Arena Skirmishes Bonus Weekend, This Month in WoW, Tweets, Diablo III - Season 4 Live

[chaud]

Season 4 Has Started, Witch Doctor and Crusader Guides

Deck Spotlight: TGT Legend Tempo Mage, This Weekend in HS ESports

MSI MGA International Tournament, Kharazim Solo Healer Guide, Science of the Storm #14

Arena Skirmishes Bonus Weekend August 28 - 31
Next week is the Wrath of the Lich King timewalking event. Patch 6.2.2 and the new Timewarped Badge system will be live by then as long as nothing changes!

Through the end of the day on Monday, Arena Skirmishes award triple bonus honor. There’s never been a better time to queue up for the Arena and crack some skulls. Keep an eye out for the event-only quest The Arena Calls. When you win 10 Arena matches, the quest awards 500 Conquest Points which do not count against your weekly Conquest Point maximum.

In case you’ve never participated in an Arena Skirmish, here’s an easy how-to guide:

• From anywhere in-game, open the Group Finder (default hotkey: i)
• Select the Player vs. Player tab on the bottom of the window.
• Under Arena Battles, choose either 2v2 or 3v3.
• Click the Join Battle button to be matched up with teammates.

It’s Arena PvP! Rush in and bash your opponents.

Will you answer the call to battle?

This Month in WoW – September 2015

September is here, and summertime is coming to an end. This month is chock-full of festivities, celebrations, and heated PvP action as we draw closer to BlizzCon 2015. Here’s a peek at some of the fun you can have!

In-Game Events

Darkmoon Faire Returns [September 6-13]
The wondrous and mystical Darkmoon Faire returns to Azeroth on September 6, and if you haven’t completed all of Silas Darkmoon’s new Darkmoon Races, now’s the time! Test your speed and agility on a variety of racing mounts as you dodge electrifying obstacles and zip all over Darkmoon Island for rewards and achievements. You may also want to take a few moments to be a kid again by going for a ride on the new Darkmoon Seesaw.

The faire continues to be one of the best ways to acquire heirloom gear, and don’t forget all of the toys, mounts, and pets that can only be gotten here. Get in that cannon!

Pirates’ Day [September 19-20]
Every year on this one day, Captain DeMeza lands at the goblin town of Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale, attempting to recruit land-lubbers into her buccaneer ranks. Don’t miss your chance to visit her or her henchmen in the capital cities. New for this year is the Big Bag of Booty. Be the Robin Hood of pirates by purchasing this one-time-use item which you can toss into the streets to help distribute piles of gold to those most in need. Yarr!

Brewfest [September 20-October 6]
Celebrated by both the Horde and the Alliance, Brewfest is a time to enjoy the fermented fruits of the harvest: pretzels, cheese, and brew! The competing breweries Thunderbrew, Barleybrew, and the Ogres, all come together outside of all the major cities in a bid to outdo each other with their special ales, meads, and beers. Brave adventurers are invited to sit back, take a pull, and sample the finest wares these brewers have to offer!

Brewfest is your only chance to acquire the Swift Brewfest Ram and Great Brewfest Kodo mounts, as well as the Wopertinger and Pin-Sized Pink Pachyderm pets. It’s also your chance to get your brew-covered mitts on a few new items: the Stout Alemental pet, and the Steamworks Sausage Grill and Brewfest Banner toys!

Harvest Festival [September 21-28]
The Harvest Festival is a time to commemorate those who have sacrificed their lives to help their allies. Throughout history, many have given their lives to that end. Every year, members of the Horde and the Alliance set aside time to honor the memories of the fallen, and to pay tribute to those whose memories are held most dear: Uther Lightbringer, for the Alliance, and Grommash Hellscream, for the Horde.

Members of the Alliance show their respect by lighting a candle at the Tomb of Uther Lightbringer in the Western Plaguelands. while members of the Horde show their respect to Grommash Hellscream by leaving a bottle of spirits at the base of the Hellscream Memorial in Demon Fall Canyon in Ashenvale.

But your determination to pay respects to the dearly departed doesn’t stop there! Show your patriotism by earning a new Spiritshard which will transforms you into an Anxious, Vengeful, Forlorn, or Peaceful spirit. It’ll be your chance to truly feel the emotions of those who have paid the ultimate price.

