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Patch 5.2 PTR: Battle with the Blues tomorrow
Do you ever wish you could play WoW with the blues? If you're on the PTR, tomorrow's your opportunity to do so. Several Blizzard employees will be on the PTR tomorrow afternoon, queuing for random battlegrounds as part of stress testing for the 5.2 patch. If you've ever wanted to test your mettle against Blizzard employees, this is the perfect chance to do so. Simply log on the PTR between 4:30-6:30PM PST, and queue up for a random battleground. Sapperwix Greetings Champions! Tomorrow on the PTR Blizzard employees are going to be storming the Battlegrounds. We're going to be doing some stress testing in preparation of the upcoming 5.2 patch. For your chance to match steel and spell with some of Blizzard's finest sign on to the PTR realms tomorrow 3/1/13 from 4:30-6:30pm PST and queue up for Random Battlegrounds. We'll be queuing as teams, you'll be able to distinguish us by our guilds "Blizzard Horde" and "Blizzard Alliance". See you on the fields of honor! source Blue poster Bashiok tweeted a very special message for all that are considering participation: Hey, please jump on the PTR tomorrow and shame these guys. Tell them Bashiok sent you as you /hug their corpse. bit.ly/XdPLb7 - Bashiok (@Bashiok) February 28, 2013 You heard the man. Good luck to all who sign up!
Blizzard takes a stand against pre-made battleground groups
Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri has been very active in the past 24 hours in a topic on the patch 5.1 changes to battleground queues. He's been responding to criticism of these changes, and, at the same time, being characteristically forthright on the issue of pre-mades. Quote: if you break it down, what does a full oQueue premade bring to the table that is unfair? I'll try to break it down as clearly as I can: Any addon that enables a full, organized Battleground group to queue against a randomly assembled group is creating a scenario where that coordinated group has a huge advantage. That is not in the spirit of the experience we want to provide in the normal Battleground queue. Playing with friends is fun and important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the spirit of the game nor the fun of others. The normal Battleground queue is for players to jump in and play against other players in a similar situation. We realize that it's not a perfect system, and we're still looking at ways to improve normal Battleground queues further. Regardless, it's not meant for organized groups to "pug stomp" and get quick Honor. We have built in outlets for players that want to organize--if a competitive, social experience was really the goal, then there are clear ways to achieve that. The ultimate effect that this kind of queuing has had is to drive players away from PvP. Perhaps it's been a long time since you've been in a random group, but a lot of players will see that they're up against a premade and simply quit. At best, they suffer through it. To an extent premade groups count on this. Heck, one of the popular addons announces opposing players that appear to have rage quit. Addons aren't really a viable solution for botting issues, but we do take those issues seriously and we'll continue our work on improvements to the Battleground system, including better ways to deal with botting and other exploitative gameplay. source
Conquest Point hotfix: making it harder to PvP
This has been an unfolding drama over the past few days, and for me is one of those moments where, even making the best effort, I literally cannot understand where Blizzard are going with a change to the game. For a while now, the Conquest system has remained the same. If your rating in either arenas or rated battlegrounds is below around 1550, your arena point cap is 1350 for the week. The total cap is 1650, but in order to reach that higher cap, you need to do battlegrounds. If you're doing rated battlegrounds, you can get all the way to 1650, but not with arenas, unless your rating is high enough. So, when players noticed they weren't getting their conquest above 1350, they took to the forums.
Blizzard's guide to conquest points
Blizzard's official blog has answered the confusion about conquest points. If you're wondering how to get them, where to spend them, and what your weekly cap is, worry no more! Well, you can worry if you want to, but they've answered the questions, so it would be slightly silly. Things to keep in mind for your conquest point acquisition: There is a weekly cap on how many conquest points you can gain that scales with your personal rating. Everyone starts out at 0 with a weekly cap of 1,342 conquest points. There is no overall cap to conquest or valor points. Conquest points convert into honor at the point where the next tier of items becomes available, so there's no reason to hoard them. In order to increase your weekly cap on conquest points, you need to raise your personal rating over 1,500. At 1,800 personal rating, your cap increases to 1,940 conquest points a week, and it continues from there to a personal rating of 3,000, allowing for 3,000 conquest points a week. For complete information on all these factors, please take a look at the blog post at Blizzard's World of Warcraft community site. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
