News World First Algalon 10 man

http://www.ensidia.com/media/upload/news/2009/05/18/alg10.jpg

So my 10 man group just downed Algalon the Observer. It's a pretty intense fight but not quite as hard as Blizzard made it out to be. The 1 hour timer is the real challenge since you must do a perfect attempt within it ;)

Anyway, still a great achievement and a really good job by everyone involved. We got some previously unseen loots which are in the screenshot below.


He drops a quest item which is how you get all the different rewards from him. We'll be uploading screenshots and fraps of the RP event and quest stages probably tomorrow.

As a side note Mackzter and Kungen's group killed Yogg-Saron with 0 watchers in 10 man. I believe this was also a World First.

25man versions to go!

*update*

Added 3 screenshots of the quest line: Screen 1 Screen 2 Screen 3 //mek

Lyn keeps cool despite Moon victory

June 'Lyn' Park remains coy after his 3-1 thrashing of WeMade FOX player Jae Ho 'Moon' Jang in the semi-finals of Avalon Online Warcraft III Masters.


The SK Gaming player suffered a 0-1 setback at the start of the match when he was caught off guard by Moon’s Ancient Protectors push at Twisted Meadows, albeit having checked that spot before his counterpart manipulated the trick, but insisted he wasn’t distracted by that scoreline.

“No I wasn’t worried at all when I was 0-1 down.” he told SK-Gaming.com, “he just successfully towered me with Ancient Protectors in the first game. It wouldn’t have been difficult if I found his protectors before they went up.”

While the result may indicate a one-sided match, it isn’t straightforward to play against a Night elf player for Lyn, no matter what tactic his opponent opt for. He said, “It doesn’t make that much of a difference (whether he goes for bears or talons). Both of them are hard to deal with.”

However it is a rare accomplishment for any Orc player to defeat Moon in a best of five match, Lyn isn’t exactly overjoyed, and will begin working on his upper bracket final meeting with Check next Monday instead of resting on his laurels. “I feel just fine right now, but I will get myself ready to play Check as always.”

SKLyn [3-1] FOXMoon

Game 1: SKLyn <>Replay
Game 2: SKLyn > FOXMoon Replay
Game 3: SKLyn > FOXMoon Replay
Game 4: SKLyn > FOXMoon Replay

SK take 4th seed for i36 Halo

With i36 just weeks away, Multiplay has released the list of seedings for the Halo tournament.

Multiplay's i-series is the UK's largest LAN event and next month will see the 36th chapter being written. SK-Gaming will be one of the lead characters, as they were seeded fourth out of the 12 teams.

Unsurprisingly, LowLandLions took first spot. SK-Gaming's team manager, Georg "x2Sneeka" Siewert said "LowLandlions getting first seed, was almost as expected. They won Matchbox360 XL 6 and went second at Gameland in Rome."

Siewert was also pleased with SK's seed but remained pragmatic: "Since we didn't place so well last event, the 4th seed is quite fine for us. We will need to beat all of the other teams anyway, if we're going to win." However, he did add that "we're looking forward to play at our best for this tournament."

The complete seeding looks like this:

1. LowLandLions
2. Team Dignitas
3. The Imperial
4. SK Gaming
5. Infused Gaming
6. N! Faculty
7. Outbreak
8. Status Quo
9. Signature
10. Druidz
11. Stricken
12. Aggression

First prize is £1,200 GBP and free entry to the next i-series event (i37). i36 begins on April 9.

CS & WC3 at Scandinavian EPS finals on April 25

ESL has announced that both Counter-Strike and Warcraft 3 Scandinavian EPS finals will take place in Inferno Online on April 25.


Electronic Sports League will be hosting the one day offline finals during April 25th (Saturday) in Inferno Online which is located in Stockholm, Sweden.

Amongst the participants are the current Extreme Masters Global champions fnatic and the European champions mTw for Counter-Strike and the Danish René 'Ciara' Krag against some newer faces like Samu 'BriNGeR' Riihelä. It is uncertain if Giants will attend the event as they have lost most of their players.

All tournament games will be played in single elimination with best of three (BO3) for Counter-Strike and best of five (BO5) for Warcraft 3. Additional matches for third places will be played. The results of Scandinavian EPS season 1 can be found here.

Participants:
Counter-Strike
Giants
fnatic
Mirror.ATS dk
mTw

Warcraft 3
Daniel 'LiiLD.C' Claesson
Samu 'BriNGeR' Riihelä
Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg
René 'Ciara' Krag

Prize Money Distribution:
Counter-Strike
1. 7.500 euros
2. 5.000 euros
3. 2.500 euros
4. 1.000 euros

Warcraft III
1. 1.000 euros
2. 750 euros
3. 500 euros
4. 250 euros

MYM to leave G7 teams

With the MYM brand going down lately, the G7 have decided to remove the organisation from the teams list. This leaves the G7 with seven active members again for now.

