Patch 5.5.3 is on the horizon, and Challenge Mode Season 1 officially ends on December 10 with the launch of The Thunder King. During maintenance on that day, the rewards for Season 1 will be given out and the leaderboard will be reset.
Challenge Mode Season 2 will begin immediately with the patch on December 10.
Previously we mentioned that players would need to obtain a single newer, much faster time in any dungeon to earn the achievement Mistwalker and be awarded one of the celestial mounts. Based on feedback and data we have adjusted the time and requirements for obtaining Mistwalker and changed it to the following.
Players must complete each dungeon listed below within the time limit to be a Mistwalker.
Temple of the Jade Serpent: 8m 30s
Stormstout Brewery: 6m 30s
Gate of the Setting Sun: 5m 30s
Shado-Pan Monastery: 10m 30s
Siege of Niuzao Temple: 10m 15s
Mogu’shan Palace: 6m 45s
Scholomance: 7m 15s
Scarlet Halls: 4m 15s
Scarlet Monastery: 5m 30s
For completing the above, players are awarded the title of Mistwalker, and a new and unique mount: The Celestial Riding Tiger. Soar through the skies atop an avatar of Xuen!
Season 2 brings new Challenge Mode specific toys. Completing each dungeon will grant you a new and unique toy themed around that dungeon.
Temple of the Jade Serpent: Platinum Boots of Expeditious Retreat
Stormstout Brewery: Platinum “Little Ale”
Gate of the Setting Sun: Platinum Rod of Ambershaping
Shado-Pan Monastery: Platinum Potion of Invisibility
Siege of Niuzao Temple: Platinum Amber
Mogu’shan Palace: Platinum Battle Horn
Scholomance: Platinum Vial of Polyformic Acid
Scarlet Halls: Platinum Battle Banner
Scarlet Monastery: Platinum Sacrificial Dagger
These are popular items that are used within Challenge Modes but are now earnable by earning Platinum Times. In addition, these now all reset every time a Challenge Mode is started.
Realm First!
New Realm First! achievements are awaiting for the fastest group of challengers. Season 2 and Season 3 have two new titles waiting for players who are the first to complete Challenge Conqueror: Platinum when the season is live.
Season 2: the Thundering Stampede
Season 3: the Momentous Terror
Platinum Coins
A new currency has been added to Challenge Modes that players may use to purchase new toys, mounts, and transmog sets. These are all sold by new vendors in Shrine of Seven Stars and Shrine of Two Moons.
Players earn Platinum Coins per dungeon completed if it is within the Platinum window. In addition to this recurring reward, players can earn a one time bonus for each Challenge Conqueror: Platinum meta achievement.
How are you guys crying? These times are not even hard and if you think that they are you don’t deserve the mounts in the first place, they even nerfed these timers so stop crying and learn to play the game.
The last minute announcement isn’t ideal, but otherwise this has been really good. Gotta remember these Mist walker rewards are equivalant to Gladiator and the times have already been made easier to account for the late notice. There are many teams that have already grinded out these times in a week or so.
Announcing the goals you have to reach within a two-week time window is just ridiculous for people that are not playing 24/7. Another showcase of horrible communication.
The rewards are gatekept behind times that are made up by a Dev with a council of top CM players on a private Discord channel. At the current state, less than 50 groups are within these times; most of them consist of multiple groups of the same players that are consulted by the Dev.
Almost all the groups consist of the same meta classes (Brewmaster, Disc, Elemental, Frost, Destru). As stated, the rewards should be exclusive compared to the Gladiator rewards. I’m pretty sure a few hundred people will only represent probably less than 0.01% of the CM Bracket, which will not even be close compared to the Gladiator Bracket.
The worst thing about this are the nolife,nofriends,alwaysonline players defending this decision because they already knew about and reached this goal months ago for being in the right Discord. Shut up. I know these times are doable with enough time and effort.
I’m up for the whole idea of new rewards, but not with this unprofessional selection of exclusiveness.
Let the salt flow. I am all in for rough CM platinum timers if they do not require game breaking exploits. I think Blizzard understood that the support would be under enormous pressure if sceptical players would demand manual reviews of realm records and removed server first requirement intentionnaly.
Announcing something like this at the very end of the season instead of the months earlier is a pure cringe.
Here is the real pathology:
Players are expected to dig through random discord server to figure out how the mount and title will be obtained. No communication, no transparency. It’s genuinely embarrassing to Blizzard.
And about the discord?
It’s and echo chamber of completely detached elitist. A tiny circle where a single Blizzard Dev casually hangs out with some 2top US teams and the entire system is clearly built around them. These guys are literally posting videos of themselves abusing specific CMs to force tight times (like warlock teleporting under the textures to start RP events).
Cheating? Nobody does nothing about this - no bans, no fixes, no statements, no action.
The whole setup is basically designed around a microscopic group of the players and the rest of us are expected to act like this is some grand fair skill.
