versions of classic dungeons have been some of our most popular content. We will keep doing them as long as people keem playing em'.
Guest-508: What exaclty (If you can answer without spoiling the story line!) has turned Garrosh Hellscream into the monster we all hate now?
DaveKosak: To Guest-508 Garrosh is not a monster. He has a very clear vision of the Horde, and the future of the orcs, and he gives very little thought to anyone who stands between him and that future. As he gets more powerful, and gets away with more, his vision becomes clearer. This has put him in conflict in the Alliance, and ultimately will cause problems within the Horde.
Ünseen: I love the little mana bomb received from the Theramoore scenario, but the cooldown is making it really hard to have fun with. Any chance this will be reduced to allow a bit more spammability? Maybe like a 30 second cd?
CoryStockton: To Ünseen Glad you liked the reward! Unfortunately, that kind of mana power takes a long time to recharge!
Guest-749: The new LFR system you have in WoW now seems like a great way for people who dont have alot of time to donate to raiding guild environments a chance to see content that was most of the time closed to them, however im not a big fan of 25man raids. Is there any plans to add a 10man choice to the LFR system?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-749 We think 25 works better for Raid Finder. The ratios of DPS to non DPS more matches the player population and there is less risk of getting an unviable group. In 25s you can afford to have a few deaths and you can even pull if you're backfilling a few players. Both really make you stop in your tracks on 10s. In 25, it's easier to fade back into the group if you're still not 100% confident in what you're doing. In 10s, it's harder to be a wallflower.
Guest-986: "Turalyon and Alleria" is it possible in anyway to know if there are any plans to continue their story? I had HUGE hopes to see them in game when BC came out and their SON poped out of nowhere saying they where alive. anything would do!... plz!?
DaveKosak: To Guest-986 Oh, their story will continue!!
Guest-51: How are group compositions gonna work into Challenge Modes? Surely every group would want to have a Bloodlust. And atleast a kings buff.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-51 Realistically, if you're aiming for Gold, you're going to want a shaman or a mage or a hunter in your group, though Gold is absolutely possible without using Heroism/Bloodlust or equivalent effects. Realistically that probably saves you 15-20 seconds at best, and we've seen groups beat some Gold times by more than that. When constructing a 5-player dungeon group, you're inevitably going to have some strengths and some weaknesses in your composition, and players may find that the sorts of abilities they find invaluable are not the ones they're used to viewing in that light. (Pop quiz -- Which is likely to help you more in an 18-minute challenge mode run: Bloodlust, or an AoE stun that you can a couple of times a minute?)
Vaengence: Ok, I am going to be the one to ask the dreaded question, mainly because my guild members know that I continue to fight for them and have asked me to still chase this question. 25 mans - GC you have said it would be a good topic for a Watercooler, which is good, and recent tweets say not enough is being done for them.The only change we know about is the loot change and that is onl 1 item different for Normals from the majority of Cata which, excuse the sentiment here, seems a little underwhelmin...
GhostCrawler: To Vaengence Sadly, we don't have any details to announce yet, but we have a couple of ideas that should make the 25 players happy. We'll talk about them when we're confident that they are good ideas. Remember, the result can't be that all the 10 players stampede back to 25.
DeathFish1: Any chance we will see the option to upgrade out current legendary to be maybe not the equal to the current ilvl but maybe raid finder ilvl or just a little below so that they are not just taking up space in out banks, or bags in the case of dragonwrath.
GhostCrawler: To DeathFish1 Not sure we would let you upgrade a legendary, but we could potentially allow you to transmog them. Our reluctance has always been that Thunderfuy feels less special when you see 30 of them running around AV.
Guest-924: If some gamers are thinking about coming back to WoW to exp Mist of Pandaria content, is there any special program "come back" that will launch with the release?
CoryStockton: To Guest-924 Scroll of Resurrection is awesome for returning players!
Bolting: Have you changed your design philosophy of the quest flow in mists of pandaria? In previous expansions, moving to a new zone as soon as you are eligble left enough experience to cause no issues. Do you intend for all zones to be finished from beginning to end in order, and if so why did you feel the need to add breadcrumbs to the next zone prior to being able to go without issues further down the road?
DaveKosak: To Bolting Pandaria is like a huge novel that you can read in any order. You can skip ahead to other chapters as soon as you're eligible. It's worth it to stick through a full zone to wrap up the storylines and maybe get some blue quest rewards, but you're welcome to play through however you want. We definitely put in the effort to make this expansion much more open and non-linear.
Crithto: That about wraps things up, everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Best Buy Dev Chat, sending us really great questions, and for your patience. On behalf of Greg, Cory, Ion, Dave, and Zarhym, we truly appreciate your time and passion for World of Warcraft. Have a GREAT rest of the week, and we'll see you in Pandaria next Tuesday!
DaveKosak: This was a lot of fun. Thank you everyone! Only days to go... Pandaria awaits!
CoryStockton: Tons of great questions guys, that was a lot of fun! Can't wait to see everyone in Pandaria in just a few days!
GhostCrawler: We can't wait for you guys to see all of the new Mists content. We are really proud of what we've been able to deliver with this expansion. It's going to be good. Hugs, GC.
Dorothy-BBY: Thanks guys!
Zarhym: Thank you, everyone! For those who got here late or weren't able to follow along for the whole chat, Best Buy will be providing a full transcript here momentarily: http://bbyurl.us/MistsofPandariaChat
Kyle-BBY: Great chat everyone! Thank you everyone for joining us and Blizzard for totally rocking!
Sean|Senior Social Media Specialist | Best Buy® Corporate
Private MessageTranscript for Chat: 'Live Chat: WoW Mists of Pandaria', Tue Sep 18 18:04:25 CDT 2012
Zarhym: Hello, all, and welcome to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Developer Chat, presented by Best Buy! Blizzard community manager Crithto and I will be helping facilitate the discussion today and filter as many of your questions as possible for our developers to answer.
Crithto: That’s right! Thank you, Zarhym, and welcome everyone. On the panel to answer your questions today we have World of Warcraft lead designers Greg Street, Cory Stockton, Dave Kosak, and Ion Hazzikostas. Questions are pouring in and our developers are preparing their initial responses, so let’s get started!
Guest-47: Is the second son of DeathWing going to be the Second Prince? The achitvment two Princs says that Wration and another 'Prince' will settle something important, is that true?
DaveKosak: To Guest-47 "Two Princes" is a placeholder name that may or may not reflect the final achievements in later patches. Suffice it to say, Wrathion's story will continue!
Guest-101: What was the idea with Monk healing? what mix of elements inspired it and defined it?
GregStreet: To Guest-101 Mostly we wanted it to feel different from existing healers, so there is an emphasis on a channeled spell as the main heal. We also wanted to emphasize movement and damage-dealing to heal, because those were core to the monk class.
Guest-51: Do you feel the way of nerfing Dragon Soul, by nerfing the bosses. Was more successful than the Icecrown Citadel version, by buffing the players health and damage?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-51 Yes, one of the awkward things about the Icecrown Citadel buff was that, over time, it caused players to feel weaker when they were doing anything other than raiding Icecrown. It also had some potentially distorting effects, benefiting some specs and roles more than others. Weakening the enemies instead, as we've done in Dragon Soul, is more in keeping with how we've traditionally handled our tuning adjustments, going all the way back to Vanilla raids.
Guest-43: Where is N'Zoth? He was mentioned at Blizzcon, then was talked about in Dragon Soul. What is going on with him?!
DaveKosak: To Guest-43 N'zoth is still lurking. The Titans couldn't defeat it... maybe someday we'll get our chance? Don't expect to hear anything about him in Pandaria, though!
drwuky: Hello. If someone from a CRZ hits Level 90 as first player on my realm, will he get the Realm First! Level 90 achievement for my realm or for his realm?
IonHazzikostas: To drwuky His realm
parrjj01: It seems like PVP never gets much attention from the devlopers during these type of events. As a hardcore lover of PVP and the many people that are in my guild, we have really gotten frustrated, bored, etc with how PVP is handled. Will you guys ever be implanting anything like how LFR system works. Were there will be healers on each side, for a better chance of your team succeeding? I don't know about anyone else but I really hate being on my side with 0 healers and the horde have 4 in E...
GregStreet: To parrjj01 Our BG queueing system was built a long time ago. Since that time we've engineered the much more powerful system that we use for Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder. We'd now like to reengineer that system to work for BG queues as well, which would give us the ability to better balance healers, item levels, and perhaps even premade vs. PUG. No promises, but it's something we're working on.
Guest-46: The Theramore event was a little... Underwhelming. Developers have previously stated they spent more time on the content in Pandaria than the Theramore event. Will we see more diversity and excitement in the scenarios in Pandaria?
DaveKosak: To Guest-46 There's a LOT of diversity in the scenarios. For example. there's a monkey pirate island where you're running around fetching up brew and fighting randomized bosses, and other insanity. We really tried to experiement with some different mechanics, and we got bolder as development continued.
Gehn: Any chance we will ever see attunements or rep based dungeons again or is that strictly a in-the-past type thing?
IonHazzikostas: To Gehn There's something a bit like a traditional attunement in the 5.0 raids: Players must defeat Grand Empress Shek'zeer in the Heart of Fear raid before they may begin the Terrace of Endless Spring raid. It's definitely something we're open to exploring further in the future.
Guest-30: Hi. I've had a lot of concerns regarding hit / expertise with tanks. Currently in MoP it seems tanks would reforge most their defensive stats into hit / expertise. It's extremely annoying design
GregStreet: To Guest-30 We felt like previously tanks could just ignore even hitting targets because threat was easy to maintain and survivability was based entirely around cooldowns. Now you'll need to hit the target, but you'll gain resources for doing so, so we hope the experience is more engaging to tanks. More *fighting* less standing there.
Guest-98: Will the ability to obtain legendary mats on LFR mode make it required for raiders, at least until they complete the quest?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-98 "Required" is one of those tricky words. We understand that for many players anything that gives even an incremental power gain is seen as mandatory. Progress on one portion of the early steps of the legendary questline may be made in LFR mode, so players who want to obtain their gem from Wrathion as quickly as possible will likely benefit from doing LFR alongside their Normal or Heroic raiding. LFR wings will unlock incrementally, after Normal mode, so when someone in a top progression guild is defeating up to 16 bosses when Heart of Fear and Terrace open, doing LFR will only add 6 to that total (from Mogu'shan Vaults LFR). While in the long run, we'd like to minimize players' obligation to run LFR if they are part of progression raiding guilds, that's challenging at the start of an expansion when everyone is using the same dungeon blues. We hope it'll be different for future tiers. Finally, the true power of Wrathion's gem lies in the combined effect of the weapon and the gem itself; an LFR player's Sha-touched weapon will be significantly less powerful than a Heroic raider's.
Guest-28: As the Cataclysm Expansion is now over. As a team what were your take aways both good and bad?
DaveKosak: To Guest-28 From a quest perspective, we thought that the storytelling in Cataclysm was very strong, but that the zones were very linear. For Pandaria, we wanted to swing the pendulum the other way and open up the game more, rewarding exploration. I think we found a much better balance. Kun-lai Summit, for example, is pretty open-ended, even though it's got some great stories in there. That's just one example - we're always learning from expansions. The other big takeaway was that we wanted more things for players to do, depending on what sort of challenges they want. Challenge Modes, Pet battles, and the new Daily Quest structure all appeal to different people, hoepfully with the goal of giving everyone more content no matter what your playstyle!
Guest-124: How much game time do you think will we get in exploration of the continent of pandaria?
CoryStockton: To Guest-124 We really packed in the content with Mists, that being said the amount of time it takes you is really going to depend on your playstyle. We have so many different things for players to do. Quests, reputations, dailys, sceanrios, pet battles.... The idea is to let players make progress doing whatever kind of activity they like best.
Amd11394: Prior to patch 5.0.4, When we still had the cataclysm 'revised' talent trees, Elemental shamans gained an addition to one of their talents entailing that when flame shock was dispelled we gained a temporary buff entitled 'Lave Flows' This most recent patch, with the new Mists 'revised' Talent trees highlighted the removal of the cataclysm talent system, and with it went Lava Flows, what is your reasoning for removing this valuable ability?
IonHazzikostas: To Amd11394 Defensive dispels are significantly more limited in 5.0 than they were previously. Passives like Lava Flows were designed as an answer to an environment in which defensive dispel magic was spammed constantly, and it was nearly impossible to get a buffed Lava Burst off against an attentive dispeller who could remove your Flame Shock while you were casting the spell. With an 8-second cooldown on dispels now, a healer who dispels a Flame Shock may find that they are unable to dispel the Fear or Polymorph that targets another teammate immediately thereafter. We'll keep an eye on the evolving PvP metagame in light of the new dispel changes, and consider re-adding something like Lava Flows if it proves necessary.
drwuky: Will the storyline of the Sha continue with Patch 5.1 or later patches?
DaveKosak: To drwuky For the most part, the Sha issues will be tackled by players in 5.0. BUT... not everyone wants to let sleeping Sha lie. Someone might start stirring up trouble beginning with the patches...
samich: Can we expect mailboxes on the wandering isle on release? was the removal of the one that was there for quest testing purposes?
DaveKosak: To samich Pandaren Neutrality caused a lot of design issues we had to solve. Mail ended up being a headache. What was easiest -- for us AND for our users -- was to remove mail entirely until you choose a faction. That's nice and clean and prevents a lot of issues people saw on the beta. So, no mailboxes on the Wandering Isle - sorry!
Guest-114: I know you guys recently changed the LFR loot (weapons) from the last boss in a LFR instance, are you guys going to do any other changes to LFR to make heroic raiders not feel as they have to raid 2 formats a week to be competitive?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-114 As I mentioned in reply to an earlier question, it's a goal of ours but it's a tough one to realize in a world where everyone is starting out in dungeon blues and looking to get their hands on any and all epics. It's our expectation that by the time Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR unlock, most heroic raiders will have replaced their dungeon gear and have less to gain from also running LFR mode. In future raid tiers, people who are already in Heroic gear from the prior raid zone should not find the next tier's LFR gear to be an improvement over what they have.
Guest-260: Will there be an appearance of the Burning Legion in the end of MoP?
