Developer Log - August 2024

Behind the scenes as ever the Project Epoch team is steadfastly working towards a release as soon as humanly possible. However one downside of this is that the primary focus has been entirely on bugs, polish, tuning and wrapping things up with a neat little bow.

While these monthly logs have gotten less and less visual due to that we look forward to giving you these updates on key challenges we've faced and accomplishments along the way.

General State

When we last gave an update we stated we had 3,109 issues still open across a broad spectrum of the game. As of this post this now stands at 2,599. Meaning that the QA & Bug Triage team alongside our developers have been able to close 510 issues. Many of these being simply duplicates closing and merging into a singular issue, but also a meaningful amount of actual fixes. We've been updating the internal realm with new fixes and improvements on a weekly basis and are happy with the amount of progress that has been made in that time.

This is of course a slowing of things however that is because issues are getting more and more granular. We are happy that the biggest issues are being tackled swiftly and a majority of what remains are lower priority or cosmetic.

As of today we have now opened our Bug Tracker to the public which not only allows us to work through some of the nonsense a little quicker but also makes it easier for us to work with external developers.

Core Updates

While a few months ago we initially starting recruiting a core developer at that time this was a voluntary basis. Due to that we have not had much luck and the overwhelming majority of core work being done at present is by Kaytotes. As of this month however we have now extended this to paid development and we are hoping this allows us to tackle some of the gnarlier core issues. This is being driven by an investment of $1,000 dollars towards paid core services and bug bounties.

This should allow key staff to return to core project modding and content related bug fixes rather than systemic ones.

Some of the key core changes that have happened this month include, but aren't limited to:

Ground up rewrites to Health and Power regeneration for Players and Pets.
Demon pet stat calculations.
Quality of Life for automatically resummoning pets on flight paths.
Rewrites to various movement types such as fleeing.
Chests will now despawn if only partially looted after a short time.
Major rewrites to many player stat calculations now more closely matching TBC behaviour.

Professions

Many profession crafts have seen changes or additions, and below is a sample of some of the recent work done this past month. There are many more changes and additions beyond these and some big surprises await people as they level their professions and find new recipes out in the world!

The Dark Iron Plate set now features a custom retextured helmet, which means it now matches the rest of the set! A belt has also been added to complete the look.

Other Changes

The Crusader enchantment is now a Two-Handed Weapon enchantment. This famously powerful enchantment was always the only weapon enchantment melee use. Restricting it to Two-Handed Weapons opens up the other weapon enchantments such as Unholy Weapon and Lifestealing, which will likely see adjustments as well. This also gives us room to add new enchantments in the future without it having to be wildly overpowered to compete with Crusader.

Lava fishing! How is it you can simply cast your line into bubbling magma? Well, you can't anymore! Fishing in lava or magma now features a new requirement that players will have to discover. You will find it very difficult to meet the skill requirements to fish in those hot liquids as well, but those who manage to do so will find new and interesting fish and other items to catch!

Class Is Still In Session

Some additional class work was done over this past month, with Mage and Hunter being finalized. Note that general class tuning is a forever ongoing process and is certainly not finalized at this time. Shaman and Warlock didn't make it into this developer log in time due to time spent on other tasks, but they should be featured next month, stay tuned!

Mage

Mages have strong RPG roots as typical spellcasters or wizards, and in game they've always been very consistent in being a strong spellcaster. On Project Epoch we have kept resistances and immunities on enemies, and so you will sometimes be unable to use certain spells on certain bosses, due to this its important that all 3 specs perform admirably when they are needed.

The changes below are changes that have occurred after Beta 3. For previous Mage changes, see the pinned message in the #Mage channel in Discord and our october developer log.

The changes below do not include bug fixes or damage/healing numerical buffs/nerfs.

Focus Magic has been removed.

Developer's note: Focus Magic didn't quite fit in as a talent in this version because the early Arcane talent tree is incredibly powerful for all 3 Mage specializations to talent into, this merely made a great option even better.

Arcane Barrage is now once again learned as an active ability and is no longer a passive talent. It is now learned at mage trainers at level 22 and has 4 ranks in total.
Arcane Blast is no longer learned from a trainer and is now found in the Arcane talent tree, in the place of Focus Magic (in the place that Arcane Fortitude was originally) on Row 3. This spell now has 7 ranks.

Developer's note: Arcane Blast's move to the talent tree allows this spell to more naturally move to a much lower level, allowing players to choose to level as Arcane if they wish. This also puts the talent in an easy to reach location if Fire or Frost comes across any reason why they want to be able to do the Arcane rotation occasionally.

Consuming your Arcane Blast stacks with Arcane Barrage now also increases the damage of your Arcane Missiles by 15% per stack consumed for 8 seconds. As a reminder, Arcane Blast stacks up to 3 times.
Arcane Impact (talent) now increases the critical strike chance of all Arcane spells by 2%. This functionally just means it now includes Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage.
Reverted the changes made to Empowered Arcane Missiles in Beta 3. Empowered Arcane Missiles now behaves the same as it did during Burning Crusade.
Arcane Missiles has had its mana cost reduced by roughly 5.8% at Rank 7, lower ranks were affected by different amounts.

Developer's note: The most damaging rotation for an Arcane Mage is and will still be purely Arcane Blast. But with some encounters being pretty lengthy in vanilla we want to ensure that Arcane has a decent "conservative rotation" for situations where they cannot dump their mana pool into the boss. That would typically be using Frostbolt, but these changes should allow them to do an Arcane-centric conservative rotation by spending their Arcane Blast stacks with Arcane Barrage to obtain an empowered Arcane Missiles.

