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The 5th anniversary press continues — this time it’s a site called Techland, where our friend Tracey John (who also writes for Massively) interviews Jeff Kaplan about his reflections on the last five years of the game. It’s surprising to hear that early on, Blizzard wasn’t so sure of their success. Despite the fact that even before WoW, they had made some of the most classic PC games of all time, they weren’t sure that going the subscription route was a good idea. But one of the companies’ founders stood up and gave a pep talk, and promised a whole million subscribers, apparently. Of course, they’d go on to make many times that, but that was good enough to get the team going again.

Kaplan also says that he is a little bummed that Blizzard didn’t scale back raiding earlier — 40-man raids were a little unwieldy, he admits now, and smaller raids would have meant more content in the vanilla days. But he does say that since the game has been updated so much, most of the stuff they wish they’d done different has actually been done differently. And in the future, he says that better technology will play a big role — bigger instance capacity, and things like cross-server instances and other innovations. The next five years, he seems to hint, should be just as interesting as the first.

Blizzard has just released a lengthy statement on the way the new Icecrown raid in patch 3.3 will be progressively accessed. Some of the key points:

• Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.
• The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. “Several weeks” until the next encounters become available.
• Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. The same goes for 25 mans. This means no heroic Icecrown until after the Lich King is defeated, which will apparently be, at the earliest, in a couple of months.
  
• The four most difficult bosses have a limited number of attempts on them each week. Once those attempts are gone, you have to wait another week to try again.
• There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).
  
• In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available.
• Over time, after all bosses are defeated, players will begin to get a buff, making defeating bosses easier.

This is a jam packed statement from Blizzard on the mechanics of the raid zone, and outlines exactly what your raiding guild will be doing in the weeks and months ahead. If you are going to ever set foot in the Icecrown Citadel raid, you need to know this information.

The full statement after the break.

The full statement from Daelo:

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we’re now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can’t give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I’ll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana’thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana’thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell’s effect if they so wish.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about the armor penetration and crit caps, and what they mean for rogues.

The topic of Armor Penetration and how it plays into a rogue’s gearing plan is definitely the topic I’ve received the most requests to cover. It’s been well-researched by the great folks at Elitist Jerks, and even though it will be completely gone in Cataclysm, there’s still a lot of interest in how it works. The terms ‘hard cap’, ‘soft cap’, and ‘arp cap’ are thrown around a lot and can be confusing if you’ve never done a deep-dive into the mechanic.

I also received a question regarding the rogue crit cap on the WoW.com podcast the other weekend, and decided to include it in this investigation. While a few high end rogues are already brushing up against it, many rogues are wondering how the crit cap will affect them come Icecrown’s plethora of high ilvl loot. Like any of the other caps, the crit cap needs to be seriously evaluated when trying to choose upgrades. Read on for details of both mechanics.

Armor Penetration:

Let me start by laying out all of the jargon ahead of time. There’s two key terms to consider when we’re talking about Armor Penetration (or ArP/ArPen, in short form): the Soft Cap (SC) and the Hard Cap (HC). The Soft Cap refers to the idea that you are capable of capping your ArP (the cap is 1,400 currently) when you have some sort of Armor Penetration trinket active, but you’re under this cap when the trinkets aren’t active. There’s two such trinkets in-game: Grim Toll and Mjolnir Runestone. You’ve probably seen a lot of demand/jealousy over these trinkets, as they are often BIS for many Combat builds.

Grim Toll provides a rogue with 612 ArP while active, and Mjolnir Runestone provides 665 ArP. Because we’re trying to reach the Armor Penetration Cap (1,400), this means we’ll need either 788 ArP on gear to reach Grim Toll’s Soft Cap or 735 ArP on gear if using the Mjolnir Runestone Soft Cap. Otherwise, when the trinket procs, all of the ArP over the cap will be wasted. This is obviously not what you want to do (wasting a portion of a trinket’s proc), so you must ensure you are as close to the Soft Cap as possible without exceeding it. A great way to figure out how close you are to the ArP Soft Cap is to look at your passive ArP on your gear. If it’s around 400-500, and you’re not using any ArP gems, then you could simply swap all of your gems to ArP and reach the Soft Cap without any gear swaps. You can typically gem for between 250 and 400 ArP, depending on the number of sockets in your gear, using Fractured Cardinal Rubies.

