Warcraft Experience

Vaeras of Blizzard shed some light on what the rules will most likely be for the up coming arena battles that are coming with The Burning Crusade.

With the upcoming expansion we will be introducing arena battles and to give you a better idea of what to expect, here are the rules:

• You do not talk about arena battles.
• When a player enters an arena battle, all buffs and conjured items are purged/deleted. This is done to ensure no outside buffs or items from members outside of your team are able to be used in an arena battle.
• No consumables other than bandages and conjured items can be used while in the arena. There will be a waiting area similar to the current battlegrounds where players on the team will be able to conjure items and cast buffs.
• Abilities/spells/items with cooldowns longer than 15 minutes cannot be used while in the arena.
• Each arena team will be given a rating, and will be matched up in the arena queue against teams of a similar rating. As time progresses the matching system will broaden its search up to a limit if a closely rated team cannot be found.
• Ratings adjustments are made in the same way that ELO ratings adjustments are made. This system works by adjusting each arena teams rating from a specific match based on the rating of the team they are up against. If a team wins against a team of a higher rating, the increase of their arena rating would be much higher than if they had won against a team of a lower rating. This system will help promote players improving their skill and besting teams which may have previously held the top spots.
• At the end of each week, characters receive arena points based on their team’s rating. A team must have fought a minimum number of battles for the week, which we have announced as currently set to 10 games. A player must have played in at least 30% of the team’s battles that week in order to be eligible to receive arena points. Each eligible player will then receive a fraction of the team’s total awarded points to spend on arena rewards.
• Players may spend their points on arena rewards, or save their points until they have enough to get the rewards they desire.
• There is a limit to the number of points a player can stockpile, which is currently planned to be as high as the most expensive item.
• At the end of a season, players on a team are given a title based on their team’s relative position on the ladder which will last through the next arena season.

Thanks

Due to the amount of spam comments that I have been getting I have now removed the ability to comment. Thanks a lot you asshats.

So I had to do it… I uploaded some of my screenshots to the MyWarcraftSpace website and its super neat-o. They added a photo album feature now and it made my original FrontPage photo album efforts look like a baby learning to crawl. Check it out.

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A couple of points from Blizzard and first up it’s a note on the honor system titles and changes in the BC:

The current plan is to allow players to retain their titles obtained in the current honor system; but not through use of the new honor system. We may however reincorporate them into the game at a later time. We also have plans to allow for a kind of rank selection list, allowing the title for highest rank achieved through the old honor system, new titles from the arena combat system, and any other titles obtained through play to be changed and displayed at will.

The lowering of the player cap for dungeons has been a hot topic in the past week and the community is still split on this one. Just so make sure everyone is clear, Blizzard could well create larger dungeons in the future. Remember folks, a decision now is not a decision forever

We are not currently planning any dungeons above a 25 player cap for this expansion. I can’t provide something as absolute as “never again”.

Just when buffing and zoning in was looking up, it looks like we are going to have to suffer with losing our temp buffs when zoning again, for a while longer:

We have implemented a hotfix to all realms during today’s maintenance which we had originally scheduled to release with patch 1.12 that changes the functionality of temporary item buffs (e.g. poisons, sharpening stones and shaman weapon buffs.) While we only just recently allowed the affects of these temporary item buffs to persist upon zoning and logging out, due to the extra demand it was placing on our hardware we’ve decided that for the time being, it was best to revert the change. We do anticipate this functionality will be available again once the anticipated hardware upgrades have been completed in preparation for the Burning Crusade’s release.

Let loose on Friday via Gamespy, Blizzard has this to say:

…Blizzard is working a difficulty system into its dungeons. Basically, it works like this: As you’re leveling up, you run through all the Outland instances at their default difficulty. You’ll earn gear commensurate for your level, and the challenges will be tuned as such. Once you hit 70, however, your group leaders will have the option of running dungeons on “Elite” difficulty.

Also in the article is the annoucement that no raids in the expansion will be above 25 people max, that’s right, the 40 man raid days are done… for now.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg people, there is a ton more information to be read in this article, so you will definitely want to check it out

We are pleased to announce the opening of two new realms: Tanaris which is a PvE realm and The Forgotten Coast which is a new PvP realm. These new realms will provide a great place for new and old players alike to begin fresh adventures within the world of Azeroth. Enjoy!

These realms and any future new realms will be made available for the Paid Character Transfer service 6 months past their launch.

*Please note that both of these servers are EST.

Tanaris is being added as a part of Battlegroup 10 and The Forgotten Coast will be a part of Battlegroup 11 once Cross-Realm Battlegrounds are released.

http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/08/12/1622247.shtml

In the expansion, there will be NO MORE 40 man raids. Every raid will become 25 man capped, even the previous ones (Naxx,AQ”40″,MC, and BWL). Players will now have to rely on Skill and not just power in numbers. This has also been confirmed on the forums multiple times.

This will means wonders for all sorts of smaller guilds, as well as the bigger ones that want to run multiple events on the same evening. All I can say is - awesome move Blizz!