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World of Warcraft outlines anniversary plans, delays Draenor raid
Blizzard has released a new World of Warcraft dev blog clarifying its 10th anniversary plans in light of Warlords of Draenor's impending launch on November 13th. In short, the festivities will begin on November 21st and run until well after the holidays on January 6th. Those who pony up for a sub in that time period will be awarded the Molten Corgi minipet. If you rush to the new level cap in time, you'll also be able to play through the new level-capped Molten Core raid; if not, then you can still play the new Southshore vs. Tarren Mill battleground, which comes in both level 90-99 and level 100 brackets. Blizzard further notes that the new PvP season and the normal and heroic versions of Draenor's first raid dungeon, Highmaul, will not open until December 2nd to "make sure that everyone [has] had time to level up." Highmaul's LFR and mythic modes will open another week after that. Massively's sister site WoW Insider also has some good news for Draenor devotees this morning: It appears that facial recustomization is now part of the regular barber shop in beta, possibly alleviating the fears of those worried about being saddled with an ugly pixel face once the new race models are live.
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?
Honor compensation date announced for recent PVP gear debacle
Blizzard's Bashiok has posted a time frame for the previously announced 4,000-honor point compensation package for players who spent honor on old gear during the week between the PVP Season 9 and Season 10. Any player who spent honor on ilevel 365 gear during the transition week will be awarded a free 4,000 honor points, which can go over the point cap and can be spent on the new, higher tier of Vicious PVP gear. This free honor will be awarded to players during maintenance on July 19 (this coming Tuesday). I think this is a pretty good compensation package for players who were not informed of the change in how PVP gear would be handled this season. The biggest issue from the debacle was that players spent a huge amount of time and effort grinding out honor for ilevel 365 gear during the off-week, then spent it, only to see the gear became useless just days later. Now that work has essentially been restored in the form of new, shiny, over-the-cap honor points. You will not be able to earn more honor points until you dip below the cap again, however.
Blizzard to offer compensation for PVP Season 10 transition woes
Yesterday, we talked about an issue that had PVP players in an uproar: Conquest points were accidentally down-converted to honor points a week early, with excess points converted to gold. On top of that, Blizzard launched a new tier of ilevel 371 gear without warning, just after making ilevel 365 gear available for purchase with honor. Players who spent their points decking themselves out in the latest PVP armor found themselves abruptly faced with the stunning realization that had they saved their points, they could have had better gear. It was a mistake, and it was acknowledged by Zarhym (Blizzard community manager) in a fairly lengthy blue post, along with a mention that Blizzard was exploring some options to try and make it up to players. Happily, it appears those options have been explored, as Blizzard's Bashiok posted today with a proposed solution for compensation: Players who were caught off guard by the change will be provided with 4,000 honor points, stacking over the cap. Players will not be able to accumulate more honor until spending below the 4,000 cap, but that should give PVPers a chance to pick up that new gear. This will not be immediately implemented, as it seems Blizzard is still trying to figure out how, exactly, to determine who was affected by the sudden transition and who was not -- so don't expect those 4,000 points on your character tomorrow. Still, it's nice seeing Blizzard acknowledge something that was clearly a miscommunication in regards to the transition between seasons and that it will be making sure those players caught in the middle of the fumble will be getting something back. Follow after the break for the full announcement from Bashiok.