DaveKosak: To Guest-260 The threat of the Burning Legion is still out there, and it's very much a threat to Azeroth. The mortal races are mostly focused on the current war, but not everyone has forgotten about what's out there and the challenges to come... Wrathion, in particular, is already trying to look ahead.
Guest-271: Would say that the new challenge mode dungeon gold times are going to be the "Gladiator" equivalent of PVE?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-271 That would be our hope. Seeing someone sporting a set of challenge mode armor in town should be akin to seeing someone on a Gladiator mount -- you know they did something extremely skillful to earn it, and it's not the sort of reward you can outgear and obtain later on.
CoryStockton: To Guest-271 That's probably a pretty close comparison. Beyond gold times we will have server and guild leaderboards too. That's probably where the highest level of competition will be.
Guest-160: Christie Golden mentioned in an interview that she worked closely with the quest team when she wrote Tides of War to make sure everything was very close. However, there are some notable differences between the book and the scenario during the Alliance side of it. Did the storyline of the scenario change late into the book's writing?
DaveKosak: To Guest-160 We worked hard to sync with Golden during development. The Alliance side of the scenario went through LOTS of iterations, including when it happend (before the attack? During the attack? After the attack?) Ultimately we went with the one that gave us the greatest gameplay. We want the events of the book and game to match as closely as possible, but we want the best book possible and the best game possible, so they won't be word-for-word identical. This can create some fun arguments. "Well, according to this book..." "YEAH, but I WAS THERE, MAN!" We work hard to make sure the discrepancies are minor, but we definitely don't struggle for perfection.
Guest-292: Will we ever see cross-server mail or non-boa cross faction mailing phiesibly within the 5.0 content?--Gorebane of Eonar (P.S. Wa
CoryStockton: To Guest-292 It's on our list and something we really want to do. It's really just a matter of the engineering time it takes us to get it in.
im_a_rockstar: WoW has always been a mostly raid or die game. The changes in MoP to Justice Points, the item level difference on gear obtained outside of raid, are kind of steps backwards away from alternatives, pushing us back to having our only choice to be a raid. Are there any plans to give the non-raiders / people with random avaiabilities any form of meaningful character progression in terms of player power, besides only raids?
IonHazzikostas: To im_a_rockstar We have a number of gear acquisition routes that do not involve raiding. We've broadened the avenues for acquiring Valor Points, which can now be earned by doing dungeons, daily quests, scenarios, and so forth. That gear will be at least item level 489 (compared to 476 from LFR). There's also crafted gear. And of course future content updates will continue to provide upgrades outside of raiding. All of that said, I'd encourage you to check out the new raids as well -- the addition of the LFR system makes them more accessible than ever.
NinjaFox: To Dave Kosak: The reddit AMA gave some teasers that Sylvanas, Vol'jin, and Thrall (specifically in 5.1) would be integral parts to the story. Rexxar and Koltira were also mentioned. On the Alliance side, other than Varian, Anduin and Jaina are there any notable leaders/lore figures we can expect to see active through the Pandaria storyline?
DaveKosak: To NinjaFox Great question! Many of the Alliance leaders will come into play. Tyrande has a couple of moments in 5.1. We also want to do more with the dwarven storyline (we're still kicking around ideas of how best to do that.) The trick is making sure those characters have meaningful moments. We'll definitely spend a lot of time with Jaina and King Wrynn.
DeathFish1: With the creation of the farms at Halfhill, the base structure for player and guild housing has subsequently been created as well. Is this the direction you have chosen to go with for player housing or was this even considered as an option. One very good point about this option is that multiple locations for housing can be placed thoughout the game world, preventing the issue of removing players from the world.
CoryStockton: To DeathFish1 It's certainly a baby step in that direction. We are really excited to see how players react to it in Mists. We already have lots of ideas on how we can expand this kind of content in the future too!
DaveKosak: Regarding DeathFish's question (Love the name, Deathfish!) when we think about things like player-housing, we really want to look at how this can contribute to gameplay. The farm is awesome because it ties into a lot of systems, it creates some fun crafting opportunities, it impacts the economy, etc. It's a great experiment for us because if it's popular, it gives us a lot of data into how to create this type of content in the future.
Gosu: What is the design philosophy behind PvP balance and how satisfied are you with PvP balance in Mists of Pandaria?
GhostCrawler: To Gosu One of the main ones was to allow more cross-over of gear at the lower end but not the upper end of content. (In 4.0 it was more of the opposite.) It's not fun to die in PvP over and over until you get decent gear.
Guest-134: How come with this expansion you choose to go with Pandas and not something that was already in the game, such as The Emerald Dream, maybe going into the Dragonflights, or even something more with The Demonic legion.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-134 The pandaren are a race we've been looking to introduce into the WoW universe for some time now, since their introduction as a neutral hero back in the Warcraft 3 expansion. They were originally a top contender for the Alliance race back in Burning Crusade, but we ended up going with the draenei at the time because they better fit the Outland-focused story we were trying to tell, and because it didn't feel right forcing a historically neutral race like the pandaren into one specific faction. When we were looking to make an expansion centered around themes of exploration and discovery against a backdrop of Alliance-Horde conflict, the pandaren just seemed like the right fit: Noble and enigmatic race caught in the middle of the war between the Alliance and Horde as it spirals out of control, forced to choose sides as the outside world descends upon their homeland.
Guest-179: ogue's shadow blades visual effect is lacking, and needs more of a pop. Paladins get ashbringer; could rogues get something equally cool looking?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-179 We agree that some rogue visuals (Shadow Blades, Shadow Walk, etc.) could use some more love. That's something we'd like to do in a future patch.
bocasha: In Pandaria will we see another 9 month period where we will have no new stuff coming out?
CoryStockton: To bocasha We are doing everything within our power to avoid this. We all feel that 9 months without content is pretty much unacceptable to our players. A glimmer of hope: we are already knee deep into both patch 5.1 and 5.2. Our plan is to deliver these much faster than anyone is expecting.
Guest-432: When will we see Sargeras, it's one of the reasons I've stuck around for so long...
DaveKosak: To Guest-432 Sargeras would be one monstrous raid boss! He's one of the most iconic, key villains of the franchise. Believe me, when he comes to Azeroth, you're going to feel it LONG before he even gets there.
khalanil: Have you thought about implementing zones or battlegrounds where players are normalized by level, similar to the gear level normalization in the upcoming challenge mode dungeons? This could allow players to quest or PVP with lower-level friends, and it could be fun to see a trio of level 20s take down a level 90.
DaveKosak: To khalanil This is a tremendous question, because it's something we've been talking about and exploring. With Challenge Modes, we now have tech to scale your item level, so that we can guarantee the right level of difficulty. Having this tech opens lots of doors for us down the line. We don't have anything to announce, but it's a step toward a lot of the features you're describing.
parrjj01: I really love the real ID system, which has helped me communicate with my cousin who lives in Hawaii. The only downfall is, he's horde. Neither of us want to change fractions but we'd love to run toghther doing something. Will you guys ever considor letting us 'group' toghther and duke it out in battlegrounds, but disabling chat (even in real ID terms) so the no communcation rules still apply?
GhostCrawler: To parrjj01 We don't have huge design problems with letting you play with friends from other factions. The biggest challenge is the game was never designed with the concept of letting you be allied with the opposing faction, so it would be a tremendous amount of work. I won't give up hope for it though! (We always joke about a tauren having the Hallow's End 2D gnome mask when you're grouped with him.)
Guest-184: Can one stand anywhere in Orgrimmar(including right next to the questgiver that sends you to the gunship) when MoP is activated or do we have to be outside the Garrosh building? Good to know for us who are rushing as fast as we can!
GhostCrawler: To Guest-184 If you are online, you should get the quest pushed to you no matter where you are. We don't want to over-promise though. This is technically challenging stuff and it might be the case that we need everyone to relog. /crosses fingers
Guest-37: The story of Tides of War is really interesting. I don't think players can get engaged if they have no idea what's happening, the bomb dropping is really anticlimactic. I felt a bit disappointed so little got included in the scenario. Was this because of lack of time, of developers or because you rather keep all that info in the novels.
DaveKosak: To Guest-37 I've been watching the Theramore feedback closely, and this comment seems pretty universal. We tried to keep everything all in the scenario, to make it really self-contained, but not burden it with lots of story that you have to slog through every time you played the scenario. It's pretty clear from the feedback that people wanted more story. We should've surrounded the scenarios with more quests or explanations to help round out the story for the people who wanted to know what exactly was happening. Lesson learned!
Dude7198: Will there be a Realm First achievement that involves Pet Battles?
CoryStockton: To Dude7198 We did not make any realm first achievements for pet battles. Our intention for the feature is that its more of a casual activity and a realm first just did not feel like a good fit.
Guest-261: Nobody I know is impressed with the promise of an extra piece of loot for normal 25 mans. What we would be impressed with is separate realm first achievements for each raid format. Any chance of seeing something like this?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-261 Possibly. On several servers that have one top 25-player guild that's far above the rest of the server in progression, that might turn into incentivizing them to split up the week after their 25-player Realm First to snag the 10-player one. Not sure that's great gameplay for anyone. That said, we recognize that there's interest in making it a bit easier to distinguish between 10-player and 25-player kills in statistics or achievements.
Guest-257: Were the stained glass windows in Ulduar forshadowing of the Sha? They look very similar to the Sha.
DaveKosak: To Guest-257 I'd like to say we planned that. [Long pause] But I would be lying. I think it's just a happy coincidence that fits wonderfully into our lore.
Guest-174: When will transmog rules be loosened up a little. Main hand/one hand weapons, for instance.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-174 If I had to guess, we will loosen them at some point. We would probably wait until some time after the MoP launch when players will appreciate it more. It's easy for smaller features to get lost when there is so much new content. The designers will discuss it soon (tm).
Guest-88: We saw some of the animations on the challenge mode gear, will the druid set animations be visible when the druid is shapeshifted?
CoryStockton: To Guest-88 The custom effects are based on the armor itself so they will only be visible when you are in caster form.
Guest-306: Will content come at a faster rate in MoP? It seems that we might be pushing thought content at a much faster rate.
DaveKosak: To Guest-306 That is definitely our goal! As we speak the quest team is simultaneously working on patches 5.1 and 5.2. Our hope is to keep the story and content rolling forward. It's definitely a focus for the team - I can't make any promises, but I guarantee we're trying and I hope you'll notice the results!
CoryStockton: To Guest-306 I know we sound like a broken record on this but we are really pushing hard to deliver content to you guys faster than ever with the Mists patch cycle. As Dave mentioned, we are already making awesome progress on the first set of patches.
Zawani: Hey, I had a question regarding arms warrior pve rotation. It feels like there is to much rng involved with the rotation very rarely do I get more than 2 stacks of taste for blood and sometimes I can use overpower 5 or 6 times without a single proc of it, which then will leave me rage starved and without buttons to press, I was wondering if you could lower the damage bonus of the buff or damage of OP while also increasing the proc chance as well.
GhostCrawler: To Zawani Think of getting a high stack for Taste for Blood as a random bonus, much like getting enraged from a bunch of crits in a row. You shouldn't hold your whole rotation waiting for a 4 or 5 stack, because it won't happen that often. If you're at risk of rage capping, try to Slam. If you don't have the GCD to Slam then it's probably worth just using the Heroic Strike unless you think you'll be able to Colossus Smash really soon.
Guest-43: Will we ever see Magni Bronzebeard return from being frozen under Ironforge?
DaveKosak: To Guest-43 Magni is like the definition of BLING. If we continue his story, we'll make sure to handle it in-game. I wouldn't count on seeing him return during the Pandaren story arc, though.
Guest-313: Greg just said on twitter that the 25s versus 10s situation was handled in the AMA a lot, but nothing came from that apart from an understanding that 25s do have it harder now and could use some more compensation, Don't you have concrete plans for that, more than the tiny bit of extra loot 25s will have? The issue will only get even more pronounced the next weeks during progression.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-313 It's something we discuss frequently internally. We don't have anything final to announce just yet, but we love 25-player raiding and intend to do what we can to preserve it.
Guest-6: Windwalkers have been very upset with a couple things in particular with their spec. The first is Fists of Fury, we don't like being rooted and channeling an attack when our kit is supposed to be mobile. Can we please get this mechanic revisited? As well, we don't have literally any useful raid utility. Zen meditation is very weak. Will this be addressed at all post-launch?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-6 "Mobile" doesn't mean "never, ever stops moving." Like many specs, Windwalkers will do more damage when stationary but can still do some damage when moving. Deciding when you should FoF and when you can't is one of the decision points that separates good monks from great ones. We're not inclined to change it at this time. As far as raid utility goes, we're really reluctant to hand more "must have" buffs. We don't want Windwalkers to be mandatory, especially for smaller, 10-player raid groups. If they are never taken at all, we'll take some kind of action, but I'd be very surprised if that's the case.
Guest-531: Are there plans on fixing the broken Engineering Flying Machine that has been broken since patch 4.1?
CoryStockton: To Guest-531 We will look into this and make sure we get it fixed.
Guest-413: Is there a chance we might see class specific factions developed more? Kirin Tor, Ebon Blade, Argent Bros, Ravenholdt...Could we see something similar arise for Warriors, Hunters etc?
DaveKosak: To Guest-413 We're cooking up some cool Warlock stuff we can hopefully announce soon. In a more general sense, we LOVE class-specific content, but to do it right takes development time (believe me, I have to somehow schedule all this stuff.). When it came down to deciding between more zones of content and more faction content OR class-specific stuff, we opted to create more content for everyone. But, again, we love class-specific content, we'll try to squeeze in some cool challenges for the various challenges in the patches to come...
Guest-74: Are we going to get more story-telling in scenarios? The Theramore scenario was lackluster compared to the book, key story elements haven't even been address in-game yet.(Kirin Tor leader)
DaveKosak: To Guest-74 I addressed this earlier, but keep in mind that we want scenarios to be replayable. We definitely didn't want to burden them with tons of story that you have to wade through every time you play it. As I said for Theramore, people obviously wanted more context, which probably was best served by some one-time quests on either end of the scenario. That's a lesson we're pulling forward.
Guest-335: Will Wintergrasp ever be added as a max level battleground?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-335 Potentially, if there is enough demand for it. We would introduce it as you suggest as a true Battleground to avoid faction imbalance issues.
