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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

WoW Developer AMA

Thanks to /u/Zarhym for getting this set up.

Welcome

Welcome to our friends from Blizzard today:

/u/kalgan - Tom Chilton - Game Director
/u/WatcherDev - Ion Hazzikostas - Lead Game Designer
/u/Mumper_Blizz - Cory Stockton - Lead Game Designer
/u/Desvin - Brian Holinka - Senior Game Designer
/u/zarhym - Jonathan Brown - Community Manager
/u/bashiok_foreal - Micah Whipple - Community Manager
/u/devolore - Josh Allen - Community Manager
/u/Kaivax - Randy Jordan - Community Manager

Thanks for coming and doing this!

Guidelines

If you're asking questions, please remain civil and respectful at all times. If you ask things in a disrespectful way, your question will be removed and you'll get a day-long timeout.

Typically in AMAs it's not usually a great idea to ask about the specifics of class balance issues, because those questions get brought up A LOT so you might want to consider asking more original questions. :)

Start Time

I'm posting this at 3:30PST | 6:30EST | 11:30GMT and Blizzard isn't expected until 4 | 7 | 12. Don't get too excited if it takes some time for your questions to get answered!

Summary

We'll be doing our best as time goes by to sum up the answers in comments below, which I'll link to from here.

The summary has begun. My kids are having a meltdown, and it will be slightly delayed.

Done

We're done - the time for answers has come and gone. Thanks for the interest everyone, I'll keep compiling the answers. Sorry if your question didn't get answered. Hope you still enjoyed it!

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Even with states of Normal Butcher, Heroic Butcher and Normal Ogron you feel enhancement and elemental is perfoming strongly?

    Check out Tectus or Mar'gok for a different picture, though.

    I realize it's not that simple (and no, I'm not going to argue that Fire Nova should be the defining niche of the Enhancement shaman) but what matters is the game in its totality, not a specific encounter.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    ...or the elemental shaman who didn't get a raid spot because the spec's damage output was mediocre...

    I don't mean to be disrespectful, Mr. Hazzikostas, but the very thing you said you were avoiding is happening right now as we speak.

    I really should have said "abysmal" rather than mediocre. When DPS shaman brought a suite of unique buffs in TBC, their damage was routinely 30-40% behind "real" damage-dealers, not the 10% that is often bemoaned today.

    In any case, the numbers don't entirely bear out that assertion (Elemental has very strong single-target DPS, as Butcher parses will attest) though there was regrettably some real damage done in terms of overall community perception during the first couple of weeks before the hotfixes. We are keeping an eye not just on damage, but on representation.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    With the loss of Ancestral Vigor and Mana Tide and the output of other healers, it seems R Sham's only justifiable presence is the ability to continue to heal during HTT. Do you have any ideas to remedy our plight? A la Vigor or SLT in Cata?

    Ancestral Vigor was honestly a stopgap measure at a time (mid-Cata) when Resto Shaman was by far the dominant arena healer, but the weakest healer in raids. We used AV to prop the spec up and help ensure they'd usually have at least a single raid slot while we tried to sort out the thornier balance issues with the spec. At this point, however, we feel that the overall Resto healing toolkit holds up against other specs head-to-head, and there's no longer a need for Vigor.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    One more question: Shaman earthquake, I recently discovered that no one can see this but the casting shaman. Any plans to change the animation so our aoe isn't wasted when the tanks move out of an earthquake that they cannot see? Thanks =)

    Very much so. The current situation is an unfortunate stopgap measure until our next patch - without an alternate toned-down visual to show other players (an oversight on our part), the base Earthquake visual was making melee gameplay pretty miserable for people who had to fight and perceive hazards in the middle of that graphic. So we hid it temporarily, recognizing that it's clearly a problem for tanks who want to position mobs inside the Earthquake. Will be fixed, though.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Shaman here, and I think my post will be somewhat lengthy, so I'll put my question(s) at the beginning to hopefully make it easier for you guys:

    1) Do you agree that the Shaman class has lost much of it's identity over the years?

    2) Do you feel that Shaman-balance should take the form of number tweaking, or is the sudden outcry for an all-out rework justified?

    3) What would you like to tell Shamans who feel like second class Druids?

