Note: All links have been pruned off the official forums.
Apparently this is a new feature that the CMs intend to maintain, listing various responses they've given for the past week. (It's about freaking time, too.) Check out WarCraft Weekly - Week of 6/25 for links to the posts. Synopsis follows:
Druids and Hunters are the main focus of 1.7; Druids will be having their talent trees reviewed, mostly Feral Combat, but all are going to be looked at. Every aspect of the Hunter class will be reviewed as well. The Warlock class changes in 1.6 are expected to be sufficient to fix the defensive issues with the class, but Blizzard will monitor how the warlock class functions in 1.6.
Soul Shards are - somehow - supposed to balance a warlock's abilities. The concept is inherently flawed. It can never work.
The basic problem comes down to input and output. Soul Shards can only be gained one at a time through a fight. Therefore, warlocks should - conceivably - be balanced around the concept of using one Soul Shard a fight. This currently doesn't happen as there are many abilities that are only usable outside of combat (and used to prep for combat) that require Soul Shards. However, even if only in-combat abilities used Soul Shards, they still would fail to allow balance.
According to Tyren, casters were hotfixed today to reduce the resist rates on mobs and players that are higher in level than they are. They also increased the health of various high-level bosses to compensate.
This is a welcome change, since mobs three levels higher were seeing something like a 40% resist rate, making casters basically worthless against them.
It's been suggested before, but so far Blizzard has only said it isn't currently feasible and left it at that.
However, Tigole recently posted the following:
Tigole wrote:
Yes, we have definitely thought about Cross Server Battlegrounds. It's a cool idea for several reasons and also solves some problems.
Unfortunately, at this time, our server architecture does not support the concept. That doesn't mean that there isn't the chance that someday we could restructure things to accommodate the idea. It's a cool idea and we'll keep discussing it.
So while they can't do it quite yet, they are at least considering it.
Blizzard has released additional information about the Darkmoon Fair.
The best part, though, is that Blizzard has confirmed that the fair will contain "cheap booze" which should help the Horde, who (for some strange reason) finds that their towns are mostly dry towns. (I think there's one person in Orgrimmar who sells booze.)
Well, Battlegrounds has been out for almost two weeks. And I'm already bored with them.
There are currently two Battlegrounds: Warsong Gulch, and Alterac Valley. Warsong Gulch is a game of capture the flag, while Alterac Valley is a battle for control of the valley.
Capture the flag suffers some immersion problems in the Warcraft setting, but works for the most part gameplay-wise. Alterac Valley has the opposite problem - the setting makes sense in the World of Warcraft, but the gameplay gets frustrating fast.
I've started playing a Shaman (yeah, yeah, FOTM, I know), and discovered that the modifications made to the temp weapon buffs sort of don't work right.