Guest-28: Beside the lifting on the mist with the clock strikes midnight on the 25th. We have come to expect events to complement the expansion. They have been fascinating and very fun. Should we expect events over the next 6 days? Or was the Scenario it?
CoryStockton: To Guest-28 The Theramore scenario is intended to be a preview of what players can expect from scenarios in Mists. It is by no means a launch event and thats intentional. We made a call early on to put that time into developing more content for Mists that will last and not be over in a week.
Guest-33: I loved the "Visions of the Past" quest-line in Vashj'ir. Will we see anything similar in upcoming content?
DaveKosak: To Guest-33 This is the "Battle-Maiden" questline, where you got to play as a naga badass for a while. I think these are a great break from the standard gameplay if they're well-designed, but we would want to use them sparingly. (After all, it's not WoW if you're not playing your class and kicking butt!) That said, there's a couple fun moments in Pandaria that have similar gameplay. In the Valley of Four Winds, you get to play as Chen Stormstout for a little bit. After kicking around a lot of ideas, we ultimately decided to give you a single 'Chen-Fu' button that makes him randomly do awesome kung-fu moves. It's a short sequence, but it's fun for storytelling and gives you a chance to Chen it up.
Gehn: Any updates on future guild leveling past 25?
CoryStockton: To Gehn We are totally open to increasing guild levels and the associated rewards but only when the game feels like it needs more of that content. A large number of guilds are still nowhere near level 25 so Mists did not feel like a good fit to add more guild levels.
Guest-214: Mists of Pandaria features an ambitious number of 18 raid bosses and I'm very excited about that. Im curious though as to how many bosses we can expect to see in future tiers? Firelands and Dragon Soul felt like small tiers with only 7 or 8 encounters in the tier.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-214 We like big raid tiers too, and will do our best to continue delivering them. We're planning for the next tier after Heart of Fear/Terrace to be a fair bit larger than Firelands or Dragon Soul were.
Guest-197: Whats would your answer be to the players who feel that by making multiple classes bring similar buffs and abilities, that the classes are losing their 'uniqueness'? Introducing combo points to ShadowPriests/Ret Paladins for example
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-197 Ultimately, there are only so many distinct resource mechanisms, and many of them are not great from a gameplay perspective. We'd rather differentiate our classes and specs on the basis of their overall feel and unique capabilities such as Death Grip for Death Knights or shaman' totems. I don't think many people are likely to mistake a shadow priest for a rogue just because they build up a resource and then consume it to deal damage.
Guest-395: Will the gear in Theramore's Fall 85 version be available in the 90 version?
CoryStockton: To Guest-395 The gear and the rewards for the 85 version are only available now. The 90 version has standard scenario rewards (Valor and a chance at a dungeon blue)
Lansuer: Where do you see races that are neutral leaning like the Blood Elves going within the Horde? They seem rather separate from the Horde story since Cata's launch.
DaveKosak: To Lansuer Stick around for patch 5.1 - we pick up the Blood Elves' story and propel it forward. Finally, a chance to interact with Lor'themar! Most players don't even know who he is.
Guest-121: What are your thoughts on healing classes in MoP? Are you seeing the type of balance you want in the new expansion between all classes/specs? I ask because we are seeing a lot of blending of healers into one unit, instead of variety. All healers can do everything now to state it plainly which is making certain classes stronger choices than others for non-healing reasons. Sure some do slightly better in certain situations, but the classic archetypes are no longer as valid. It removes the need fo...
GhostCrawler: To Guest-121 We strive for harmony with the healer design. If healer niches are too well-defined, then you are encouraged to stack Resto druids for one fight and then Holy paladins for the next fight. We'd rather see a diversity of healers. As far as healer balance is currently, we're pretty happy with it at 90. We still need to see Disc priests really figure out all of the nuances of Spirit Shell and we want to make sure all of the healers are really strong for Challenge Mode gold runs.
drwuky: Will you guys decrease the experience needed from 88-89 and 89-90 or increase the experience gained in Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes before release? At the moment you can NOT hit Level 89 if you start with Level 88 and 0% experience in Townlong Steppes (~10% experience missing) and also Level 90 is impossible with Dread Wastes quests only (~5% experience missing). These are datas with the 10% experience guild perk and yes, I've got both zone completed achievements.
CoryStockton: To drwuky We are still actively tuning the XP. We will look into it.
Velenor1: Question for Dave Kosak. I have always wondered why the Alliance has continuously frowned upon the Scarlet Crusade. Their main purpose was to simply eradicate the undead. With their return in MoP, we are tasked with eliminating them -again- with the aid of Lillian Voss. Why is it that we have turned their organization down for so long when we more or less have the same goals in mind?
DaveKosak: To Velenor1 The complexities really aren't in the game, but the Scarlet Crusade was very much a rogue organization. Great priests and warriors who would've otherwise served the Alliance disappear into the crusade, who serves its own ends. (In Northrend, it was clear their leadership had succumbed to demonic influence. It's hard to make up for that.) To be honest, the main reason to revisit the Crusade in 5.1 was a gameplay reason and not a story reason - it was a favorite dungeon that we really wanted to revisit with new mechanics. We didn't think a lot of story was needed.
Guest-553: Question from Munich, Germany. As the Octoberfest here and Brewfest in WoW are coming up, I wondered whether anyone at Blizzard did "field research" for designing Brewfest at the real Octoberfest ? The costumes and music are done really well.
CoryStockton: To Guest-553 We do field research on Brewfest every Friday.
DaveKosak: Sorry - meant to say 5.0 in that last question
Guest-235: Why is the theramore event so boring? Its way too easy and if you didn't read the book then you have no idea what's going on, you also wouldn't know why jaina isn't dead and why azeroth isn't completely destroyed. Do you think it would've been smarter to put more lore in the scenario and would've made it more fun?
Zarhym: To Guest-235 Dave already spoke to the story part of your question (if you missed it Best Buy will be providing a full transcript after the chat). To address your concern of difficulty, we agree it was too easy on release. We pushed a hotfix recently that increased the HP of all enemies in Theramore's Fall. The fact is that Scenarios in Mists will be more tailored for players in quest gear and dungeon blues. But players at level 85 were steamrolling through it in Dragon Soul gear, and the hotfix was to compensate for this a little.
Guest-494: Do all designers use the same in-house editor? Or do you have different tools for different jobs? How do you handle collisions in your edits?
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-494 We all use a massive proprietary tool called WoWEdit, which has been showcased a couple of times at Blizzcons in the past. We all use this tool to create and edit everything from creatures to spells to quests, and our level designers use it to actually shape the terrain of the outdoor world. At the end of the day, there are countless columns and rows in tables that define the properties of the game world and the players and monsters that inhabit it. We're only able to do the work that we do because of our amazing Tools team, a dedicated group that is constantly refining and updating our editor to enable us to create content more quickly and with fewer bugs.
Guest-186: On the World of Warcraft website, it lists tradeskill patterns, plans, etc. that the player is missing. Some of those items are no longer in game. Are there any plans to reincorporate those missing plans back into the game so the players have an opportunity to try to get all of their missing tradeskill plans?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-186 I'd hate to add back plans with no real game purpose just for sake of completeness. To be honest, I'd rather get rid of more of the older recipes that don't have a strong purpose.
Guest-160: Compared to designing dungeons, how difficult is it to design scenarios? Does it take more or less resources to make scenarios?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-160 The biggest challenge for us was just figuring out what scenarios should be. How long should they last? Should they be hard? How much variability should they have from run to run? Now that we've gone through that process, they should take much less time to design than dungeons. The biggest time expenditure on dungeons is the amazing art that goes into them.
Amd11394: Considering Dispels remove ALL magic effects, even if they dispelled Fear the Flame shock would go with it, regardless of if they intended to dispel it or not. Would this not constitute it's reinstatement?
IonHazzikostas: To Amd11394 Guessing this is a follow-up to my earlier reply. I meant that if you dispel Flame Shock off yourself, or off Teammate A, maybe you can't dispel Teammate B's Fear or Polymorph a few seconds later, and now they're stuck in CC for its full duration. In general, we expect that players have to be much more careful about how and when they use their magic dispels.
Guest-399: Rogues are famous for using daggers, and that's all that we seem to be able to use, but I like to play Combat Spec, and it's described as being a swashbuckler spec. As such, I'd like to use 1handed swords along with daggers, but there are next to no 1handed rogue compatible swords, will we ever get to use swords as part of a rogue's arsenal? Afterall, there is no longer a block on what weapons a rogue can use on their abilties.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-399 It's less of a design concern and more about how many different items we can drop. Things like e.g. Intellect axes don't have a lot of customers, so we just don't make them very often. This might be the kind of thing that transmog can eventually help address too.
basketballer259: I assume I ask this question on behalf of thousands of vanilla WoW fans: Do you ever plan on bringing back "Server-wide" Events? An example would be the Opening of AQ, which allowed the entire server to collaborate their efforts. An event of the same theory would be an incredible experience for all players to witness. It was incredibly rewarding when the whole server gathered enough materials for the opening ceremony!
DaveKosak: To basketballer259 From the standpoint of, "Everyone gather at the same place at the same time to see a big event and if you miss it its gone forever assuming you all don't crash the server," then no, no more events like that. BUT, we love the feeling of server progression, similar to the Isle of Quel'denas. Is there a way to build that progression into the game such that players who come in a couple months later don't miss out on all the fun? We think there is. And we're planning something that we'd like to try in the 5.0 patch cycle... so stay tuned! [No guarantees here, but we're actively tinkering with something.]
Shnitzel: With the pet battle system, pets which you can acquire multiples of, have lost the 'Already Known' tag. This is pretty annoying when shopping for pets for example, as you constantly have to search through your journal ("Do I have the red tickbird or the white one?"). Will this be changed? perhaps add an 'Already Known' tag in a different color?
CoryStockton: To Shnitzel Sorry for the inconvenience on that, we have already redesigned the tooltips to fix this in patch 5.1.0. Tooltips will display if you already own the pet in addition to how many.
Guest-892: Have you thought of introducing titles to reward realm 1st times for the new challenge mode dungeons. Something similar to how the PvP titles work now.
CoryStockton: To Guest-892 We actually have! The idea was that you would only have the title for as long as you held the top time. Main issue we ran into was that the title could be changing hands so fast that you might only have it for a few seconds. It's an awesome idea though and we want to explore it more.
Guest-489: Can we have a rough timeframe on when we can expect the Trials of the High King questline to be implimented? Are we taking around patch 5.1 or something closer to the Siege of Orgrimmar patch?
DaveKosak: To Guest-489 Varian Wrynn's first trial will happen in 5.1. But to set expectations, the development of Varian's character happens across the entire patch cycle and beyond - it doesn't all happen in one event or one scenario. His trials are many.
Guest-776: Transmog has become a very important part of my gaming fun. Will we be able to farm Dragon Soul LFR recolor gear at level 90, since the LFR tool won't work for it at that level ? This goes for future expansions and MoP content, of course.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-776 We aren't going to support Raid Finder for content that is much lower level than your character, but we are going to allow you to enter old raids solo without being in a raid in a future patch (ideally the next major one, but standard no promises). That should facilitiate a lot of transmog farming.
Guest-727: The Reliquary is an interesting faction (at least in my opinion), but it hasn't been really visible in Cataclysm. Any chance we'll see them in Pandaria, as a counterpart to Brann ? Or at least some way to get their tabard ?
DaveKosak: To Guest-727 No plan for a tabard, but starting in 5.1 they're going to start poking around Pandaria for relics...
Guest-763: Were Orges ever thought of as a playalbe race, at one time? (Greg marry me /kiss) Irth
GhostCrawler: To Guest-763 Yep. We considered them for Cataclysm instead of goblins. Figuring out the females and the two-headed mages would be (fun!) challenges. Maybe someday.
Zarhym: Way to ignore that marriage proposal follow-up, GC. ;p
Cueball: First: Hi guys, including Zarhym (didn't know you'd be here). Anyway, is there anything to Jaina's words that it is "time to bring Dalaran down" to the land and that she is still in support of fighting against the Horde?
DaveKosak: To Cueball Jaina's story will continue starting in patch 5.1. We'll try to catch players up with where she is at the end of the book, and then move on from there.
Guest-571: With the introduction of Pet Battles, do you think we can see pets dropping in raids again? There hasn't been a pet drop in a raid since Karazhan IIRC so a prime example in today's standing could be Ragnaros dropping Mini Ragnaros instead of it being on the store.
CoryStockton: To Guest-571 I don't see why not! We just need to make sure it's a good fit with the content.
Guest-736: Is there any plans to allow players to have more then one Death Knight per server?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-736 We agree that it feels like an antiquated rule at this point. We'll see how hard it is to remove that restriction.
sdk: I am wondering about the incentives to 25 man. This game is a social game so why does it seem that 25 man guilds are dieing off and they are going to 10 mans. Paragon recently posted that they were going to 10 man. Is there any other way to fix it so that people are drawn to do 25 mans because they want to raid with friends and get the good gear?
IonHazzikostas: To sdk In Paragon's specific case, I suspect they'd find no lack of capable people more than willing to raid with them, but maintaining a Finnish-speaking roster is a core part of their guild culture, and they've made what was no doubt a very difficult decision to scale down to 10-player raiding rather than compromise that culture. As I noted in the Reddit AMA, ultimately there are heavier logistical burdens, particularly placed on the officers and raid leaders, in sustaining a 25-player roster versus only needing 10 players. We're actively discussing ways of ensuring that 25-player raiders feel properly incentivized and rewarded without necessarily elevating one raid size over the other. We definitely welcome ongoing community discussion and feedback on that topic.
Alablaster: As Developers, what was your biggest hurdle in building the new features we will see in Mists and how did you overcome them? Also I want to send kudos out to the art team - the beta was visually stunning!
CoryStockton: To Alablaster Our biggest issue with new features is adding more complexity to the game. It's somethign we struggle with every expansion. I will pass your kind words on to the art team too!
Wamogri: Will the baby shark pet ever get added back into the game?
CoryStockton: To Wamogri Yes! That's what those sweet new water bubbles are for!