    And now my post to put it in context:

    So far I've been really enjoying the new expansion - it's my favorite since TBC. The lore, the quests, the cinematics, the soundtrack - everything is awesome. Yet I can't help but feel that people playing other classes are just having a lot more fun than me. All throughout leveling I watched as Ret Pallys and Ferals would two-shot their quest mobs, while I struggled to kill even a single mob before being forced to spam Healing Surge 4-5 times to get to full hp for the next mob. I kept telling myself it would be different at 100 - how else could I stomach the leveling experience? And then 100 came and went. My ilvl rose to 610, then to 630, but nothing really changed. I was consistently bottom dps (sometimes even below the tank) despite having all of the correct talents/rotations/priorities. I was even removed from Heroics a few times for having low dps, only to find when I went to the Shaman forum for help that many others were having similar stories.

    Then the hotfix came and there was hope. Blizzard knows we're bad! Help is on the way! And to be fair, the hotfix did help; my dps was still towards the bottom, but by a smaller margin - and I was no longer removed from groups. However we are not yet fixed, and there is room for a lot of improvement - many Shaman agree on that. What we don't seem to agree on is how that 'fix' should be implimented. Some think we just need a few more spells buffed (Lava Burst and Storm Strike in particular). Some believe our class mechanics are inherently flawed and many of them need to be reworked. I happen to be a part of the second camp. I believe that over the years our class has lost a lot of what made it unique: Totems that augment combat (windfury, stoneskin, etc), Bloodlust being given to mages, Our old mastery being turned into a secondary stat for everyone, etc. Remember that we started out as the iconic Horde class - there was a lot about Shamans (and paladins) that really stuck out from the other classes. So it's a tough pill to swallow going from the Horde's flagship class to being the undisputed "worst hybrid" in the game. So I'm sitting here with my clunky outdated totems, my pitiful damage, and just a general sadness inside while I watch my brother class (druids) get FOUR specializations, varying talents between specs, massive damage and self healing. I'm no game developer, but here are a few of the things that make me feel the Shaman kit needs a tune-up:

    A) Searing Totem. An ability on the GCD that looks pretty underwhelming, lasts 1 minute, and needs to be constantly re-applied to avoid missing free dps.

    B) Earthquake. A very cool ability from a thematic standpoint, but pretty clunky in implimentation - especially after you made it invisible to the tanks while leaving the cast time and cooldown the same.

    C) Unleash Flame/Unleash Elements. The worst thing about this spell is that it remains on the GCD despite having it's damage removed.

    D) Talents. I don't think any other hybrid class has as much overlap between their talents as Shamans do. Elemental and Enhancement are drastically different in their design, so why aren't more talents unique to a specialization?

    E) Talents (cont.) We have several talents that seem like they would be baseline passives for our class. The level 45 tier is especially frustrating. Totems are such an iconic part of our class - and yet we have an entire tier of talents dedicated to fixing their problems. I mean, Capacitor totem might as well not even be on your bar unless you're running Totemic Projection - but at the same time you can't run Storm Elemental unless you also run Totemic Persistence (unless you wanna lose your level 100 ability as soon as you try to Ground a spell). This just seems like outdated design.

    Sorry for the long post. I tried to make this as constructive as possible and not fall into blame and general negativity, but I apologize if anything came off as too aggressive. I do appreciate your time, both for the AMA and (hopefully) for responding to my questions.

    (Wasn't dodging this question, just tackling some more bite-sized queries first....)

    Alright, shaman.

    1) Do you agree that the Shaman class has lost much of it's identity over the years?

    Probably the biggest blow to shaman identity came in Wrath (2008) when most buffs were changed to raidwide and were generally standardized among classes as a result. There was certainly something cool about bringing unique buffs like Windfury, and having a large number of those buffs that you could call uniquely your own. But it was quite a bit less cool being the Fury warrior who was only a viable endgame raid DPS with a shaman in your party, or being the raid leader playing party Tetris and cycling Bloodlusts through the melee group, or the elemental shaman who didn't get a raid spot because the spec's damage output was mediocre and they were only worthwhile if there was an open spot in the warlock/warlock/warlock/spriest group. I don't think returning to that would be the answer.

    So, yes, the shaman is no longer a buff-bot. What, then, is the shaman identity? We do see totems as remaining a large part of that identity, and tried in Mists to remove passive buff totems and refocus them as more concentrated and intense effects that do something powerful in the short-term -- Capacitor, Tremor, Grounding, Healing Tide, etc. (not going to argue that Searing fits into this model or is particularly sexy, though). I'd be curious to hear (from you, from everyone) what it is about the shaman class that most resonates (or resonated, in the event that you've lost that lovin' feeling) with you.

    2) Do you feel that Shaman-balance should take the form of number tweaking, or is the sudden outcry for an all-out rework justified?

