A couple of days ago, I was sitting around with my WoW guildies talking reputations. We were lamenting exactly how hard it was way back in the day to grind to exalted with the core factions of the Horde and Alliance (Runecloth turn ins anyone?). I particularly remember spending weeks of ingame time doing laps in Un'goro Crater gathering dirt so that my human mage could ride a kitty cat. Even now it is still a challenge to gain rep with those basic factions, the Gnomeregan Exiles and the Darkspear Trolls being the worst of the lot.
Now there is hope for us, in the form of one of the coolest announcements to come along with the news about Patch 3.1. With the dual specs and Ulduar, with the class rebalancing and all the myriad of other changes to the game, a new event will open up in Icecrown. Dubbed the Argent Tournament, this event will begin much like the opening of the Sunwell, in that we will be building a grand stadium through a series of daily quests. This stadium, once built, will host a series of grand epic battles featuring -- get this -- mounted combat. Yessiree, the one thing that was missing from WoW is now being introduced, at least in limited form.
There is so much cool in this news, it's hard to explain it all. Essentially, players will be able to take up the standard of a certain city (for instance Thunder Bluff), and fighting in their name will provide a whole host of new rewards. We're talking mounts, pets, titles -- all those things we want most in the game. The collector in me is squealing with delight, which is kind of awkward considering the rest of me just wants a cookie and a nap. Since this was just announced yesterday and they are still working out the details, the information I've found is fairly cursory, but we can expect details to firm up as the date approaches for Patch 3.1 to drop.
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