argent tournament grounds

Crusader’s Coliseum

To be clear, the 5 man encounter is called Trial of the Champion. The raid encounter (both 10 and 25 man) is called Trial of the Crusader while the heroic mode of this encounter is called Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Trial of the Champion should roughly on par with other 5 man dungeons in WoTLK. The heroic mode rewards 1 Emblem of Conquest and 1 Champion’s seal per boss. Only the heroic mode will be included in the rotation of dungeon daily quests. Trial of the Crusader will award 2 Emblems of Triumph for each encounter.

There will be a jousting fight in one of the encounters in Trial of the Champion but gear won’t come into play here unlike in the “vehicle fights” in Oculus and Ulduar. It should be just like regular jousting in the Argent Tournament.

Since there are four different modes for Trial of the Crusader, you’ll be able to choose among the four just like you can choose between normal and heroic for other dungeons. This time there will be four choices.

To activate Trial of the Grand Crusader, at least one player in the group should have finished Trial of the Crusader. Activating is done by talking to an npc and everyone in the raid will automatically be doing the tribute run.

The Trial of the Crusader will have one encounter similar to Priestess Delrissa in Magisters’ Terrace. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it was basically a fight where 5 of you fight 5 of them in a sort of Arena Tournament fashion. Gives you that PvP feel inside a dungeon run.

Isle of Conquest

After some testing in the PTR, the devs decided to make a few changes to Isle of Conquest such as increasing keep walls health, lowering reinforcements for both sides, making cannons repairable and other things.

Blizzard’s ideal average time for completing Isle of Conquest (and other battlegrounds too in fact) is 20-30 minutes.

The Cobalt Mine and Oil Derrick will have an added bonus when captured. Capturing one will give a 15% bonus to all damage done by operated vehicles. Capturing both will give a 30% bonus.

Spawn killing or graveyard camping is a potential concern for Isle of Conquest. While making it back to the keep should allow players to dodge enemies, Blizzard might add graveyard portals for resurrecting at a different location if this really becomes a big problem.

While vehicle combat figures greatly in Isle of Conquest, the dev team feels that ground combat will also be a big part of the battleground. The above mentioned change about the Oil Derrick and the Cobalt Mine will make capturing them important and that requires ground combat to do.

Isle of Conquest marks of honor will be a part of the turn in quests. By adding an additional requirement, the rewards will also be increased.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

silvermoon battlemasters

The big thing that’s coming in patch 3.2 concerning Battlegrounds is that they’re going to make experience gain in battlegrounds available. This way players can do some leveling up by doing just battlegrounds, although at a slower rate than if you were to go out and quest. Experience gain will be not be based on kills but instead actions like capturing a flag. I wonder how this will affect battleground healers though since they usually do nothing but heal. I also wonder if simply completing a game, win or lose will give you some experience along with the marks of honor.

The issue of experience gain concerns the twinks, who are a group of people who want to remain at their current level to stay in that bracket. Obviously gaining experience will mess things up so Blizzard also added a feature that will allow players to turn the experience gain on and off. Using this feature involves visitng an npc in Orgrimmar or Stormwind and costs 10 gold each time. turning off experience gain will also turn it off for PvE so if you want to go questing you’ll have to turn this feature on. Also, when entering battlegrounds, you will only be grouped with players who have the same setting so that twinks will only be matched with fellow twinks and those who don’t want to fight twinks won’t have to.

There’s also an interesting idea that they’re planning for the future where players will be able to roll on green and blue gear after a battleground match is over. If you’re a twink, this should be awesome news and even if you’re not, I’m guessing that these pieces of gear will be nice even for PvE use.

As for the Isle of Conquest, it’s much better to read the Q&A to get all the details but here’s the jist of it. the Isle of Conquest is 40 player BG like Alterac Valley with 71-79 and 80 brackets. The fight involves breaking into the opponent’s keep and killing the general much like Alterac Valley but the manner of doing so very different and looks more fun. They do this by breaking down the walls with siege weapons taken from Hangar, Docks or the Siege Workshop in the middle. With the various vehicles you can break down the walls and even catapult yourself over the enemy walls and break it down using Saronite bombs!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

silvermoon battlemasters

WoW-EU CM Vaneraswrote a post about the new details of this new battleground. Looking at the details, I can see why an Alterac Valley comparison is in order. First of all the ultimate objective to kill the opposing faction’s general is the same. You also control territories to gain an advantage over the other team. It’s also similar to Alterac Valley in that when you run out of reinforcements, you lose the battle. The compression to Wintergrasp comes from the fact that players will be able to use Siege vehicles in this battleground.

One interesting thing about this BG is that the territories you can gain control of seem to have a more distinct purpose, unlike AV where it’s pretty much just controlling graveyards to make the advances easier. The Oil Derrick and the Cobalt Mine can be controlled to provide reinforcements and a steady flow of honor for the team. The Docks, Airship Hangar and the Siege Workshop all can be controlled to provide the team with a variety of interesting new siege weapons. Click here to read more info about the Isle of Conquest.

It all sounds cool and should be interesting and awesome if it’s done well. One of the things that probably concerns some people about this is the kind of lag a place like this might have but hopefully that’s not going to be a problem. Another concern is the fact that it’s another PvP area with siege vehicles and I guess some people are just tired of it and want to play their own class instead of monotonously pushing a few buttons over and over.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Considering that we’ll be able to meet the Lich King inside the Icecrown Citadel by patch 3.3, it makes sense that patch 3.2 would be about events and preparations leading to what will happen in patch 3.3. In fact, that’s exactly that it’s mostly about, judging from the features listed by Blizzard.

argent tournament grounds

Expanded Argent Tournament

According to information given by Blizzard, we’ll see more dailies and more rewards and more things going on to lure more adventurers. This will definitely involve the Coliseum which will be build by the time the patch comes out. I’m actually hoping we’ll see more action (dailies included) that doesn’t have anything to do with jousting since i really hate it and suck at it.

Crusader’s Coliseum

We knew about this Coliseum ever since the Argent Tournament was announced but until now we’ve never known exactly what kind of action we were going to see in it. Back then I guessed that it would be used for some kind Ring of Blood type event for a group of 5. Apparently I got a part of it right but I never expected it to be as big as they said it will be. CM Zarhym mentioned that it is going to be a Ring of Blood type fight inside the Coliseum but there will be two versions, the 5 man version and the 10/25 man version, with one version having different bosses from the other. I’m guessing that this should be pretty quick and thus making it a pretty popular run for both heroics and raids. I’m not sure if the raid version will be the same tier as Ulduar or higher but my guess is that it might be the same, making it that tier’s version of Obsidian Sanctum.

Isle of Conquest, the new Battleground

The announcement of this battleground should put to rest the speculation that it’s going to be the one in Azshara that Blizzard junked before. Besides I don’t think that one would have had any relation to Wrath of the Lich King. CM Zarhym also mentioned that this new battleground is going to be like a mix between Wintergrasp and Alterac Valley with a few twists, which should mean more vehicular combat. I’m guessing that while this probably won’t have a real geographic location in any map, it should theoretically be in Icecrown just like Eye of the Storm is theoretically in Netherstorm.

Arena Season 7

there really isn’t much to say about this except that, like all new seasons, we should expect a new tier of PvP gear.

That’s all we have for now but even with that little information, it’s enough to make us excited all over again and make us suffer in anticipation!

Post from: WOW Obsessed