Guest-525: Recently in Twitter Ghostcrawler mentioned the possibility of making subraces such as Maghar orcs and Wildhammer dwarfs available with the player character model updates, how high chance is there that this would also allow us to play as Broken or Taunka?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-525 If we ever opened up more races, I suspect we'd be pretty liberal about it, but to be clear, that feature is no more than a twinkle in some designer's eye at this stage.
artimadours: Are there any plans to allow for heirloom items to be sent cross realm?
CoryStockton: To artimadours We want this as bad as you guys do. It's on the list and we are looking into it.
Nize: You mentioned in a previous Q&A that legendary weapon components would be done in a manner to lessen drama within in a guild. One step was the implementation of components achievable through LFR. My question is how will components from normal and heroic raids be distributed. Will it be distributed similarly to how Deathwing's essences or new LFR are, or will the raid leaders still choose who to give those components to?
GhostCrawler: To Nize In 5.0 it's not a competitive issue at all. In Raid Finder, it's a random drop for some players. In Normal and Heroic there is a chance of a drop, at which point it is multi-lootable and every player on the quest will get it.
Guest-787: There has been some speculation as to whether Turalyon and Alleria might make a triumphant comeback in Mists of Pandaria. Any comments on this, or are they saved for a later expansion pack? The Alliance sure could use something to turn the tide of war.
DaveKosak: To Guest-787 ...and also, I think the Alliance can take this!
DaveKosak: To Guest-787 There's no plan to continue their story in Pandaria.
DaveKosak: (Reverse the order of those replies.
Guest-212: Are we going to have the ability to remove players who dc or log off from scenario groups and add in new players from the queue?
CoryStockton: To Guest-212 Not at launch but we hope to have it in for the 5.1 patch. We understand the concern.
lilm123: Do you guys plan on giving out title for challgenge modes, like how you do for PvP (0.0% - 0.5%: Gladiator 0.5% - 3%: Duelist 3% - 10%: Rival 10% - 35%: Challenger)
IonHazzikostas: To lilm123 If and when we move on to future challenge mode "seasons", titles to recognize players' past accomplishments are definitely something we'll consider.
Guest-913: With all these new changes to get players out into the world (great idea), is it a goal of the development team to possibly bring back World-PvP? Coming from someone who plays on a PvP Realm, I would love to relive the old days of huge scale open world PvP battles. I'm sure many others feel the same way.
GhostCrawler: To Guest-913 We are trying to encourage it. Spots like the Black Market and the shrines (the faction "cities" in the Vale) will probably have a lot of PvP on PvP servers. Remember, guards are much weaker on PvP servers now and there are no sanctuaries in Pandaria.
Guest-883: At the end of the Klaxxi questline, the mantid mentioned that at one point in time, they worshipped Y'shaarj, an old god. However, he was slain by the Titans and was split into "shadows of his former self". Is he, in some way, in relations with the Sha and will we see Y'shaarj in future content patches?
DaveKosak: To Guest-883 Y'shaarj breathed love and exhaled hate, inhaled peace and breathed violence... Plus, his name was y'SHAarj. It's pretty safe to connect the dots. But Y'shaarj itself is very, very, very dead.
Guest-728: WIll we see a Heroic Version of Ragefire Chasm?
CoryStockton: To Guest-728 Certainly not out of the question. Heroic versions of classic dungeons have been some of our most popular content. We will keep doing them as long as people keem playing em'.
Guest-508: What exaclty (If you can answer without spoiling the story line!) has turned Garrosh Hellscream into the monster we all hate now?
DaveKosak: To Guest-508 Garrosh is not a monster. He has a very clear vision of the Horde, and the future of the orcs, and he gives very little thought to anyone who stands between him and that future. As he gets more powerful, and gets away with more, his vision becomes clearer. This has put him in conflict in the Alliance, and ultimately will cause problems within the Horde.
Ünseen: I love the little mana bomb received from the Theramoore scenario, but the cooldown is making it really hard to have fun with. Any chance this will be reduced to allow a bit more spammability? Maybe like a 30 second cd?
CoryStockton: To Ünseen Glad you liked the reward! Unfortunately, that kind of mana power takes a long time to recharge!
Guest-749: The new LFR system you have in WoW now seems like a great way for people who dont have alot of time to donate to raiding guild environments a chance to see content that was most of the time closed to them, however im not a big fan of 25man raids. Is there any plans to add a 10man choice to the LFR system?
GhostCrawler: To Guest-749 We think 25 works better for Raid Finder. The ratios of DPS to non DPS more matches the player population and there is less risk of getting an unviable group. In 25s you can afford to have a few deaths and you can even pull if you're backfilling a few players. Both really make you stop in your tracks on 10s. In 25, it's easier to fade back into the group if you're still not 100% confident in what you're doing. In 10s, it's harder to be a wallflower.
Guest-986: "Turalyon and Alleria" is it possible in anyway to know if there are any plans to continue their story? I had HUGE hopes to see them in game when BC came out and their SON poped out of nowhere saying they where alive. anything would do!... plz!?
DaveKosak: To Guest-986 Oh, their story will continue!!
Guest-51: How are group compositions gonna work into Challenge Modes? Surely every group would want to have a Bloodlust. And atleast a kings buff.
IonHazzikostas: To Guest-51 Realistically, if you're aiming for Gold, you're going to want a shaman or a mage or a hunter in your group, though Gold is absolutely possible without using Heroism/Bloodlust or equivalent effects. Realistically that probably saves you 15-20 seconds at best, and we've seen groups beat some Gold times by more than that. When constructing a 5-player dungeon group, you're inevitably going to have some strengths and some weaknesses in your composition, and players may find that the sorts of abilities they find invaluable are not the ones they're used to viewing in that light. (Pop quiz -- Which is likely to help you more in an 18-minute challenge mode run: Bloodlust, or an AoE stun that you can a couple of times a minute?)
Vaengence: Ok, I am going to be the one to ask the dreaded question, mainly because my guild members know that I continue to fight for them and have asked me to still chase this question. 25 mans - GC you have said it would be a good topic for a Watercooler, which is good, and recent tweets say not enough is being done for them.The only change we know about is the loot change and that is onl 1 item different for Normals from the majority of Cata which, excuse the sentiment here, seems a little underwhelmin...
GhostCrawler: To Vaengence Sadly, we don't have any details to announce yet, but we have a couple of ideas that should make the 25 players happy. We'll talk about them when we're confident that they are good ideas. Remember, the result can't be that all the 10 players stampede back to 25.
DeathFish1: Any chance we will see the option to upgrade out current legendary to be maybe not the equal to the current ilvl but maybe raid finder ilvl or just a little below so that they are not just taking up space in out banks, or bags in the case of dragonwrath.
GhostCrawler: To DeathFish1 Not sure we would let you upgrade a legendary, but we could potentially allow you to transmog them. Our reluctance has always been that Thunderfuy feels less special when you see 30 of them running around AV.
Guest-924: If some gamers are thinking about coming back to WoW to exp Mist of Pandaria content, is there any special program "come back" that will launch with the release?
CoryStockton: To Guest-924 Scroll of Resurrection is awesome for returning players!
Bolting: Have you changed your design philosophy of the quest flow in mists of pandaria? In previous expansions, moving to a new zone as soon as you are eligble left enough experience to cause no issues. Do you intend for all zones to be finished from beginning to end in order, and if so why did you feel the need to add breadcrumbs to the next zone prior to being able to go without issues further down the road?
DaveKosak: To Bolting Pandaria is like a huge novel that you can read in any order. You can skip ahead to other chapters as soon as you're eligible. It's worth it to stick through a full zone to wrap up the storylines and maybe get some blue quest rewards, but you're welcome to play through however you want. We definitely put in the effort to make this expansion much more open and non-linear.
Crithto: That about wraps things up, everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Best Buy Dev Chat, sending us really great questions, and for your patience. On behalf of Greg, Cory, Ion, Dave, and Zarhym, we truly appreciate your time and passion for World of Warcraft. Have a GREAT rest of the week, and we'll see you in Pandaria next Tuesday!
DaveKosak: This was a lot of fun. Thank you everyone! Only days to go... Pandaria awaits!
CoryStockton: Tons of great questions guys, that was a lot of fun! Can't wait to see everyone in Pandaria in just a few days!
GhostCrawler: We can't wait for you guys to see all of the new Mists content. We are really proud of what we've been able to deliver with this expansion. It's going to be good. Hugs, GC.
Dorothy-BBY: Thanks guys!
Zarhym: Thank you, everyone! For those who got here late or weren't able to follow along for the whole chat, Best Buy will be providing a full transcript here momentarily: http://bbyurl.us/MistsofPandariaChat
Kyle-BBY: Great chat everyone! Thank you everyone for joining us and Blizzard for totally rocking!
Sean|Senior Social Media Specialist | Best Buy® Corporate
Private Message -
Diablo III Developer Chat Transcript
Thanks to everyone who joined us on for the Diablo III Developer Chat today! We had a great turnout and some even greater questions. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, here is a transcript of the chat to tide you over until May 15th.
Pre-order Diablo III now!
Developers:
Jay Wilson, Game Director
Jason Bender, Senior System Designer
Jason Regier, Lead Software Engineer
Kevin Martens, Lead Content Designer
Transcript for Chat: 'Diablo III Developer Chat', Tue May 08 16:00:00 CDT 2012
Kyle-BBY: Welcome to the Diablo III Developer Chat new arrivals! We'll be getting started in a few more minutes. Get your questions ready!
Guest-74: When the option is selected to list things in the auction house for a real dollar value selling price, does that money go to the seller or Blizzard?
JayWilson: We charge a $1 dollar service fee, or 15% for commodities. The remainder of the sale price goes to the seller.
Guest-20: With some information out (may or maynot be correct) about how hard monsters hit in Inferno, will WD pets still be viable?
JayWilson: Yes, pets scale pretty well in inferno. You do have to refresh them, but they are useful for tanking mobs.
Guest-228: What was the hardest thing you had to cut from the game due to time/prodcution constraints?
JasonRegier: For me, it was PvP. I had a ton of fun playing it against folks at BlizzCon, but it just wasn't ready for prime time yet.
Guest-106: Will there be anyway to share the wings I get in the Collector's Edition with friends?
JasonBender: Those are just for you, but you can apply them to as many of your characters as you like.
Guest-26: Has anyone from the internal testing found a legendary item yet? Also, when are the stats for the legendaries going to be released?
JasonRegier: I got one during testing, and when it dropped, I jumped up and cheered. It was awesome!
Guest-25: Can you explain us about the bossfights? Will they be like Diablo 2 where the bosses had a fixed number of abilities and they just used them, or it will be more like WoW where the bosses have phases with different abilities and the scenery/positioning its crucial in the fight.
JayWilson: Depends on the boss. Some have a set number of abilities, some have phases. Most are a little more complex than Diablo II.
Guest-157: I will like to start of by saying the game is looking amazing so far, and I'm new to Diablo. Can you use the WASD keys for movement or just the left click on the mouse?
JasonRegier: Basic control in Diablo 3 is very simple. Just click to move, and click on monsters to attack them.
JayWilson: We don't support WASD for movement. We don't think it feels good as a movement scheme from an isometric view.
tomt610: Will you make inferno difficulty easier if people will start telling you that you made it too hard and they cannot beat it, even that it is beatable at this point? Cause I remember in 90s games required skill to beat them and it would be nice to have at least one that kind of game at this point, without life regenerating itself etc.
JasonBender: Inferno isn't for everyone. We would like to keep it as challenging as possible. Also, don't forget Hardcore mode. That's retro-hard!
Guest-70: How many times was the codebase rewritten over the years or was reuse pretty standard?
KevinMartens: We've spent a lot of time and energy getting the servers to be as prepared as possible. The big stress test during the beta was very helpful (thanks for all who participated). We'll have a big support team standing by at launch.
Guest-251: What was your inspiration for the Wizard?
JayWilson: We were inspired by old school pen and paper RPG's. We wanted a magic user who could control time, disentegrate, cast illusions, etc.
Guest-36: Do you have plans to implement the Necromancer or druid at any point in the future?
JayWilson: Any future classes we do are shrouded in mystery (insert scary ghost sounds).
Guest-283: what are the plans for launch day, are the servers prepared for the work load that is coming?
KevinMartens: We've spent a lot of time and energy getting the servers to be as prepared as possible. The big stress test during the beta was very helpful (thanks for all who participated). We'll have a big support team standing by at launch.
Guest-728: when you want to play with a friend who is much lower level than you, are you stuck playing the furthest ACT or DIFFICULTY they have achieved?
JasonBender: They can jump in to your game at a higher level (up to the highest difficulty they've achieved), even though they might miss story points. If the lower level player creates the game you will be limited to their story progress. You're not limited by ACT, but you are limited by DIFFICULTY.
Guest-253: What was the funniest / most awesome bug you discovered during the development of Diablo 3?
JasonBender: Funniest bug? We accidentally had an event that summoned 5 treasure goblins at one time. It was great seeing people scramble to chase them as they ran in different directions. Serious chaos!
KevinMartens: Perhaps a little less funny than awesome but I had an skeleton summoner with a bug with no limit on the number of skeletons and I went to a meeting, came back an the monitor was entirely filled with skeletons. I killed them all with a leap attack
Guest-56: Besides PvP, do you have any plans on adding additional content to Diablo?
JayWilson: To Guest-56 Nothing solid at this point.
Guest-25: Will the game have support for clans/guilds at release? if not, is something its being considered to be added in the future? I remember in Diablo 2 we had to create new characters to add the clan's tag.
JayWilson: No plans at this time.
Guest-23: I have had troubles with the FPS in the beta with my pretty decent upper class notebook, especially when bigger waves of monsters where on the screen? Has the FPS been optimized for notebook users for release since beta?
JasonRegier: It's hard to say without knowing more about your particular configuration. We work really closely with our hardware compatibility department to make sure that lots of people have a great experience with D3, and we're always looking to make performance better.
Guest-236: If i am higher level then my freinds and want to play with them, will there be any kind of handicap? for example will they get less exp
JasonBender: There is an XP penalty for killing monsters too high/low in level relative to your character. It scales based on your level, so at lower levels you can fight a broader range of creatures. This is good because player levels tend to be farther apart earlier in the game.
Guest-389: In the beta I had a hard time determining how much damage a spell did. I later learned that if I held ctrl and moused over a spell it gave me a percentage. Has any changes been made to make actually spell damage info more accessible?