As reported over the past weeks, the MYM brand and ESNation are disappearing slowly with ESNation going bankrupt and MYM removing all of their teams. This now also led to the decision for G7 to remove one of their long-time members even though "The G7 Teams had hoped that MYM would survive its most recent attempted transition".

"This is certainly a difficult moment for the G7," remarked Alexander T. Muller, one of the federation's senior and founding members. "MYM, as represented by Mark "Mercy" Fries, was an extremely productive and important member in his time with the G7 Teams. However, while it isn't easy to dismiss such a significant presence as the MYM brand, this decision was made swiftly and with much certainty. The G7 Teams will continue to move forward and fulfill our organization's mission."

This leaves the G7 with again seven active members being SK Gaming, compLexity, fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Made in Brazil, Mousesports as well as Craig "Torbull" Levine.

Wotlk uses Warcraft 3 codes for item drop rate

Jeffrey Kaplan, Former World of Warcraft lead designer revealed that since the released of Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft is using a system that was originally made for Warcraft 3.


Jeffrey Kaplan who left the World of Warcraft project to become the Director for Blizzards next-gen MMO, revealed (link via kotaku) the wider public that since the released of World of Warcraft's newest expansion, the original quest item drop rate of around 35% has been changed with a brand new old system from Warcraft 3.

The system which is called "progressive percentages" is used for critical hits in Warcraft 3 and now the more creatures you kill in WoW the higher the percentage grows and can eventually become a 100% drop.

Jeffrey Kaplan about the old and new drop rate system: "We found that this had a lot of problems where players would run into streaks, and they only remembered the shitty streaks," said Kaplan. "So what we decided to do was we took a page out of Warcraft 3, which had a very elegant design which they referred to as 'progressive percentages.

So what we did recently with Wrath of the Lich King, and it's something we've never really talked about before, but in Lich King, every creature that is part of the collection quest has the item 100% of the time," continued Kaplan. "But we do a progressive system where we up the chance the player [gets the item] each time he kills it.

The problem was, when we put it live in the beta--and we didn't tell anybody this--we found that while it was great that it got rid of the bad streaks, it also got rid of all the good streaks. And overall we needed to raise the base drop percentage to around 45%."

Blizzard-related timer set for April Fool's

A new and anonymous timer ticks ever closer to April Fool's day. Who knows if it is a joke?

Blizzard Entertainment and April Fool's. Those two topics go together like peas and carrots. There is not one day of the year that Blizzard celebrates better than the first day of April, when they prepare massive pranks on the community rather than their actual integrated gameplay that everyone expects. Usually everyone chuckles and a few fools really do take it from Blizzard until they are embarassed in front of their friends a week later in the workers' lounge. However, something ever more curious ticks this year and one must wonder about the value of the prank.

The Alliance's wisp race was cute and gave a few people a warming chuckle that showed that Blizzard was affectionately nudging them in the ribs. The tauren marine seemed to have Samwise Didier written all over. But what made them enjoyable and distinct was that they happened immediately without forewarning. It always seemed unplanned, they did not have a timer set across several fan sites, which is exactly what is arranged for this year.

On StarCraft 2 Forum, StarCraft.org and StarCraft Legacy, which are StarCraft fansites, they all have timers set for 1:00 AM (Eastern Time). Sure, it could be just a long and extended April Fool's joke that will have been several days in motion. However, exactly eleven years to that day StarCraft will have been released. If it is real, it is likely to be some sort of announcement concerning the long-awaited beta keys for StarCraft II. If it is made into a prank about the beta keys, many anxious gamers will have a bitter aftertaste in their mouths and the actual beta release would have seemingly more unappreciative views from eager fans.

Regardless of whatever it turns out to be, we will keep you posted in the meantime.

Mirror add stofqaz to complete the roster

Earlier this month Mirror have removed Michael "Friis" Jørgensen due to not fitting into the team anymore. Now they announce his replacement being an unknown player at least on the professional level. Mirror have decided to add Christoffer "Stofqaz" Gundersen.

Mirror were down to only four players after removing Michael 'Friis' Jørgensen about two weeks ago and were still looking for a replacement at that time. Now they have announced the addition of a rather unknown player at least on the professional level in Denmark being Christoffer 'Stofqaz' Gundersen.

According to manager Marc Kjærgaard they needed a player "who could fill out Michaels [Friis] position as leading AWP" and continues with "I – as well as the players, believe he is one of the best AWP-players in Denmark". But even though Stofqaz is an unknown player they want to give him the chance to prove himself and Marc states, "if you don’t get the chance, you’ll never be able to prove yourself".

Read the full statement of Marc "MarcK" Kjærgaard below.

