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.

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Epic gems were also introduced in the game, and can be prospected from Titanium ore. A direct consequence of this is of course an increase in stats and damage of all classes. Other professions had to be adjusted as well to match for this Jewelcrafting increase. Enchanting rings have had their value adjusted to be higher, tailoring embroideries, alchemy benefits, and so on and so forth.

To keep the Coliseum accessible to everyone, a five player normal and heroic mode are present, as well as a 10 and 25 men mode, in both normal and hard difficulty. So you will be going to Trial of the Champion (or 5 man ToC), Trial of the Crusader or Trial of the Grand Crusader (both available in 10 and 25 man flavors).

You will also be happy to know even the normal ToC rewards only epic items, so while leveling my little priest till 80 I almost had a complete epic set available to wear.

For the solo fans out there, Argent Tournament daily series of quests got re-tweaked, and more enjoyable quests and rewards can be found all over the place. If you obtained the title of Crusader already, then these dailies are still a good way to make decent money while working your way towards buying various Champion Badges rewards, like vanity pets, tabards, mounts, etc. New heirloom items were also added here, including the renowned +10% experience chest that stacks with the 10% shoulder for a faster leveling experience.

Champion Badges can also be used to buy a pony for your squire so that he can run errands to far places for you: access the bank, buy and sell stuff and repair, but only one of these activities every 3 hours, not all of them.

The blue Argent Crusader's Tabard can also be bought and used as a teleporter: it will beam you down to the Argent Tournament Grounds, with a half hour cooldown.

PvP fans have not been forgotten, and along with the regular player tweaks that mostly upset Ret Pallies these time, you will be happy to know a new vast battleground has been added. I'm talking of course about the Isle of Conquest, a major scale, resource control battleground, designed to hold 80 players, 40 on each side.

The rich in natural resources Isle of Conquest can host fierce strategic battles, where players need to decide what goal to focus on in order to outsmart their enemies into victory. Battle ends when you manage to break the enemy keep and kill their general, or when a faction runs out of resources.

I actually haven't played this in a couple of weeks, but last I checked everyone was rushing towards the hangar in order to gain access to the zeppelin, and then parachute directly into the enemy keep or attacked their gate from high above using the onboard canons.

Let's see... what else... Wintergrasp has been limited to a minimum of 3 max raid groups, and players will be able to queue 15 minutes before the battle start from Dalaran. This was done to alleviate really high latency problems, and now players can even defend the keep from time to time actually.

Arena season 6 is also coming to an end, and season 7 will be up and running from September 1st. Koralon also found a spot between his brothers Emalon and Archavon in the Wintergrasp Vault instance. Kora is a fire boss, and you can find him just as you enter the vault, on the left. He won't be up there though until season 7, because he drops Tier 9 PvE items, and Arena PvP season 7 items.

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Conclusion

I will probably be back to brief you on the upcoming WoW Expansion 3: Cataclysm soon enough, and it seems the wait won't be that long since Call of the Crusade is the last step before Icecrown Citadel and your epic confrontation with Arthas, the Lich King. Minor tweaks here, a new PvP battleground there, and a bosses only PvE instance, Patch 3.2.0 manages to keep the WoW spirit alive and well, and to rekindle that heroic dungeon interest. Okay, now back to ToC for more free epicsss!