JayWilson: You can set more advanced tooltips to permanently display so you don't need to hold down CTRL. I do feel these could be more accurate in displaying the exact damage you're doing, and we may improve it in the future.
Guest-261: Due to the amount of time it must take to produce the cinematics, how does that influence/affect a more iterative game design process?
KevinMartens: The cinematics team is very, very good at working with us to identify the moments of a cinematic that are most prone to change and leaving those to the last possible moment. There is seldom an issue that we can't change with a line change or a simple new shot. The process and time limits have not been much of a problem at all.
Guest-278: I know that Diablo3 is a click-to-move type game, but for sufferers of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, it can be very painful to click that much. Is controller support available in the future, if not, can players use applications such as Xpadder for use with controllers on the computer?
JasonBender: Right-click drive mode allows you to automatically attack while moving when you hold the right mouse button down instead of clicking. Several of us use this to reduce clicks. (You can imagine how many times we've clicked in the process of making the game!)
Guest-217: Are the end of the act bosses still going to be the enemies with the highest drop rates for the most sought after gear resulting in "Baal Runs" being the best way to gear up, or will you encourage players to scour the map looking for rarespawns and giving them a higher drop rate instead
JayWilson: We have a new system called "Nephalem Valor" that encourages you to kill randomly placed rares and champions. When you do, you get a stacking buff that increases your gold and magic find, and increases the drops on bosses. This makes it most beneficial to play through random content, then go fight bosses.
Guest-224: Say for example that I am playing a high level character, but I want to play with my friend who only has a low level character. Will me joining his game ruin the experience for him because I could just blast through the content and make it too easy for him?
JayWilson: You could blast him through the content, but his XP will be greatly diminished to the point that it's not very beneficial for your low level friend...unless he likes spoilers. But that's what Youtube is for.
Guest-302: In regards to internal testing, did any of you try out a completely ridiculous build and manage to make it work in a later difficulty?
KevinMartens: We spend a lot of time trying out "wacky" builds like melee Wizards or pet-less Witch Doctors and it is a fun, often challenging way to play. We often find ourselves changing a skill or two when we get stuck on a particular elite monster and sequence. Or more likely, we get tempted into to trying a completely different build when we get some particularly awesome piece of equipment. Melee wizard example above is a good one--I was playing recently with a typical mix of ranged spells and found a big bad-**bleep** sword that had such great stats, I changed my build to a melee wizard just to try out the sword.
Guest-352: How much does the difficulty and greater item quality drop change when your buddy enters the world to play with you?
JayWilson: Depends on the difficulty level you are playing in. I can't remember 'exact' numbers, though. It hovers around doubling monster health per player, but there are other variables as well.
Guest-65: What happeneds after i beat inferno mode? P.S I LOVE YOU GUYS AWESOME JOB WITH THE GAME!
JasonRegier: I'm pretty sure Jay comes to your house and gives you a big hug.
Guest-249: Hey guys, what are the best moments you have from development time?
JasonBender: Blizzcon was super-motivating. Also it's fun when we have hours long discussions about crazy design ideas, then see the exact same arguments happen on the forums.
JasonRegier: For me, one of the best moments was seeing hundreds of people playing the game for the first time at BlizzCon. The response was fantastic! I can't wait for the public to finally play the full game.
Guest-347: Bashiok stated that the display of BattleTags in games was a bug. Today Lylirra said that it wasn't. So is this a bug or not? If not then what exactly is the point of character names at all?
JayWilson: It's not a bug, it is supposed to be displayed in game. We felt showing the Battle Tag was an essential element to identifying your friends and didn't want players displayed with different names in different situations. The purpose of character names is to help the player identify their characters in the case they have multiple of the same class and for extended presence.
Guest-632: In diablo 2 as you got further into NM and **bleep** the areas became much bigger. Will the same happen with the later difficulties of Diablo 3? I remember Durance of Hate level 3 normal vs **bleep** and having a huge area difference.
KevinMartens: The areas do not get bigger in later difficulties and it hasn't impacted the fun at all. Bigger does not equal better in level design, in the vast majority of cases. We've concentrated much more on the second-to-second challenge and item rewards for higher difficulty playthroughs.
Guest-509: Can you keep teleporting if you are under 1 second, using the wormhole rune on the wizard?
JayWilson: You can teleport as many times as the animation will allow in the time before the cooldown is triggered.
Guest-351: My question is..... So if inferno has its own gear tiers Act1 - Act4 will all the normal thru **bleep** gear end up being trash or will some items end up being good way past their level unique items?? Thanks in advance .
JasonBender: You'll need to gear up for a while prior to Inferno, so He|| gear will still be valuable for a while. Inferno ramps harshly, though, so you'll need to farm early inferno to handle late inferno. There is a point where gear becomes useless, but a perfectly rolled rare or legendary item can last a long time if it has the affixes you need. Don't forget crafting components, too. Old items can be used to crafter better ones.
Guest-519: is there a way to switch weapons quickly on the run? (As we did with Diablo 2 by pressing "W") ?
JayWilson: No. In polling players this seemed to primarily be used to hot swap to high magic find weapons right before a boss died, which didn't seem like great gameplay to encourage.
Guest-552: Is there any customization to the character when making a character at the start screen? Also is there any customization later in the the game?
JayWilson: You can also use dyes to customize gear, and even hide pieces of gear that have good stats that you don't like the look of.
JasonRegier: At the starting screen, no. But within the game, there's a huge number of combinations of items and skills to choose from. Those choices really make your character unique.
Guest-367: Was anyone in the internal test team able to beat the fourth difficulty of the game ? If not what is the reason for that ?
KevinMartens: No one has beaten Inferno.
Guest-415: Will third party programs that collect data about how much loot/gold is dropped where and when be allowed to use?
JasonRegier: Using 3rd party programs like those is against the terms of use.
Talen: Many Beta Testers have conserns about the text size of the user interface being either to small, or to large.Do you have any plans at this time to introduce scaling o accessability options for the User Interface and Item Stat Text ?
JayWilson: Not at this time. Every feature has development cost. If there is demand for something like this we'll weigh it against other features we could add to the game. We did, however, increase font size late in the Beta.
Guest-366: For the Witch Doctor, with Zombie Handler and Circle of Life passives, are you able to go well beyond having 4 summoned dogs on the field at once or is there some sort of cap?
JasonBender: 4 is the max for dogs. You can get up to your max nyumber of dogs with a variety of skills (beyond just summoning them), which is good if they're dying a lot in higher difficulties, but that doesn't break the cap.
Guest-335: Developers: Which act is your favorite to play through?
JasonBender: I like Act 3. Because... er... *SPOILERS*!
KevinMartens: Interesting question as that actually changes for me based on the difficulty. I like Act 3 on normal just because of certain battle sequences (no spoilers!!!) but like Act 2 on Nightmare because the bump in difficulty there is a fun challenge for me.
JayWilson: Don't ask me to pick my favorite child.
Guest-248: So I read that we can make a new characters in other regions other than our own, will we be able to copy a character over to that region or will we have to start a new one to play with our overseas friends?
JasonRegier: You will have to start a new one.
Guest-617: Did you find it difficult to convince others (Co-Wokers - Players) that a stat system wasn't very fun and just a math game? And also, was it easy to convince others that a skill system that was developed around experimentation would be more fun than a Diablo 2 system of constantly re-rolling? (I love the skill system lets me try whatever I want to try - I feel rewarded for experimenting. I feel more games should have this type of system.)
JayWilson: Yes, it was difficult.
Guest-847: What is the highest gem level that we can expect to drop?
JayWilson: Tier 5 gems are the highest that drop.
Guest-505: Beyond what we have already seen and the sets in Inferno, how many unique weapons and armor sets can we expect to see in D3? Will more be added? (outstanding job so far!)
JasonBender: We have a ton of cool ideas that we would like to do. A bunch are in the works, but I can't yet say when they'll be ready for you. (The art team loves making these.)
Guest-807: Will there be the option to change the strength of the monsters by pretending to have more players in a game? Like in D2?
JayWilson: Not at release. With the challenge level of Inferno we did not see this as necessary.
Guest-2444: Will Melee Wizards be Viable in **bleep** Mode?
KevinMartens: For difficulty modes: certainly, the challenge will be harder in later difficulty modes. But really, this question points to a cool point of depth/awesomeness in our system. With the right gear and some practice, melee wizard will be viable--maybe barely but still. For Hardcore Mode: Again, with the right gear, maybe, but it is a risky thing to try. Let me know how you do
Guest-906: are the angels wings from the CE, an emote thing? or is it like an item you can trigger on and off? also is there a cooldown on them?
JasonBender: They're linked to a 1x1 item that goes in the inventory, but you can put them in your stash. You can click your wings to turn them on and off. There's no limit to how many times you can use them.
JasonBender: (Also no cooldown on the wings.)
Guest-128: Is there a separate appearance for the female barb when she goes berserker mode (the ability for 15 sec that you unlock at lvl 30)and how does she looks like can we not have a picture or something because we only see the male.
JasonRegier: Yes, she looks different.
Guest-523: Do bosses get more abilities through the difficulties to make them harder or do they just have scaling dmg and life? ie. in nightmare, he||, and inferno. Also, does Nephalem Valor only apply in Inferno?
JayWilson: Not really. We have a couple cases, but they are mild enough that I'd say overall no. Bosses mainly scale in stats. And yes, Nephalem Valor is Inferno only.
Guest-393: The new skill menu has been highly discussed by a large group of players awaiting Diablo III, and there has been much criticism (Despite it being an improvement over the early beta skill UI). Will there be further changes or did we see a finalized version of that system in the last patch of the beta?
JayWilson: Other than polish-oriented improvements (of which I can't recall which made Beta and which didn't) the skill system is basically unchanged from the final one that appeared in Beta.
Guest-347: Thank you for answering my first question. How far back does the behind the scenes in the CE cover? Does it cover any early D3 development or does it only cover the past couple years? Any word on when we can expect the web API for D3 or at least more information on it?
JasonBender: The behind-the-scenes talks about all kinds of crazy stuff, so there should be some good history in there for you. Not sure about the API.
Guest-446: Will certain areas in Diablo 3 have different treasure classes like they did in Diablo 2 for finding higher items or does it just come down to how far you have progressed into the game and is there a diminishing effect of the amount of mf your character can have eg. like a mf cap?
JayWilson: I don't really know how to answer the treasure class one, lots of areas have different treasure classes but we try to make areas relatively equal depending on challenge and monster level. MF is not capped, though.
Smeet: With Diablo 2, enemies in **bleep** difficulty almost all recieved an immunity to one type of damage. Does this trend continue into Diablo 3, or are the enemies / affixes made threatening in different ways?
JayWilson: We do not use immunities as a monster affix. We focused more on powers that change up the monster's threat and challenge different classes in different ways.
Guest-351: LOVE YOU GUYS & D3!!! Thanks for the Answer Also BTW how does sharing MF with a group work and is that group % amp'd up by "Nephalem Valor"
JasonBender: MF is an average of the group's MF rating, so everyone either contributes combat power or boosts the group's MF. Valor covers the party.
Guest-911: will I be able to have multiple keys on the same account IE: Collectors Edition and Standard? and are we able to use"Dual-Boxing" ?
JasonRegier: No, you can have one license attached to the account. Dual boxing isn't supported... you'll need to have multiple battle.net accounts.
Guest-561: How is Inferno difficulty being balanced as a sort of longterm endgame opportunity? Will characters struggle in inferno until they acquire really epic gear or is the aim for Inferno to always be very challenging even when characters are decked out? How does magic find gear play into the balance of being able to clear inferno (E.G. Being able to clear faster and safer vs wearing MF gear vs Nephalem Valor).
KevinMartens: Inferno is balanced to never be trivial, even with the best gear. If some of you end up finding it trivial, we'll certainly be paying attention--good luck! Magic find gear vs. survivability gear works much like you think. You'll probably use MF gear when you are farming an area you know/think you can survive in and switch to survivability gear once you are trying to get further into a tough area.
Guest-776: Send: Do you think that assigning a very specific/distinct personality to each character was a good call? A lot of people seem to be thrown away from wizard for example, just because of his not so cool attitude. Or the not-so-badass grandpa witchdoctor (character wise). Thanks
JayWilson: Yes, we do think it was a good call. We think improving our game story by making the player characters active participants is worth the risk that a few players might get turned off by the choices for those characters. Without making this choice it weakens our story, and strong story is one of the most requested ways the community wanted us to improve Diablo.
Guest-545: Is it an accurate assessment to say that expansions would follow the inferno progression and have a few levels but significant gear upgrades. Or will it be more like a level cap increase with inferno-like content at the end?
JasonBender: We're concentrating on a smooth launch right now. Next up after that: PVP!
Guest-401: Will there be a ladder and ladder-only items to keep Diablo 3 fresh for years to come? I know a lot of people still play Diablo 2, and were excited about the recent ladder reset.
JayWilson: Not currently. We'd prefer to find better ways to accomplish this. If we can't come up with something better we'd consider a ladder in the future. It's not a problem that needs to be solved right away.
DrowningRabbit: Speaking on Inferno mode, Blizzard has in the past made encounters like pre-patch C'Thun that were statistically impossible to finish. While that feat hasn't been repeated in World of Warcraft, is that a concern for Diablo 3's Inferno mode bosses?
KevinMartens: There are not statistically impossible bosses/challenges, at least not by design. There are extremely difficult moments in Inferno but I do think that people, with practice and gear, will be able to finish it. Let the race to end of Inferno begin on May 15th, everyone!
Guest-1326: Any plans for Lobby like Diablo 2?
JasonBender: We support public chat channels, and we are always looking to improve the Battle.net service. It will evolve over time. (The trick is getting the chat gem working juuuuuuuuust right.) :-p
JayWilson: BTW, I said earlier that Nephalem Valor is only available in Inferno. This is incorrect. It kicks in at level 60, regardless of your difficulty level.
Guest-647: Hi Guys. Breathtaking work so far!, I wish you the best for the release!. My question would be how often can we expect to see new patches in terms game mechanics but also item stats in the span of perhaps one year?. Second question to Jay - will be rolling barb & monk combo for the first playthrough on hardcore, what would you say the chances are defeating **bleep**?