    We've already made some numbers tweaks, and we'll make some more as needed. There's no question that Enhance and especially Elemental were weak during the initial days of Warlords, but at this point we're seeing both specs performing very solidly in dungeons as well as a range of encounters in Highmaul. We'll of course continue to watch balance as gear and strategies evolve, and watch PvP representation and success as the arena/RBG season really gets underway. In the short term, I would not expect a drastic overhaul. Drastic overhauls of classes are something we do rarely, and then almost exclusively with expansions and not patches. There are plenty of shaman out there who are having fun who don't want to log in to find their class completely changed overnight. But that doesn't that there isn't room for improvement. A number of the points above regarding talents are very valid, and there's definitely room for more differentiation through that avenue. And the Call/Persistence/Projection row is terrible.

    3) What would you like to tell Shamans who feel like second class Druids?

    Druids are cats/bears/turkeys/trees; you are mail-clad warriors of the elements. Have faith, and try to focus feedback in a constructive way that focuses on specific areas of discontent. We're listening.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    It's all rng though. I have the same setup as you described but I rarely get good follower items from salvage. Since upgrading salvage yard to lvl 3 I have received a ton of crates ( I'd estimate .75 or per mission), but hardly any follower items, and no items I can use. Maybe 10% of my crates have had a follower item, possibly less than that.

    The gear I get too isn't even good transmog gear. I've seen a few neat looking shields but since they are old items they are super small and just don't fit any transmog sets for this xpac.

    I promise that the chances of getting a follower item are identical from a level 3 vs. a level 2 crate. The other stuff is all just a bonus.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    First of all, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions in this point in time. Things must be really busy at the office with Highmaul released to the public and the world bosses giving trouble to EVERYONE. I have a couple of questions that trouble me a lot, they are the following:

    • Why does the amount of Missions decrease substantially when all the active followers are level 100? The amount of missions I could do before this happened were about 25 to 30 per day. Now I am limited to 3 or 4 missions, which leaves me with 16 to 17 followers doing nothing at all, making the barracks level 3 upgrade a bit pointless as well. This also brings a bit of a problem with the Salvage yard.

    • Is there a chance that we could have an option to stop moving background in certain dungeons/raids? Grimrail Depot causes 2 of my guildmates to have motion sickness when we are doing the second and third bosses, and it doesn’t help when that instance is needed for the legendary ring quest.

    • This is a lore question, but I think it could be game related as well, where on Draenor is Dentarg? I have not seen him at all.

    • Are there plans to expand the garrison further than level 3? The phase where the garrison is seems to be a little bit big for what they are.

    • How many of you actively play the game outside of work hours and now many reached level cap in this expansion? (My take is that I'd feel sick of seeing the same game on my work hours that I'd play something else on my free time, not related to the previous questions in terms of context.)

    • How long does it take to create, test and ship out a raid instance at this point in time? I remember watching the 10 year anniversary and hearing that Molten Core took a week to create is something interesting to hear.

    Again, thanks for your patience and time. Keep up the good work.

    Few responses here: 1) Originally missions all pulled from a single pool; players found that as they got their first level 100 followers they got fewer low-level missions and had a harder time leveling their weaker followers, so we made a change to ensure that some low-level missions would always pop if you had a follower in that range who needed them. We recognize this causes some odd incentives (you're encouraged to NOT max all your followers) and are discussing good solutions to that problem.

    2) Grimrail: Sorry, there's actual motion going on and not a simple graphical effect that can be disabled. Agree it's rough for your friend. :( All I can suggest is to zoom in a bit and you can largely avoid having much movement in your field of view.

    3) All of us play, with a wide variety of playstyles. Garrison missions have probably had a non-trivial impact on office productivity the past few weeks.... We love the game, and of course it's also essential to be experiencing the gameplay and potential issues firsthand so that we can really understand what's working well, what isn't, what's frustrating, etc. Personally, I've been doing tons of Heroics, daily CMs, and jumped right into Highmaul last night (I couldn't raid on Tuesday night either!).

    4) Making a raid zone nowadays is a huge endeavor that touches virtually all parts of the team in some form. From start to finish, Throne of Thunder or Siege of Orgrimmar each took 6-7 months to go from a 2D layout and a general concept to a playable, tested, tuning, and polished experience. (Spoilers: We're working on the next big raid zone right now.)

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Are there any plans for Moonkin remodels, bear remodels and warlock pet remodels? (Looking at you Felguard.)

    We hear you - primary focus for Warlords was on the main player models, but this is definitely something we want to do.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Why is the loot table on level 3 salvage crates so damn big?

