Next week is going to be data mining and a lot of fun with new content and lore reveals with the 9.1 PTR release.
0:33 VE’NARI REP
Here’s a big move- Ve’nari Reputation is account wide. This is a good change overall considering what Ve’nari rep actually is. It’s just character upgrades that for some feel mandatory. Ve’nari’s currency, Stygia, is going to be abandoned in patch 9.1. This won’t really affect most people given how late it is and how of course those Torghast upgrades were account wide anyway.
2:27 OMAR LEAVES
We found out earlier this week that Omar Gonzalez has left Blizzard. He left and joined Secret Door which is one of the two studios under Michael Morhaime’s new games company Dreamhaven. Omar has been with Blizzard for 18 years and has done a lot during his stay. He developed the internal prototype of WOW Classic.
4:14 CLASSIC ORIGINS
If you like a little bit of WOW Classic content to watch, there’s a video that describes the journey of WOW Classic. Check out Nano Nost on YouTube.
4:36 PATCH 9.1
PTR is going to be next week so by the time you’re watching this it will probably be a handful of days. It’s going to be quite fun if it goes the way things normally go then rating and stuff like that will not be out initially. It will quite likely be an earlier version of the world content. So hopefully we’ll be able to bring you Korthia and basically let you know what’s going on with The Maw revamp.
5:42 THE GREAT PUSH
A surprising announcement from Blizzard this week is they are doing a brand new annual mythic plus tournament that is completely different to the MDI (Mythic Dungeon International). So instead of a plus +18 time trial, this new tournament called The Great Push will be tasking teams with pushing keys as high as they can. The MDI basically is not that relatable to how most people actually play the game so at least The Great Push is a bit closer and of course variety is nice.
The downside is the $20,000 prize pool where the winning team gets $8,000 which is $1,600 per player. Which would likely amount to very little money per hour based on how much practice MDI teams need to do to actually get to the stage where they can be competitive.
7:09 PVP MMR
Next up in PVP news, Blizzard is trying to meet a long-standing matchmaking problem but sadly they are not doing anything for the problem that most players are actually experiencing with parts of the rated system. Those at the very top were no longer receiving rating increases when winning and they were then experiencing very long queue times. This was mostly caused by larger than usual rating inflation which was down to player optic because so many people have joined up with PVP because of the new reward systems.
The more people that are queuing, the easier it is for the very best players to gain rating. This in turn incentivised those at the top to simply stop playing and just sit in their rating. Which then made it hard for those ranked immediately below those players to actually gain rating.
The first two solutions they offer are pretty much in place already, and that is a rating inflation system. This will basically increase the minimum rating of players by roughly 10 points per week. That essentially acts as a soft rating decay for those who choose to stop playing early on since it increases the upper bracket of rating. And so the inactive high end players will be overcomed by those who are more active. Basically a decay system in an MMR thing.
Secondly, Blizzard said they just implemented a flat increase to the upper bound of the matchmaking rating system and that came into effect with this weekly reset. I don’t know how to fix the problem but what is going on does make it harder for the people who are just trying to engage with the PVP system reasonably. I really think Blizzard needs to fix the problem for the next season.
10:16 TBC CLASSIC
This week’s TBC Classic updates actually include new content that was not in the original Burning Crusade. They’ve increased the level cap to level 70. And you can now queue for Arena Skirmishes and the Eye of the Storm Battleground.
Furthermore, heroic dungeons have been enabled for testing. Hopefully though this will herald like an invite wave.
Brand new Burning Crusade content where Blizzard have actually added a new starting quest experience for boosted level 58 characters. Somewhat similar to the end of the new level 1 through 10 questing experience in retail, where you reach the capital city and you’re kind of showing the ropes. This brand new opening quest chain is going to introduce players to their class trainer. It’s going to show them how to learn new abilities and talents. It’s going to guide them through the city, to the location of the innkeeper, bank, guild master and provide them with a selection of starting gear and some items including a mount. You’re going to start 75% of the way through level 58 with maximum rested experience.
12:32 FROM THE VAULT
Blizzard is releasing an all new monthly collectible series called From The Vault. It will highlight a different character for each month and they’re starting big with Arthas. A two-foot tall statue of Arthas that costs a thousand dollars. And also a bit of original concept art for Arthas as well. They are going to do this monthly until November and they are going to release announcements on the second Tuesday of each month. This will definitely destroy your wallets!
13:48 QUICKFIRE NEWS
DesMephisto, you know him for Warriors and speed leveling, and also his work on autism awareness. He is doing a streaming event for the autistic self-advocacy network. You may check all that’s happening all over at Twitch.
75% of the way to unlocking Daisy the Sloth.
In-game, it is The Burning Crusade Timewalking, the weekly quest to do five dungeons will get you high level 200 or 207. If you get lucky a little bit of Castle Nathria loot and then of course you can also do The Black Temple for item level 200 loot plus the Warglaives mog for your Demon Hunters.
For the world boss we’ve got Oranomoros who drops the second best lego for Mages, at least one of them.