"As most of you already know, earlier this month we announced the departure of Michael “Friis” Jørgensen. We have chosen this day, to announce our new fifth. The criteria for the selection of a new player, is that it could be someone, who could fill out Michaels position as leading AWP. Therefore it is with great joy, we today announce our new AWP’er in the Mirror-jersey; Christoffer “Stofqaz” Gundersen.

Players as well as management in mirror are all familiar with Christoffer and only know him as an exceptional character and we expect him to boost the atmosphere and morale of the team. Besides this, we have also chosen stofqaz because I – as well as the players, believe he is one of the best AWP-players in Denmark. We have wathced him the last couple of LAN’s, where he has done an amazing job for his former team CMAX.gg.

A lot of you out there will probably see this decision as a big risk, since Christoffer never has played at this level, but if you don’t get the chance, you’ll never be able to prove yourself.Christoffer still lacks certain elements in his game, mostly routine. None the less, there is no doubt in our minds, that he was the right choice. His potential, dedication and awesome AWP-skills will make him one of the biggest profiles on the Danish scene."

Mirror.ATS dk roster:
Daniel 'anizz' Aniff
Rasmus 'FaG' Møller Thomsen
Christoffer 'Stofqaz' Gundersen
Martin 'trace' Heldt
Jack 'wazorN' Henriksen

Now on Steam - Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death

JUDGE, JURY and EXECUTIONER. Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death is now on Steam available worldwide.

Garry's Mod Update Released

Updates to Garry's Mod have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Garry's Mod
- Fixed spawn menu not opening properly on some computers
- Fixed various issues with Script Enforcer
- Renamed sv_scriptenforcerenabled to sv_scriptenforcer

Patch 3.1.0 - PTR Build 9733

Patch 3.1.0 - PTR Build 9733
A new build has been deployed on test realms, stay tuned for all the changes!

Talent Calculator - Build 9733
The Talent Calculator has been updated to the latest build.

Glyph Changes
Druid
• Glyph of Survival Instincts - Your Survival Instincts ability grants an additional 10% of your maximum health.
• Glyph of Savage Roar - Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 3% bonus damage done. (Down from 6%)

Mage
• Glyph of Molten Armor - Your Molten Armor grants an additional 20% (Up from 15%) of your spirit as critical strike rating.

Priest
• Glyph of Hymn of Hope - Your Hymn of Hope lasts an additional 2 sec.

Warlock
• Glyph of Succubus - Your Succubus's Seduction ability also removes all damage over time effects from the target. (Old - Increases the duration of your Succubus's Seduction by 3 sec.)

Class Spell Changes
Quote from Blizzard staff

Death Knight (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Frost
• Howling Blast cooldown has been reduced from 10 sec to 8 sec.
• Rime now has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on Howling Blast and cause your next Howling Blast to consume no runes.

Unholy
• Death Strike damage has been lowered, it now deals 60% weapon damage (down from 75%) plus 178.4 (down from 222.75) for Rank 5.
• Night of the Dead has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 4.
• Ghoul Frenzy has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 7.
• Master of Ghouls has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 6.

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Feral
• Primal Gore doesn't affect Rake anymore.
Restoration
• Revitalize now gives your Rejuvenation and Wild Growth spells have a 5/10/15% chance to restore 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick. (Old - No info on the % in the tooltip)

Mage (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Fire
• Living Bomb AOE damage has been greatly increased. Rank 3 now deals 680 Fire damage (up from 306) to all enemies within 10 yards.
• Molten Armor now increases your critical strike rating by 35% of your spirit. (Up from 25%)
• Improved Scorch now Increases your chance to critically hit with Scorch, Fireball and Frostfire Bolt by an additional 1/2/3%. (Old - Scorch only, 3/6/9%)

Frost
• Ice Barrier now prevents spellcasting from being delayed by damage. (Old - prevented spells from interruption)
• Winter's Chill now also Increases your chance to critically hit with Frostbolt by an additional 1/2/3%.

Paladin (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Retribution
• Seal of the Martyr now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 48% of min weapon damage ] to [ 48% of max weapon damage ] (up from 22%) additional Holy damage. Unleashing this Seal's energy instantly causes [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of min weapon damage ] to [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of max weapon damage ] (Down from 16/25/36%) Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.
• Seal of Blood now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 48% of min weapon damage ] to [ 48% of max weapon damage ] (up from 22%) additional Holy damage. Unleashing this Seal's energy instantly causes [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of min weapon damage ] to [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of max weapon damage ] (Down from 16/25/36%) Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.
• Crusader's Strike has been reverted back to normal - An instant strike that causes 110% weapon damage.

Protection
• Divine Guardian *New Talent* - Tier 4 - Improve the effectiveness of your Divine Sacrifice spell by an additional 5/10% and increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 50/100% and the amount absorbed by 10/20%.

Rogue (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Assassination
• Lethality now affects all combo point-generating abilities. (Old - all combo moves)

Shaman (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Elemental
• Totem of Wrath range has been changed from 30 to 40 yards.