Let’s say that you weren’t fortunate enough to have scored a Grim Toll/Mjolnir Runestone by now, and so you’re sitting on alternate trinkets. This is where the Armor Penetration Hard Cap comes into play. The Hard Cap is set at 1,400, which is where your ArP is permanently capped, regardless of if you have a trinket active or not. Using some of the best gear in the game, gemming pure Armor Penetration gems, and focusing solely on ArP, it is still impossible (according to my math) for a rogue to reach the ArP Hard Cap. If you were to spec maces, it would be possible via the bonus from Mace Specialization, but there are no end-game off hand maces and few MH maces worth it.

The real concern is that when Icecrown is released and the item level of gear reaches its highest point, a rogue will be able to hard cap Armor Penetration passively. This results in a significant DPS increase, and will be the gearing objective of the most high end Combat raiders. A well-designed PvE gearset includes between 18-22 sockets, which allow a rogue to gem somewhere around 400 ArP if using all ArP gems. A rogue’s “hard cap” set would then have to include 1,000 passive ArP rating: something that I simply can’t find on gear currently. My best attempt yielded a fairly high-end set with 899 passive ArP. ICC’s release should push this into the realm of possibility.

In short, unless you have a Grim Toll or Mjolnir Runestone, neither of the ArP caps are of any importance to you. If you are lucky enough to be graced with one of these, simply ensure that your ArP is near but not over the Soft Cap for your particular trinket. It’s important to note that Sunder/Expose Armor, Faerie Fire, and other ArP debuffs do not affect the ArP Soft/Hard Caps. The ArP caps we talk about are all personal, and they’re the same regardless of what buffs or debuffs an opponent may have. Do note that these formulas are based around the idea of fighting a level 83 boss.

Crit Cap:

The Crit Cap is another one of those jargon terms that you’ll hear from time to time without really seeing it explained in detail. Most rogues are talking specifically about the ‘White Hit Critical Strike Chance Cap’, or WCC for short, which is the point where additional critical strike rating no longer increases your chance to score white swing crits. The reason that this cap exists is the Glancing Blow mechanic, which is implemented to lower melee damage against boss-level mobs. Due to Glancing Blows, a rogue can literally get to the point where they are unable to crit any more often.

Let’s first note that neither yellow attacks (special moves) nor poison damage are afflicted by the white crit cap, as they are unable to be glancing blows. They each have their own crit cap, but it’s significantly higher and currently unreachable. The crit cap that rogues are currently able to reach only affects white swings. However, white swings make up a huge portion of our a damage, especially as Combat via Prey on the Weak. Let’s talk about how this cap is calculated and reached.

Blizzard bases all attacks on a “roll” that takes place when you swing. This roll can be thought of as a /roll 100. Blizzard chooses a random number between 1-100, and the result determines what happens with that attack. If you roll a 1-5, Blizzard converts the attack into a hit. This is due to an undetermined mechanic known as “crit suppression” that most bosses seem to have. It’s actually set to 4.8% (as researched by Vulajin), but can be rounded to 5% for this simple example. It just means that 5% of the time, you simply won’t crit.

Now we factor in glancing blows, and if you roll a 6-29, you will have a glancing blow. This means that your attack hits for half damage and is unable to crit. That’s a total of 29 possible chances for you to “not crit”. In addition, we have to factor in a mob’s chance to evade your attacks. If you’re Expertise capped and Hit capped (white hit capped, or usually 722 hit rating with Precision / Misery), a mob has no chance to avoid you, and so if you roll 30-100, you have a chance of critting the mob. This results in the crit cap for a rogue with capped hit and expertise being 71%, as you are guaranteed to “not” crit 29% of the time.

The complete formula is:

Start with 100%
subtract a boss’ dodge and parry, affected by expertise and positioning, usually near 0-2%
subtract a boss’ crit suppression of 4.8%
subtract your glancing blow chance of 24%
subtract your miss, affected by hit, usually between 0-10%
———-
= Your White Crit Cap.