    A common misconception is that large tables necessarily mean more randomness, or that items are competing with each other. There are lots of ways of constructing treasure tables to avoid this. After many reports from players concerned with seemingly poor yield of follower rewards from Level 3 salvage crates, we took a really thorough look through the data and tested extensively to make 100% sure we weren't missing something.

    A level 3 salvage crate actually gives you a guaranteed direct pull from the level 2 salvage loot table, PLUS additional chances to get transmog, legacy, or current items for your character to use or sell. The loot table is large to offer tons of variety, and there are definitely some jackpot items in there (Everburning Candle says hi), but it's not coming at the expense of the core follower items or resources you got from level 1 and level 2.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    I'll also submit one more question, and be -that- guy.

    What's the deal currently with your stance on flying, any new developments, or insights?

    Thanks!

    Overall, we’re happy with how ground travel in Draenor has played out thus far, and we’ve heard a lot of feedback to that effect as well, though we of course recognize that there are players who feel differently. We’ll have more to announce about our 6.1 patch plans in the very near future, but as the focus of our endgame outdoor content remains in the main Draenor zones, our reasons for disallowing flight in 6.0 continue to apply in 6.1. Whether you’re navigating your way to Orumo the Observer in Shattrath Rise, trying to reach a treasure cache atop a column in Spires, or working your way around the ledges encircling The Pit, you’re engaging in gameplay that simply would not exist in a world with unfettered flight. It was never our intent to make large-scale navigation of the world inconvenient, and in 6.1 we’re going to be improving our flight path system to always take the most direct route between two points, even if you have not discovered some of the intermediate nodes. Please keep the feedback coming – if you’re unhappy with the design, some of the most helpful feedback would be specific examples of situations or systems that feel frustrating without being able to fly in Draenor.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Hi there! First AMA, sorry for any weirdness.

    I've got multiple questions:

    1) what are the plans for Wrathion? I loved his interaction with Anduin in the legendary cloak questline and would love to see them patch their friendship. If Wrathion got sent down the "future raid boss" pipe I'd be sorely disappointed. He's one of my favorites. :(

    2) In Shadowmoon, I went to go visit my old friends Fiona, Gidwin, and Tarenar. They were red. What did I do to piss them off? Essentially why is Fiona's Caravan red to horde, I helped them in EPL and Tarenar's a blood elf anyway.

    3) I'm trying to do the Stables quests as a hunter, and it seems to be a gigantic pain in BM spec, especially when Dire Beast and Stampede end up with six animals trying to get in my lap instead of attacking the mob. It's bad enough that my DPS is hobbled by not being able to use my pet -- is there anything that can be done to at least remind the other beasts that they're there to tear faces off? I've been doing it in Lone Wolf'd SV spec, but it's unfamiliar and really no fun at all.

    4) also, it seems like recently taxis have been eating pets, elementals, and demons. Possibly undead as well, though I haven't brought my dk to draenor yet. I've experienced it with quest-related vehicles before and just consider that one a hazard of questing, but without flying taxis are essential in Draenor. Is there any explanation as to why this happens, or a potential fix? Occastionally I can get my pet/elemental back by walking a little ways away, but not always.

    5) can trap launcher just always be on and have an option to toggle it off? i keep trying to cc and end up dropping a trap at my feet instead and it's frankly embarrassing...

    thank you for the consideration! :)

    4) This is a bug, and we're working on a fix in the near future.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    How well do you think the charge system works for spells, verses the more traditional cooldown, and are you planning on converting any more spells to be charge based?

    We're pretty happy with that system. The major advantage of that system is the way it allows for more open-ended decisionmaking in spell use that doesn't penalize a player for not using an ability the instant it comes off cooldown. It also lets you deliberately plan ahead and pool usage. I'm not sure we'd want to extend it to ALL abilities, but for abilities that commonly run into the two issues I just outlined, it can really improve usability without needing to add additional mechanics.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    BRING BACK CLASS QUESTS.

    Such as: The Hunt for Rhok'delar / Lok'delar epic bow/staff for Hunters. & the way Paladins and Warlocks used to have to EARN their free mount, or How Druids had to see the lore behind their shapeshifting forms (I WANT TO SEE A CLASS QUEST for the Claws of Shirvallah lvl100 Talent, the way GREEN fire quest worked for Warlocks)

    PLEASE PLEASE, bring back the best part of WoW. Class individuality and specific Lore type quests that explain the origins or even how each SPECIFIC CLASS came to be.

    That is all, Thank you for everything you do!

    For sure - the green fire questline was a great experience. We do want to do more of this in the future, especially in a way that highlights and reinforces class identity, and are actively working on some cool stuff along these lines.

