Just when we thought that patch 3.1 was just all about Ulduar, Dual Specs and the coming class changes, Blizzard has given us a surprise that looks kinda fun - The Argent Tournament. According to Blizzard poster Wryxian, the Argent Tournament is a world event coming in patch 3.1 which will be found in Icecrown. It will host the following features:
* The ability to prove your worth to a capital city of your choosing through our new mounted combat system (still in development)
* New daily quests to construct the great Argent Crusade coliseum for glorious battles to come
* All new rewards - new items, titles, banners, tabards, pets, mounts, and more
* All new achievements
* Many more festivities, and more to come in future content updates!
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In another thread in the official forums, Blizzard poster Zarhym mentioned that the Argent Tournament is a permanent event and is not a pvp related thing despite the mention of a coliseum that's going to be built. He mentioned that it's also going to be instanced.
To me this is starting to look like something very familiar to us. A permanent event that makes us do daily quests to complete a coliseum and gain some sort of "reputation" to earn rewards - sounds like the Isle of Quel'danas and the several phases helping the Shattered Sun Offensive to take over the whole island. The addition of events and festivities inside the coliseum is a new thing though and still has me wondering what kind of thing Blizzard is thinking of. The logic is that since this isn't a PvP related thing, the coliseum should be some sort of PvE thing. My guess is that it could be anything from a sort of ring of blood type fight to maybe even a venue of short raid boss encounters. Your guess is as good as mine at this point since it's so vague. Anyway, the coliseum itself won't be available at patch 3.1 so we'll have more time to speculate.
MMO Champion has a list and screen shots of the things you can get from the Argent Tournament and they look pretty cool. Check it out here.