A great WCC calculator is available at Filltheglass.org. If you’re under the White Hit Cap (WHC) and the Expertise Cap (EC) (you can read up on both here), then this number is even lower, as some of the 1-100 roll will be taken up with misses and dodges. Let’s say you’re missing 5% hit and 2% dodge from your Hit and Expertise, and so now your crit cap is 64% crit. The question becomes: can you reach the crit cap in any real situation? The answer is ‘yes, if you’re geared, or very undergeared’.

Take Dark Matter, for example; it provides 13.33% chance to crit when active. Considering that 40% crit is not uncommon to see for a Combat rogue while unbuffed, and that there are several critical strike buffs and debuffs (5% from Leader of the Pack/Rampage, 3% from Master Poisoner/Heart of the Crusader), and Dark Matter’s amazing proc, you can easily reach 60%+ critical strike chance in a raiding environment. Blessing of Kings, Horn of Winter, and Mark of the Wild also add to this critical strike chance value. If you’re gemming Agility, this number can get even crazier. However, without the 13% from Dark Matter, it’s still pretty rough getting to the crit cap by yourself.

Similar to ArP, there are two White Crit Caps: Soft and Hard. Soft would imply you have a trinket that grants you a significant amount of critical strike rating or Agility (such as the very popular Darkmoon Card: Greatness), and that you can reach the WCC when this trinket is active. The Hard Cap would imply that you are at your personal WCC even without your trinkets active. The WCC is obviously easier to reach if you have very low hit and expertise. If you’re getting close to wasting itemization points on agility/crit due to being at your WCC, you can socket Hit/Expertise to raise your cap and buy you some breathing room. This is one of the reasons that spreadsheets making gearing decisions far easier: it’s almost impossible to do all of this math in your head.

Conclusion:

If you’re getting close to your WCC, explore using Expertise or Hit to raise the cap, as this should yield a net DPS boost from the saved critical strike rating. With a low expertise/hit set in ICC, it may be possible to reach the White Hard Crit Cap, so be sure to evaluate your own crit cap before picking up a shiny new trinket or regemming. If you’ve got a GT/MR, be mindful of the ArP Soft Cap (as you are for hit/expertise). If you don’t have a GT/MR or a Dark Matter, then none of this will really apply to you unless you are loaded with ICC gear with a very particular itemization pattern and gemming strategy. For a quick reference chart of any cap-related values, check out Cally’s great post at Elitist Jerks.

I think this is an interesting post by Grancran over on the official forums. We’ve already talked about how Blizzard is revamping the newbie experience in upcoming releases (including the next patch and the expansion), but he wants to know: for whom? Sure, there are going to be lots and lots of people going through the starting experience again when the expansion rolls around, both because of the new class combinations and the new races, but all of those people have already played the game. Why update a tutorial system when the majority of gamers have already played WoW?

It’s an interesting question. Neth answers pretty tamely, saying that we were all noobs at one point, and that they want to make the starting areas as welcome as possible. But the question remains: is Blizzard expecting an influx of new players at some point in the future?

If so (and why else would they completely revamp the tutorial system and starting experience in a five year old game?), we have to wonder where they’ll come from. Will Cataclysm bring in a swarm of new players? I’d think that it would bring some people back to the game, but I’d assume that most regular gamers have already played World of Warcraft and/or one of its many originators and imitators at some point.

The WoW movie is mentioned by a few players, and certainly that’s a possibility — though the movie isn’t due out for a comparatively long time in terms of patches. Starcraft II may also bring a number of new players in or back to the game, as the new Battle.net system will definitely spread the word about people playing World of Warcraft. But even then, all of those new draws combined don’t really seem like they’re capable of generating the flood of new players that completely revamping the starting experience would deserve.

Unless Blizzard has something else up their sleeve — something like WoW going partly free-to-play or a big boost to recruit-a-friend would certainly bring in a flood of new players, enough to justify giving them new tutorials and easier leveling. Whatever it is, Blizzard definitely thinks the newbies are coming. As with so much of this game, we’ll have to wait and see.