JayWilson: We'll patch as the game needs it. Predicting a timeframe isn't something we'd do now. For your second question, need more information. How good are you? I'll just guess. I think you personally have a 37.4% chance to beat Hell.
Guest-311: Can you implement a force Stop key (differing from force Stand Still), where pressing the key will stop all actions including movement and holding the key acts like force Stand Still? Finer movement controls will open up more mechanics!
JasonBender: We always try to keep the controls streamlined where we can, but if there's a need for a new UI element we will surely consider it. No plans just yet on that particular item, though.
Guest-625: Why are the Monk's heals not scaled by stats? The monk can never improve healing with gear. By contrast, the Barbarian's heals scale with damage or max HP.
JayWilson: His heals scale with his level. They are powerful enough that we had concerns that if they scaled with gear they would be too good. Barb heals are personal, but Monk heals are group oriented, which is why they are handled differently.
Guest-303: I Feel that a Dota style pvp map / pvp game mode would be perfect for Diablo..any plans in the works?
JayWilson: That would be like making a whole new game inside our game. There are some parallels, but enough differences that I'd rather we focus on our core cooperative and PVE experiences.
Guest-1639: How large is D3 compared to D2? Will it take as long or longer to clear the game (excluding inferno)?
KevinMartens: Length of the game varies greatly depending on play-style and randomness. Play-style means completist poke around in every corner type people vs. rush the main objectives people--big difference. Randomness affects the length because you could be walking through an area and roll a 2 level dungeon (10-15 minutes of gameplay) or a 30 second ambush event. Depending on what rolls, that can really change your length. But regardless, length isn't the concern in a game so focused on replayability. Not that the game short so much as that is not what the design challenge is.
Guest-785: Can you craft "inferno" level gear? if not what is the highest level gear you can craft?
JasonBender: Yes, and it's awesome! It takes a lot of components to get to the best gear, though.
Guest-846: Are you concerned that the current Skill UI along with the Skill tab for cycling through skills has perhaps been too categorized and requires a potential excessive amount of cycling through to find things? Example: with the Demon Hunter, why not just have three categories with Hatred Generators, Spenders, and Discipline skills instead of how things are split up now? Isn't that much easier to understand instead of the seeminly excessive categories at the moment?
JasonRegier: We've found that categories in the current skill system UI is really helpful for newer players. And the "Elective Mode" option is there for advanced players to customize their builds to their heart's content.
Guest-645: Some people say they will not be rolling a WD because it is a silly class, what do you say to them? Also, Soul Harvest seems too good at the moment....... 6 ..... more...... days ........
JayWilson: I'd rather people be highly opinionated about our classes than not care. We made five classes just in case you don't like one of them.
Guest-184: What's up with gems? Are they going to be socketable in more than just helms and weapons?
JasonBender: Gems can be used in helms, weapons, and a variety of armor slots.
Guest-538: In order to sell items on the real money auction house, do I have to have funds in my battle.net balance?
JasonRegier: No, you can sell items without having any money in your account. There is no charge for posting items.
Guest-340: Would you say that Diablo III's soundtrack is overall, Wagnerian in texture?
KevinMartens: I'm not music history oriented enough to know the right pigeon-hole genre for our score. I think it is too varied to simply fit into one sub-genre.
Guest-348: Do you have any comments on Athene vs Kripp for worlds first Inferno kill?
JasonBender: I guess someone needs to take the other side of that bet, so Athene had better win. I like hot dogs. (The real question is: Who gets the world's first HARDCORE Inferno completion!)
JayWilson: $20 and a coupon for a free hot dog on Kripp.
Guest-520: Is it possible to place the dyes and wings from CE in the shared stash ? (so if i later upgrade my game to CE i could get the CE exclusives for my old heroes)
JasonRegier: Yes.
Guest-313: A new article on a fansite was just posted describing a way to use the WD to sacrafice zombies to do 25,000%+ weapon damage. How confident are you at this time that classes are balanced endgame?
KevinMartens: There are billions of class and skill combinations--literally. They inherently cannot be balanced at time of ship due to lack of working time-machine technology and/or Groundhogs Day -style repeat testing days. We look forward to following all of you as you find incredibly awesome builds.
Guest-844: Will Legendary/Set items have their own unique graphics independent of the "tier" sets or will they look the same?
JasonBender: Legendary items and set always have unique art, stats, names and flavor text.
Guest-876: Is the best gear in the game ("potentially," stats-wise) limited to dropping in Inferno difficulty, or are the differences between Inferno gear and end-game **bleep** gear mostly cosmetic or drop-chance related?
JayWilson: The top three tiers of items, which are the best, only drop in Inferno.
Guest-708: What class are each of you going to play at release? Softcore or hardcore?
JasonRegier: Witchdoctor for me too. Hardcore!
JasonBender: Witch Doctor. Also I'm looking forward to crying over my first hardcore character. And my second. And my third.
KevinMartens: No pornography references, please! (Monk, softcore)
Guest-869: Are there any non-set Legendaries that will only drop in Inferno Act III and IV?
JasonBender: Yes. Legendary items are dropped based on the level of the monster or chest, so we have several at the max level that can only be found in the end of Inferno.
Guest-720: Dueling: Will you ever consider patching in dueling “in-game” without having to lose the current play session and hit the arenas? The purpose is for fun things like settling disputes amongst friends, battling for items, or just killing time waiting for a friend to come back. It cannot be used for griefing due to mutually acceptance of the duel (and could even take a knee like in WoW so as there is no death).
JayWilson: I'm not opposed to this, but it's not a trivial amount of work, and is not a priority for us right now. We want to focus on our team-based arena mode right now.
Guest-547: Will there be any bosses that are only in certain difficulty modes?
JasonBender: Bosses appear in each difficulty, but there are a handful of unique monsters that only appear in certain difficulties. Also there are a number of rare/champion affixes that don't show up until you reach later difficulties.
JayWilson: Hold on, getting Wyatt for all your complex Witch Doctor questions.
Guest-483: How does the treasure goblin scale, in regards to HP, in the higher difficulties? Will they always take a couple of hits to bring down?
KevinMartens: Treasure Goblins are harder to kill at higher difficulties. I never miss one in normal but often fail to kill one in time in higher difficulties, usually because I'm too paranoid about being **bleep**ed by elite monsters to chase him aggressively.
Guest-536: Will there be any more 'randomization pockets' (such as the Hanging Tree and the Corpse Pile) in the areas we played in the beta for us to discover?
KevinMartens: I suspect that the beta players have discovered most, if not all, of the randomization pockets in the beta areas, but there is much more D3 to come. Also, there are rumors of secret things being secretly secreted somewhere secret.
Guest-25: Will the mobs or bosses have diminishing returns/immunity on stun/slow/fear abilities? Or stunlocking them in inferno with 4 barbarians its totally possible?
JayWilson: Elite mobs (bosses, champions, rares) are affected to a lesser degree by control skills, and are immune to a select few. We do not have a system for diminishing returns, as we want CC to be useful even against bosses.
Guest-1803: Does the explosive beast rune for zombie charger work with the final gift rune for zombie dogs? ie zombie dogs from zombie charger dropping health globes? Thanks.
KevinMartens: No, it does not.
Guest-104: Are there any plans to ever had "hotkeys" in the game so we can quickly switch between different spells like in D2 with the F-keys?
JasonRegier: The hotbar at the bottom of the screen gives you easy access to your current skills, and you can change the keybindings for it if you don't like the defaults.
Guest-1064: How will the Monk and Witch Doctor passive skills that avoid death work in Hardcore mode?
JayWilson: They will allow you to avoid death! Congratulations, hardcore player, you have outsmarted mortality!
Guest-367: Do i need to read the quest dialog to fully understand the diablo lore ? or i can simply watch the cinematics and understand what is going on ?
JasonBender: There are several ways to enhance your enjoyment of the story. The cinematics are meant to keep the story clear, but the more you read, the better it should be. (Even the item and skill flavor text adds to the lore.)
JayWilson: Correction: we drop gems up to tier 8.
Guest-376: can we follow treasure goblin through portal to a special dungon?
JasonBender: One wonders where they go!
Guest-1540: I heard a rumor around a month ago that players can recieve an extra reward if they don't switch their build for an entire Act, is this true?
JasonBender: Not exactly true. It's good to explore builds. Nephalem Valor goes away if you respec, but that isn't based on the act.
Guest-713: how will mf work in groups. say if 2 people have mf and 2 are just dps. will it take the groups mf number as a hole or just 1 person for their drops only?
KevinMartens: Magic find is averaged across the party. If you have two MF people with 100% and two DPS people with 0%, then each person has 50% for their drops. Loot is, of course, per player.
Guest-503: Is "rushing" a character possible? Or are there some kind of restrictions that keep a player from getting to Nightmare/**bleep**/Inferno in a significantly shorter time period than usual.
JayWilson: A higher level character can help you jump past content within a difficulty, but you get greatly diminished XP, so you really need to go through legitimately. We have hard level requirements for difficulty levels, though, so no shortcuts there.
Guest-661: I know you don't plan to support Diablo 3 to be a eSport - If the commnunity wants it to become a eSport(without the implied balance), would you support it with replays/spectator mode and more ?
JayWilson: No. We don't want Diablo 3 to become an E-sport. It's OK to have PVP just for fun. Our focus is on our PVE game, and we want it to stay there.
Guest-302: What was it like being able to take a game I'm sure you all loved, and being able to expand the story, and create amazing things I bet the original creators would never even have thought of?
JasonBender: It was a privilege. Personally, I feel incredibly lucky to be involved with Diablo, one of my favorite game worlds of all time. It was never hard to come up with cool ideas, just tough to pick the best to make the coolest game possible!
Guest-2203: Many people are trying to get world first 60 and think it is doable in as little as 20 hours. Can you give us any insight on this?
JayWilson: World's first what?
Guest-1729: How do you guys feel about the Barbarian in Inferno (being a melee class and all), especially regarding (the need for?) Shields?
KevinMartens: Survivability is certainly something that you need to gear for in Inferno. Shield is the easiest vs. most obvious choice but certainly you can gear for a higher DPS with a different selection of gear and skills. It is still a fine balance between your play style, your DPS, your survivability stats, etc. None of those things can be out of balance for the way you play in order to survive at Inferno.
Guest-1736: So, you guys are always talking about how diffcult Inferno will be. What about the others? Does this mean nightmare and **bleep** will also be too easy for us just like normal mode? Thats a serious concern for me...
JasonBender: Different players find different things challenging. (This also depends on your gear.) Finishing Inferno in Hardcore mode will not be easy!
Guest-2357: Is stun duration reduced in **bleep**/inferno or is the same as in normal?
KevinMartens: It has been reduced.
Guest-586: Will you share game statistics with the community? For example: ### different Monk builds have defeated <insert boss name>? or other misc data?
JasonBender: We like sharing cool stats, but no specifics yet on what they will be.
JayWilson: To the person who asked if we might add or remove skills: we'll do whatever we think is right to balance the game and make the classes feel well rounded and effective. In other words...maybe.
Kyle-BBY: Great chat everyone! Thank you for joining us fans and Diablo III Dev team!
KevinMartens: Thank you, everyone, for attending
JasonBender: Thank you so much! Great questions!
JasonRegier: Thanks everyone! See you online!
JayWilson: Thanks everyone! May 15th! WOOOOO!!!!!!Thanks to everyone who joined us on for the Diablo III Developer Chat today! We had a great turnout and some even greater questions. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, here is a transcript of the chat to tide you over until May 15th.
Pre-order Diablo III now!
Developers:
Jay Wilson, Game Director
Jason Bender, Senior System Designer
Jason Regier, Lead Software Engineer
Kevin Martens, Lead Content Designer
Transcript for Chat: 'Diablo III Developer Chat', Tue May 08 16:00:00 CDT 2012
Kyle-BBY: Welcome to the Diablo III Developer Chat new arrivals! We'll be getting started in a few more minutes. Get your questions ready!
Guest-74: When the option is selected to list things in the auction house for a real dollar value selling price, does that money go to the seller or Blizzard?
JayWilson: We charge a $1 dollar service fee, or 15% for commodities. The remainder of the sale price goes to the seller.
Guest-20: With some information out (may or maynot be correct) about how hard monsters hit in Inferno, will WD pets still be viable?
JayWilson: Yes, pets scale pretty well in inferno. You do have to refresh them, but they are useful for tanking mobs.
Guest-228: What was the hardest thing you had to cut from the game due to time/prodcution constraints?
JasonRegier: For me, it was PvP. I had a ton of fun playing it against folks at BlizzCon, but it just wasn't ready for prime time yet.
Guest-106: Will there be anyway to share the wings I get in the Collector's Edition with friends?
JasonBender: Those are just for you, but you can apply them to as many of your characters as you like.
Guest-26: Has anyone from the internal testing found a legendary item yet? Also, when are the stats for the legendaries going to be released?
JasonRegier: I got one during testing, and when it dropped, I jumped up and cheered. It was awesome!
Guest-25: Can you explain us about the bossfights? Will they be like Diablo 2 where the bosses had a fixed number of abilities and they just used them, or it will be more like WoW where the bosses have phases with different abilities and the scenery/positioning its crucial in the fight.
JayWilson: Depends on the boss. Some have a set number of abilities, some have phases. Most are a little more complex than Diablo II.
Guest-157: I will like to start of by saying the game is looking amazing so far, and I'm new to Diablo. Can you use the WASD keys for movement or just the left click on the mouse?
JasonRegier: Basic control in Diablo 3 is very simple. Just click to move, and click on monsters to attack them.
JayWilson: We don't support WASD for movement. We don't think it feels good as a movement scheme from an isometric view.
tomt610: Will you make inferno difficulty easier if people will start telling you that you made it too hard and they cannot beat it, even that it is beatable at this point? Cause I remember in 90s games required skill to beat them and it would be nice to have at least one that kind of game at this point, without life regenerating itself etc.
JasonBender: Inferno isn't for everyone. We would like to keep it as challenging as possible. Also, don't forget Hardcore mode. That's retro-hard!
Guest-70: How many times was the codebase rewritten over the years or was reuse pretty standard?
KevinMartens: We've spent a lot of time and energy getting the servers to be as prepared as possible. The big stress test during the beta was very helpful (thanks for all who participated). We'll have a big support team standing by at launch.
