Here comes Patch 5.4 (PTR)!Follow

Wowhead's blurb on it is here. Big things that stand out to me?

"Virtual realms" sound a lot like realm merging. I personally don't mind it, but some other folks might.

Proving Grounds sounds more like what I had hoped the Brawler's Guild was going to be originally. I hope there are still some kind of prizes, even if they're only achievements or pets.

Scaling enchants should be interesting; I wonder if this means that old enchants will be retired, since, say, minor intellect will scale to major? More likely they'll just scale to their maximum potential (so, +3 versus +180), so heirlooms will be enchanted with the best of the best. *Edit: Reading again, it says that only high level enchants scale down - low level enchants will not scale up.

Flexible raid difficulty doesn't hold much appeal for a loner like me, but I can see it being good for small guilds or groups of friends.

Vengeance is nerfed Looks like I may need to switch to Feral on my druid to make dailies bearable (heh, bear-able, as I'm a bear now). Some interesting changes to druid talents and abilities, but nothing to offset the DPS loss Guardian tanks will see. Probably for the best, but a nerf is a nerf.

Pet stones will be simple to get after the next patch; trading in three of the same family will give you a BoA Flawless stone. I'm wondering if there aren't some additional restrictions, like "turning in three rare pets"? Several pet racials were buffed. I'm wondering if they still plan on switching some of the advantages/disadvantages as had been talked about before (like how any elemental is a perfect mechanical counter)? Didn't see it listed.

Edited, Jun 12th 2013 7:18am by LockeColeMA

Virtual realms are okay I guess. They should make life a lot less miserable for folks playing on dead servers/a dead faction. But, and this is a big but in my eyes, announcing this just after they had the prices for realmtransfers reduced and not before is extremely shady and reeks of greed. I bet many people would have chosen not to transfer, even for the reduced price, had they known this beforehand.

The nerf to Shadowform pisses me off because it is, once again, a PvP nerf that will affect me even though I don't PvP much. Why are they so f'ing stubborn on not having two different working incarnations for every skill? Too confusing? My a$$! Some skills already work different. Their argument on that behalf is beyond stupid. Whoever insists on this should be punched. Often. And then fired.

The patch as a whole looks good.

Recoup buff to 4% every 3seconds (5% with glyph). So that should make soloing old raids a smig easier on the rogue.

They also finally fixed how Killing Spree should work. Currently if you pop KS you will attack any target within range of your origional target. Come 5.4 it will only do that if you have Blade Flurry up. If you pop it without BF then you will just attack your current target. That is so incredibly nice.

Also Garrosh looks cheesy and the scorpion boss looks absolutely amazing.

On a side note looks like my dream of Nazgrim and Taylor becoming BFFs is not going to work out.

So you are saying every single person that made use of the discount for transfers would have made said transfer even knowing that in a few months the problem with dead realms will (hopefully) be solved? Are you serious?
So yes, the decision to make the idea of Virtual Realms public only after their "nice price reduction" had ended is indeed morally questionable. To say the least.

That's certainly one way to view it; however, the other options would have come under just as much fire. Imagine --

A) Blizzard manages to keep virtual realms secret. The grumbling about low server populations continues. Some people transfer. Virtual realms come out and are a success. Boards are filled with angry complaints.

B) Virtual realms come out and go over as well as CRZ. People complain about being deceived. New tech is decried as buggy. Boards are filled with angry complaints. Demands for free transfers and server merges continue.

C) Virtual realms fail to come out with 5.4. PTR showed tech was not working smoothly. People complain Blizzard is milking the server transfer fee. Boards are filled with angry complaints.

D) Virtual realms launch. Everything works perfectly. Blizzard provides each account with a promotional visit by a Belf or Nelf cosplayer who will "provide gf/bf services" and a swag bag including limited edition gold coins. Boards are filled with angry complaints: "gf/bf services were not on par with favorite AV, gold coins were too small and Blizz waited until after the price of gold had dropped, why didn't Blizz make transsexual goblin cosplayers an option, pandapoke still sucks."

E) Blizz realizes that they are screwed and at least half the people complaining don't actually have active accounts or may even be trolls trying to increase another game's allure. Virtual realms shelved and not even announced as a possibility. Boards are filled with angry complaints. "Server populations are low, Blizz should do something!"

No matter when they announced it, somebody would have just paid for a transfer. At least this way, some people got a discount on player services, one of which was the option to transfer. That was probably about the best option they could offer.

I like the whole Virtual Realm idea.

I was not willing to spend $600 to move mine and my mom's characters off of The Scryers (H) which has an almost-dead market (try going there and searching for lv86+ weapons, you'll get 1-2 pages, max, and most of those are greens for example).

Even with the "discounts", $300 is just too much to move our guild and all 22 of our characters off of The Scryers.

But, with Virtual Realms, we can just stay on The Scryers, and actually get a chance to see actual goods on the Market that we can buy and sell.

I've been wanting to buy a Lionheart Champion, Reborn for a long time... but I have to pluck away making one from scratch. On Moon Guard, I was buying them and then turning them into Executioners (shaving off 15 days of the wait time) for our 2h strength characters.

Can't do that on The Scryers, though, because nobody wants to sell them. They want to sell the 502 versions for ridiculous prices (50-60k+) and the same person will keep re-listing and re-listing and re-listing and refusing to back his price down. I think there were at least two weeks straight, the same guy listing the same 502 at 49,999 or something like that and he just wouldn't get the hint that nobody wanted to pay that much.

Meanwhile, on Moon Guard, I was buying 476s for 12-14k and then turning them into 502s for my own use.

Better than having to grind up to 480 and pray the weapon in LFR ToT drops for each of my characters I had intentions of questing with.

Even with 458 crafted pvp junk, that 502 sword upgraded to 510 packs a helluva punch. Easily enough to let me do 60k DPS even with the crap armor/rings/trinkets.

Edited, Jun 13th 2013 3:39pm by Lyrailis