wow Blue Posts Roundup: September 11th

[Stan 5,022]

We have a fresh set of blue posts, covering a variety of topics!

Grand Challenger's Bounty Loot Clarification

Even though we covered the topic separately, we're posting it here for clarity. Blizzard posted a new update on Twitter regarding Grand Challenger's Bounty awarding a single piece of loot in Battle for Azeroth. Months ago during BfA Beta, the cache had a random chance to drop 1-3 items, which apparently felt bad for players who only received a single item. They listened to player feedback and the cache only rewarded one item since late June.

Blizzard (Source)

Is it a bug or intended for the m+ weekly catches to have only 1 pieces. Many of my friends and guildies only got 1 piece. We thought it was up to 3 pieces.

For a few weeks in the Battle for Azeroth Beta, the chest dropped more than one item. The intended design and behavior of the chest is to award one weekly high-end item, just like it did in Legion.

For additional context and clarity: this change was made months ago, during the BfA Beta, in response to player feedback that a random chance for 1-3 items in the weekly M+ cache felt bad for players who only got 1 item. The cache has only rewarded one item since late June.

Horde Bias & Warfronts

Here we have multiple blue posts by Community Manager Ythisens who dispells rumors that there's Horde bias among the dev team. The team is also internally discussing the current state of Warfronts.

Blizzard (Source)

Amongst all the chaos of the past several weeks, blue posts seem to be markedly absent. In the past i remember them being far more active and communicative with the forums, even in heated situations (see: the realid debacle of 2010). They were an important source of communication and a way to make players feel they were being heard, at least to some extent. 

That seems to have all but gone the way of the dodo. Now it seems they drop a prepared statement in a sticky post, never to be seen again with no further comment, if that. Am I imagining things?

This is absolutely the case.

I don't think it is.

FYI Ythisens, while I momentarily maybe have your attention. A new forums/site bug started happening last night. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769006749

This happened to me yesterday at home, figured it was just my browser. Thanks for the note.

How are you enjoying the warfront Ythisens? I suppose you are a horde and thus actually able to play it?

Yep I'm currently Horde at the moment, to be honest I thought the Warfront was pretty fun. It was very different but still really cool. I did it on all three of my characters and only had good luck on my alt which rolled a 370 weapon from the weekly. Which means my alt has a better weapon than my main at the moment FeelsBadMan.

Eager to do it on Alliance next to see the difference.

We all know you don't play Alliance man.

I know this doesn't support the "Horde bias" narrative GD has, but I'm literally the only person on my team that plays Horde currently. I have to maintain an Alliance character to play with them ?

But they said they like it

I said I liked it, not we. I'm not speaking for the whole team in this regard. I can almost guarantee there are folks internally that don't like it because its just another facet of the game, not everyone likes everything and that's an okay thing. I'm speaking in a generality here and not about Warfronts specifically. There are a few people internally that only like pet battles and fishing, I find them very tedious personally and thus don't like them, its okay that I don't like them.

The way this is phrased... it sounds like you find the people that only like pet battles and fishing to be tedious. I chuckled.

I also didn't notice this when I reread it. I feel like I shouldn't edit it because it also made me laugh when someone pointed it out. 

Not be mean. But are you a sadist? cause I would never post here if I was gm. No one likes to be polite anymore. Heck I don't even like the current game. but if get any response form you guys would been seen good thing. but these guys are like rabid dogs and a bone. They cant be nice. NO not a fan boy. Just pointing out it always better to trick Women in bed in with candy than vinegar.

Probably. I'm not a GM. There are things I don't like as well, but I think even if someone isn't being polite they can still have a valid opinion or criticism about a system. There can still be good feedback there, it can just be a little harder to see. Please don't use that phrase again, that's just really weird to say.

I have noticed everytime Horde bias is brought it just joked off by devs or blue posts. Even in interviews.

It's funny because it creates the natural narrative of factional conflict and we even see posts from both sides complaining about bias. It's been a topic forever on the forums so its something easy to joke about historically with the community. It's not something we have to raise as feedback because its just something that is always there. The actual breakdown is closer to 50% than you would actually think when it comes to what faction has the most players.

Can we get an ETA on someone higher up able to provide a clearer statement of the state of Warfronts right now?

We're discussing it internally to try and hopefully get some answers for you guys on a broad variety of questions I've seen you guys ask. No ETA on it though.

Warfronts & Guild Groups

You can only queue up as a group of five for Warfronts right now. This is probably not intended and may be hotfixed in the future to allow a full guild of 20 members to queue up.

Blizzard (Source)

It is funny that a PVE centric content of 20 players vs AI cant allow guild groups higher than 5 people, we had a plan to do it as a guild and work on the achievements and just have fun, guess that is a word Blizzard doesnt understand. Player choice this expac seems really limited. I dont usually complain about the state of the game but this seems a huge oversight or just a giant dumb call having one of your key futures of the expansion locked like this. Islands are a giant borefoest also with random rewards and no way to target them. I still enjoy Mythic Plus a lot and Uldir is fun even though I just started it on Normal and wont cry like others that I will unsub but dam Blizz you are making really hard to keep logging in besides making your game a dungeon crawler and that is not what an MMO is supposed to be.

I did it in a group of 5 but honestly didn't know you couldn't queue as a group of 20. Thanks for the note.

I remember them saying when it was announced that you could?

If you have a link to that it would be much appreciated.