  • Watcher
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Hi, thanks for giving the time to do this. I have a few concerns, in regards to healers and holy paladins in particular.

    1) Spirit as a secondary/primary stat. It's super discouraging that we as healers don't have any enchants, gems, or flasks with spirit. The nerfing of that crystal recently you get in the inn was hard hit also. My question is: What is spirit? Secondary stat or Primary stat? Why can't we have it on either gems and enchants or flasks? It should really be treated as one or the other. It just seems unfair as the odd one out, when tanks even get a stam flask to use.

    2) Healing overall in Highmaul, even on normals (at least as a holy paladin) is hard. Everyone seems to take a considerable amount of damage at the same time. If the fights are relativly short it's something that is handable. But any fights that last beyond 4 minutes and holy paladins have a hard time keeping up. There is very little AoE healing going on as a paladin. Our 2 AoE heals without a cooldown either cost way more mana and heal for little, or cost no mana and heal for a little more. I can't keep people up using Holy Radiance or Light of Dawn. Eternal Flame as a finisher is way better to use then Light of Dawn, especially with Beacon of Faith and spamming Flash of Light is the only way holy paladins can keep up with the other healers AoE wise, and it causes me to run on fumes for at least 1/4th of the fight. Is this a concern seen by the Dev team? I know we are supposed to use Holy Light as much as possible, but it's just too slow.

    No problem - it's always fun to chat about this stuff.

    1) It's your best secondary stat as a healer, similar to what Armor is for tanks. Early on in beta, you actually could get Spirits gems/flasks/food, but we found that it undermined part of the point of consumable philosophy. We removed primary stats from gems and enchants in order to add some player choice and allow players to customize their secondary stats in a post-reforging world. If you want to try a crit-heavy build or want to stack mastery on your healer, you can use our profession system to accomplish that. But if Spirit were an option, it would clearly be the correct choice, and you'd never for a moment consider using any of those other secondary stat options. So in the interest of preserving some interesting choice, we removed Spirit and Armor food/gems/enchants and balanced healers around that change.

    2) We're keeping a very close eye on healing overall as raiding begins. From personal experience, observation, and talking to other healers, a lot of what we're seeing is a mix of learning new fights (and thus people in general taking large amounts of avoidable damage) and healers getting used to not panicking when someone is at 60% or 70% health. Both of those are things that should improve over time. We recognize that it's one of the risks of a more deliberate healing pace: in Mists mistakes might have been instantly lethal due to spikier damage, while in Warlords they're survivable in the short-term, but are bleeding healers try in the long term. If you aren't cleaning out the stands on Kargath, or people are triggering arcane mines on Mar'gok, that might not instantly wipe you, but it'll absolutely lead to your healers running out of gas eventually. That said, raid healing in particular tends to lend itself towards more specialization, and raid leaders may find that it makes sense to have their paladins focus a bit more on single-target healing, which is a clear niche thanks to Beacon, while other classes blanket the raid.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    what is your favorite kind of cheese?

    Camembert.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    When do we get a duckling companion pet, Mumper? (please say 'Noblegarden 2015')

    Upvoted!

    I want ducks so much! /u/Mumper_Blizz, can we please have ducks? Please?

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Will my garrison follower ever be able to follow me outside of my garrison? I know bodyguards exist, but I would just like to have them with me (and not benefit me while fighting) kind of like how non-combat pets do. I giggle at the thought of a raid filled with Millhouse Manastorms :) Thanks!

    I think you answered your own question there, friend.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Work environment question:

    Who brings the best snacks? What are some of the teams favorite snacks while working on patches and other task?

    We have a ton of foodies here.

    My observation -- gourmet donuts really go over well.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    [deleted]

    I give up.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    If you click on his body, it says "Dead".

    Why would you do that?

    I would never do that.

    Ew.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    And taking care of their cats while they're on vacation, right?

    RIGHT?

    I'm not here to take care of your cats.

    I'm here to prevent them from forming some sort of world dominion plot while you're away.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    What happened to Orgrim Doomhammer? The guy that would become the Warchief of the horde, friend of Durotan and mentor of Thrall. We barely get any glimpse of him and then he is killed off. He was portrayed previously as a brutal orc but sympathetic to others and a brilliant tactician.

    I'm not so sure he was killed off.

    I have nothing whatsoever to do with the creative development and storytelling of WoW. But speaking purely as a player who has gone through that scene...

    He looked like he was knocked out and still breathing to me.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Thanks for doing this AMA.