Guest-251: What was your inspiration for the Wizard?
JayWilson: We were inspired by old school pen and paper RPG's. We wanted a magic user who could control time, disentegrate, cast illusions, etc.
Guest-36: Do you have plans to implement the Necromancer or druid at any point in the future?
JayWilson: Any future classes we do are shrouded in mystery (insert scary ghost sounds).
Guest-283: what are the plans for launch day, are the servers prepared for the work load that is coming?
KevinMartens: We've spent a lot of time and energy getting the servers to be as prepared as possible. The big stress test during the beta was very helpful (thanks for all who participated). We'll have a big support team standing by at launch.
Guest-728: when you want to play with a friend who is much lower level than you, are you stuck playing the furthest ACT or DIFFICULTY they have achieved?
JasonBender: They can jump in to your game at a higher level (up to the highest difficulty they've achieved), even though they might miss story points. If the lower level player creates the game you will be limited to their story progress. You're not limited by ACT, but you are limited by DIFFICULTY.
Guest-253: What was the funniest / most awesome bug you discovered during the development of Diablo 3?
JasonBender: Funniest bug? We accidentally had an event that summoned 5 treasure goblins at one time. It was great seeing people scramble to chase them as they ran in different directions. Serious chaos!
KevinMartens: Perhaps a little less funny than awesome but I had an skeleton summoner with a bug with no limit on the number of skeletons and I went to a meeting, came back an the monitor was entirely filled with skeletons. I killed them all with a leap attack
Guest-56: Besides PvP, do you have any plans on adding additional content to Diablo?
JayWilson: To Guest-56 Nothing solid at this point.
Guest-25: Will the game have support for clans/guilds at release? if not, is something its being considered to be added in the future? I remember in Diablo 2 we had to create new characters to add the clan's tag.
JayWilson: No plans at this time.
Guest-23: I have had troubles with the FPS in the beta with my pretty decent upper class notebook, especially when bigger waves of monsters where on the screen? Has the FPS been optimized for notebook users for release since beta?
JasonRegier: It's hard to say without knowing more about your particular configuration. We work really closely with our hardware compatibility department to make sure that lots of people have a great experience with D3, and we're always looking to make performance better.
Guest-236: If i am higher level then my freinds and want to play with them, will there be any kind of handicap? for example will they get less exp
JasonBender: There is an XP penalty for killing monsters too high/low in level relative to your character. It scales based on your level, so at lower levels you can fight a broader range of creatures. This is good because player levels tend to be farther apart earlier in the game.
Guest-389: In the beta I had a hard time determining how much damage a spell did. I later learned that if I held ctrl and moused over a spell it gave me a percentage. Has any changes been made to make actually spell damage info more accessible?
JayWilson: You can set more advanced tooltips to permanently display so you don't need to hold down CTRL. I do feel these could be more accurate in displaying the exact damage you're doing, and we may improve it in the future.
Guest-261: Due to the amount of time it must take to produce the cinematics, how does that influence/affect a more iterative game design process?
KevinMartens: The cinematics team is very, very good at working with us to identify the moments of a cinematic that are most prone to change and leaving those to the last possible moment. There is seldom an issue that we can't change with a line change or a simple new shot. The process and time limits have not been much of a problem at all.
Guest-278: I know that Diablo3 is a click-to-move type game, but for sufferers of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, it can be very painful to click that much. Is controller support available in the future, if not, can players use applications such as Xpadder for use with controllers on the computer?
JasonBender: Right-click drive mode allows you to automatically attack while moving when you hold the right mouse button down instead of clicking. Several of us use this to reduce clicks. (You can imagine how many times we've clicked in the process of making the game!)
Guest-217: Are the end of the act bosses still going to be the enemies with the highest drop rates for the most sought after gear resulting in "Baal Runs" being the best way to gear up, or will you encourage players to scour the map looking for rarespawns and giving them a higher drop rate instead
JayWilson: We have a new system called "Nephalem Valor" that encourages you to kill randomly placed rares and champions. When you do, you get a stacking buff that increases your gold and magic find, and increases the drops on bosses. This makes it most beneficial to play through random content, then go fight bosses.
Guest-224: Say for example that I am playing a high level character, but I want to play with my friend who only has a low level character. Will me joining his game ruin the experience for him because I could just blast through the content and make it too easy for him?
JayWilson: You could blast him through the content, but his XP will be greatly diminished to the point that it's not very beneficial for your low level friend...unless he likes spoilers. But that's what Youtube is for.
Guest-302: In regards to internal testing, did any of you try out a completely ridiculous build and manage to make it work in a later difficulty?
KevinMartens: We spend a lot of time trying out "wacky" builds like melee Wizards or pet-less Witch Doctors and it is a fun, often challenging way to play. We often find ourselves changing a skill or two when we get stuck on a particular elite monster and sequence. Or more likely, we get tempted into to trying a completely different build when we get some particularly awesome piece of equipment. Melee wizard example above is a good one--I was playing recently with a typical mix of ranged spells and found a big bad-**bleep** sword that had such great stats, I changed my build to a melee wizard just to try out the sword.
Guest-352: How much does the difficulty and greater item quality drop change when your buddy enters the world to play with you?
JayWilson: Depends on the difficulty level you are playing in. I can't remember 'exact' numbers, though. It hovers around doubling monster health per player, but there are other variables as well.
Guest-65: What happeneds after i beat inferno mode? P.S I LOVE YOU GUYS AWESOME JOB WITH THE GAME!
JasonRegier: I'm pretty sure Jay comes to your house and gives you a big hug.
Guest-249: Hey guys, what are the best moments you have from development time?
JasonBender: Blizzcon was super-motivating. Also it's fun when we have hours long discussions about crazy design ideas, then see the exact same arguments happen on the forums.
JasonRegier: For me, one of the best moments was seeing hundreds of people playing the game for the first time at BlizzCon. The response was fantastic! I can't wait for the public to finally play the full game.
Guest-347: Bashiok stated that the display of BattleTags in games was a bug. Today Lylirra said that it wasn't. So is this a bug or not? If not then what exactly is the point of character names at all?
JayWilson: It's not a bug, it is supposed to be displayed in game. We felt showing the Battle Tag was an essential element to identifying your friends and didn't want players displayed with different names in different situations. The purpose of character names is to help the player identify their characters in the case they have multiple of the same class and for extended presence.
Guest-632: In diablo 2 as you got further into NM and **bleep** the areas became much bigger. Will the same happen with the later difficulties of Diablo 3? I remember Durance of Hate level 3 normal vs **bleep** and having a huge area difference.
KevinMartens: The areas do not get bigger in later difficulties and it hasn't impacted the fun at all. Bigger does not equal better in level design, in the vast majority of cases. We've concentrated much more on the second-to-second challenge and item rewards for higher difficulty playthroughs.
Guest-509: Can you keep teleporting if you are under 1 second, using the wormhole rune on the wizard?
JayWilson: You can teleport as many times as the animation will allow in the time before the cooldown is triggered.
Guest-351: My question is..... So if inferno has its own gear tiers Act1 - Act4 will all the normal thru **bleep** gear end up being trash or will some items end up being good way past their level unique items?? Thanks in advance .
JasonBender: You'll need to gear up for a while prior to Inferno, so He|| gear will still be valuable for a while. Inferno ramps harshly, though, so you'll need to farm early inferno to handle late inferno. There is a point where gear becomes useless, but a perfectly rolled rare or legendary item can last a long time if it has the affixes you need. Don't forget crafting components, too. Old items can be used to crafter better ones.
Guest-519: is there a way to switch weapons quickly on the run? (As we did with Diablo 2 by pressing "W") ?
JayWilson: No. In polling players this seemed to primarily be used to hot swap to high magic find weapons right before a boss died, which didn't seem like great gameplay to encourage.
Guest-552: Is there any customization to the character when making a character at the start screen? Also is there any customization later in the the game?
JayWilson: You can also use dyes to customize gear, and even hide pieces of gear that have good stats that you don't like the look of.
JasonRegier: At the starting screen, no. But within the game, there's a huge number of combinations of items and skills to choose from. Those choices really make your character unique.
Guest-367: Was anyone in the internal test team able to beat the fourth difficulty of the game ? If not what is the reason for that ?
KevinMartens: No one has beaten Inferno.
Guest-415: Will third party programs that collect data about how much loot/gold is dropped where and when be allowed to use?
JasonRegier: Using 3rd party programs like those is against the terms of use.
Talen: Many Beta Testers have conserns about the text size of the user interface being either to small, or to large.Do you have any plans at this time to introduce scaling o accessability options for the User Interface and Item Stat Text ?
JayWilson: Not at this time. Every feature has development cost. If there is demand for something like this we'll weigh it against other features we could add to the game. We did, however, increase font size late in the Beta.
Guest-366: For the Witch Doctor, with Zombie Handler and Circle of Life passives, are you able to go well beyond having 4 summoned dogs on the field at once or is there some sort of cap?
JasonBender: 4 is the max for dogs. You can get up to your max nyumber of dogs with a variety of skills (beyond just summoning them), which is good if they're dying a lot in higher difficulties, but that doesn't break the cap.
Guest-335: Developers: Which act is your favorite to play through?
JasonBender: I like Act 3. Because... er... *SPOILERS*!
KevinMartens: Interesting question as that actually changes for me based on the difficulty. I like Act 3 on normal just because of certain battle sequences (no spoilers!!!) but like Act 2 on Nightmare because the bump in difficulty there is a fun challenge for me.
JayWilson: Don't ask me to pick my favorite child.
Guest-248: So I read that we can make a new characters in other regions other than our own, will we be able to copy a character over to that region or will we have to start a new one to play with our overseas friends?
JasonRegier: You will have to start a new one.
Guest-617: Did you find it difficult to convince others (Co-Wokers - Players) that a stat system wasn't very fun and just a math game? And also, was it easy to convince others that a skill system that was developed around experimentation would be more fun than a Diablo 2 system of constantly re-rolling? (I love the skill system lets me try whatever I want to try - I feel rewarded for experimenting. I feel more games should have this type of system.)
JayWilson: Yes, it was difficult.
Guest-847: What is the highest gem level that we can expect to drop?
JayWilson: Tier 5 gems are the highest that drop.
Guest-505: Beyond what we have already seen and the sets in Inferno, how many unique weapons and armor sets can we expect to see in D3? Will more be added? (outstanding job so far!)
JasonBender: We have a ton of cool ideas that we would like to do. A bunch are in the works, but I can't yet say when they'll be ready for you. (The art team loves making these.)
Guest-807: Will there be the option to change the strength of the monsters by pretending to have more players in a game? Like in D2?
JayWilson: Not at release. With the challenge level of Inferno we did not see this as necessary.
Guest-2444: Will Melee Wizards be Viable in **bleep** Mode?
KevinMartens: For difficulty modes: certainly, the challenge will be harder in later difficulty modes. But really, this question points to a cool point of depth/awesomeness in our system. With the right gear and some practice, melee wizard will be viable--maybe barely but still. For Hardcore Mode: Again, with the right gear, maybe, but it is a risky thing to try. Let me know how you do
Guest-906: are the angels wings from the CE, an emote thing? or is it like an item you can trigger on and off? also is there a cooldown on them?
JasonBender: They're linked to a 1x1 item that goes in the inventory, but you can put them in your stash. You can click your wings to turn them on and off. There's no limit to how many times you can use them.
JasonBender: (Also no cooldown on the wings.)
Guest-128: Is there a separate appearance for the female barb when she goes berserker mode (the ability for 15 sec that you unlock at lvl 30)and how does she looks like can we not have a picture or something because we only see the male.
JasonRegier: Yes, she looks different.
Guest-523: Do bosses get more abilities through the difficulties to make them harder or do they just have scaling dmg and life? ie. in nightmare, he||, and inferno. Also, does Nephalem Valor only apply in Inferno?
JayWilson: Not really. We have a couple cases, but they are mild enough that I'd say overall no. Bosses mainly scale in stats. And yes, Nephalem Valor is Inferno only.
Guest-393: The new skill menu has been highly discussed by a large group of players awaiting Diablo III, and there has been much criticism (Despite it being an improvement over the early beta skill UI). Will there be further changes or did we see a finalized version of that system in the last patch of the beta?
JayWilson: Other than polish-oriented improvements (of which I can't recall which made Beta and which didn't) the skill system is basically unchanged from the final one that appeared in Beta.
Guest-347: Thank you for answering my first question. How far back does the behind the scenes in the CE cover? Does it cover any early D3 development or does it only cover the past couple years? Any word on when we can expect the web API for D3 or at least more information on it?
JasonBender: The behind-the-scenes talks about all kinds of crazy stuff, so there should be some good history in there for you. Not sure about the API.
Guest-446: Will certain areas in Diablo 3 have different treasure classes like they did in Diablo 2 for finding higher items or does it just come down to how far you have progressed into the game and is there a diminishing effect of the amount of mf your character can have eg. like a mf cap?
JayWilson: I don't really know how to answer the treasure class one, lots of areas have different treasure classes but we try to make areas relatively equal depending on challenge and monster level. MF is not capped, though.
Smeet: With Diablo 2, enemies in **bleep** difficulty almost all recieved an immunity to one type of damage. Does this trend continue into Diablo 3, or are the enemies / affixes made threatening in different ways?
JayWilson: We do not use immunities as a monster affix. We focused more on powers that change up the monster's threat and challenge different classes in different ways.
Guest-351: LOVE YOU GUYS & D3!!! Thanks for the Answer Also BTW how does sharing MF with a group work and is that group % amp'd up by "Nephalem Valor"
JasonBender: MF is an average of the group's MF rating, so everyone either contributes combat power or boosts the group's MF. Valor covers the party.
Guest-911: will I be able to have multiple keys on the same account IE: Collectors Edition and Standard? and are we able to use"Dual-Boxing" ?
JasonRegier: No, you can have one license attached to the account. Dual boxing isn't supported... you'll need to have multiple battle.net accounts.
Guest-561: How is Inferno difficulty being balanced as a sort of longterm endgame opportunity? Will characters struggle in inferno until they acquire really epic gear or is the aim for Inferno to always be very challenging even when characters are decked out? How does magic find gear play into the balance of being able to clear inferno (E.G. Being able to clear faster and safer vs wearing MF gear vs Nephalem Valor).