Warrior (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Arms
• Shattering Throw will now reduce the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec or remove any invulnerabilities. (Old - reduced armor AND removed any invulnerabilities)
• Bladestorm will now instantly Whirlwind up to 4 nearby targets.
• Juggernaut now affects both Slam and Mortal Strike

Fury
• Improved Berserker Stance now increases strength by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 3/6/9/12/15%)Protection
• Improved Defensive Stance now increases Physical damage caused by 5/10% for 12 sec. (Old - melee damage)

Orangemarmalade's moment of glory made simple

ESL commentator, Matt Rider, has uploaded a short video explaining just how the Extreme Masters final was won.

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at WoW is that it is too complicated to understand. Taking that on-board, ESL commentator, Matt Rider, has released a short clip of one of the most exciting moments the game has ever seen.

2-1 down in the series, and in a 1v2 situation, HON's mage was staring defeat in the face. The ensuing comeback was one of the most memorable moments in the history of World of Warcraft.

If you haven't seen it before, didn't understand it, or simply want to relive the incredible action, you can see it all below:

http://www.sk-gaming.com/video/100535-Orangemarmalade_How_HON_became_global_champions

Maxlan 15 - Main Contest – Live for Speed

Twice a year, the best Live for Speed Sim Racers meet each other at the biggest LAN-Party Event with a Racing Tournament as the Main contest, otherwise known as „Maxlan“.

The name might ring a bell for some of you in the eSport scene, but it's not the popular „French MaxLan“. The „German Maxlan“ is organized twice a year in the north-west of Germany with over 200 participants.

Maxlan 15 - "Sympathy for the devil" - 27th-29th March 2009

Meppen will be the location where SK Racing wil fight for the first major LFS trophy in 2009.And it was Marco 'Jay' Schade who managed to win the prestigious Maxlan Racing Tournament the last five nstallments consecutively. He had beaten Danny 'HuskY' Engels twice, back in 2007, and also Hendrik 'b0nd' von Eye had to eat his dust in '08.

For the first Maxlan in 2009, the mentioned SK Players: Marco 'Jay' Schade, Hendrik 'b0nd' von Eye and Danny 'HuskY' Engels are travelling to Meppen once again. And in this preview for this weekend's upcoming spectacle, HuskY is giving us a closer look on the Maxlan 15 Live for Speed Starting Grid.

http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/23133-Maxlan_15__Main_Contest__Live_for_Speed

Kr0ne qualifies for Munich Gaming Challenge

Last night the second qualifier was held for the Munich Gaming Challenge to determine the last two participants for the finals. Four players will now fight for the 2.000€ prize money being given out at the Munich Gaming Challenge on April 3rd.

The event features a four players FIFA 1on1 tournament where everyone was able to qualify for through two online qualifiers. Last night Joshua 'Kr0ne' Begehr managed to beat all of his opponents as well as André 'AndResoN' Richter in the Grand Final but both players will attend the final event. The Munich Gaming Challenge will take place on April 3rd with a prize money of 1.000€ for the first placed player but also the other three attending players will get a money reward.

In an earlier qualifier former SK and now mousesports player Jannik 'Era' Huber also qualified as well as hoorai player Kai 'deto' Wollin. Make sure to check the coverage on April 3rd to get more information about the event and bracket as well as the winners.

Munich Gaming Challenge
Joshua 'Kr0ne' Begehr
André 'AndResoN' Richter
Jannik 'Era' Huber
Kai 'deto' Wollin

Prize Money Distribution
1st - 1.000€
2nd - 500€
3rd - 300€
4th - 200€

03/26 PTR Maintenance - New Build

03/26 PTR Maintenance - New Build
A new build will be deployed on test realms tonight. Stay tuned for all the new changes!

Quote from: Gradina (Source)
The Public Test Realms will be going down today March 26 at 12:30 PM to update to the latest build. This thread will be updated when they are available for play.Thank you for your patience.

Filefront, Realm First, Season 6, Blue posts

Blue posters have been very active lately, it's time for a recap!

Filefront to be suspended indefinitely on March 30
The financial crisis hasn't been very nice to Filefront it seems, the site will be suspended indefinitely on March 30 ... If there is anything you want to save from this site, now might be the right time to do it.

We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.

We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best.

Keep gaming alive,

FileFront Management and Team.

Ulduar - No Realm First for 10-Man Raiding

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
I checked on this and it looks like the realm first feats of the strength being removed from normal 10player Ulduar is the plan and not a bug. I updated my previous post on this as well.

We are still tweaking the achievements and their rewards for Ulduar so more changes could still come in future PTR builds.

