Trial of the Gladiator, Connected Realms Update, Flying in WoD, WoD Blue Posts

If you’re looking for some great Arena action, then Trial of the Gladiator is for you. Building on the same system used for the Arena Tournament realm, players who take part in Trial of the Gladiator will be able to enter and purchase gear, enchants, and gems from a vendor, and then match skills with other players. Similar to the Arena Tournament realm, an array of equal-quality gear and items will be available to all players, putting everyone on the same footing from the start of competition.

Any player will be able to queue for this new feature once it’s available, but you’ll only be able to earn a rating during specific days and times of the week that rated competition opens up. This will help make the pool of serious combatants more concentrated, allowing the system to match players more accurately based on skill and helping ensure rated battles provide a highly competitive experience.

You’ll be able to practice whenever you like outside of those times, but if you want to earn the prestige awards, you’ll need to hone your skills and climb to the top of the ladder at the appointed times. We also don’t want to penalize people too heavily for missing a scheduled combat or two, and we’re looking into ways to make sure the system strikes the right balance between flexibility and cutting-edge competition.

As previously announced, we’ve been working toward connecting realms to increase the number of players on low-population realms, and since then have completed several connections. As a part of our ongoing communication, we wanted to provide you with an update that contains a list of completed realm connections, currently planned connections, and any additional future plans in one convenient location.

*Please note this list does not encompass all potential future connections. Please check back for further updates.

​We will be connecting the realms listed below on Monday, November 18th during a scheduled maintenance beginning at 6 a.m. PST through approximately 11:00 a.m. PST. Once maintenance is finished, these realm connections will be complete.

• Draenor and Echo Isles
  
• Gorgonnash and Balnazzar/Warsong
  
• Lethon and Blackwing Lair/Dethecus, Detheroc, Haomarush
  
• Lightning's Blade and Burning Blade/Onyxia
  
• Smolderthorn and Anub'arak/Chromaggus/Garithos

​Future Connections
We do not have a date for the following realm connections, but will update this blog post when we do.

​​Batch 1

• Azshara and Azgalor
  
• Arygos and Llane
  
• Cairne and Perenolde
  
• Nathrezim and Anub'arak/Chromaggus/Garithos/Smolderthorn
  
• Zangarmarsh and Hellscream

Batch 2

• Coilfang and Dark Iron
  
• Fenris and Dragonblight
  
• Spirestone and Drak'Tharon/Firetree/Malorne/Rivendare
  
• Ysondre and Magtheridon

​Plans for these connections may change at any time, but we’ll provide additional updates on specific dates for future connections here as we can. Please note that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.

Warlords of Draenor and Flying Mounts
No no no no no. I have paid what? something like 100,000 gold to buy flight for all my alts? You make us pay more gold to learn to fly in new zones and now you're taking this away from us?

No this doesnt fly with me at all. What next? Level up an alt but she can't fly until I do the same quest? I appreciate you want to make something feel epic again. Taking something away from me that I've repeatedly earned and paid for sucks.

I'm also tired of leveling up again with no flight. Once I have mastered flight, I should be able to buy a tome like cold weather flying. I dislike no flying until 6.1, but making me quest againto earn something I have sunk MASSIVE gold into, doesnt leave a good taste in my mouth.
Flying isn't being taken away. It's still there in all the other places you've earned it/gained it. All of those mounts you have are still usable. You just won't be using them in Draenor (at least to fly with) until a little while later and you'll still be able to get it at some point. We plan to make travel though via flight paths as convenient as possible and make being on the ground worth it via discoveries within the world. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor and Flying Mounts
Those of you who are worried about the lack of flying early on in the expansion, remember that it will only apply to the new zones, and only for a limited time in most cases. The new zones are being designed with this in mind too—we're being extra careful to ensure that flying isn't missed too much. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor and Flying Mounts
I just want to emphasise to those of you who are worried: we're working to make sure you won't be hugely inconvenienced by the loss of flying as you explore the new content. There'll also be a sturdy flight path network to get you from A to B. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor and Flying Mounts
Its not cool its just tedious and annoying to have to relearn to fly every gd expac. You know the expac I had the most fun leveling in Bash? It was cata because I could fly I could skip the camping skum i could nuke my quests; and then when I got to 85 I could put on a tabard and just grind my rep, it wasn't daily gated so I got it all done in about a day and a half it was wonderful.
We know there is some portion of players that raid, or have some specific end-game goal, and that leveling and questing and mobs and the story and the actual rest of the game in general just gets in the way of that. But ultimately "racing to end-game so you can put on a tabard and grind out rep" isn't the name of the game we're making. We're not going to be able to force you to care about the music, or setting, or experience, but you gotta understand that the rest of the game is for everyone else that does care about those things, and at least consider the logical reasons we present that makes that content better for them, even if it means it could maybe slightly disrupt your ability to chain-queue for Heroics.