KevinMartens: Inferno is balanced to never be trivial, even with the best gear. If some of you end up finding it trivial, we'll certainly be paying attention--good luck! Magic find gear vs. survivability gear works much like you think. You'll probably use MF gear when you are farming an area you know/think you can survive in and switch to survivability gear once you are trying to get further into a tough area.
Guest-776: Send: Do you think that assigning a very specific/distinct personality to each character was a good call? A lot of people seem to be thrown away from wizard for example, just because of his not so cool attitude. Or the not-so-badass grandpa witchdoctor (character wise). Thanks
JayWilson: Yes, we do think it was a good call. We think improving our game story by making the player characters active participants is worth the risk that a few players might get turned off by the choices for those characters. Without making this choice it weakens our story, and strong story is one of the most requested ways the community wanted us to improve Diablo.
Guest-545: Is it an accurate assessment to say that expansions would follow the inferno progression and have a few levels but significant gear upgrades. Or will it be more like a level cap increase with inferno-like content at the end?
JasonBender: We're concentrating on a smooth launch right now. Next up after that: PVP!
Guest-401: Will there be a ladder and ladder-only items to keep Diablo 3 fresh for years to come? I know a lot of people still play Diablo 2, and were excited about the recent ladder reset.
JayWilson: Not currently. We'd prefer to find better ways to accomplish this. If we can't come up with something better we'd consider a ladder in the future. It's not a problem that needs to be solved right away.
DrowningRabbit: Speaking on Inferno mode, Blizzard has in the past made encounters like pre-patch C'Thun that were statistically impossible to finish. While that feat hasn't been repeated in World of Warcraft, is that a concern for Diablo 3's Inferno mode bosses?
KevinMartens: There are not statistically impossible bosses/challenges, at least not by design. There are extremely difficult moments in Inferno but I do think that people, with practice and gear, will be able to finish it. Let the race to end of Inferno begin on May 15th, everyone!
Guest-1326: Any plans for Lobby like Diablo 2?
JasonBender: We support public chat channels, and we are always looking to improve the Battle.net service. It will evolve over time. (The trick is getting the chat gem working juuuuuuuuust right.) :-p
JayWilson: BTW, I said earlier that Nephalem Valor is only available in Inferno. This is incorrect. It kicks in at level 60, regardless of your difficulty level.
Guest-647: Hi Guys. Breathtaking work so far!, I wish you the best for the release!. My question would be how often can we expect to see new patches in terms game mechanics but also item stats in the span of perhaps one year?. Second question to Jay - will be rolling barb & monk combo for the first playthrough on hardcore, what would you say the chances are defeating **bleep**?
JayWilson: We'll patch as the game needs it. Predicting a timeframe isn't something we'd do now. For your second question, need more information. How good are you? I'll just guess. I think you personally have a 37.4% chance to beat Hell.
Guest-311: Can you implement a force Stop key (differing from force Stand Still), where pressing the key will stop all actions including movement and holding the key acts like force Stand Still? Finer movement controls will open up more mechanics!
JasonBender: We always try to keep the controls streamlined where we can, but if there's a need for a new UI element we will surely consider it. No plans just yet on that particular item, though.
Guest-625: Why are the Monk's heals not scaled by stats? The monk can never improve healing with gear. By contrast, the Barbarian's heals scale with damage or max HP.
JayWilson: His heals scale with his level. They are powerful enough that we had concerns that if they scaled with gear they would be too good. Barb heals are personal, but Monk heals are group oriented, which is why they are handled differently.
Guest-303: I Feel that a Dota style pvp map / pvp game mode would be perfect for Diablo..any plans in the works?
JayWilson: That would be like making a whole new game inside our game. There are some parallels, but enough differences that I'd rather we focus on our core cooperative and PVE experiences.
Guest-1639: How large is D3 compared to D2? Will it take as long or longer to clear the game (excluding inferno)?
KevinMartens: Length of the game varies greatly depending on play-style and randomness. Play-style means completist poke around in every corner type people vs. rush the main objectives people--big difference. Randomness affects the length because you could be walking through an area and roll a 2 level dungeon (10-15 minutes of gameplay) or a 30 second ambush event. Depending on what rolls, that can really change your length. But regardless, length isn't the concern in a game so focused on replayability. Not that the game short so much as that is not what the design challenge is.
Guest-785: Can you craft "inferno" level gear? if not what is the highest level gear you can craft?
JasonBender: Yes, and it's awesome! It takes a lot of components to get to the best gear, though.
Guest-846: Are you concerned that the current Skill UI along with the Skill tab for cycling through skills has perhaps been too categorized and requires a potential excessive amount of cycling through to find things? Example: with the Demon Hunter, why not just have three categories with Hatred Generators, Spenders, and Discipline skills instead of how things are split up now? Isn't that much easier to understand instead of the seeminly excessive categories at the moment?
JasonRegier: We've found that categories in the current skill system UI is really helpful for newer players. And the "Elective Mode" option is there for advanced players to customize their builds to their heart's content.
Guest-645: Some people say they will not be rolling a WD because it is a silly class, what do you say to them? Also, Soul Harvest seems too good at the moment....... 6 ..... more...... days ........
JayWilson: I'd rather people be highly opinionated about our classes than not care. We made five classes just in case you don't like one of them.
Guest-184: What's up with gems? Are they going to be socketable in more than just helms and weapons?
JasonBender: Gems can be used in helms, weapons, and a variety of armor slots.
Guest-538: In order to sell items on the real money auction house, do I have to have funds in my battle.net balance?
JasonRegier: No, you can sell items without having any money in your account. There is no charge for posting items.
Guest-340: Would you say that Diablo III's soundtrack is overall, Wagnerian in texture?
KevinMartens: I'm not music history oriented enough to know the right pigeon-hole genre for our score. I think it is too varied to simply fit into one sub-genre.
Guest-348: Do you have any comments on Athene vs Kripp for worlds first Inferno kill?
JasonBender: I guess someone needs to take the other side of that bet, so Athene had better win. I like hot dogs. (The real question is: Who gets the world's first HARDCORE Inferno completion!)
JayWilson: $20 and a coupon for a free hot dog on Kripp.
Guest-520: Is it possible to place the dyes and wings from CE in the shared stash ? (so if i later upgrade my game to CE i could get the CE exclusives for my old heroes)
JasonRegier: Yes.
Guest-313: A new article on a fansite was just posted describing a way to use the WD to sacrafice zombies to do 25,000%+ weapon damage. How confident are you at this time that classes are balanced endgame?
KevinMartens: There are billions of class and skill combinations--literally. They inherently cannot be balanced at time of ship due to lack of working time-machine technology and/or Groundhogs Day -style repeat testing days. We look forward to following all of you as you find incredibly awesome builds.
Guest-844: Will Legendary/Set items have their own unique graphics independent of the "tier" sets or will they look the same?
JasonBender: Legendary items and set always have unique art, stats, names and flavor text.
Guest-876: Is the best gear in the game ("potentially," stats-wise) limited to dropping in Inferno difficulty, or are the differences between Inferno gear and end-game **bleep** gear mostly cosmetic or drop-chance related?
JayWilson: The top three tiers of items, which are the best, only drop in Inferno.
Guest-708: What class are each of you going to play at release? Softcore or hardcore?
JasonRegier: Witchdoctor for me too. Hardcore!
JasonBender: Witch Doctor. Also I'm looking forward to crying over my first hardcore character. And my second. And my third.
KevinMartens: No pornography references, please! (Monk, softcore)
Guest-869: Are there any non-set Legendaries that will only drop in Inferno Act III and IV?
JasonBender: Yes. Legendary items are dropped based on the level of the monster or chest, so we have several at the max level that can only be found in the end of Inferno.
Guest-720: Dueling: Will you ever consider patching in dueling “in-game” without having to lose the current play session and hit the arenas? The purpose is for fun things like settling disputes amongst friends, battling for items, or just killing time waiting for a friend to come back. It cannot be used for griefing due to mutually acceptance of the duel (and could even take a knee like in WoW so as there is no death).
JayWilson: I'm not opposed to this, but it's not a trivial amount of work, and is not a priority for us right now. We want to focus on our team-based arena mode right now.
Guest-547: Will there be any bosses that are only in certain difficulty modes?
JasonBender: Bosses appear in each difficulty, but there are a handful of unique monsters that only appear in certain difficulties. Also there are a number of rare/champion affixes that don't show up until you reach later difficulties.
JayWilson: Hold on, getting Wyatt for all your complex Witch Doctor questions.
Guest-483: How does the treasure goblin scale, in regards to HP, in the higher difficulties? Will they always take a couple of hits to bring down?
KevinMartens: Treasure Goblins are harder to kill at higher difficulties. I never miss one in normal but often fail to kill one in time in higher difficulties, usually because I'm too paranoid about being **bleep**ed by elite monsters to chase him aggressively.
Guest-536: Will there be any more 'randomization pockets' (such as the Hanging Tree and the Corpse Pile) in the areas we played in the beta for us to discover?
KevinMartens: I suspect that the beta players have discovered most, if not all, of the randomization pockets in the beta areas, but there is much more D3 to come. Also, there are rumors of secret things being secretly secreted somewhere secret.
Guest-25: Will the mobs or bosses have diminishing returns/immunity on stun/slow/fear abilities? Or stunlocking them in inferno with 4 barbarians its totally possible?
JayWilson: Elite mobs (bosses, champions, rares) are affected to a lesser degree by control skills, and are immune to a select few. We do not have a system for diminishing returns, as we want CC to be useful even against bosses.
Guest-1803: Does the explosive beast rune for zombie charger work with the final gift rune for zombie dogs? ie zombie dogs from zombie charger dropping health globes? Thanks.
KevinMartens: No, it does not.
Guest-104: Are there any plans to ever had "hotkeys" in the game so we can quickly switch between different spells like in D2 with the F-keys?
JasonRegier: The hotbar at the bottom of the screen gives you easy access to your current skills, and you can change the keybindings for it if you don't like the defaults.
Guest-1064: How will the Monk and Witch Doctor passive skills that avoid death work in Hardcore mode?
JayWilson: They will allow you to avoid death! Congratulations, hardcore player, you have outsmarted mortality!
Guest-367: Do i need to read the quest dialog to fully understand the diablo lore ? or i can simply watch the cinematics and understand what is going on ?
JasonBender: There are several ways to enhance your enjoyment of the story. The cinematics are meant to keep the story clear, but the more you read, the better it should be. (Even the item and skill flavor text adds to the lore.)
JayWilson: Correction: we drop gems up to tier 8.
Guest-376: can we follow treasure goblin through portal to a special dungon?
JasonBender: One wonders where they go!
Guest-1540: I heard a rumor around a month ago that players can recieve an extra reward if they don't switch their build for an entire Act, is this true?
JasonBender: Not exactly true. It's good to explore builds. Nephalem Valor goes away if you respec, but that isn't based on the act.
Guest-713: how will mf work in groups. say if 2 people have mf and 2 are just dps. will it take the groups mf number as a hole or just 1 person for their drops only?
KevinMartens: Magic find is averaged across the party. If you have two MF people with 100% and two DPS people with 0%, then each person has 50% for their drops. Loot is, of course, per player.
Guest-503: Is "rushing" a character possible? Or are there some kind of restrictions that keep a player from getting to Nightmare/**bleep**/Inferno in a significantly shorter time period than usual.
JayWilson: A higher level character can help you jump past content within a difficulty, but you get greatly diminished XP, so you really need to go through legitimately. We have hard level requirements for difficulty levels, though, so no shortcuts there.
Guest-661: I know you don't plan to support Diablo 3 to be a eSport - If the commnunity wants it to become a eSport(without the implied balance), would you support it with replays/spectator mode and more ?
JayWilson: No. We don't want Diablo 3 to become an E-sport. It's OK to have PVP just for fun. Our focus is on our PVE game, and we want it to stay there.
Guest-302: What was it like being able to take a game I'm sure you all loved, and being able to expand the story, and create amazing things I bet the original creators would never even have thought of?
JasonBender: It was a privilege. Personally, I feel incredibly lucky to be involved with Diablo, one of my favorite game worlds of all time. It was never hard to come up with cool ideas, just tough to pick the best to make the coolest game possible!
Guest-2203: Many people are trying to get world first 60 and think it is doable in as little as 20 hours. Can you give us any insight on this?
JayWilson: World's first what?
Guest-1729: How do you guys feel about the Barbarian in Inferno (being a melee class and all), especially regarding (the need for?) Shields?
KevinMartens: Survivability is certainly something that you need to gear for in Inferno. Shield is the easiest vs. most obvious choice but certainly you can gear for a higher DPS with a different selection of gear and skills. It is still a fine balance between your play style, your DPS, your survivability stats, etc. None of those things can be out of balance for the way you play in order to survive at Inferno.
Guest-1736: So, you guys are always talking about how diffcult Inferno will be. What about the others? Does this mean nightmare and **bleep** will also be too easy for us just like normal mode? Thats a serious concern for me...
JasonBender: Different players find different things challenging. (This also depends on your gear.) Finishing Inferno in Hardcore mode will not be easy!
Guest-2357: Is stun duration reduced in **bleep**/inferno or is the same as in normal?
KevinMartens: It has been reduced.
Guest-586: Will you share game statistics with the community? For example: ### different Monk builds have defeated <insert boss name>? or other misc data?
JasonBender: We like sharing cool stats, but no specifics yet on what they will be.
JayWilson: To the person who asked if we might add or remove skills: we'll do whatever we think is right to balance the game and make the classes feel well rounded and effective. In other words...maybe.
Kyle-BBY: Great chat everyone! Thank you for joining us fans and Diablo III Dev team!
KevinMartens: Thank you, everyone, for attending
JasonBender: Thank you so much! Great questions!
JasonRegier: Thanks everyone! See you online!
JayWilson: Thanks everyone! May 15th! WOOOOO!!!!!! -
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Hi, I currently have a moderate nat type on Call Of Duty Black ops 2 which i would like to change to open. I have followed the post by StephanieG but it is still moderate. Could you please advice me on how to change the nat type to open? thanks
Same is happening here on PC. Only happens in Multiplayer so I no it must be an interenet fault.
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