    Can you share some rejected Garrison building suggestions, and possible reasons they were tossed? The funnier the better.

    Loving this xpac.

    There's still time to work on my suggestions! --

    Coffee Bar (Cup of Warcraft)

    Movie Theater (The Silver Screencraft)

    BBQ Restaurant (Smokecraft)

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    What is your favorite mount in WoW?

    I love love love my Enchanted Fey Dragon.

    Love.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Do you stand or sit?

    Definitely.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    [deleted]

    No way to say this without sounding sappy...

    The best thing about this job is being within a few feet of Rygarius and Bashiok and Zarhym and Crithto and Nethaera and Lore all day. Interacting with them and cracking wise and sharing a big part of their lives is an honor and a joy.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Hey guys! Thank you so much for doing this AMA! It would mean the absolute world to me if you took a few minutes and read my question! My question is in bold towards the bottom.

    My question is for the Community Managers, but more directed at /u/devolore. Any of the other CMs or Blizzard employees can join in and help me out! I would love to hear as much feedback as possible from every single one of you!

    My name is Eric. I'm 22, I've been going to college for the past fourish years on and off. I'm a giant fan of yours Lore. I've followed you since your early days over at Tankspot creating boss encounter video guides! I've watched every single Weekly Marmot video and every weekly Q&A video you used to make. I watched Legendary religiously. (Legendary was incredible! Bashiok kidnapping Gary, or Bashiok shutting down the stream because you knew too much with your tin foil hat theories. Or those times Gary started a fire in his studio.... Good times!) I even watched you stream your raids with Months Behind! Yes.... I even watched your raid stream during the Heroic Ragnaros times.... shutters I'm so happy that you and /u/akamikeb created that podcast! It's honestly my favorite podcast! I constantly go back and listen to old episodes quite often.

    I watched the WoW documentary and was blown away by it. (Nice job with getting a lot of the in game footage for the documentary lore!) I was blown away by it for different reasons than other people. I thought it was incredible how every single person in that documentary loved every aspect of their job at blizzard. To them it didn't even seem like it was a job because they loved it so much. All i could see was their passion for gaming and their love of gaming being turn into a career that they loved. It was so powerful for me that as soon as I finished watching the documentary I knew that the career that I'm supposed to go into is gaming. (I'm getting to my question soon i swear)

    I'm a terrible artist, and even worse at coding. But the one thing I love about video games are the communities. Every single game I'm passionate about I follow the communities deeply. Whether it be the subreddit, fan site, or forum. I love every aspect of the communities. I love talking to other about games, I love communicating with other people about how to make the game even better. I've come to the conclusion that being a Community Manager for a gaming company would a dream come true. Being a Community Manager for a gaming company is my dream job.

    So my question is kind of a loaded question so i apologize in advance. What things can I do starting right now to better myself so that I can become a Community Manager one day? What skills do I need to have? What tools do i need to know? What types of programs do I need to know how to use? What college degree would a gaming company look for in a Community Manager? What College degree is the best? How can/do i start networking with people in the gaming industry already? What exactly do gaming companies look for in Community managers? What things can i do/learn to make myself stand out from all the other people applying for jobs as community managers? How do I become the best person for a Community Manager position? I know it's a lot to tackle. It would me so much to me if you took some time and think this over and came back with specific answers. I truly want to make my dream of becoming a Community Manager a reality. I would love to hear any amount of feedback! Feedback is so important to me!

    I love gaming so much. It's my passion in life! I want to turn that passion it into a career that i love just as much. People tell me thing like "You need to grow up. Stop playing video games. Think of all the people you could meet. All the places you can go. All the things you can achieve if you stopped playing video games" When i hear things like this, all i can think of of how many incredible people I've met while playing video games. How many incredible memories I've made while gaming. All the amazing places I've been to and seen in video games. I think of all the goals I've set out to achieve in video games. Gaming is my true passion and i want to make it into a career!

    I just wanted to finish up and say thank you Lore. I've followed you for so many years Lore. I consider both you and /u/akamikeb to be heroes of mine. I see so much of myself in you guys. I see how passionate you guys are about gaming and how you've turned that passion into a career that you love. I look up to you guys so much. It means the absolute word to me knowing that there's a chance that you might read this.

    I apologize for the length of this question. I felt like I needed to share a lot about myself and my passion for becoming a Community Manager to give you a better understanding of how much these questions actually mean to me! Thank you so much for your time! Have a wonderful day! I would love to hear feedback from as many Blizzard employees as possible. Any kind of feedback would mean so much to me!

    TL;DR What can I do to become a Community Manager for a gaming company?