As of today, the only 2 realm first achievements for Ulduar are:

Realm First! Death's Demise
Participated in the realm first defeat of Yogg-Saron without the assistance of any Keepers on Heroic Difficulty.
Title Reward: Death's Demise

Realm First! Celestial Defender
Participated in the realm first defeat of Algalon the Observer on Heroic Difficulty.
Title Reward: The Celestial Defender

Arena Season 6 - Upcoming Changes
Bornakk clarified some of the changes made to Arena for the sixth season. As a reminder, with Arena Season 6, arena teams will start at 0 rating instead of 1500 and items with a rating requirement will now be obtainable starting at 1250 rating. (See Arena Season 6 – Upcoming Changes.

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
In order to make joining teams later in the season a little easier for players, the system will now be setup so if a player joins a team that has a team rating of 1000 or higher, the player’s personal rating will start off at 1000 instead of 0.

To answer some players’ questions:
• Only the current arena season’s weapons (furious) will be available. Deadly weapons will be removed when Arena Season 6 starts.
• The first tier furious weapons will be equivalent to heroic Ulduar weapons and the second tier furious weapons will match heroic hard mode Ulduar weapons.

Another thing to keep in mind is that until you start to get close to your team's matchmaking rating, you will be gaining around 20 or more points in a win and zero or nearly zero in a loss. So players will make steady progress through games played until they near their team's matchmaking rating.

Changes to Flasks in 3.1.0
Community Managers posted a few extra information on the changes made to flasks in Patch 3.1.

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
To answer some questions brought up in this thread:
• Mixology will work like it does now, if you know the recipe to create the flask, the flask will grant double the duration, so 2 hours in the new case.
• Elixir Mastery is also being updated to work with the new flask design so for example where you got 2 or 3 extras before you will now get 4 or 6 extras.

[...]The new changes apply to all flasks. The only change specific to Northrend flasks is the conversion to mixtures for already-crafted flasks prior to 3.1. All other flasks will have their durations lowered to 1 hour when the patch is released. The material costs for all flasks will be cut in half as will the vendor sell prices.

Arena Tournament Registration Extension

Quote from: Aratil (Source)
We have reopened Arena Tournament registration from now until Friday, March 27 at 5:00 PM PDT. An issue occurred on Monday that impacted registration for the Arena Tournament and we have decided to give all players another opportunity to register. However, phase 3 of the tournament is already underway and participants are unable to join any existing teams, so new registrants will have to create new teams in order to play. Additionally, you have only until April 6th to meet the minimum requirements of games played to qualify for tournament prizes. Please keep these factors in mind should you decide to register now.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff
Avoidance added to pets in 3.1
We added AE avoidance to the shadowfiend, wolves, water and fire elementals, and treants I believe. The avoidance does work in PvP. My earlier comment meant to imply that pets are a big liability on those raid damage events because they just die without avoidance. But it does let them survive AE in PvP also, such as Bladestorm and Whirlwind. That is a (small) nerf to warriors.

We don't make classes with temporary pets buy avoidance, because honestly they wouldn't spend the talents etc. on a temporary pet. It is not nearly the power multiplier that a hunter, warlock or DK pet is. But I can see the argument that avoidance is just an unalienable right for all pets and we might eventually just give it to them all. (We probably won't make this change for 3.1 because it involves changing a couple of DK talents and redoing all the pet talent trees.)

We can give it to Mirror Images. They are extremely frail. (Source)

Tanking with any talent spec
You named examples where we are already accomplish this, and that's good. For a time, warriors could tank with a 31/5/15 build (I think I am remembering those numbers correctly). Later, they were pretty much confined to the Prot tree, plus Cruelty and a couple of other talents. Was one way better than the other? We're not sure, but we're trying to explore the tank who is more broad than deep a little more. If we love the way it turns out, we might retrofit the other tank classes. (As I said in the original post: might.) (Source)

Change to healing mechanics
I agree there are a lot of ideas to make healing more fun or interesting and we need to start experimenting with some.

As to why we didn't implement the "big health" solution, it was just the scope of the change. It's not as simple as just doubling everything. Once tanks don't really fear being killed by a boss in a few swings, it becomes a lot harder to keep the fight challenging. But it is probably something we will look at seriously next time around. (Source)

Dual-Spec and its effects on the game
We will not be balancing around the existence of dual-spec. The example I used was a case we already have -- multiple tank fights, then single tank fights, then multiple tank fights. We didn't design that around dual-spec. We assumed you'd probably have an OT who tried to do dps on Saph. Dual-spec gives them a way to do better dps.

This is one of the reasons though that we think it's important to keep pure dps slightly elevated. Mostly, though, dual-spec is a convenience factor. You can already run back to town and respec in the middle of a raid, and plenty of people did that already (and hated it).

