The call has been sounded. The Argent Crusade beckons. The heroes of Azeroth have been summoned... To prove their worth...Test their courage... To be considered worthy... For the final battle ahead...

Are you up to the challenge?

So last time we left World of Warcraft, players were taken by surprise by the imminent threat posed by the old god Yogg-Saron deep beneath Ulduar.

Having finally defeated this ancient threat, the focus comes back now on defeating Arthas, the evil undead Lich King.

But as seen from the Wrathgate incident, this might not be so easily accomplished, as large armies can be easily turned undead and against you in a matter of minutes. Side note: if you haven't seen the cinematic there I strongly suggest going back and finishing all the quests in Dragonblight so you don't lose an important WoW moment; alternately, the clip can also be found on our website, under the Videos section, for all of you lazy players out there.

So instead, a different approach is needed to defeat Arthas...

Thus, Highlord Tirion Fordring, Supreme Commander of the Argent Crusade has decided to open the Crusaders' Coliseum, previously under construction and found in Icecrown - now finally complete and awaiting challengers.

The goal is that instead of big armies, a small group of highly trained noobs... erm... I mean... professionals should venture instead into the mighty Icecrown citadel and face Arthas. And what better way to select these champions but to have a contest, with great rewards but also hard challenges for players to face.

Some of the fiercest Northrend creatures have been bought for this reason, and are waiting just outside to face and wipe entire player raids.

Learning from the past as always, Blizzard realized that Ulduar was maybe a little too hard, even on normal modes for quite a few people, and thus not as accessible as they wanted it to be. Furthermore, limiting access to the new Emblems of Conquest for heroic 25 raids only, an even larger gap between good geared and normal geared people was created.

With the patch 3.2, Blizzard attempted to close the gap by adding the new max level heroic gear currency Badges of Triumph as a reward not only from Trial of the Grand Crusader, the big raid instance thing, but from completing the daily heroic dungeon as well.

In addition, every other badge you gain will be an Emblem of Conquest, allowing you to gear decently enough for pretty much every PvE encounter out there.