You gave us official info 12 days before the end of the season. The fact that players were expected to dig through a discord server to get some information on what times could be expected to get a reward is a bit questionable, no?
These times are not easy to get (which is completely fine) and this is why reward seems to be prestigious
However, if you had given players information much earlier, some of them would have actually tried to build a good comp (or even level a meta class) to beat these timers - or at least tried to
Same story again - lack of communication until it’s too late, followed by the classic “we’ll do better next time”. I’m tired boss.
Great way to fck up a cool mount again which was used as a bait for lot of players in the game when MoP Classic released.
Don’t get me wrong i’m all up for the challenges.
CM Season 1 was barely announced formally anywhere in official blueposts that it was already going (im pretty sure there were only a mention in the bottom of a ToT PTR patch note which is a patchnote for a test realm, so it wasn’t even clear that it affects live realms).
The first version of the rewards was to get realm best times which were already a letdown that some of the players immediately gave up on it. (not everyone will do weird terrain exploits just to be on the top) and then it gets changed to something achievable at the end… when already everyone are raid logging and barely playing, like can’t even get a plat team going because players are already given up on CM-s and most of us wont even have the time to get a meta char levelled / geared / practiced to reach the timers (too bad for some classes that are not even competitive). LFG is totally dead for plat CM-s, there are like 1-2 gold groups are trying to form but that’s all.
As a collectionist this sh!tshow what happened here kinda turned off all my will to ever participate in something so toxic ever again. Having the first mount from the 4 celestial and then missing second, kinda makes me not want the remaining 3rd and 4th the collection will never be complete. Hopefully those some small clique of players will be really happy with their mounts what they get for their self-made-up dumb competition (which they didn’t even have to compete for because they already met the requirements).
The lack of any communication, pushing through dumb decisions at all costs and making an official statement about it 1 and a half week before the season ends is just infuriating.
And i’m out, kinda tired of saying the same obvious arguments again and again.
Incredily disappointing news. The people applauding this announcement without the slightest hint of critical thinking are also quite disappointing. Congrats on already playing flavour of the month and pushing CMs before anyone knew of this.
Why is this declared on such short notice before these rewards will be unobtainable? Why does this consciously exclude all classes that aren’t current meta - since you have based your decision on “feedback and data”? Why swap the season rewards between season 1 and 2?
I’ve been doing the platinum times on my frost DK and it’s been fun pushing times with my guildies. These new times you announced tell me I’m suppossed to reroll to something else and run all these 8 dungeons with a capable meta comp within 2 weeks while abusing every possible bug/glitch under the sun. Is that your intention?
Not a single Paladin, Rogue or Druid qualifies. A whole 2 Warriors and 1 DK do. (Taking data from WoWSims tracking) This feels like a cater to the group of people already super engrossed with CMs, simply by putting an arbitrary time restriction of 2 weeks for everyone else to catch up.
My proposition is to leave the title restrcited to your cut-off time so the lucky few can feel happy and keep the mount obtainable through reaching the target times until end of season 2. This gives people time to improve on their runs and actually execute in 8 different dungeons.
I wouldn’t be against giving some leeway into S2 for people to still get the S1 mount, I wouldn’t say all season but maybe 2 or 3 months, gotta remember these are still nerfed times, if you need all season to get them, you aren’t the target for this mount.
I dont mind super tight timers, but it should at least be doable for every class, just like getting glad is. Right now - with these timers, there’s no way off-meta classes like rogue will get this done. Dissapointing.
Oh. Great idea announcing these rewards TWO WEEKS before season ends. Amazing! Love to see it.
I didn’t bother to run CMs in MoP, because they were incredibly boring compared to M+ and rewards were nonexistent and now freaking TWO WEEKS before season end that developer and his clique of friends gets visually amazing mount while 99.9999% of the playerbase is just screwed. Cool stuff. JUst amazing. I’m also playing a Holy Paladin…. My bad i guess. I guess I’ll level meta classes to play… OH WAIT.. there’s only TWO WEEKS left. My bad for having life outside of this game. I’m sorry lords.
Dumb company with dumb developers. Thank god I haven’t bought the new WoW expac. This is just disgrace how you treat people. Announcing exlusive rewards two weeks before season ends is truly peak blizzard stuff. Love it!!! I seriously hope this ““““developer”””” gets fired. Like what.. do you just give your developers free reign over the game with no oversight? Actually I guess so.. MoP has been just a slew of bad decisions. My god.. I hope you guys don’t release WoD classic or Legion Classic… Can’t imagine what horror show you “people” would create. Lmfao. Good stuff!!
Like with new megaservers… you could’ve said like first 1000 people to achieve platinum timer in all dungeons would get the mount…. would’ve made CMs incredibly lively at start. But all good, that certain developers and his clique of friends obviously wants super exlusive mount. All good, I get it.
are you guys completly cking off the rail with this announcement ?`this is NOT something u announce one week before the season ends. ffs. Atleast make it to where 1 dungeon in said time is enough to get the reward for this season but not ALL dungeons….there is just no time for it left now
