Ozzy Osbourne's been the Prince of Darkness since 1979 -- too bad Arthas is poised to steal the throne. In a series of ads televised across North America (some of which are soon to arrive in Europe), Ozzy and Steve van Zandt want to know: 'What's your #!@? Game?' Check the spots out here before they hit the airwaves and be sure to press the "Watch in High Quality" option (bottom right of the picture) for the best results:
Ozzy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT8maUTzE48
Steve Van Zandt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXeyYdGoLCU

Stay tuned here as we will be revealing more ads specially made for Europe in the coming days!

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Upcoming Feral changes, Part II
On the subject of weapons, this change should be transparent to most druids. You will end up having a few more items that you can use, but your feral staves will continue to do the damage they do now. If it makes it clearer, imagine that feral attack power is not going away as a concept, but weapon dps will instead translate to their current FAP values. This is also not license for us to never again add weapons which are optimized for druids. It should just provide more options in between major upgrades.

On the subject of armor, the intent of the change is to give you more options in which trinkets and other jewelry you use, instead of always having to rely on the (relatively rare) bonus armor pieces. (We don't think the solution of just dropping bonus armor pieces everywhere is a great one either -- no single stat should trump the others by that much.) The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.

Our design remains to have fewer specialized items drop so that more loot is actually valued by someone in the group. A lot of the druid itemization was a relic of the older system and we have been wanting to convert it over. But with any change like this, it may take some time before all of the rough edges are smoothed over. To use a tired cliche, the designers tend to take the stance that the design of WoW is a journey not a destination.

On the myriad of other topics...

I realize some players have made some passionate and intelligent arguments for other ways in which bears can scale from gear. That isn't something we are going to do at the moment, but something we may investigate in the future. I understand that it's fun to improve tanking gear, and while we don't want it to be such a burden to get the armor pieces, we also don't want the choices to be so meaningless that you aren't gearing for tanking at all. Let's see how things stand after these changes go live.

We are not adding additional weapons that druids can use at the moment, but we may consider it in the future.

Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that "unblocked hits are the new crushing blows." We don't want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn't mean identical, but it also doesn't mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Change to Warlock summoning and soul shards
We are. I attempted to preface the post above so that we wouldn't get a lot of "THAT'S IT?!" responses. This is *a* change. It is not *the* change. (Source)

As we have mentioned, we are discussing some exciting changes to how soul shards might work. This is not an announcement of an overhaul to that system, but it will make shard use slightly less painful.

When a warlock casts Ritual of Summoning, instead of creating a portal, they will summon a new creation similar to a dungeon meeting stone. It will cost one shard to create this item. Then, anyone in the warlock’s party or raid can use the “meeting stone” to summon other members of the group. For example, once the warlock summons the stone, then party members B and C could summon D without the warlock’s direct involvement, and most importantly without requiring additional shards. You will be able to bring the rest of a 25-person raid quickly (since you can summon folks simultaneously), for the cost of a single shard, and with less clicking on the part of the lock.

The “meeting stone” will last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown. It will not be usable in areas where summoning is currently restricted, such as battlegrounds or in combat. Creating the stone still requires 2 people in addition to the warlock. Summoning actual party members only requires 2 people.

This change will be in for the next patch, which will occur before the 3.1 Ulduar content patch.

IRVINE, Calif. - November 20, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®'s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King™, has sold more than 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability*, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. This eclipses the previous record of nearly 2.4 million copies sold in 24 hours, set in January 2007 by Blizzard's first World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade®. Wrath of the Lich King was simultaneously released in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia on November 13; Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand on November 14; and South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18.

In celebration of the launch, more than 15,000 stores throughout the world had their doors open at midnight to welcome thousands of expectant players. Several of these locations were attended by Blizzard Entertainment representatives, who met players and signed copies of the game.

"We're grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Wrath of the Lich King contains some of the best content we’ve created for the game so far, and we look forward to seeing even more players log in to experience it in the days ahead."

"After a single day of availability, Wrath of the Lich King is already the bestselling PC game of 2008 at GameStop and ranks as one of our top-selling products so far this year," said Bob McKenzie, GameStop’s senior vice president of merchandising. "In keeping with the tradition established by their previous releases, Blizzard Entertainment has again created a product that not only reflects their high standards of quality but is clearly an instant hit with gamers around the country."

Prior to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft’s subscriber population had grown to more than 11 million players, further strengthening its position as the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. More information about the new expansion can be found at the official Wrath of the Lich King website: www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath.

This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes.

ARMOR
As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier.

We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals).

FERAL ATTACK POWER
We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.

These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid. (Source)

First up from the player Akercocke on the European Turalyon realm. Will there be a new line of class quests in Wrath of the Lich King, aside from ones that are for the Death Knight?
Not at release. We do have some things planned for the upcoming patches but for release nothing. We love to do more there is just some trickery involved with class quests, the main problem being that – at least we’ve learned in the past – that we don’t want to roll these things out piecemeal, so a couple classes at a time. We did that with the hunters and the priests and the fan reaction wasn’t really good. Although they did like the quests it’s just that I think everyone wants their own class to get a quest and we agree we think that should.

