We're looking for some volunteers to put in some focused testing time on the new Argent Tournament content in northern Icecrown. We're aware some of you have been diligently doing the content already throughout our many changes, and we're very thankful for that; you've helped in hammering out quite a few issues. We're interested to hear what you have to say about the current gameplay and balance. Be advised that things have changed if you started testing this early on.

Moving forward, the valiant and champion NPCs are getting another balance pass, and the Ironforge and Undercity combatants in particular are getting retuned for an upcoming build.

A short FAQ:

What's changed from previous builds?

Since the early PTR, we've changed the early aspirant training to be more comprehensive, significantly rebalanced the valiants and champions, made the mounts more accessible, and fixed a myriad of issues.

How do I get to the Tournament?

If you've never been, you can speak with Jean Pierre Poulain on Krasus' Landing in Dalaran to get a free flight. If you've visited before, there is a flight point out there. It's in the far northeast of Icecrown, just north of Sindragosa's Fall.

What sort of feedback are you looking for?

Whatever feedback you have to share. Bugs, balancing issues, clarity of purpose, overall feel, portions you particularly like or dislike, quests you find too difficult or easy, how the fights feel against NPCs or other players... let us know your thoughts on the Tournament.

Posting in the sticky is fine, but I'll be keeping an eye out for other threads as well just in case. ;)

The amount of currency you receive is working as intended, if that's what you mean. Be aware that there are four dailies at champion level that give seals totaling five seals a day, and that one in particular requires completing a questline to unlock.

EDIT: Concerning the discrepency of valiant seals, I'm afraid I need more information than that. You were each working for your racial city, correct? How many dailies did each of you complete? It sounds to me as if you did not complete all your given dailies for the day, to be honest.

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Q u o t e:


Only skipped the lumber and stone gathering ones.

I did the "kill icecrown scourge" quest, killing the fire revnant in crystalsong, the 3 valiant challengers defeated, and another one can't remember it off the top of my head. I was doing the 4 TB quests.

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And you did this with the latest PTR build, or earlier? Everything looks correct and I was unable to reproduce it. If you've been testing this through builds it's possible there are some legacy issues. Try it out tonight/tomorrow and let me know if you're still lacking seals; you should get the full five no matter what city you're working for.

(Also, as a side note, this is an Argent Tournament thread; let's keep it that way. If your post is deleted, it's because you're off-topic.)

Good to know on the champion marks, thanks.

As for the combatants, each city has its own strategy; fighting them all the same way will likely lead to failure. They all have weaknesses you can use to your advantage and strengths you need to avoid. Now, if you feel those things aren't being communicated properly, that's a whole different issue, and we're looking to make it a bit more clear in an upcoming build.

Keep up the feedback, it's appreciated.

Oh, also, if you normally play with music off, you may want to turn it on for testing purposes. ;)

Gear is not a factor in mount performance and currently is not planned to be at any point. The idea is to present a completely even scenario (statistic-wise) should you choose to joust with another player.

Also, you can get a maximum of five Champion Seals a day, and the prices are balanced with that in mind.

If you experience aberrant behavior like that which is specifically occurring on this build or later, please do bug it, yes. Otherwise, it may simply be a legacy issue. I'm aware a number of you have been testing this since the beginning, and I truly appreciate your perseverance and continued testing. Just be aware that there may be a little bit of strangeness due to changes from build to build.

The marks and the plague wagon issue will be fixed in an upcoming build, as well as a significant rebalancing of the city valiants and champions. We'll still be here reading.

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Q u o t e:
Kis, it was already stated earlier in the thread but it may have been missed with all the QQ post on the champions and valiants. Anyway, I am still unable to champion a third or more factions. No quests at all in the Alliance tent.

And also, I'm still an Exalted Champion of Stormwind even though I had never championed for them (unable to ride the horse). The only thing I ever did for that achievement was getting exalted with SW.

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It wasn't missed; I've said repeatedly that those of you who have been testing prior to this patch may have legacy issues that are no longer applicable in this build. I understand that you're currently in an odd state on your character, but that is a result of completing things at unfortunate times, and I don't believe it's possible to get into the state your character is in currently.

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Q u o t e:
Vanity Pets - 40 Crusader Seals: Again this seems a little expensive. Why not cut it to 20 or 25? It's basically the same deal with the mounts you block them from being purchased until you are a champion anyway.

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Keep in mind the pets aren't soulbound. There's a little bit of that in the price.

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Q u o t e:
Epic Weapons - 25 Crusader Seals: I'd have expected these to be higher priced then the pets/mounts. But I guess considering how useless they are I'm not too surprised. Do you really think anyone will buy them? They all seem to be similar in power to 10 man Naxx.

Rare Armor - 10 Crusader Seals: These are even more useless then the Epic Weapons. I would seriously be surprised if anyone bought them. Especially when they can buy a BOE equivalent and save their seal's for the pets/mounts.

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Raiding is more widespread than ever, as you all know, but despite that, there are still some people who haven't set foot into a single raid instance in Wrath. They prefer solo or 5-man content. The equipment in the Argent Tournament is not geared (*duck*) toward your main character who has been in raids since shortly after the expansion released, but those people who haven't been able to do them yet. It will also help somewhat in gearing up alts to get raid-ready.

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Q u o t e:
Champion's Writs: These are pretty useless as they are now. You have to be a champion of a faction to even use them. Why not add a dialog option to the Quartermasters to turn in the writs for rep instead of having to access and purchase the item?

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Technical reasons. And these are purely for getting your city reputation up. For those who find that "useless," there's the purse.

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Q u o t e:
FYI: I'm still not able to become a Valiant of a third faction in this patch. I heard a rumor that it is fixed for new character imports but not existing ones; I hope not, as I don't want to go through all that again...

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Unfortunately this is a legacy issue, as I've mentioned. Still, your feedback concerning relative difficulty is certainly appreciated.

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Q u o t e:
I still think there should be a title for Exalted Champion of all 5 factions. Maybe "Alliance Champion"/"Horde Champion"? I would say "of the Alliance"/"of the Horde" but those are reserved for PvP achievements that I'll probably never get...

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How about "Crusader"? Mind you, you have to be exalted with the Argent Crusade as well. ;) I know we have the achievement for all five without it, but really, there are a whole slew of titles flying around this Tournament already.

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Q u o t e:
Understandable. I still don't think too many people will buy them when they can spend the seals on the mounts/pets, even on alts. It's pretty easy to get similar gear off the AH with the BoE gear that drops in Heroics/Raids.

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I assure you, there are many, many players out there who would like to get into raids or perform better in heroics who don't remotely have the funds to purchase the BoEs that drop in raids. You may not run in such circles, but they exist. ;)

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Q u o t e:
Why not have the choice of rep badges in the quest like you did earlier? The writs take up space and if you are exalted with your main faction you have to champion another faction to even get the option to turn them in.

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Technical limitations, again.

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Q u o t e:
I have championed Stormwind and Darnassus and I recently chose exodar as my third, i picked up the court of bones quest and noticed something unusual, the Exodar quest for it still requires the Plague wagons in this latest build.

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It looks all right in our internal build right now; it's possible the PTR build was made while it was being fixed. All should be good soon.

Thank you all for your continued testing and feedback on this. It's helping us out quite a bit. As people have already noted, the valiant and champion retuning has gone in, so please do try it again in this build if you haven't already. We're still reading.

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Q u o t e:
Is there even a distant possibility of this "Aspirant/Valiant/Champion" working cross-faction?

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No.