Blizzard’s new recruit, the World of Warcraft PvP guru Brian Holinka, confirmed via Twitter last night that the much-missed WoW Skirmishes would be making a return to the game!
Whether he was really meant to or not, or shouldn’t have really said anything, we’re not sure, but WoW PvPers everywhere will be doing a happy little dance today. His tweet reads as follows:
.@bwalterwhiteb We acknowledge many people want skirmish back. It was more forgotten than removed. It will come back, but not in 5.3
— Holinka (@holinka) March 11, 2013
So, unfortunately, WoW Skirmishes will not be back just yet. But we can all hope for their imminent return, given this high-level Blizzard confirmation that they would be back. GAMEBREAKER is hoping for their return in 5.4, so that we PvPers all have something to look forward to! With the two new datamined battlegrounds, and the soon-to-be-arriving PvP gear changes, it’s an exciting time to be PvPing in WoW.
For those players who weren’t around in Wrath, what was the WoW Skirmish system, and why won’t PvPers shut up about it?
In WoW, Skirmishes were essentially just like unrated arenas, which you could queue for by yourself, or with others. You could queue for them, and be matched with a random, facing off against another team in the same boat, or join in with a friend, and face off against other groups. Skirmishes awarded no rating and no points, so why were they so great? Mostly because of their lack of rating, their lack of pressure.
If you want to try out a new composition in the game right now, or a new class, your only option is to dive straight into rated arenas, most likely with a friend, but potentially also with a PuG you collected in trade chat. If it’s a friend, you’ve got to create a new team, or be added to their existing team, and risk dragging down their rating. With skirmishes you could just leap straight in, melt some face, and learn as you went along.
WoW Skirmishes were removed at the start of Cataclysm and replaced with Wargames, which require the player to not only know someone to team up with, but another team to work against. This is great for organized, usually high level PvPers, who want to play against specific players or comps to test their mettle, but very hard indeed for the casual or would-be PvPer to get into, simply because of the number of players required, as well as the fact that rather than playing with your friends, you’re playing against them. Whatever your reasons, are you as happy as I am to see the promised return of WoW Skirmishes?
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