[...] I fear loot may get more complicated with a dual-spec system. You'll have players arguing that their current spec isn't their main spec or whatever. I'm sure the community will adapt, but it is a concern. I predict dual-spec is going to change the game in ways nobody is quite anticipating yet. (Source)

[...] We struggled with this a lot, but ultimately we do let players respec at will even today and just charge them for it. Plenty of Resto druids healed raids and then went Feral to do quests the rest of the week. Plenty of mages raid as Fire and PvP as Frost. We just thought in this case that the talent system got in the way of players enjoying the game rather than rewarding them for making good but hard choices. Commiting to being sub-optimal for parts of the game you enjoy was just a drag.

I expect some players may not use dual-spec at all, and that's cool. Others will change once a week and others may change multiple times a night. We wanted the system to be flexible. We didn't want it to allow players to not have to commit to talent builds though, which is why we limit you to 2 specs and not as many as you want. (Source)

Less players are playing in Arena during Season 5 than during Season 1
I posted this in another thread somewhere, but I think the major conclusion you can really draw from this is that players go where the loot is. In season 1, it was much easier to get epics from Arena than raiding. We have almost completely flipped to the opposite extreme now.

Our goal isn't to force players into Arena who hate it but suffer through to get the loot. Everyone will be happier if the players doing Arenas are the players who like to do Arenas. Similarly, the people raiding should be the people who like raiding.

One of the designers came up with a smart saying recently, which is that you should not conculde that all heroics should be like Mechanar just because Mechanar was our most popular heroic. (Source)

PvE and PvP Balance
The PvE content in LK isn't extremely difficult, and it involves large groups. As a result the system is fairly tolerant of class imbalance. If you have a dude who isn't pulling his weight, though no fault of his own, you can still progress.

That is not true in Arenas. Arenas are always "hard" by this definition. They are very intolerant of class imbalance. The next tier of raid content will be much less tolerant of class imbalance too. If you think you have seen QQ before, just wait until raids are wiping on Ulduar hard modes. (And I don't mean to imply all of the player complaints or concerns are invalid or unhelpful.)

We think PvE and PvP balance will be in a better place come 3.1. It won't be perfect, but hopefully we can make changes to get it as close as possible. (Source)

Death Knight (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Giving a real tanking tree to Death Knights
We like that DKs have three trees in which to tank. It accomplishes a few things. One is it lets a class keep their role while trying a different spec. A mage can switch from Fire to Arcane and still do pretty comparable dps. A prot warrior who wants to switch spec is doing something like choosing Imp Heroic Strike vs. Warbringer.

Second, I'm not sure that the Prot trees for warriors and paladins were huge success stories for us pre-LK. They had a ton of passive mitigation and threat talents that felt necessary, so they had very few talent points to spend on fun stuff (like Warbringer). Druids are in a slightly different boat since they get two roles in one tree.

Third, it lets the DK shift from tanking to dps a lot more readily than warriors or paladins (at least in a world without dual spec). I know what it's like to be the Prot warrior OT desperately trying to out dps the healers on fights where you are supposed to dps. That has improved, but I suspect a lot of players in that situation when dual-spec comes out will opt for a dps spec. DKs have to commit to tanking talents too, but they are more spread out, and they aren't having to give up things like Scourge Strike or Frost Strike to get them.

We don't know what any of this means for the future of older classes like the warrior. With the DK we had a chance for a fresh start. Can I see a world in which Arms warriors tank with a two-hander and Prot warriors do dps with a shield? Sure. Is it easy to get there. Not really. Are players even excited about going that direction? I think the jury is out on that. (And you don't need to turn this thread into whether or not you think that's a good idea.) It gets even more difficult when you talk about the dps Holy priest or the healing Boomkin. Lolz.

Rune Strike won't earn a premiere niche in the game design hall of fame. It does its job, but it's not a particularly fun ability like Shield Slam or even Scourge Strike. We implemented it to solve a problem, which was that DKs are so locked into their rotations that missing an early Plague Strike or whatever could totally botch DK threat generation. We would like to add other DK abilities that center around threat generation, but it's tricky. For one, Heroic Strike aint going into the hall of fame either. Again, it does its job but at some risk to the player (not the character). Second, any new DK abilities we added would have to also fit into their rotation while tanking but not while dps'ing. We can't just make Icy Touch 2.0 that generates a lot of threat. How is that different from Icy Touch? Yet if we make an ability that takes Blood+Unholy or something that takes 20 runic power, it has to fit in naturally to DK cycles while tanking yet be unattractive to DKs doing dps, who have abilities to contend with already.

That's a lot of text, so I'll just say in conclusion, that this is a new class for us all and I think sometimes players don't give enough credit to just how much iteration has gone on in the existing classes over the past 4-5 years. We've tried to make up for lost time with the DKs, but they still have a long way to go.

The good news is, players seem to enjoy tanking with them. (Source)

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Restoration Druids on PTRs
I am looking right now at a PTR attempt by a very good guild. Now you can argue that these trees need to L2P, but that's a tough argument. You could argue that eventually the community will figure out the most optimal way to heal, and that these numbers will shift over time. That I might believe a little more.