The next question is from Preliatus on the realm Kirin Tor. Are there any updates as to the whereabouts of General Turalyon? (WoWWiki)
So Turalyon, last I heard, he was locked away in some legion home world but you know that’s just a rumor. But really there are plans for Turalyon, it’s one of those things that we keep every content patch we try and work out something. Invariably it goes another way and so we’re hopeful that eventually we’ll get to him.

Some players are particularly interested in quests that will involve these famous lore heroes, do you find these quests more challenging to implement than others?
Oh yeah, they are way more challenging to implement. The main hurdles basically are that our established lore characters have histories and stories, there’s memories attached to all those characters so players remember them from not just World of Warcraft but all the Warcraft series. So we have to be really mindful of giving them the proper due respect. We’ve done things in the past where they weren’t received as well and even doing something as simple as changing the appearance of a hero that currently exists causes some uproar. It’s definitely getting that entire questline or storyline built up is a challenge more so than just introducing a new hero.  

What do you think of the new Sylvanas model?
I personally like the new model much better than the Night Elf that we had but we are getting a new custom built model which looks amazing. (Source)

Is there any particular storyline from the original game that you are excited to be picking up again in Wrath of the Lich King?
Several. It’s been a nice expansion, it was a good break from Outland where things got a little… different I guess is the best term for it. Anything that involves Arthas, Lich King, we’re all over, we love that stuff. Expanding Tirion Fordring’s line and roll rather in the expansion is huge for us. A personal favorite of mine if the Forsaken’s involvement in the early zones with their plague, their blight, that’s something we’ve been forming for years with the old world and we obviously paused it for Outland and we’re coming back. I think we’re just releasing some new stuff in this next build that will kind of bring all that to a head that I’m pretty excited about.

Aside from that there’s also a whole lot of new stuff that we’re also excited about, so Vrykul and Brann and his involvement with the Titans. The power struggles in the Horde, we’re going to start seeing some of those in the next upcoming beta pushes that I’m really excited about. The whole Wrathgate series which we’re just getting ready to release that movie and I hope the fans will love it, I know I love it, so I’m pretty confident they will.

I think the good thing with Northrend is the whole atmosphere of the world just lends itself to a more natural storytelling environment. I think myself and all the other designers really kind of attached to it.

Another thing is, we talked in the past about is how we plan for Arthas to play a bigger role in this expansion, a bigger role than Illidan did in The Burning Crusade, so without giving too much away how well would you say this has gone so far?
I think it’s gone really well. If you start as a Death Knight, the first person you see is the Lich King. Going through our zones, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly [Hills], Zul’drak, I think almost every zone has at least one encounter with the Lich King, some with Prince Arthas himself - the Alliance get a series in Dragonblight for that - so I think it’s gone really well. Then in Icecrown again, you’ll get several interactions with the Lich King and then going forward in patch 3.1 and beyond there will just be more.

Tanking in WotLK
The goal is roughly equivalent. The goal is not identical. Identical would mean making all abilities identical, down to things like Divine Shield and Innervate. I also want to caution you all that there are plenty of players who are concerned about the degree of homogenization we’ve done to get the tank classes as close as they are. It’s cool for everyone to have their different visions for what the game should be, just make sure not to impose your vision on everyone else. There are eleven million people playing WoW….

As far as the other arguments are concerned…

-- You can argue that our design is for warriors to be the best tanks. But I can debunk that right here. It's not. They will probably be superior in some cases and inferior in others, but never to the extent that you bench the warrior and bring in another class for a certain fight.
-- You can argue that some classes need to tank worse than others to compensate for their other abilities or degree of hybrid-ness. But that is not our design.
-- You can argue that some classes end up being better tanks for some reason or another. This is a totally legit concern. I don’t think we have any evidence that this is really happening yet, but it is something we pay a lot of attention to.

-- In Classic WoW there was really only one tank, the warrior.
-- In Burning Crusade, we added two other tanks, but the design was that they were typically used in an OT role. There were exceptions of course.
-- The design for Lich King is four tanking classes. You should be able to raid in Lich King without a warrior tank, or without a warrior period. You can replace “warrior” in that sentence with 9 other classes. One of the reasons we spent so much time on the warrior Prot tree is we wanted to compensate t...

PvE raid content difficulty
Keep in mind that guilds like this are comprised of people who have bested every raid encounter we've released since Onyxia and Molten Core. They've made it a focus for years now to conquer every piece of PvE content we put out there, and do it first. Knowledge, experience, and teamwork are built rapidly when struggling through so many different boss encounters.

Now, I'm not arguing that the raid content is any easier or harder than in the past. I've not done any of the 25 man raids yet. I do get the feeling though that the majority of the people I've seen on the forums specifically arguing that the content is too easy, based on the performance or opinions of the top guilds of the world, have not experienced the content either.

