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New PvP season planned before Warlords of Draenor
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has confirmed that the developers are planning an additional PvP season before the end of Mists of Pandaria, and therefore, before the launch of Warlords of Draenor. .@Shaee33 @Matteygf We're planning an additional PvP season for mists. Details on end of season rewards, timeline, & new gear to come soon. - Holinka (@holinka) January 7, 2014 Of course, this has implications for PvP, but a lot of players will look at this news and immediately start wondering what it means for the Warlords of Draenor release date. Let's look back at previous PvP season lengths. We're currently 16 weeks into season 14, season 13 was 26 weeks, season 12 was 22 weeks. The last season of Cataclysm, season 11, which ran alongside Dragon Soul, was a fairly epic 38 weeks. Its two predecessors, seasons 9 and 10, were 28 and 21 weeks respectively. Can we therefore predict the length of season 15? Not really, but we can confidently say it's likely to be over 20 weeks. Bearing in mind that we're 16 weeks into season 14, we may well have another 4+ weeks to go, meaning that season 14 will end at best February 4, so a 20-week duration would put season 15's end on July 1. This would be highly optimistic. (Edit: And as commenters add, the season end has previously marked the pre-patch, not the expansion itself.) But apart from the expansion, what does it mean for PvP?
PvP Gear: The Season 14 fiasco explained
Another PvP season, another set of gear-related issues. It was no surprise that the conquest vendors were despawned shortly after season 14 began, the same happened for season 13 after all, but it turns out that their return may have been more than a little premature. As Blizzard Community Manager Lore explains, the initial removal of the vendors was really just the start of an ongoing comedy of errors that is, as yet, not completely resolved. Lore's full post is after the break, but let's sum up the key issues here. At the start of Season 14, a small number of players had a conquest cap of 28,000 instead of 2,200. This was due to some issues with the catch-up cap rolling over from season 13. Conquest vendors were removed while the error was fixed. Conquest vendors were reintroduced, but it turns out the error was never fixed, because it transpires that realms should have been restarted. Conquest caps remained far too high. Players were able to purchase gear they shouldn't have been able to get, and some even got the Grievous Conquest achievement, allowing them to purchase conquest gear with honor. Blizzard's team is working hard to fix the issues, starting with the correction of caps from 28,000 down to 2,200. They've also pulled the vendors selling conquest gear for honor, and made the Grievous Conquest weapons unavailable. Unfortunately, as it's a far harder issue to fix, removing the extra gear from people who shouldn't have it is going to take a lot longer.
PvP season 14 underway
Battle-hardened arena masters might already be aware, but if you blinked you could have missed it: PvP season 14 has begun. The big news for this time around is that as of season 14, you no longer need to join an arena team in order to compete, and thus all team ratings have been removed. Your personal ratings have been reset, and you can now queue for arenas in groups of 2, 3, or 5. Your opponents will be selected based on the average rating of your team members. The change will make it easier to rotate team members in and out, or bring alts to arena matches if you so desire. It may also be a nice incentive for the PvP-averse (such as myself!) to hop on in with some friends and give it a go. Happy season 14, everybody!
Top Gear Season 14 & 15 coming to Blu-ray January 15th
Top Gear UK fans in the US can mark their calendars, the last two seasons of the show were filmed in HD and will make their debut on Blu-ray next year. Season 14 is on three discs and includes the South America Special for its $29.99 MSRP while season 15 is on two discs and promises plenty of outtakes and special features with a $24.99 MSRP. They're scheduled for release on January 15, 2011, until then we'll have to get by with the US version on History Channel and whatever episodes we can wrangle out of the PlayStation Network.