Upcoming World of Warcraft Tournaments

Road to BlizzCon: WoW North American Regionals
BlizzCon is only a couple of months away and teams are vying for a chance to make it to the finals. Don’t miss the WoW North American Regionals on the official World of Warcraft Twitch channel! We’ll be sharing more details on the event in the coming days.

GCDTV
GCDTV [(G)lobal (C)ool(D)own TV] continues its tournament hosted by DMachine, and cast by Arena veterans Supatease and Venruki.

• Tournament #21 – Saturday, September 5, 5:00 p.m. EDT/2:00 p.m. PDT
• Day 2/Finals – Sunday, September 6, 5:00 p.m. EDT/2:00 p.m. PDT

You can catch all of the action on the GCDTV Twitch channel, sign up to play on their Battlefy site, catch-up on previous tournament VoDs here, and follow their official GCDTV Twitter feed to stay up-to-date on all of the action.

ESL WoW (EU)
The Electronic Sports League continues to bring the weekend WoW action on:

• Sunday, September 6 at 17:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. PDT) – Go4WoW Europe Cup #10
  
• Sunday, September 13 at 17:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. PDT) – Go4WoW Europe Cup #11
• Sunday, September 20 at 17:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. PDT) – Go4WoW Europe Cup #12

For more information, head over to the ESL news site, and don’t forget to follow ESL on Twitch and Twitter.

Bonus Events

• September 4-7 – Northrend Timewalking
• September 11-14 – Battleground Bonus Event
• September 18-21 – Draenor Dungeons Bonus Event
• September 25-28 – Pet Battle Event

Blue Tweets

PvE
.Does LFR Archimonde drop the Ring upgrade?
No, Crystallized Fel is only available on Normal difficulty and above. (WarcraftDevs)

PvP
The biggest difference with ranked solo queue would be having a rating attached and MMR.
Keep in mind conquest does not exist in 7.0. Skirmish will provide honor and gear. (holinka)
I would certainly love to hear more ideas about how we can improve Ground Finder too. (holinka)
One common misconception about ranked solo queue is "I will only get great teammates!" (holinka)

But those good geared players do queue rated solo queue
The reward systems are different in 7.0 (holinka)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

Can I ask you, how much has the WoW team changed since WotLK?
Not much. The leadership team stayed virtually the same the whole time I was there. Some folks went to Titan and several came back. The team was growing the entire time so you always saw a lot of new faces, but they were additions, not replacements. Reading between the lines a bit, I don't think this is one of those deals where some kind of new team radically evolved the philosophy. Blizzard turnover, even between teams, is very low by industry standards.

Why do Blizzard devs think anyone who disagrees with their direction or believes previous iterations of WoW were superior are blinded by rose colored glasses?
I can't speak for them, obviously. I will say as a game developer on a long-running game such as LoL or WoW or even Age of Empires, you tend to hear in about roughly equal proportions "this feature is flawed and stale, please update it" and "this feature was better before, please revert it." Thus, it's possible to often feel like you are fighting nostalgia, which might make you perceive it even when that isn't the player's specific feedback at the moment.

You don't tend to hear "this feature is perfect, please don't change it," because content customers don't tend to post on social media, but you hear plenty of "this feature was perfect - why did you change it?"

Final Fantasy XIV - 5 Million Accounts
Earlier this month Square Enix announced that FFXIV is up to 5 million accounts (not active subscribers)! For comparison, World of Warcraft hit 100 million in December 2013.

Diablo III - Season 4 Has Started
Season 4 has started! Diablofans has all of the details.

[Fawkess]

Holy shit, i did not think FF14 was up that high

edit: i just realized he meant accounts in total

[mikeyh]

Holy shit, i did not think FF14 was up that high

edit: i just realized he meant accounts in total

I thought the same thing when I saw that number a few days ago. I'm guessing WoW is up into the hundreds of millions.

[TheHodedOne]

FF14 will take down WoW in one or two months

[Grimalkin of Old]

Here we go again with that "registered accounts" nonsense.

[Antermosiph]

FF14 will take down WoW in one or two months

FFXIV is pretty niche. It has its popularity but there are a large amount of factors that will drive people far away. It will get popular and stay there, but will prob never hit WoW numbers.

