Rynundu

Welcome to the team! :)

We've received feedback from some of you regarding Heirloom item scaling from levels 91 to 100, particularly in comparison to items available from dungeons. After some discussion, we agree that Heirlooms need to be made more competitive with dungeon items. So, we’ve just applied a hotfix that will increase the item levels of Heirlooms from levels 91 to 100. You may still find the occasional item that has slightly higher stats, but the frequency of that happening should be much lower.

The changes will go live after tonight's maintenance.

Thank you for the feedback!

At level 100, Skirmishes and Battlegrounds will award Strongboxes as the primary reward mechanic. You'll get some Honor from a win, but the contents of the Strongbox will be what you're really interested in. Those are obviously not available at level 90, which is why PvP gearing feels slow right now.

That said, we agree that 18 Honor was too low as a base value for a Skirmish win. We bump that up to 36. That amount will still increase based on how long a match goes, starting at 45 honor past 1 minute and increasing from there. Again, keep in mind that we want shorter matches to give more Honor per time spent, so that players don't feel obligated to drag out Skirmishes for better rewards.

As to why it's not a higher number ("this gear won't matter in a few weeks"), there's a few key points to keep in mind. First off, there's the relationship between Skirmishes and Battlegrounds. Battlegrounds take longer and often have longer queues, which makes them a much larger personal investment to participate in. We want to make sure that extra personal investment feels worthwhile, so we're tuning Skirmish and Battleground rewards so that you earn slightly more Honor per time spent in a Battleground than you would in a Skirmish. If an average Battleground takes 15 minutes, and an average Skirmish only takes 2 or 3, the Battleground should reward significantly more Honor.

Also, keep in mind that there's no weekly cap on Honor gains. It's okay for a rated Arena match to reward 180 Conquest points, because after you get your 10 wins (or reach your catch-up cap), that's it for the week. You might earn Honor a little slower, but you could earn your entire Honor set in just a few days if you really wanted to.

Finally, we don't want to set unrealistic expectations for Warlords and level 100 PvP. We're okay with letting players gear a little bit faster right now in preparation for Warlords, but we don't want you to feel like you've had the rug pulled out from under you once the expansion launches and you start gearing at level 100. We want Skirmishes and Battlegrounds to feel rewarding in the interim period, but we don't want them to be some kind of loot piñata either.

DreamHack Stockholm 2014 will be the biggest gathering of Blizzard eSports in Europe this year. Some of the world’s best WoW, Hearthstone and StarCraft II players will do battle in the DreamHack tournament at the event from September 26-27, and we want to see how you plan to support them.

Take part in our “Cheerful” contest and show off your fandom for the chance to win!

What's a Cheerful?
Cheerfuls are fan-made signs that are used to hype up, encourage, and support your favorite eSports players.

How do I take part?

• Create a Cheerful using your preferred materials or digital software
• Upload an image of your creation to www.imgur.com.
• Tweet the link to your Imgur image with the hashtag #RoadtoBlizzcon, or leave your link in a comment on this Facebook post.

Be sure to share your images with us by 20:00 CEST on September 28. We’ll then select our seven favorite Cheerfuls, and choose one overall winner from those top submissions. All finalists will win some fun swag — and there’s some even cooler loot in store for the grand prize winner.

Need inspiration? Here are some examples of StarCraft II Cheerfuls.

Be sure to read the contest rules here before submitting your designs. Good luck and have fun!

Update! :)

Welcome Alarinth! :)

We’ve been very happy with our Connected Realms feature, and as we continue to connect realms, we’re also making other changes to support them. As cities, guilds, auction houses, and various other features are linked via Connected Realms, there are several services (such as free character moves or new player recommendations) that will affect all of the realms in a given connection. So, from this point on, when we select a realm for any of these services, we will mark all of the realms it’s connected with for the same service.

Due to some technical issues, the connection between Aggramar and Hellscream did not process completely and therefore has been postponed for the time being. The other connections were completed successfully (see here).

We are not planning to connect any realms next week but Darkmoon Faire and Earthern Ring (EN) as well as Rexxar and Alleria (DE) are still the next in line.