Dear Community,

Last month we shared our content timeline with you all, and also mentioned that we would be working under the principle of item-gating for Kronos III. This principle will apply to nearly all content, with the exception of PVP item rewards which will follow the traditional “item-version-by-patch” concept. Below we have detailed the original timeline of the PVP honor system and the accompanying rewards, along with how this implementation will work on Kronos III.

Original Timeline:

Patch 1.4 (5 months after launch) – PVP Honor System was introduced

(5 months after launch) – PVP Honor System was introduced Patch 1.5 (6 months after launch) – Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley battlegrounds were added

(6 months after launch) – Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley battlegrounds were added Patch 1.6 (8 months after launch) – BWL was launched, and the stats of currently existing Rank 14 items were improved

(8 months after launch) – BWL was launched, and the stats of currently existing Rank 14 items were improved Patch 1.7 (10 months after launch) – Arathi Basin was added

(10 months after launch) – Arathi Basin was added Patch 1.11 (19 months after launch) – Stats of Rank 7 – 13 items were improved. New Rank 14 items were added (e.g. Caster 1-Hand)

Kronos Timeline:

Server Launch – PVP Honor System, Patch 1.4 version of PVP rewards, Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin are all in-game

– PVP Honor System, Patch 1.4 version of PVP rewards, Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin are all in-game Blackwing Lair (6 months after launch) – No change

(6 months after launch) – No change Dungeon 1/2 Patch (8 months after launch) – Stats of Rank 14 items will be improved

(8 months after launch) – Stats of Rank 14 items will be improved Dragons of Nightmare Patch (10 months after launch) – Stats of Rank 7 – 13 items will be improved. New Rank 14 items will be added.

All PVP items (including those already purchased) will be automatically updated at their appropriate times. The new Rank 14 items (such as High Warlord’s Battle Mace), will only be available to players who are Rank 14 at the time of purchase.

The reason behind upgrading the items 2 months after our launch of Blackwing Lair is to keep the item balance on par with what would have occurred back in 2006. With the original timeline, there were only 3 months available for players to have reached Rank 14 before the items were upgraded. Rather than gating all PVP content for 5+ months and removing that aspect of the game, we believe that upgrading the items roughly 2 months after the launch of BWL will provide a comparable experience. PVP and PVE items will compete with each other in some cases, until PVP items are buffed and brought above BWL quality for most classes. The decision to upgrade the rank 7 – 13 items and add the new rank 14 items prior to the launch of AQ, is to ensure that PVP items remain competitive with their PVE counterparts.

Another aspect of PvP changes we would like to announce is a rather small difference to the way rank updates are calculated. Every week players rank points are decayed by 20%, meaning that you have to continue to play in order to make it to the higher ranks. The higher the rank, the harder you will have to play eventually to keep up. Back in 2006 (WoW Wiki Reference) it was described as such:

Your weekly RP decay is 20% of your current RP total. But, if your weekly adjustment (Earning – Decay) negative, that adjustment is cut in half. Also, your weekly adjustment will never drop you down by more than 2500 pts.

Kronos I and II, both have/had this same decay cap of 2500 rank points. This means that if you were to lose more than 2500 rank points from the decay, the cap would come into effect and you would lose only 2500. This gets more and more relevant on higher ranks, where players would decay 10,000 if they did not get a good enough standing. On Kronos III we have decided to make the decay cap more forgiving; in that we’ll reduce the maximum amount of rank points you can lose in an update from 2500 to 1000. We’ve decided on this change in order to acknowledge that some players may never even begin attempting to rank, if they know they will not be able to play for a single week throughout the duration of their ranking period. To be clear, this change will not allow anyone to achieve rank 14 faster than normal. This change will also be applied to Kronos I.

That’s it for this week. Stay tuned as we’ll have some more information to share on Kronos III in the near future!