Why not make the air more dangerous instead of taking away flying.
We've tried that quite a few times, it's really just a symptom of how the game mechanics function that most of our forays into dangerous flight just feel really bad. On one hand they feel unnecessarily harsh because there's only a few things you can really do to someone while they're flying and they generally deal with stuns/slows/dismounts, and on the other hand there's just no fun gameplay that can really be had there. The best gameplay is at ground level because that's the basis for the design of our game's combat systems. We'd toyed with mounted/flying combat in the past but that could almost be a totally separate game on its own, and probably gets us too far away from what WoW is.

How would this questing to unlock flying be the same? Its essentially dailies with the new name of Epic questing chain. You would most likely have to repeatly do things everyday or every week until you earn a certain gated number.
Do I need to go edit that part out, or is everyone going to be able to refrain from deciding exactly what it is (and being angry about it) before we've even designed it?

Nah, never mind, editing it out. Everyone is just going to focus on that and make assumptions about what that means. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arenas
I don't know where this idea came from, but just to clear things up, we have no plans to remove the current Arena ladder. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Professions
We do want to slim down on the overall number of gems and enchants you'll need to put on your gear. That's primarily a quality of life change. We want to make it less of a hassle to be able to equip a new item.

That said, we don't think these changes have to mean that e.g. Jewelcrafting will no longer be a decent source of income. We could -- and this is purely a hypothetical example -- make the best gems rarer, which would drive prices up and increase profit margins. If you can make just as much gold (comparatively) off of one gem in Warlords as you can selling three in Mists, that'll help substantially. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Racial Changes
There aren’t plans for any broad, sweeping changes to racial abilities in 6.0. We’ll probably tune some numbers so some racials feel less mandatory in certain cases. Also, due to the changes we announced at BlizzCon, there are several hit and expertise-based racials that will need to be replaced with something new—hopefully we can use those new racials to help shore up racial balance overall. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Yak Reforge NPC
We've talked about different options. Maybe transmog? Maybe item upgrades? We don't know yet. Your thoughts/feedback would be helpful. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor Heirlooms UI
It's a new UI of (essentially) buttons that will "light up" when you obtain one (or have obtained one) of the heirlooms. Click the button and an item of that type will be generated and put into your bags. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The cost associated with the migration service actually helps to regulate the amount of realm hopping going on, which in turn helps to prevent huge 'overnight' realm population fluctuations.

It's certainly a useful service for people who find themselves stranded without friends etc. but we don't currently have any plans to change the way it works or add a multi-character move option. However, we hear you loud and clear and will continue to pass on everyone's thoughts.

Some very valid points, thanks once again.

I've mentioned this in other threads, but right now—especially during the Connected Realms roll-out—we're not looking to make any changes to the migration services. Once things have settled, we can take a step back and assess the situation.

Please know that we totally want you all to be having the best possible experience while playing. There is no simple fix to this that works for everyone. There are solid reasons why we can't currently offer free transfers to any realm, even with cooldowns as some have suggested, but we're constantly working to develop and implement other solutions that will help as many people as possible.