MDI Dragonflight Season 1 Registrations, Pepe Plush, Hearthstone Esports 2023

[Lumy]

MDI Dragonflight Season 1 Registrations
Mythic Dungeon International Dragonflight Season 1 registrations are closing this Friday (January 27, 2023). The tournament features a prize pool of $300,000 for the global finals, as well as a new toy reward for participants: Thundering Banner of the Aspects.

To get the toy, players have to sign up with a team and then complete two Time Trials Dungeons at level 15 within the time limit.

• Sign up or log in on GameBattles and then go to the Tournament Page to create a team before sign-ups close on January 27, 2023.
• After all the members of your team have successfully passed through the screening process, you will be granted access to the Tournament Realms.
• Customize your character with gear, enchants and consumables from the local vendors in Valdrakken.
• Once the Time Trials start on February 1, you can take the Time Trials keystones from the Trialmaster and enter the dungeons.

MDI Dragonflight Season 1 Registrations

Pepe Ardenweald Plush
A new World of Warcraft Pepe Ardenweald Plush is now available on the Blizzard Gear Store!

World of Warcraft Pepe Ardenweald 8in Plush

Purchases through the affiliate links help support the site.

The World of Warcraft Pepe Ardenweald 8in Plush is made of high-pile polyester for an ultra-soft feel. Use the swivel head to pose this Pepe however you want. The clip-on feet allow for this plush to stand on its own.

• 8" x 7.5" x 4.5"
• 100% Polyester
• Embroidered
• Officially Licensed

Hearthstone Esports 2023
Hearthstone Esports is back in 2023 for the tenth year of competitive Hearthstone!

Competitive Hearthstone Changes for 2023

• There will be a total of six qualifying events this year: three Masters Tour Seasonal Championships leading into the 2023 World Championship, and three standalone Battlegrounds: Lobby Legends tournaments.
• Each Masters Tour and Lobby Legends will feature 16 of the top Ladder players based on Competitive Points earned through monthly standings.
• Each Battlegrounds: Lobby Legends will have a $50,000 prize pool, and the World Championship will have a total of $500,000 prize pool.
• All events will be broadcasted on both YouTube and Twitch. Viewership Drops will be available, more details to come later.
• The current scope of Hearthstone Esports is separate from the overall success of the game, and new content plans are in the works.
• The reduction in prize pool is not related to the loss of NetEase as a Chinese publisher.
• Mainland Chinese players are excluded from tournaments due to the end of the agreements with the publishing partner.
• Blizzard is committed to Chinese players and is currently exploring alternatives to bring Hearthstone back to them.

Climb the Ladder with Hearthstone Esports in 2023!

[Foulfrost]

Screw them and their Esport nonsense! This pushing for an MMO to be an Esport is exactly why the world itself feels so dead. They focus on pleasing the 1% over everybody else!

[Beranin]

Screw them and their Esport nonsense! This pushing for an MMO to be an Esport is exactly why the world itself feels so dead. They focus on pleasing the 1% over everybody else!

lmao what is this take

[Sanguinerd]

lmao what is this take

The truth. Most bad changes lead directly back to Blizzards obsession with competitive gaming

Awesome for fps, mobas and rts - not so much for mmorpgs.

[Biomega]

Screw them and their Esport nonsense! This pushing for an MMO to be an Esport is exactly why the world itself feels so dead. They focus on pleasing the 1% over everybody else!

Name three things they changed in the game that:

-they did ONLY for eSports reasons -AND-
-affect the average random player negatively and non-tangentially -OR-
-affect the 1% positively and the 99% neutrally, but took significant resources that would otherwise have gone to the 99%

I'm very anxious to hear concrete complaints instead of vague "they favor the 1%" kind of rants.

[Sialina]

Name three things they changed in the game that:

-they did ONLY for eSports reasons -AND-
-affect the average random player negatively and non-tangentially -OR-
-affect the 1% positively and the 99% neutrally, but took significant resources that would otherwise have gone to the 99%

I'm very anxious to hear concrete complaints instead of vague "they favor the 1%" kind of rants.

I will second this reply, the reason they ALSO have E-sports on top of all the casual content in the game is likely for streaming viewership, wow blowing up from time to time might be bringing in significant parts of their new blood.

[Nite92]

The truth. Most bad changes lead directly back to Blizzards obsession with competitive gaming

Awesome for fps, mobas and rts - not so much for mmorpgs.

Just because you think a change can be done because of X, does not mean it was done because of X.

I'd argue, most bad changes were made to keep casual players playing. Or do you think all these "player power systems" (artifact weapon grind, netherlight crucible, azerite armor and power, benthic gear, random corruption procs, Shadowlands renown grind, torghast, The Maw grind, covenant restrictions ....) were made to please the 1%?
If you think these systems were already bad for casuals, then multiply it by a lot, and that's how bad it was for the 1%.

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I will second this reply, the reason they ALSO have E-sports on top of all the casual content in the game is likely for streaming viewership, wow blowing up from time to time might be bringing in significant parts of their new blood.

It's just like real-world politics. You don't like a thing, so it must be due to people you don't like.

People actually thought, player power systems were made for the 1%... Those people don't even know what competitive players went through to stay competitive.

[Rageonit]

lmao what is this take

"The time they invest into something I don't enjoy is not invested in ME!"
Don't think even for a second he cares about other players ("the majority") or whatever.

