Hey time to perk up a bit! A little good news can go a long way, so here we have it for you;

Retribution

• Inquiry of Faith now increases Inquisition duration by 66/133/200%, up from 50/100/150%.

Interesting change.  Adding a few more seconds on to Inquisition frees up a bit more in the rotation. PvE will enjoy this for sure, which I feel this change was mainly made for, however, PvP players could also enjoy this change, especially those that like to just slap seal of truth on and forget that the sun ever went down.

• Season 10 Conquest Point weapons will only be purchasable once a required minimum sum of Conquest Points has been reached during the current season. For example, Ruthless Gladiator’s Pike costs 3400 Conquest Points to purchase. However, players must first earn a total of 11650 Conquest Points during Season 10 before they are able to purchase it.
• Season 9 Honor Point weapons will only be purchasable once a required minimum sum of Honor Points has been reached during the current season. For example, Vicious Gladiator’s Pike costs 3400 Honor Points to purchase. However, players must first earn a total of 18500 Honor Points during Season 10 before they are able to purchase it.
• Once the minimum sum of points required to purchase weapons is reached, all available weapons can be purchased for their listed costs. The point requirement is not reset once a purchase is made.

This is an interesting change though for PvPers. Prolonging the acquisition of PvP weapons, this is obviously to not delay the release of PvP weapons during a season to allow PvEers to catch up, or so they say. The balancing of releasing PvP weapons and PvP seasons has been thrown around so much. Even the TBC seasons had long seasons where we just waited for Blizzard to decide when the PvEers caught up. However, the question comes to mind if this is really a good solution. It’s hard to balance that sort of things. Sometimes the PvE community rolls through content, however, there are times where PvEers get stuck and Blizzard has to go “ok well even if we setup this system do we need to modify it now on the fly to make sure things don’t get ‘abused’?”

If the solution is to get a PvP weapon to PvE, then so be it in my opinion, it’s not as good but you don’t steal someone’s weapon, you work for it on your own and use your points on it. I think if they do go through with this system that they should not touch it, and have it basically be the only thing holding PvPers from grabbing weapons. Though I feel like it looks like a clunky fix, it might just work well.

While on the topic I received a question I wanted to answer;

“Slayton, rumor has it, W0W will become free and no longer have a monthly subscription, have you heard anything on this?”

I think I posted this a little bit back but I’ll post this again.

Right now Blizzard has no intent on making WoW free anytime in the near future, HOWEVER, if numbers drop a lot, and I’m talking a lot, there is talk of taking away or reducing the monthly payment. There are a number of variables to that though. I can tell you though, that if you want a few free days because you are broke or something like that, you can cancel your subscription for a week or so, and you will normally be “invited back to play with 7 free days.”

———OFF TOPIC———-

Now, who likes Tool and Pink Floyd? What if they had a baby? Well, I think they would call it Karnivool. <— link to their website.

Karnivool – Themata

-Slayton

Sorry I didn’t post for so long, I was preparing for the world to end. I left my kids, family, job, and bank accounts. I even took out insurance in-case all my stuff doesn’t get to hell with me.

In all seriousness though, we’ve been gone awhile because Megaphone is moving, and we are the only writers at this time. So, we are going to look (AGAIN!) for another writer, who is going to be stable and keep this page entertaining! If you’re interested, email me with why you think you should write for this webpage at: Slayton@justpvp.com

Anywhos! Let’s get on topic; nothing much has changed! The World of Warcraft has been moving somewhat slower then we are used to in terms of changes. Does that mean they are happy with where the game is at? Or have they given up on putting so much effort into it?

Well, I talked about this in my last post but, I wanted to really find out, so I got with a close friend that’s at Blizzard who used to play on my old server with me. For the protection of their job, regardless if people find this information harmless, we decided it would be best if we keep real names out of this.

S: Hey, it’s Slayton! Long time no see!

E: Hello, ya it has been a while. You still play?

S: A bit, when I’m not busy. I see you’re still at it.

E: Eh, not as much as I used to that’s for sure.

S: Ya, seems like a lot of people I know are in the same boat, that’s actually why I came here is to find you to ask some questions.

E: So that’s what kind of friends we are.

S: ! well, now that the cats out of the bag…

E: Haha, alright, whatcha wanna know?

S: 1 big question? Or little ones?

E: I like em big.

S: ….

E:

S: lol, ok, my question is ‘is wow dying?’

E: Umm, how do you kill something that has no soul? No but in all seriousness it hit it’s peak a bit ago and it’s been declining. Numbers aren’t hurting but, you can tell the momentum isn’t there anymore. We know that too.

E: People were shifted, and the way I see it is that while a game’s decline isn’t the reason people were moved, they were moved because these people are key people, and we want our key people still doing the big contribution making. Probably leaving our other people to just, keep whats already working going. Chances are people aren’t likely to see any big game changes anytime soon.

S: Game changes like what?

E: Like, resilience, you know, us revising stats. You shouldn’t see anything big come along like a new stat. It’s a lot of resources to do that and we are cutting back.