Small sample size is small and I'm sure other guilds might do it differently.
One boss - Lifebloom 56% - Wild Growth 29% - Rejuv 9% - Swiftmend 1% - Nourish 1%
Another - Lifebloom 27% - Wild Hrowth 25% - Rejuv 15% - Nourish 16%

[...] I didn't write down which exact fight it was so I don't have the numbers in front of me anymore. I'll try to find it tomorrow. Maybe I can even ask the player if it's okay to post the full numbers.

I do remember that in the first boss fight, the LB did bloom some, though I can't remember if they let it bloom every time or if that just happened because the healer had to move around (it is a fight where you might have to do that). The blooms could very well have happened to non-tanks, though he or she was definitely LBing the tank too.

I am the last person to advocate over-analyzing small data sets in any case. If we continue to see druids healing in so many different ways as those Lissanna linked, that would be awesome. (Source)

Hunter (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hunter's Mark duration in 3.1
5 min PvE duration. 2 min PvP duration. (Source)

Mage (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Upcoming changes to Scorch (See this post)
It's just a passive bonus. You gain the 1/2/3% crit even if neither you nor anyone casts Scorch. (Source)

Paladin (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Judgement of the Wise in 3.1
Unless you are doing something unusual, SA probably accounts for 5% of your Patch mana while Judgements of the Wise is like 45%. On Sapphiron, SA is probably 30% while Wise is 30%. Those numbers are based on my (gin-soaked) memory and they will vary depending on your raid buffs, but we have been looking at them a lot lately, so I believe they are close.

With the 3.1 change to Wise, you will have more consistent mana regardless of whether you are fighting a boss that does tons of raid damage. If the number is too low, we can buff it, but we still want you to have to e.g. use Divine Plea and care about Wisdom and other raid buffs being up. Some players seem to be doing fine without the Blood glyph and without the T7 set bonus, which is consistent with our research, but ideally we'd like to see some more PTR tests.

Are you getting this using Seal of Command or Blood?
Blood. Otherwise there should be no SA on Patch at all. This is the problem we are trying to fix, that mana return varies enormously depending on whether the raid does a lot of AE. That makes it hard to balance both the encounters and the class. (Source)

Buffing Retribution
We had to nerf Ret pretty quickly after Lich King launched, and it was pretty devastating to a lot of paladins, who let us know that in no uncertain terms.

If there is a spec we want to avoid over-buffing so that we don't have to nerf them, it's Ret. Please don't take that to mean that we will keep you down on purpose. That's not what I meant.

[...] I wasn't addressing either point. I was just saying that we try to be really careful not to get in a situation where we have to nerf the spec because Ret paladins take it pretty hard. Nobody likes to be nerfed, but Ret was never really in a place in BC where many players took it very seriously as a dps spec. In LK, people generally do take it seriously. But having been in the minor leagues for so long, I think a lot of Rets are really paranoid about heading back there again. That leads us to try and be extra careful. (Source)

Mana as a Retribution Paladin
To answer some discussion above, it isn't our intent that Ret paladins gear for mana. Their damage is balanced around the assumption that they don't.

The numbers I came up with yesterday were not for a paladin who dives in the slime. Not every guild is doing that. Since some of you seem to be having mana problems while doing about the exact same things other paladins are doing who do not have mana problems, we need to figure out why.

GC, are we ever going to get some kind of feedback on all of the posts for the recoil on Blood/Martyr. I think it's the only thing really hanging out there that we would really love an answer on. If you can make a note to pop into the one of the threads on the subject, I'll send you a case of gin.

We're not going to pull the recoil from Blood, at least not right now. While it did play nice with Spiritual Attunement, it is also an important balancing tool to keep Ret PvP under control. And it's one of those things that makes paladins play a little differently, which is worth preserving at a time when so many players are worried about class homogenization.

One thing we have talked about doing is shifting some of the damage from the Judgement to the Seal. Basically your dps would stay the same, but those big crits would be less scary at hurting yourself. This has the added bonus of reducing PvP burst a little more. We don't think Rets are going to be sat out for raids (even Algalon) because of the self-damage. Guilds are using them now while testing Ulduar hard modes. If it gets to be the case, we can easily scale back the self damage done.

Remember, if you are very low on health, you don't have to hit that button. You do have an alternative until you get healed up again. Yes it will hurt your dps for a time, but classes have to make decisions like that all the time. Ask a mage or hunter that has to sacrifice personal dps for mana gain. (Source)

Shaman (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Elemental Tier 8 Bonus
The Elemental Worldbreaker set had its mp5 replaced, mostly with crit IIRC. (Source)

NGL ONE: Lyn poised for European charge

June 'Lyn' Park will be playing against former SK Gaming player Daniel 'XlorD' Spenst and Yuri 'Sting' Sheremetov of WICKED eSports this week as he pushes for the top of the NGL ONE Solo League.

