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Blizzard Talks about Brawler's Guild
Firstly, an announcement. Blizzard's made the "First rule..." joke now. Everyone else can stop, OK? Good. On with the post. Blizzard hasn't just been busy talking about Brawler's Guild. No, the developers have been trying to readdress some communication failings that, apparently, led to people erroneously thinking the Brawler's Guild was this big new feature that everyone would want to enjoy. I was definitely one of those people. Readers could tell as much from earlier coverage. So when Blizzard announced the method of gaining entry, I was among those who were annoyed. But now, the community managers have stepped in to address the concerns of players like me. The post splits out what Brawler's Guild is and isn't, and probably most important among the "isn't" section is "A major patch feature accessible to everyone (at first)". And this is where I'm not sure I agree with Blizzard. From a lore perspective, there are definitely bigger things afoot for both the Alliance and the Horde, and there's the addition of the two new factions, their quest hubs, gear and daily quests to look forward to, as well as new scenarios. And that's all great, but for me, Brawler's Guild is the major feature of patch 5.1.
Brawler's Guild: There must be another way
Regular WoW Insider readers may have caught sight of my earlier piece regarding Brawler's Guild. I hope it came across in that piece just how excited I was about this impending new feature, how much I wanted to keep doing it despite the fact that it awarded nothing but fun and ranking. I mentioned that there were likely to be changes coming to two elements, the rotten fruit thrown by other players at the person fighting, and the queue times. I postulated that a fix for the queue times, which were very long indeed on the Patch 5.1 PTR and promised to be even longer on live servers, could be something along the lines of instancing, using the new scenario technology, phasing, or simply introducing more rings somehow. I did not anticipate that the proposed solution would be to make this fantastic new feature invitation only, and that those invitations would only be sold on the Black Market Auction House. I didn't anticipate this for several reasons. Firstly, the Brawler's Guild is far too brilliant an idea for Blizzard to want to gate it. It wouldn't make sense to me that, given that most players can access this, they should be prevented from doing so. It's a really brilliant side feature, a game within the game. At the time of writing, it awards no gear, no useable boost or bonus. It's like pet battles, only now it's invitation only.