Arcane Missiles will now display floating text when it fails to cast, such as when the target is immune to Arcane.

Developer's note: During Beta 3 this spell could sometimes fail to cast. This was because the initial cast of Arcane Missiles was being treated as a physical ability and was reliant on melee hit chance, but due to an intentional blizzard design it was unable to display the fact that it missed. The initial cast can no longer miss, and now any time it fails to cast due to resistance or immunity it will display that information. To clarify, this has no effect on the missiles launched from the channel, this only affects the beginning of the channel when you press Arcane Missiles.

Mages have received a new flavorful ability, Conjure Weapon. This allows you to conjure an equipable weapon that can be traded to other players. The weapon options are a Dagger, One-Handed Sword, Two-Handed Sword, One-Handed Mace, Two-Handed Mace, One-Handed Axe, and Two-Handed Axe, in that order as ranks at varying levels. The conjured weapon will scale to the level of the Mage that conjured the item, not the wearer of the item. This weapon also has Intellect as a stat, making it an excellent weapon skill training weapon. Being a conjured item, these items disappear after being logged off for 15 minutes. Conjure Weapon Rank 1 (Dagger) is available at level 16.
The Water Elemental summoned by frost mages now has a new ability, Slush Sluice. This ability channels a beam of Frost damage at the target, dealing minor damage, and causing all Frost attacks landing on that target to consider the target as Frozen. This spell lasts 9 seconds and has a 16 second cooldown.

Developer's note: We are aware there may be PvP concerns with this ability, and we are looking at ways to minimize its impact in those situations.

Piercing Ice (talent) now triples its effectiveness when you deal Frost damage to a creature that is immune to Fire damage.
A new talent has been added to the Fire talent tree on Row 5, beside Blast Wave and requiring Blast Wave, named Pyroclastic Burst. This talent causes your Fire spell critical strikes to grant you a stack of Pyroclastic Burst, increasing the damage of your next Pyroblast by 10%. This stacks up to 6 times, and displays a visual effect and sound effect when it reaches 6 stacks or if you deal an additional Fire spell critical strike while you are already at 6 stacks.
Master of Elements can now also proc from Arcane spells and has been renamed to Master of Schools.
Improved Fire Blast has been renamed to Improved Blasting, and now also increases the critical strike chance of Arcane Blast by 1%/2%/4%.

Developer's note: These two changes above were made to support the idea of Arcane being able to subspec into Fire instead of Frost as a potential build option.

Improved Mana Shield has been renamed to Improved Shielding, and now also increases the resistances gained from Mage Armor by 50%/100%.
Evocation has been reverted to its 1.12 state. This means that the Spirit stat will now impact how much this spell restores. With the general amount of Spirit a Mage has at level 60, this works out to be a small buff to this spell, but adds a lot of depth to the ability. However, this means Evocation is no longer affected by spell casting speed increasing effects.
Mages can now undertake new quests to obtain Teleport: Stonard (Horde) / Teleport: Theramore (Alliance) and Portal: Stonard (Horde) / Portal: Theramore (Alliance).

Below you will find the Dungeon Set 2 (Tier 0.5) boots for Mages. Since the last time it has been shown, the 6pc and 8pc effects have been swapped, and the new 8pc effect has been overhauled.

Hunter

Hunters are a powerful class known well for soloing and breaking things. We would generally prefer that you don't break things though.

In regards to the "GCD Desync 3:2 rotation" that was possible during retail Burning Crusade and was not possible during Burning Crusade Classic, we have no plans to implement it here. It relies on a pretty large bug to a core game mechanic and is not something that can be implemented into a feature easily or be explained in the tooltip without confusion or complications.

The changes below are changes that have occurred after Beta 3. For previous Hunter changes, see the pinned message in the #Hunter channel in Discord and our october developer log.

The changes below do not include bug fixes or damage/healing numerical buffs/nerfs.

Tamed spiders, hyenas, turtles, crocolisks, and tallstriders now have a new focus spender called Snap. This ability is practically identical to Claw.
Moths now have the Serenity Dust ability that they had in Wrath of the Lich King, but with flat attack power instead of a percentage effect.
Crabs now have the Pin ability that they had in Wrath of the Lich King, but its duration has been reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. The damage dealt over the course of its duration is unchanged.
Wasps now have the Sting ability that they had in Wrath of the Lich King, but its effect is now equal to the effect of Faerie Fire and does not stack with that spell.
Bullets and Arrows now stack to 250 (was 200) and all sources of a full stack of ammo have been increased to 250.
Quivers and Ammo Pouches now all have 2 additional inventory slots.

Developer's note: These two changes were made to bring the total ammo held in a Quiver/Ammo Pouch closer to level 70 values, because Burning Crusade hunters consume more ammo than Vanilla hunters did.

Below you will find the Dungeon Set 2 (Tier 0.5) boots for Hunters. Since the last time it has been shown, the 6pc effect was removed and replaced with the 8pc effect, and the 8pc effect has been replaced. The stats have also changed.

Test When?

This month we made a key stride in resolving a performance issue that the project has had during and after Beta 3 which was a large bottleneck for us even giving a slight thumbs up to another public test.

We are hoping that during this upcoming month with investments into core development we will be able to solve the few truly blocking issues we have open preventing a public test.

We hope to have more updates on this next month and thank you all for your patience. It has not been a light decision to take this time to craft something special.