[Gorsameth]

Name three things they changed in the game that:

-they did ONLY for eSports reasons -AND-
-affect the average random player negatively and non-tangentially -OR-
-affect the 1% positively and the 99% neutrally, but took significant resources that would otherwise have gone to the 99%

I'm very anxious to hear concrete complaints instead of vague "they favor the 1%" kind of rants.

I'm not the OP, I don't agree with his "hot take" but I do think the argument can be made that the current state of complexity in dungeons, especially trash mechanics, can be largely blamed on the MDI and the devs wanting players to approach the dungeons in a certain way.

[sam86]

didn't hearthstone viewer numbers drop massively in 2022? i remember everyone talking about how hearthstone will no longer have esports component?

[Biomega]

I'm not the OP, I don't agree with his "hot take" but I do think the argument can be made that the current state of complexity in dungeons, especially trash mechanics, can be largely blamed on the MDI and the devs wanting players to approach the dungeons in a certain way.

Poppycock.

If they purely wanted to design for the MDI, they'd do a lot of things differently. The fact they ALSO have an MDI that uses the M+ system doesn't mean they made system for eSports, and it doesn't mean they designed it the way they did because of eSports.

Increasing complexity is a direct function of better difficulty segmentation - a scaling system like M+ is exactly what allows them to make things more complex and more difficult, because that way it DOESN'T infringe on the average rando simply by virtue of those people never going into an M+25 or whatever in the first place. And difficulty inflation over time is hardly surprising considering that's pretty much always been the case and is only natural as the game ages. You can hardly expect people who are looking for challenges to be satisfied with a flat level of complexity and difficulty over several years if not decades of time.

None of this is related to the fact that the MDI exists, and would still be there without the MDI. Which makes sense, considering the MDI exists for what, 200 people in the world if we're generous; but high M+ is done by THOUSANDS all day every day. And in a similar vein the scaling M+ system benefits more than just the top players, in fact the idea of progressive affixes is a low to mid level key thing entirely; so it was designed not around people doing +25, but people doing +10 to +15 to (maybe eventually) +20. That is far from a "1%er" approach when you look at the population of M+ players.

[Skylarking]

That cash pool is fucking laughable honestly

[Zoura]

MDI, good fun to follow! That and Race to world first great to follow.

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That cash pool is fucking laughable honestly

Thats 3 million swedish kr, i dont see how thats laughable.. For 5 people, then sponsors etc. Pretty decent sum.

[Zalraki]

Only 0.3% of players care about this. Please stop wasting front page space.

[Rvsoldier]

Name three things they changed in the game that:

-they did ONLY for eSports reasons -AND-
-affect the average random player negatively and non-tangentially -OR-
-affect the 1% positively and the 99% neutrally, but took significant resources that would otherwise have gone to the 99%

I'm very anxious to hear concrete complaints instead of vague "they favor the 1%" kind of rants.

Mythic plus dungeons are out of control design wise compared to Legion to make them more competitive.

Loot in general barely dropping and raid fights being overturned for the top % of players to bottleneck the mythic raid race. This one's gotten significantly better in dragonflight after reaching a breaking point in Sepulcher.

[Biomega]

Mythic plus dungeons are out of control design wise compared to Legion to make them more competitive.

Competitive with raids, and competitive within the community. NOT for the purposes of the MDI/TGP, which would have very different design choices if it was purely for the purpose of a professional, public competition.

Loot in general barely dropping and raid fights being overturned for the top % of players to bottleneck the mythic raid race. This one's gotten significantly better in dragonflight after reaching a breaking point in Sepulcher.

That one doesn't affect the average player. Unless you're saying the average player was doing mythic Raszageth in Week 2. By the time Johnny Random gets there, it's tuned and balanced just fine. This has zero impact on anyone BUT the top two guilds. The early bosses are usually fine, and have been fine in both Vault and Sepulcher. You could argue Sepulcher was overtuned in general, but that had little to do with the RWF - as evidenced by the negative impact that tuning had on the actual event, the fact that it was persistent even during bosses traditionally not relevant to the race, and the fact that it continued well beyond the race. It was a general tuning experiment they tried and failed; the fact that it also featured a race didn't factor into this.

As for loot acquisition, that's a change since SL the intent of which is to balance raid quality loot vs. M+ quantity loot. It has nothing to do with the race. In fact, it has the LEAST impact on the race, since the RWF guys will do degen splits farming anyway and have crazy amounts of loot mere mortals would never have.

[Zardas]

didn't hearthstone viewer numbers drop massively in 2022? i remember everyone talking about how hearthstone will no longer have esports component?

It dropped massively three years ago, when they signed a contract with Youtube and switched all their competitive streams from Twitch to Youtube (yes, it was a stupid decision and everyone knew it). Since then, it has basically been a slow decline.

[kilometer18]

To get that banner toy do teams literally just complete any (2) +15s on the tournament realm? Is it more involved than that?

[Relapses]

lmao what is this take

This is the video game equivalent of your grandpa yelling at the kids to get off their lawn.

- - - Updated - - -

To get that banner toy do teams literally just complete any (2) +15s on the tournament realm? Is it more involved than that?

Nope. I believe you need to time them... maybe? But that should be a walk in the park on the tourny realm.

[trapmaster]

cash pool *wheeze laughters* Best jokes ever..