News Round Up: Jade Forest Disabled, Head Enchant Removal Explained Further, and More

With the next patch to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta, we will be temporarily removing the Jade Forest zone. We’re going to be making improvements to the zone, and want to put the focus of testing on other areas during this time.

As a result, starting with this next beta patch (which is coming soon™), you will find that you are no longer able to enter Jade Forest. If you have any characters that are hanging out in Jade Forest when the zone is disabled, they will be automatically ported out to their hearthstone location. The hearthstone location will be set to the characters’ main city if required. Furthermore, characters that need experience to continue testing will be boosted to the appropriate XP and appropriate quest to continue testing in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

We expect Jade Forest to be offline for an extended period of time; we’ll provide further details as we progress with our updates to the zone. Thank you for testing Mists of Pandaria!

Head Enchant Removal Further Explained

Part of the logic in getting rid of the head enchant was to make it easier for players to use their gear. Gems, enchants and reforges all have their place but too much of that sort of preparation before you can actually use an item gets annoying. I'm not saying freeing up one head enchant solves that problem, but it's a small step. I don't know that enchanting the helmet in and of itself is so much fun that we need to preserve it. I think in the meeting where we discussed cutting the enchant there might have even been a little bit of cheering.

In addition, we're not saying we'll never make head enchants again. Maybe we'll come up with a clever use for them or maybe we'll come up with some kind of system that needs a different kind of reward (this was the original genesis of the enchants back in the day). It would be harder to implement such a design if we had to go take the head enchants away from one of the professions. For now, the idea will just go back in the vault. It may not be there forever.

Orgrimmar's Organization

In terms of finding and getting to places. I mean wtf? I'm kinda new to the horde side but damn, I thought Stormwind was bad in terms of organization.

Spellbook Organization

We know from feedback and from testing that dividing spells among 3 tabs felt arbitrary to a lot of players. Some players didn't even realize they had access to some spells. The current design has all of your class spells in alphabetical order, with the exception that active abilities (those you can drag to your bar) come before passive abilities. We would consider a design where the passives are mixed in with the actives. (The general tab is for anything that isn't related to your class, such as racial abilities and things like riding.)

We've seen some ideas from players that we should attempt to categorize class abilities further, such as offensive vs. defensive, or buffs vs. heals, but worry that it would be very challenging to come up with a single organizational scheme that is intuitive to most of our players. I think it's like one of those deals where everyone organizes their hard drive, desktop or email inbox differently. Some people have tons of little categories that make sense to them (key point) and some keep everything in one big bucket. There isn't a one-size fits all scheme that works.

On 群兽奔腾 for Hunters

The design intent is that Stampede skips over any unusable pets (such as an exotic for a non-BM) hunter or any blank slots (in the case that maybe you left a hole in case you tame something interesting along the way). For any skipped slots, Stampede would just clone your current pet for that slot, so you would still always have 5 pets when you Stampede.

The idea of the glyph is that it would use the clone mechanic all the time. Theoretically, a hunter with only one pet would be wasting the glyph.

Summer Challenge: AQ40

Kaivax

Every week this summer, we’re challenging you to get together with a few friends to explore a part of Azeroth that you may not have seen in a while, or perform a feat that you may have never done. We’re calling them World of Warcraft Summer Challenges, and we’re going to be playing along with you as we hunt down rare achievements, get screenshots of amazing bosses, and try to find some rare gear for our transmogrification sets.

This week’s challenge is: 安其拉, often called “AQ40”.

At the heart of Ahn'Qiraj lies an ancient temple complex. Built in the time before recorded history, it is both a monument to unspeakable gods and a massive breeding ground for the qiraji army. Since the War of the Shifting Sands ended a thousand years ago, the Twin Emperors of the qiraji empire have been trapped inside their temple, barely contained behind the magical barrier erected by the bronze dragon Anachronos and the night elves.

Originally opened for raids of 40 players at level 60, 安其拉 offers six required bosses and three optional bosses, ending with the old god 克苏恩. There are a number of reasons to spend some time in AQ40.

Notable achievements

安其拉神殿: Defeat C’Thun.
安其拉神殿（公会版）: Defeat C’Thun while in a guild group of at least 10 people
旧世奇兵: Complete this and the other three level 60 raids.
红色是身份的象征: Obtain a Red Qiraji Resonating Crystal.

Desirable gear

Other odds and ends

Now that the 流沙节杖 has been reassembled and the seal has been broken, the way into the inner sanctum of Ahn'Qiraj is open. Beyond the crawling madness of the hives, beneath the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, legions of qiraji prepare for invasion. They must be stopped at all costs before they can unleash their voracious insectoid armies on Kalimdor once again, and a second War of the Shifting Sands breaks loose!

Please join us in this discussion thread, where we’re talking about this week’s challenge, and looking forward to your stories about how it went for you this week, your screenshots, and your suggestions for other fun reasons to take on The Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.

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