Is it possible you will draw the same conclusion when you've cleared every 25 man encounter through Arthas (when his time comes)? Of course. When your intuitions grow into experience after you've made such accomplishments you'll have better ground from which to justify your disappointment.

Of course we're monitoring your feedback and experiencing the content ourselves. I reiterate that we'll always consider adjusting content for greater ease or difficulty if we feel it is necessary to maintain a fun and rewarding game. (Source)

PvP Balancing
It is certainly our goal to make all classes competitive in Arenas. I think we have made improvements from BC. I don't think we're there yet. We are going to learn a lot when more players are at 80 and everyone starts to try out different strats and comps. I do feel pretty comfortable predicting that the issues players are worried about now will not be the ones we're all worried about in 3 months. Dark horses always have a way of sneaking up on you.

I understand the problem with perceptions, and it can sometimes be frustrating that players who can be so well-informed about their own classes could be so out of touch with changes that have occured to other classes. It's just a big game. We definitely can't buff classes or specs just as part of a PR campaign to shake people's mindsets. But that will come with time. (Source)

Vehicle Bugs
If you are experiencing vehicle bugs or have experienced vehicle bugs, please feel free to post them in the thread linked below. Please include as much detail as possible when adding to this thread so that we may better find any possible issues.

US PvP Transfer to Drak'tharon
We will be blocking the transfers of Alliance characters off of the realm Cho'gall in the near future for population balance. If you plan to complete this transfer please do so as soon as possible. (Source)

[US] PvE transfers to Fizzcrank
We will be reopening free character transfers to the PvE realm, Fizzcrank, on Wednesday November 19 from 9:00am PST to 2:00pm PST. If you are looking to transfer to this realm, please be prepared to do so during this timeframe. No characters will be eligible to use the free moves to this realm once they are complete.

What realms will be eligible to transfer here?
The same realms that were open to Fizzcrank before they were closed off last weekend: Aggramar, Alleria, Alexstrasza, Argent Dawn, Arygos, Blackhand, Doomhammer, Greymane, Hellscream, Hyjal, Medivh, Proudmoore, Thrall, Silvermoon, Whisperwind, Zul'jin

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Feral druids AE
And in case it gets asked, Feral druids we haven't forgotten about your AE either. We'll try and announce something soon. (Source)

Druid can't train Weakness Spectralizers
This is a known issue and I believe we are hotfixing it. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
PvP balance and Deterrence
With only a couple of exceptions, every change we made to hunters and every new talent we added were done to address specific concerns of players. You're in fantastic shape for PvE and if you are indeed still too low in PvP as you suspect, then we'll get that taken care of. We have a Deterrence idea we're working on right now, but I don't want to say any more until we're farther along. One reason I don't say as much about future plans as I could is players tend to get really upset if we change our minds or the implementation takes longer than we think. Somehow my mentioning "we're working on it" gets turned into "broken promises" and then everyone gets their torches and pitchforks. (Source)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Upcoming changes to paladin's talent trees
Not every talent tree has those clickable abilities at the 11, 21, 31, 41 and 51 spots. We might eventually give Protection and Holy and 11-pointer and we have some ideas on what we would like to do, but mostly we want to see if there is anything they are really lacking that filling the hole could solve.

A taunt is not a particularly interesting talent. It's a button you ideally never want to push and often when you have to push it, it's because someone else in the group messed up. This is why we are leaning towards just giving paladins a brand new ability to taunt, but I'll announce it for sure when we are sure.

Paladins received more changes to core mechanics than any other class in LK, so I would not be at all surprised to see changes to their talent trees over the next few patches. Holy, IMO, is likely to see the most work. (Source)

Leveling as Holy buffs in Patch 3.0.x
That’s a bit of a misinterpretation, though I suspect I don’t need to point that out. The Holy paladin is a healing spec. If you take that spec, it’s with the expectation that you are giving up some other strengths in order to be a good healer. We don’t want leveling to be horribly painful for you, but to be honest, I don’t think it is. My answer was more that if you find leveling as Holy (or Protection or Discipline or whatever) too slow, then you do have the option to respec. Many players do. Shadow is probably the most common case of a spec that is used to level even by players that fully intend to heal.

You also make it sound as if we somehow broke existing gameplay here. Healers have never been exceptionally fast at leveling (and neither have tanks for that matter). We think we made things a little easier with the changes to spellpower and similar adjustments for tanks, but I would be surprised if your relative (for your level) dps actually went down between BC and LK.

Also, you are still going to want multiple sets of gear even with this change. Once you hit level 80 and get your stuff gemmed and enchanted it is going to be better for one role (healing, dps, PvP) than for others. The spellpower change makes healing gear better at dps (and vice versa) but it doesn’t mean they become the same thing. (Source)

[...] I don’t actually think Holy paladins get different and substandard treatment. You did get hurt by the Ret nerfs, and as I said, we intend to compensate you for that. It will be in the next patch, which will be before the 3.1 Ulduar patch. I think it’s ex...