    My two cents --

    For many roles (including community management) in the gaming industry, the way to find your place in the business is to do on the outside what you'd like to be doing on the inside.

    People like my good friend Lore here were building communities and communicating helpfully about the game to other players for a long time before pursuing a job doing those things. Think along the lines of a self-assigned apprenticeship. If you wanted a job as a carpenter, in addition to getting some education that relates to carpentry, the best thing you could do would be to start building things yourself and learning carpentry as a hobby.

    Community management makes a great hobby, if you're cut out for it. And if you aren't, you definitely want to find that out before you try to do it for a living!

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Hey guys love the expansion. How much attention do you pay to the outside community. The Instance, Wow Insider and MMO-Champion in particular

    Oh so you like The Instance, do you? :-D

    There isn't an easy way to quantify how much attention we pay to those things, but I can tell you -- as someone who was one of those entities before going to work at Blizzard, I felt greatly attended to. As Blizzard community managers, we pay a lot of attention to fansites and influencers and everything players are saying to us on Twitter and Facebook and the forums and here on Reddit.

  • Randy Jordan
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Your game is helping me through a very rough time right now. I don't have a question, I just wanted to say thank you and hope you all see it.

    Edit: And thank you for taking the time to reply to me. Holy crap, my day is now infinitely better.

    I'm showing it to everybody!

    We just want you to know that this means the world to us, and we hope things get better for you.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Is it intentional to be garrison mission starved once all your followers are 100? It feels crappy to have to bring in a scrub level 90 and level 95 to spawn as many missions as possible for the salvage yard.

    Not intended. Don't have any details on a fix just yet, but we're looking into it.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Do you have any plans to allow crafted gear to continue to be upgraded as new raid tiers are released?

    Still discussing if we want to do anything for Tier 17, but we'll almost certainly have some sort of upgrade for crafted gear with Tier 18.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    No way to say this without sounding sappy...

    The best thing about this job is being within a few feet of Rygarius and Bashiok and Zarhym and Crithto and Nethaera and Lore all day. Interacting with them and cracking wise and sharing a big part of their lives is an honor and a joy.

    And taking care of their cats while they're on vacation, right?

    RIGHT?

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Thank you very much for doing this AMA and your awesome work in general. :)

    Can you comment on the changes you did to mob pathing with WoD? As a tank player I find myself annoyed by that quite often when trying to position mobs properly. They seem to react much more twitchy to my own movement than they did in MoP.

    We actually didn't change mob pathing directly -- we made a ton of improvements to server responsiveness, which means the server (and thus, the mobs) have a more precise idea of where your character is currently standing than they have in the past. The end result is that there's a noticeable difference in the feel of how certain mobs move around, especially for tanks. There really isn't a quick fix for this, but it's something on our radar for sure.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Warlords-only feature? :(

    That'll be a real shame, it seemed like a great addition to the future of the core game for singleplayer investment and advancement, like pet battles were!

    I should clarify: it's intended as a feature that we don't have to bring along with us into the next expansion (like a new profession would be, for example). However, it's something we can bring along if we want to, or even repurpose a lot of the same tech to provide something else. Opens up a lot of options for future expansions.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Your game is helping me through a very rough time right now. I don't have a question, I just wanted to say thank you and hope you all see it.

    Edit: And thank you for taking the time to reply to me. Holy crap, my day is now infinitely better.

    I don't have an answer, I just wanted to respond to your comment because everyone else was doing it and I want to feel included.

    (but srsly glad you're enjoying the game, and hoping for the best for you!)

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    My question is for /u/devolore. As a huge fan of Legendary, The Weekly Marmot, PST, and PST Rapid Fire, I miss your videos a ton, but I was wondering if you ever miss making that content. Also, what was your favorite moment during your YouTube/Tankspot/GamebreakerTV times?

    Definitely miss making that content. I've actually started a new podcast with Mike B recently -- I won't directly promote it here, but you could probably find it on Google or something.

    Favorite moment would probably be the original "Halo MMO" tinfoil hat stuff, especially now that I've been able to peek behind the curtain as a Blizzard employee :P

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    updates

    Does this include new customisation options? Because I'd love to see Mag'har/Blackrock/Dragonmaw/Laughing Skull skins for player Orc characters.

    Chris Robinson (our Art Director) has mentioned that he'd love to see stuff like that as well, there's just a lot of higher-priority projects that need the art team's attention first.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    1. I know our UI team reads the UI forums regularly, but feel free to contact me about addon development issues if you like. Easiest way to do that is probably through Twitter at @CM_Lore.