[Deathsmind]

FF14 will take down WoW in one or two months

Going at the same pace they have going at it would only take them 20 years to beat wow.

[GrinnersGrin]

FF14 will take down WoW in one or two months

Nice math shitposter

[Salech]

"MMO" champion more like "Blizzard" Champions.

[Spiral Mage]

FF14 has 5 million >active< paying accounts, not 5 million accounts total.

Also, WoW has never had 100m. I think that's a typo, one too many zeros.

[Antermosiph]

FF14 has 5 million >active< paying accounts, not 5 million accounts total.

Also, WoW has never had 100m. I think that's a typo, one too many zeros.

The recent 5 million number from FFXIV is not active subscribers. Its the number of people who had 1. Bought the game and 2. Subscribed at least 1 month.

WoW had hit 100 million of this same number, neither number for FFXIV or WoW is including trial accounts.

FFXIV (although this is an estimated quote from someone else) is estimated to have about 1.2mil currently active subscribers. Given the fuckload of bots though I'd put it around 1.1mil

[Skorpionss]

"MMO" champion more like "Blizzard" Champions.

how is this worthy of a comment? You've been here since 2009... it was always and will always be a Blizzard Fansite... and it's called MMO-Champion because it mostly focuses on World of Warcraft, which is the champion of MMOs

Anyway I wonder if those FF14 numbers also include Trial accounts :-?

[Deleted]

Haha, MMO-Champion - nice twisting of facts. FF has 5m active accounts.

[Skorpionss]

The recent 5 million number from FFXIV is not active subscribers. Its the number of people who had 1. Bought the game and 2. Subscribed at least 1 month.

WoW had hit 100 million of this same number, neither number for FFXIV or WoW is including trial accounts.

FFXIV (although this is an estimated quote from someone else) is estimated to have about 1.2mil currently active subscribers. Given the fuckload of bots though I'd put it around 1.1mil

ah and here it was answered xD

- - - Updated - - -

Haha, MMO-Champion - nice twisting of facts. FF has 5m active accounts.

In just under 2 years, FINAL FANTASY XIV now exceeds 5 million registered accounts globally across North America, Japan, Europe, and China!

Registered, not active

[Antermosiph]

Haha, MMO-Champion - nice twisting of facts. FF has 5m active accounts.

http://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy...ered-accounts/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/...million-users/

http://mmos.com/news/final-fantasy-1...on-subscribers

" This is NOT a current subscriber number, but rather the total number of accounts that have subscribed to the game at one point, not counting free trials."

Edit: Literally a 30 second google search

[Zephre]

FF does not have 5 million active subscribers.

It annoys me each time people mistake overall accounts for active subscriptions, the games doing well but not that well

[Spirthealer]

FF does not have 5 million active subscribers.

It annoys me each time people mistake overall accounts for active subscriptions, the games doing well but not that well

It is because post people on these forums don't read haha.

[furydeath]

Haha, MMO-Champion - nice twisting of facts. FF has 5m active accounts.

I remember when this site first started ....in the mountains

[arcaneshot]

FF14 has 5 million >active< paying accounts, not 5 million accounts total.

Also, WoW has never had 100m. I think that's a typo, one too many zeros.

It conflicts with my head canon, it has to be wrong.

[Zipzo]

Now...as a guy who likes to keep neutral and leave things to preference I was a little bit taken aback by...

Earlier this month Square Enix announced that FFXIV is up to 5 million accounts! For comparison, World of Warcraft hit 100 million in December 2013.

How much of a shill for Blizzard this makes mmo-champ look like. Something to note, mmo-champ rarely if ever posts FFXIV news, so this tiny little tidbit comes off as nothing more than an attempt to step on FFXIV's toes, when SE has kept themselves, done their own thing, ever recovering from their admitted failure to produce a quality product a few years ago, and in the midst of their growing success with a project they completely did from the ground up in order to please their fans.

I don't actively play the game or anything, but I at least respect what they've done as a consumer, but that quick little "comparison" to WoW on a piece of data that seems all to un-important to the modern day MMO-Champ repertoire for updates just seemed out-of-place.

I'm sorry but this comment felt so back-handed, smarmy. I don't even play FFXIV and I could still smell the salt.