S: What else are they not going to do?

E: Well, they are already planning another expansion. That’s not something I can really talk about obviously, but even I don’t know much about it since it’s just concept right now. But what they wont be doing, is gameplay changes. Might see some class changes, but nothing drastic. No real mechanic changes on say tanking or dps will be seen before the next expansion. But the team we have now is still good, just a few key people went to start working on the next MMO.

S: Ok, well I’ma ask you about that in a second. But Paladins?

E: Ah yes, paladins, umm, let’s just say that, Blizzard regrets that it never really got to the point of perfect. But, it was a bad concept to begin with, trying to make a tanky dps and then trying to make that tanky dps stay competative, and then taking away the tanky and just having a warrior with mana. In the end it was just something that should have been done differently. A lot of us would have liked the chance to make the paladin dps with a sword and shield.

S: Why didn’t that happen?

E: A lot of reasons, some of which have to do with itemization, I mean, a tanking shield? That wouldnt work, add a dps shield in the game? We were trying to stay away from adding different types of itemization options and working on making small groups work and mulitple items be good for multiple classes. Lastly, any way you look at it, it would be really hard to balance it. They would be OP vs melee, weak vs casters, but then they wouldn’t be good in teams and frustrating to play vs any caster. In the end, going back and forth on it, we scrapped the idea, as it would require a lot more reworking.

S: Any big changes in store for retadins?

E: Not really, but it’s nothing against retribution, it’s just that, all in all it’s seen as decent right now. We want to keep things interesting so, a few tweeks here and there but, we aren’t going to like, rework sacred shield to shoot lightning at warlocks within 20 yards.

S: That’s a shame.

E: I know, I hate warlocks too.

S: Before I go, about that new MMO?

E: It’s going to be cool, obviously people will flock towards it cause it’s Blizzard but, to be honest it’s going to incorporate a lot of the cool things in WoW like the cross server chat and such. All that stuff has been tested and works in WoW so we will be applying all those easy user friendly features to the new MMO. One big debate is add-ons. Our people had to be really good at monitoring them in WoW for exploitation, we are going to try to cut back on that risk in the new MMO, but hope to keep it open enough to have those type of customizations interesting.

S: I might play, but I’ma pick up Diablo 3 for sure.

E: Ya, same here. I do have to go though, looks like the wifey is home.

S: Ah, take care man.

E: You too! See ya Slayton.

That was our interview with “E” (E=employee, don’t think I left you a clue Blizzard >: ). As you can see, WoW isn’t too dead at the moment but Blizzard seems to be looking towards the future. Don’t let this discourage you though! You’ve got plenty of time to get gladiator, and would be a shame to not do so before this game’s time is up.

Again, I’m looking for another writer for the main page.

After being buffed it looks like Selfless Healer is back down to 10 seconds, this is probably to keep PvE Ret Paladins from taking this buff and for them to focus on DPS. This might be good news though, cause it means that Blizzard wants to add something small for us

I apologize for the lack of updates, I’ve been really busy in the Air Force with the whole Libya thing going down. However, I am proud to announce that I will be picking another “featured retadin”! very soon, so keep your eyes out for a private message from me!

Looks like also that MLG has dropped WoW from this years competition, however, so far they say that it isn’t going to stay like that, and that it’s only temporary, talking to my sources though it seems like MLG is feeling a little down about WoW too at the moment.

If anyone hasn’t seen I’ll post the Blizzcon ticket update:

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Source)

BlizzCon® is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® universes. This two-day event features discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers, hands-on play time with the latest versions of Blizzard Entertainment games, professional and casual eSports tournaments for players to showcase their talents, social events for players and developers to meet one another, community contests with great prizes, and much more.

BlizzCon 2011 Tickets – $175 USD
Tickets to attend BlizzCon 2011 will go on sale in two batches on Saturday, May 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time and Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. Pacific Time. Visit the official BlizzCon website or the online Blizzard Store on either of these dates for a chance to purchase tickets.

Benefit Dinner Tickets – $500 USD (BlizzCon admission included)
On Thursday, October 20, Blizzard will host a special pre-BlizzCon dinner to benefit the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, where guests can meet and chat with game developers, executives, and other folks from Blizzard before the show. A limited number of tickets go on sale Saturday, May 28 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

BlizzCon Virtual Ticket – $39.99 USD
Watch BlizzCon 2011 at home! Comprehensive live coverage of BlizzCon will be available to viewers around the world as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via Pay-per-View on DIRECTV in the US. Limited streaming coverage of the opening ceremony and eSports tournaments will also be available online for free.

Unfortunately you will not see me attending these events at the moment, as I have been tasked to do other things, if, however, you are interested in representing Retpaladin.com at this event let me know in a private message.

That’s all I have for right now, just wanted to let you all know that we are still alive and kicking, we will also be discussing if we have a desire to have a new writer or bring one of our forum admins on the front page, I’ll let you know more as we figure it all out.

-Slayton