Making end-level content more approachable has been another big change for the game. It’s easier to get more powerful badge gear, you created the Dungeon Finder tool, etc. I know there’s always been that hardcore versus casual debate that rages on the WOW forums, where some people hate that stuff and some people love it. How do you feel like the general feedback among WOW players has been?

The general feedback has been positive. We definitely plan to keep going in the direction that we’re going right now. We’re really happy with the Dungeon Finder. I’d like to find a way to extend that at the very least to 10-person raids at some point in the future. There are a lot of complexities with making that work, but anything we can do to alleviate the annoyances or pains associated with players having to arrange their own groups would be great. Being able to extend that into raiding would be awesome if we could do it.

We also have plans to continue making PvP more accessible also. It’s interesting that in Burning Crusade our raiding game was extremely hardcore, and in a lot of ways the PvP was a lot more casual player-friendly. Through the course of Lich King, those have flipped around. A lot of that is just because of the development in our PvE game. We had really aggressive development in solving the problems that we saw in PvE in Burning Crusade as far as making PvE more accessible and easier to get into and more rewarding. Almost simultaneously, PvP either stayed the same or got more hardcore in some ways.

Those flipped roles in Lich King, and we really want to balance them out better than we have before in Cataclysm. We want to continue to advance on that front with PvE, and with PvP we really want to make sure that it feels better-balanced against PvP as far as how much effort it takes to organize stuff and how much reward you get for your time and effort spent.[/b]

For the final question, there’s been some rumors going around and I wanted to clear them up. You guys have wrapped up the main Lich King storyline. Icecrown is out there, which you guys have said is the final major raid for this expansion. But there are some rumors that there might be another content patch of some sort before Cataclysm releases.

That is a possibility. We can’t say for sure at this point, but we are looking into the possibility of having a boss in the Ruby Sanctum, which is another part of Wyrmrest Temple. It’s a little too early to have a lot of details on that, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a huge chunk of content. It’s not a patch 3.4 or anything.

We have several changes planned for Battlegrounds in the next minor content patch and would like to share them with you now. This patch will be available for public testing and we encourage you to participate, queue up and provide some feedback on these changes.

• Firstly, say goodbye to Battleground Marks of Honor. We feel this currency system is a bit outdated and are getting rid of it. Any items which require these marks as currency will have their costs adjusted appropriately to remove this requirement. The quest NPCs will still be available to award players Honor for turning in leftover marks, but this is only to help players clear this expired currency.


• Next, the Battleground holiday weekend will now be denoted as "Call to Arms" in the Battleground tab and Calendar. If you prefer a specific Battleground over all others, look for those words next to its name to determine whether or not you'll receive bonus Honor. The bonus awards for Call to Arms Battlegrounds have been adjusted.


• Winning a Call to Arms Battleground for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Additional Call to Arms Battleground victories after the first win for a player that day will award them with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Losing a Call to Arms Battleground will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.


• To bring the rate at which players obtain PvP rewards with Honor more in-line with the rate at which players obtain PvE rewards via the Dungeon Finder, we'll also be increasing the amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill by 100%. In light of this, the amount of experience provided from an Honorable Kill, and the amount of Honor awarded for completing the Wintergrasp weekly quests, have been reduced by 50%.
  
  It's important to note one thing about these 50% decreases. All Honor awarded for completing objectives in Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp is actually based on an Honorable Kill conversion rate. So if you destroy a tower in Alterac Valley for example, the Honor you're awarded is actually based on a flat number of Honorable Kills. Since Honorable Kills will now award 100% more Honor, completing such objectives will also award more Honor. This is why experience gains based on completing Battleground objectives and Honor awarded from the Wintergrasp quests are being decreased by 50%.


• Now that we hopefully have your attention, we're pleased to announce the implementation of the Random Battleground system! This system will work virtually the same as the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon Finder. Players can queue with a group of up to five players for a Random Battleground in the Battleground tab. As with the Random Dungeon option, the Battleground chosen will not be revealed until players zone into the Battleground for which they are selected. The bonus rewards for this system are identical to the updated Call to Arms bonuses.
• Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Losing a Battleground using the Random Battleground option will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• When using the Random Battleground option, players will not receive additional rewards if the Battleground chosen is under the effects of the Call to Arms bonuses. In other words, the bonuses do not stack. In addition, if a player has been rewarded 30 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency from either the Random Battleground system, or the Call to Arms Battleground, he or she will be rewarded 15 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency that day for each additional victory. This applies whether the Random Battleground system is used, or the Call to Arms Battleground is chosen specifically, as a player cannot be rewarded the full amount of bonus Honor more than once per day.

All of these features and changes will be available in the next minor patch which should be hitting the public test realms in the near future. Please help us out by testing this system and providing your feedback so we can make some fine-tuning adjustments before the patch's release.

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1

02/17

• The drop rate of Frost Lotus, from herbs in Northrend, has been increased by 50%.

Big Love Rocket Droprate (Source Re: Big Love Rocket Drop rate bug?)
The drop rate for this mount is indeed lower than 1-2% and that is intentional. We are okay with the number it is at right now and will continue to see how things for this event.

Sticking with the same role (Source Re: Why There's A Shortage Of Healers)
I'm not entirely sure what the goal of this thread was, but World of Warcraft is a game with a variety of play styles that are there for players to play and experience as they see fit. Just because you started out as a healer (or whatever else) doesn't mean you need to stay that way forever. It is hard to really argue that doing the same exact thing for 5+ years won't be taxing in some way.

I know some people who love healing and in the situations where they end up DPSing (like when dropping down to two healers in a raid or something) they complain a bit that they don't have as much impact on the raid. There are also the healer types that have nothing but healing specs since they want the responsibility of taking care of the raid and don't want to put that in someone else's hands (these people also tend to get especially irritated when these other healers are causing problems that they wouldn't have done themselves). Then some others may end up being "forced" to heal a fair amount to help out the group and any good guild I've been with tries to prevent the situation where that one person ends up carrying the load week in and week out with no end in sight.

What I'm getting at here is just to remind players that if you aren't in the mood to do something anymore, try out something else. Whether that's Battlegrounds or a hunter or changing to that other spec you haven't had a chance to try out yet, give it a try and see how it goes. You may find a new style to play for the next few years or you may end up being good buddies again with your original play style.  

Some highly populated realms, as well as some realms in highly populated Battlegroups, are currently experiencing performance issues during peak playing hours, which, depending on the realm, can occur both inside and outside instances. This is caused primarily by high concurrent Icecrown Citadel activity, the start of Arena Season 8, the release of the new Vault of Archavon boss encounter and the “Love is in the Air” seasonal event.

To help address some of these issues, we’ve applied a hotfix to optimise certain database requests during the weekly maintenance, in addition to a variety of other related adjustments. We will continue to monitor the affected realms and will be making further adjustments to continually improve performance where possible. We know the performance issues have been a frustrating inconvenience for the players on these realms -- we very much appreciate your patience while we implement additional short- and long-term solutions.