by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Well, here’s some unexpected news. Blizzard has just announced that rewards for Mists of Pandaria Challenge Mode dungeons will become unavailable after the pre-WoD systems patch (colloquially called “6.0”). Full details below.

Countless adventurers continue to brave the most trying versions of Mists of Pandaria dungeons, but the clock is ticking. This “season” of Challenge Modes will be coming to an end with the upcoming release of a patch prior to the expansion’s release.

Challenge Modes are designed to offer as close to a “normalized” difficulty as possible, and they’re tuned to be tough to master. With Warlords of Draenor’s class changes, itemization changes (e.g. the removal of Hit and Expertise), and—of course—increased level cap on the horizon, the difficulty of Mists of Pandaria’s dungeons will no longer be tuned the same as they were. In the spirit of fair play, when the aforementioned patch is released a little while before the new expansion launches, the current slate of Challenge Mode dungeons will no longer be available, and the achievements they award will be converted to Feats of Strength. The reward items will still be available for purchase by those who qualified prior to the end of the season, but it will not be possible for new players to earn those rewards going forward.

If you still need to earn your Undaunted title, Ancestral Phoenix, or class-specific Transmogrification sets, now’s the time to get out there and prove your worth. In Warlords of Draenor, an entirely new set of Challenge Modes will be available . . . and with them an array of new rewards for you to earn. Until then, stay sharp!

What makes this news the most surprising is how out-of-the-blue it seems. Nothing about Challenge Mode rewards becoming unavailable was ever communicated prior to now. While the exclusivity of the transmog armor sets, mounts, and title contention makes the rewards that much sweeter, it does seem odd that with the iLvl-throttling mechanism in place, these could have stuck around as challenges in future expansions, even if new CM dungeons had new rewards along with them.

However, the point about changing abilities and stats makes a lot of sense, and I think it’s safe to say that with how much Blizzard typically tweaks classes between expansions, this will likely be the model going forward.

To be clear, though; despite the wording of the official post, the challenge modes will still be available after the upcoming patch 5.4.7. It’s the systems patch that precedes Warlords by a few weeks (which will very likely be 6.0.1) that will seal off the Mists challenges.

Have you cleared all the Challenge Modes yet? Still looking for a team? No clue what Challenge Modes are? Let us know in the comments.