Now that that's out of the way. Information about the upcoming Patch 3.2 has been rolling out at a breakneck pace (of course, all while I'm out of town). The PTR is imminent, and many of the changes are, to be mild, hotly contested. Since my personal interest lies mostly in raiding, I'll start with that.
The centerpiece of this patch is the expansion of the Argent Tournament. Up to this point in the game, the Tournament has been focused largely around daily quests. The updated Tournament will include a new 5-man dungeon, Trial of the Champion and new 10- and 25-man raids, Trial of the Crusader. There will also be heroic versions of both the raids, Trial of the Grand Crusader, in which raiders will have only a few attempts at each encounter each week. All of the raids are on separate raid lock-outs.
Personally, I like all of these additions. There's a little something for players of every level, from new 80s running Heroics to hardcore raiders who demand more and more difficult encounters from Blizzard. Also, the fact that all the new instances are on separate lock-outs means... more gear! The only concern I have with this set-up is the possibility for different levels of gear presented. Currently, Blizzard has it set up so the 10-man and 25-man raids each have different item levels of gear that drop in them. If they continue with this model, they could have a large plethora of gear levels dropping from similar instances. I think it would work best if they had two levels of gear at max. I guess I could deal with three.
The second change is to the emblem system. Currently, there are three levels of emblems: Heroism, Valor, and Conquest. In Patch 3.2, all heroics and raids dropping Heroism and Valor badges will drop Emblems of Conquest. This is the change that seems to be the one people are most upset with. For the most part, those most upset are those hardcore raiders who have already worked up to tier 8. They see this change as having trvialized their months of hard work, since any newly minted level 80 can waltz into a heroic dungeon and get themselves a few easy pieces of tier 8 gear.
In reality, Blizzard isn't just trying to piss off their most loyal players. If this change was not made, each player would have to go through heroics, Naxx, and Ulduar to get to the shiny new tier 9 content. This is not much in the best interests of a 25-man raiding team, and Blizzard knows this. Personally, that's not the part I have a problem with. It feels like the dev team is slightly schizophrenic; the 10- and 25-man system made for a complicated emblem system. Now, it seems they've deemed it too complicated. Now, they jump into a different philosophy, one of more simplicity and ease of use. For the most part, I'm all for it. I kind of just wish they would make up their minds about what's going to go down. Of course, the game does go through different cycles, and maybe this expansion has just gotten to the point of a little change.
Next, a little bit on the PvP changes.
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