    2. Currency tab is a known issue. We'll get that fixed.

    3. I'll bring the rest of your questions up with the UI team. Can't make any promises, but I'll look into it!

    Oh one other thing I should note just to be clear: that includes the EU UI forums. :)

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Why does the Vers + 505 Int proc pvp trinket proc when using burning rush. Super annoying.

    Also, any news on why copeland's clarity says it grants 1467 sp and actually used to but only gives 1100 now for the past couple of weeks yet the tooltip is still wrong? Kind of annoying since you updated the crit to 290 on the tooltip but STILL have not fixed the sp to either be 1467 like it used to be or actually display 1100.

    Looking into that.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Hi, just one quick question:

    Whatever happened to the appear invisible functionality that was promised to be coming soon in 2012?

    It's an idea that's still on the table, but that team (which handles Battle.net functionality for every Blizzard title, not just WoW) has a ton of higher-priority issues and features to work on, so it's not likely to happen in the very near future I'm afraid.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    UI & Tech:

    • The UI community, especially those of us from EU, would really love a dedicated CM for that department, there currently is no easy way for us to report problems and we tend to find them first

    • UI: The “Currency” tab has been bugging me since WoD ever since the start of the expansion, as it’s always sorted alphabetically (and always last) and the “collapse”/”expand” state is never saved upon a reload of the UI. Could we maybe get a fix for this? At least maybe move the “Unused” section to be the last on the list and/or always collapsed? Or default collapsed?

    • UI: Nameplates could really benefit from “native” dot tracking. Nameplates are currently pretty “dumb”, not offering any data about the actual NPC that it belongs to (well, other than its name…). Right now if the mob you place a dot on gets moved out of your range, the nameplate gets destroyed (or, rather, recycled) and it’s pretty much impossible to match back the auras/dots back to the same unit. Is there any way we could get more data tied to them, like GUID, so we can reliably track them better?

    • UI: On the nameplate subject, nameplate addons currently must derive basic information for units by examining colors of elements on the stock nameplates and similar means. Could this limited set of information be exposed in a more reasonable manner?.

    • Is there any ETA on fixing /castglyph slash command? It has been buggy for a really long time.

    • There are currently several client bugs like not being able to cast Mage Pet Freeze while mounted and NPCs that don’t react to players so you have to move out and then back in range, is this something that will be fixed before 6.1?

    • When are we going to see normalization of the new-style tooltips (BattlePet, BattlePetAbility, GarrisonFollower, GarrisonMission, …) to behave the same way as the regular tooltips and be attachable to GameTooltip? Any addon that deals with tooltip has to reimplement a lot of duplicate logic to deal with those.

    1. I know our UI team reads the UI forums regularly, but feel free to contact me about addon development issues if you like. Easiest way to do that is probably through Twitter at @CM_Lore.

    2. Currency tab is a known issue. We'll get that fixed.

    3. I'll bring the rest of your questions up with the UI team. Can't make any promises, but I'll look into it!

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    It seems as if a lot of the elements of Garrisons (follwer missions, work orders, etc.) were designed with the mobile Armory in mind. Will we be seeing an update to the mobile app to include Garrions features?

    Not likely. It's a really cool idea (one we've heard a lot), but as the Garrison is intended as a Warlords-only feature, there are several other potential improvements we could make to the mobile app that would have more long-term use, if we decided to expand its feature set.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    1. Healer trinkets, any chance we can have some "proc on heal" instead of attack? Also they've been reported to only proc on melee swings, not on spell attacks.

    2. Warlocks: Our raid's warlock is the best geared in the raid, 3rd best on the server, and he is FIGHTING to keep above people 10ilvls lower than him (before the flames, yes he knows his stat breakdowns/rotations/cooldowns wonderfully). Any help coming to that class soon?

    1. We've been hotfixing those trinkets, and I believe at this point they all should be proccing from heals as well as attacks. The tooltips won't update until a future patch. If you come across a healer trinket that still isn't proccing from heals, that's a bug -- please report it!

    2. I can't directly speak to any specific plans, but I know we're watching raid performance closely, and plan to make adjustments as needed.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Is it intended that my friends are unable to use the portals in my spirit lodge or see my archaeology trophy room in my town hall?

    Not intended, will be fixed in 6.1.

  • Devolore
    Posted 11 years ago (Source)

    Are the already released new character models still being tweaked and worked on? Because some of them are just looking very broken, human female for example, commonly referred to as TEAM FOREHEAD.

    We are planning to make some additional updates and tweaks to the new character models, yes.

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