Sylly hits the PTR: The Argent Tournament in 3.2
I spent some more time on the PTR one day this week, poking around in the new content and mechanics. It’s an interesting experience being on the PTR, sort of like Borean Tundra or the Howling Fjord in the first days of the expansion, but without, even, the feedback that had already been disseminated to the community by beta testers. General chat flies past with 8 million variations on “Where do I find what I’m looking for?” with mostly helpful responses and a minimum of “in my pants, noob” type responses. Guild names are amusingly direct, such as “PTR Raiding Guild.” And, for me, there was an infusion of excitement and exploration. While I have plans to do more, I began my playtime this week exploring the changes to the Argent Tournament. I went there mostly because I really want the tabard that will port me a hop, skip and jump away from Dalaran and the improved squire that will do everything but my laundry, and I wanted to check out the new dailies and so forth that would allow me to get these goodies more quickly.
There are big changes around the Tournament grounds, as the colloseum has been finished up on the PTR. The screenshot at the beginning of the post is from inside the colloseum. Here’s another one (also featuring the Obsidian Hatchling, one of the new raptor mini pets. You didn’t think I’d step foot in the PTR and not have the new pet in the first 10 minutes, did you?).
Here’s a better picture of the little fella:
In all, the colliseum didn’t look as I had expected (I had a vague mental picture that was something like Giant Stadium built of wood and stone), but I like Blizzard’s vision much better than my own. The actual “event space” of the colliseum was much smaller than I had expected, with long walkways leading up from two directions. The new badge vendors were on one of these long walkways and I had a great time chatting them up and having a look at the gear they had to offer.
After checking out the colliseum, I went to seek out the new Argent Tournament Daily quests. I found the quest givers in the same tent where you can currently pick up Threat from Above and the other Champion quests.
The non-daily quest you can see in that screen shot is a continuation of the Black Knight quests, while the two dailies offer more ways to accrue Champion Seals. Here’s a screenshot showing some of the quest text for the Black Knight quest continuation, as well as the new double paned quest log that will be part of the new UI:
I did my best to be a good tester, and offered feedback on every quest that I did, so this slowed me down considerably and limited the amount that I was able to accomplish in the time that I spent on the PTR, but I was glad to take the time. In the screenshot above you can see a blue symbol in the quest text with instructions to Alt + left click to give feedback. Doing so allows you to open up a survey about whatever quest, item, or NPC offers this option. You can let Blizz know if quests were fun, if they were written in a comprehensible way, what you thought of the quest reward, and so forth, with a box for whatever specific feedback you want to give.
I found the new Argent Tournament quests and dailies to all be very simple to accomplish, very quick, and fairly fun. At least there is no half hour grind to get one seal like with the current jousting quest (I have abandoned that quest almost completely, by the way. I just do the others.) There was new content to see, including an island to the north. When flying out there I saw someone fighting a Krakken from a boat, although I wasn’t on long enough to end up with that quest myself. It looked pretty cool though!
I also saw this fella tied up outside of the colloseum and am wondering if they haul him in to fight adventurers like the Romans used to bring in tigers for the gladiators to fight:
In all, I can report that the new content added to the Argent Tournament was enjoyable for me. The dailies are easy and accessible and will help tremendously in allowing players to work more quickly toward earning the tournament rewards that appeal to them most. Like any dailies, I am certain that these will eventually become boring as hell, but for now they seem fresh and fun. The new colluseum looks great and I can’t wait to go back on when I can and they are testing it and find a pug to go inside and try out some of the battles. Seriously… fighting Hogger at level 80? That’s just so full of win it’s bursting at the seams!
p.s. it occurs to me that once this goes live and people are flocking here for the new instance and raids, the jousting quests are going to be well nigh impossible except for the people with the best computers. For example, anyone else have miserable lag around the Naxx summoning stone? The jousting quests require fast reaction and timing, which may be out of reach for many. I’d therefore recommend that anyone who isn’t yet a crusader but thinks they might want to be start doing these quests now… just a word to the wise.