Looks like they are prepping for 2.4 on the test realm shortly… there’s been a flurry of blue posts with some actual 2.4 info. Big news of the day? The removal of diminishing returns from honor kills:

“We’ve reached a point where we’re now confident that applying diminishing returns to honor is no longer necessary, and we’re currently planning to remove it with the 2.4 patch.

With this change we’re including a few restrictions as well though: Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will not be worth any honor, and if a player dies 50 times or more during a battleground they won’t be worth any honor for the remainder of that battle.” -Vaneck

It’s about time. Anything to relieve the honor grind is a welcome sight.

Also, some of the class changes that have been leaked by blue have PvP ramifications: priests will now be able to use Fear Ward while in Shadowform and shaman will get some Earth Shield relief as the Healing Grace talent will now grant 10/20/30% dispel resists.

More info to come as they release the full patch notes.

Tags: PvP · News

In the “first step is admitting that you have a problem” category, Blizzard has finally announced that there are issues with /teamquit. Although now that personal ratings are involved, it has become a more sticky situation:

“An issue has been identified that is sometimes causing players to be removed from the wrong Arena Team when attempting to leave a different team (being removed from the 5v5 team when trying to leave the 2v2 team, for example).

As a direct result of this some players are inadvertently losing some of their personal rating.

We expect this issue to be resolved in an upcoming patch, but we regret to inform you that our support teams will be unable to reimburse any lost ratings during this time.” -Tharfor

BG9 5v5 Invitational Tournament
On the heels of their EU Cyclone Tournament, SK Gaming is now behind the newly announced Battlegroup 9 5v5 Invitational Tournament. Top teams such as CLC and Shuttlecocks have already committed.

This will be an 8 team double-elimination tournament, best of five games format. Seeds will be given out according to rank and rating of the current arena season and past accomplishments. Sign-ups begin today (Jan 31) and will end February 5th, brackets and teams will be announced by February 6th.

Although some may be miffed at the “BG9″, “8 team”, and “invitational” qualifiers to this tournament, it’s a good start. At the very least, we will get to see some high quality 5v5 matches. And hopefully this will just be a sign of things to come as tournaments should be open to more entrants/teams when tournament servers are finally available from Blizzard.

More details on the tournament here.

Tags: PvP · News