Winning three games out of four in the past two match days, June 'Lyn' Park is currently tied at the fourth place with Mousesports latest recruit Dae Hui 'FoV' Cho and former Meet Your Makers player Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen, three points adrift of undefeated Seo Woo 'ReiGn' Kang at the summit, but with two games in hand.

This is the second time Lyn plays an Undead player in NGL ONE this season so far, but unlike Hjalmar 'DowaQ' Högberg, the two-time EPS Germany champion is likely to opt for Human in this Sunday’s meeting in a bid to register his first win in the star league.

Lyn acknowledged XlorD’s strength in this match-up, before signalling his intention in this Friday’s meeting with Yuri 'Sting' Sheremetov. “XlorD is good at playing Human. I barely beat him in WC3L recently.” he told SK-Gaming.com, “while I lost to Sting in the following match day in WC3L so I must win this time.”

Criticism of his lack of attention in WC3L arose in SK forum when he lost to Sting a fortnight ago, but Lyn denied the claim, stating he was exhausted that day after continuous practice, and official matches that lasted from 11:00 p.m. in Korea till almost 6:00 a.m. the next day.

“No, it is not true (that I don't care about WC3L). That day I was very tired. I always practice a lot, and I played almost 15 matches. I played against infi and DowaQ in NGL, and then two solo games and 2on2 with MichaeL against WICKED in WC3L.”

$1.4bn spent on MMO subscriptions in 2008

Around 1.4 billion US dollars have been spent for massively multiplayer online game subscriptions across Europe and North America together.

One of the latest Screen Digest reports (via mcvuk) shows that last year, Europeans and North Americans have spent around $1.4bn for MMO subscriptions in total.

That is a 22% market growth difference from year 2007 and experts at Screen diggest say that despite the increased growth of the Asian online games market model where players instead of paying monthly fees buy items for money, the sector still has five more years to grow.

A comment from Screen digest’s senior analyst and head of games Piers Harding-Rolls: “Industry commentators have for some time been using the example of the Asian online games market to proclaim the death of subscription business models in the West, praising the accessibility and flexibility of free-to-access games that generate revenue by encouraging players to make micro-transactions as part of the gaming experience."

Enemy Territory could be the next QuakeLive

After a successful QuakeLive Beta, id Software’s Todd Hollenshead thinks that the company might go further and make Enemy Territory the next web browser game.

During the Game developers conference 2009, the co-owner and CEO of id Software, Todd Hollenshead spoke about their recent success with QuakeLive beta where more than 110 000 accounts were created, their current work plan and the next possible game on QuakeLive's engine.

Todd Hollenshead's comments about the QuakeLive beta: "The participation in the open beta is 50 percent higher than what we expected. The beta was perhaps too successful, at least in the raw numbers, with a massive queue forming when the beta kicked off."

"I had my concerns. Are people going to show up?"

ID even made a special reward to the players who sat through the wait with a special achievement that shows an angry face with the words: Position in Queue 501337.

He also added that the next game they will work on, could be Wolfenstein Enemy Territory a game that has been one of gaming community's favourite esports games.

Gravitas call choice of EG over them "bullshit"

After Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen of Crack Clan voiced his anger at the list of invites for ESWC Masters of Cheonan, Gravitas members voice their dissapointment and disbelief at the choice of EG over them.

Gravitas Gaming, like Crack Clan, is on the waiting list for ESWC Masters of Cheonan after they were also not included on the direct invites list, with the ESWC choosing X30 and Team EG ahead of the KODE5 USA winners.

""We're really disappointed. Especially if you compare our past year performance to the other two US teams: WCG USA representative, won kode5 usa, top placing at esl etc," said Ben "Ben" Hui of Gravitas to HLTV.

"And then the fact that x3o just replaced 2 players - so both teams [x3o and Evil Geniuses] have yet to prove themselves - and everyone knows how Evil Geniuses have done at every event this year - but I won't get into that."

"What I would disagree about the most is the choice of Evil Geniuses over us. That my friend, is quite the bull****"

Alex "Vansilli" Nguyen, Gravitas manager does go into however, "What I would disagree about the most is the choice of Evil Geniuses over us. That my friend, is quite the bull****." Vansilli believes their inclusion is down to the fact the current EG line-up has three members who won ESWC 2006 USA; Tyler 'storm' Wood,Matt 'warden' Dickens and Danny 'fRoD' Montaner [pictured above].

"It seems as though ESWC neglected those who actually have still been playing Counterstrike 1.6 over here in North America - when the others sold out to Source," said Vansilli.

The Gravitas manager does support the choice of X30 as the other American invite, "I totally agree that x3o was chosen as one of the American teams invited, because that is a team that has been working hard," said Vansilli, "but we definately should of been there with them above Evil Geniuses - who have been dominated by teams and pugs since their return to 1.6."