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Please take a moment to read all of the following changes below. Skimming or only reading some information may cause misunderstanding. These changes will be released in the near future, but may not all be released at the same time.
Gear Revamp
After many years of running on the same expansion, change is occasionally necessary to keep the game fresh, clean, and free from stagnation. Smolderforge for the past few years has turned into a very different environment than the one it used to be. These problems proved to be insanely difficult to fix without affecting the majority of the community. For the past few years we’ve let things continue as is with much debate within the community about what we should do. After a long time of debating the issue and internally discussing as a staff we have come to a decision about the path we’re going to lead Smolderforge on.
Tier 6 gear is now the end-game tier of PvE.
Scarlet Citadel has been adjusted appropriately with Tier 6 gear and will now have a rare chance to drop the Fiery Warhorse mount. All Sunwell weapons will continue to drop here (minus Thori’dal). The spell resistance nerfs have been highly lowered and the raid should be equally fair for melee and casters.
New vendors have been added to provide more beginner-gear for Tier 5 range, namely a ZA and SSC & TK vendor for gear besides the already-existing Tier 5 set vendor.
Sunwell weapons will be left in the game; however, all Sunwell-related gear, included crafted items, are to be removed from players. We understand the hostility of this decision by many, but we believe that in order to fix the spiralled-out-of-control state of PvP damage, and insufficient resilience mitigation to this bursty-environment we have created, this change is necessary. We have opted to leave weapons into the game because of a long history of donations, as well as a credit to the players who worked to obtain these items, and lastly so there is still something very appealing at end-game.
The SWP vendor in the donor mall now sells the non-Kil’jaeden Sunwell weapons for high prices. Additionally, a Black Temple/Hyjal gear vendor has been added to the donor mall to allow access to these items.
Every character from the wipe will be mailed a compensation package. This package will include 100 Badges of Justice, 10 Marks of Honor for all 4 battlegrounds (40), 7 Transmog Tokens, and Speedy the Turtle pet.
We are basically rolling back the PvE gear a level to keep things on the playing field more fair. Sunwell gear was in a whole new tier of its own and drastically affecting the PvP environment in a bad way.
The Return of Hyjal
Hyjal has now returned, but slightly modified to be more enjoyable. Graveyards are now on flying zeppelins to prevent excessive graveyard camping. Players may parachute down any direction from these ships, or take a teleport to their base.
The daily quests have been rewritten and instead of killing enemy NPCs in the area, you now are to kill enemy players to complete the quest objectives.
Yes, the LoS issues still exist, no I cannot fix them, yes it is part of the map. Sorry.
Legendary Transmog Items
We have designed 60 new legendary items that copy the stats of Season 4 and Sunwell weapons. These weapons however have the models of other weapons. Thunderfury, Warglaives, Benediction, Anathema models, and much, much more.
These legendary items plan to be obtained through high-rated arena, but additionally possible to obtain for non-arena players.
We are still developing the system for non-arena players, but it will likely be objective based, not HK farming. We’ll have more details soon!
(Ignore the "Arena Transmog" item description. :P)
Season 4 Gear Cost Lowered
Helms lowered to 1110 points (down from 2250)
Boots lowered to 675 points (down from 2250)
We may be doing additional changes to the S4 gear cost. This is only what we have done so far.
Administrator - Project Lead / Server Management / Core Development
Thank you for these updates!! Totally happy with getting rid of SWP gear, and the idea of Legendary item transmogs! I also have a suggestion to make regarding the PvE gear vendors. Can we like remove the ZA & BT gear vendors cause some of the people that actually do PvE here have something to raid for. I know some bosses aren't working 100% as intended but most of them are doable.
And also SC at the moment is very easy to raid, and what I thought was that we could like make a Instance attunement for SC, where players must kill a certain boss or multiple bosses (Eg: Bosses from TK/BT/SSC/ZA) to gain attuenment to SC. This is only my suggestion to help improve PvE here, looking forward to your opinions regarding this. :)
keeping swp weapons, does that mean only those who were for donations or all swp weapons. Otherwise nice!! I always wanted glaives mog but im silly rogue so couldnt get them on AT :D
Great work, I look forward to the slightly more challenging PvE and more balanced PvP. The only thing I'd ask is that some sort of compensation could be made to those of us who have spent a lot of time farming SWP gear, perhaps enough currency to buy the "new" end game gear, or maybe some "fun items" ? :D
?ó?é¼?ôWell if you were a man, I?ó?é¼?äód punch you. Punch you right in the mouth.?ó?é¼?¥ ?ó?é¼?Ç¥ Ron Burgundy
Glad to see that your interest has returned and you aren't afraid of change.
If by tier 6 you include the off parts (t6,5), all classes can pvp with an hybrid set of gear, or still being full pve if they wish so, without being THAT overpowered.
Hopefully this will create a more balanced environment and reduce the amount of complaints about "gear faults".
And nice to see that Hyjal is back and enhanced, it is indeed a sf trademark.
Sounds awesome, I am really looking forward to see that happen! I just hope that our playerbase is clever enough to understand that if every single player has his gamebreaking items removed, then the situation doesn't change at all. Everyone will have items of the same quality, the gameplay just gets better. Whoever decides to keep on using full PvE gear in PvP will do lots of damage anyway, it will just become bearable.
I'm really happy to see that happen after all these years, we really need something fresh and new.
Bucovsky wrote:I just hope that our playerbase is clever enough to understand that if every single player has his gamebreaking items removed, then the situation doesn't change at all
thats isnt completely true because some classes can afford to use more pve and some cant, removing the WHOLE swp gear isn't 100% balanced, some classes could use a piece or two. Same with arena seasons on retail, every season there is a new gear set so everyone's gear improve but the situation doesnt remain the same cause some classes get a slight advantage. Now when everyone moves from swp to t6 it's definetly gonna have an effect. A nerf for some and a boost to others.
