KRONOS

Dear players,

we are sorry for having been silent for more than a month, but you may be familiar with the strain caused by exams in June and July. However now everyone in our team got plenty of free time and is back to working on the server.

From now on there will be regular news posts dealing with one particular theme like a dungeon, a raid, a mechanic or a special quest. Those will contain detailed descriptions and will in most cases be accompanied by a video showing you the fixes in action.

Furthermore there will be posts just like this one, presenting all the fixes recently implemented with a special focus on more important issues. Expect one of these posts about once every other week, depending on how much has been fixed or whether a key feature takes some more time to be fine-tuned.

Today’s topics are NPC mechanics, Line of Sight (LoS) of objects and combat mechanics.

NPC mechanics:
You have probably been in a situation where you just have to kill a single NPC which happens to be surrounded by several packs. On most servers you can just pull your target out of the camp, and don’t need to worry about mobs on your target’s path, however on Retail and now also on Kronos this leads to aggroing everything along the way said NPC moves. This so called chain-pulling mechanic also applies to feared targets who may run into friendly units. Chainpulling is enabled for all Humanoids, most Demons and several kinds of Beasts.
Additionally regular NPCs will from now on get slowed if they are below 20% of their total health.
Both features are as blizz-like as possible and make the classic world feel more alive, as the aid mechanic underlines the social component of mobs, whereas the slow mirrors the possibility of getting wounded and no longer being able to walk or move properly.

Line of Sight of objects:
Another cornerstone of this week’s changelog is the fix to the LoS of objects all across Azeroth. The most important ones are quite possibly the tree stumps in Warsong Gulch, which previously made it impossible to hit players with ranged attacks or spells even though they appeared to be in Line of Sight.
Other noteworthy objects are the Gates in Stratholme which are no longer skippable through the use of blink or charge, preventing an unintended way of farming Magistrate Barthilas.

Combat mechanics:
Combat mechanics are obviously at the center of gameplay and a thus a high degree of perfection needs to be achieved for an authentic experience. Last week we made another step toward reaching that level by adjusting the blocking and channelling mechanics.
From now on magical melee attacks, such as those used by Ragnaros and Thunderaan, can no longer be blocked. This results in the right amount of damage dealt by such creatures to tanks.
Additionally several issues with channeling spells were fixed, i.e. you won’t be able to cast Arcane Missiles on friendly targets or waste mana and time on casting it on out of sight targets since in both cases an error message will now show up.

Future updates:
Additional recent fixes, which we will highlight after some final adjustments in future updates include:
The Aurius Event in Stratholme, the Paladin and Warlock Epic Mount Quest, the Alt + F4 mechanic preventing abusive behavior in PvE and open world PvP, pooling of Stratholme Supply Crates and more!

And finally a list of all the fixes – small and big: