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And the winners are...

  • dlanod wins 30 days of free WoW Game Time
  • Adanion wins the WoW Hoodie
  • Koviko wins a video card worth up to $250!

Congrats to our winners, and thanks to everyone who participated! Winners will be contacted shortly, via the email addresses provided in their profiles.

25 man testing for Mists of Pandaria beta has finally begun, and guilds like our friends at Midwinter are streaming their raids.

While cheering the players on is exciting, it's always a little more fun when you can win something yourself! How would you like some free World of Warcraft Game Time? What about a World of Warcraft Alliance Premium Hoodie or a new video card?

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One of these prizes could be yours, if you have what it takes to play, ask, answer and win the Mists of Pandaria contest on Arqade.

The rules:

  • The contest starts at the time this post is made and goes until the end of 25 man testing on September 11th at 11:59 pm UTC.
  • To enter: Play World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta or watch streams of the 25 man beta raids and ask any questions you have about it on Arqade. Check back for answers, and answer other World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria questions yourself, because answers count too!
  • Your questions can be about anything related to Mists of Pandaria - they don't have to be just about the beta raids. That is, all questions related to content that will be released with the expansion and/or released in the 5.0-series of patches are eligible. (See this answer for more info).
  • Tag your question , or answer a question that is tagged .
  • All Mists of Pandaria questions and answers tagged that end the contest with a score of 5 or more are eligible for the awesome prizes listed above.
  • Each question you ask or answer you provide that meets the above criteria will earn you one entry into a drawing for prizes. But make sure what you post is good - because any post you make that gets closed or ends the contest with a negative score will lose you one entry in the raffle. Posts that end the contest with a score between 0 and 4 don't add or subtract entries. (For tips on making sure your question is good, see below)
  • Three people will be selected to receive either
    30 days of World of Warcraft Game Time, the World of Warcraft Hoodie (men's or women's) or a video card or your choice (worth up to $250).
  • Eligibility: The contest is open to current and new arqade.com users. Everyone is eligible regardless of geographic location; however, we sometimes come across issues with international shipping that make it very difficult or impossible to send prizes to people who live in certain areas. If this happens to be the case, Stack Exchange will work to find a mutually agreeable solution, but we cannot guarantee that we will always be able to make international orders work.

How to make sure your post is awesome

First of all, Arqade is not a forum. Arqade is for specific, practical Q&A. If you want to chat about something, awesome - we have a chat room for that! But don’t just post a discussion thread as a question - it will get closed and you’ll lose raffle entries.

Generally, anything related to gameplay is on topic. That includes (but of course isn’t limited to!) things like:

  • Strategy
  • Puzzle solving
  • Game mechanics and terminology
  • Plot and characters in games
  • Game-specific hardware

Some examples of things that are off topic include:

  • Game development
  • Game identification
  • Shopping advice
  • Piracy

For more info, check out our FAQ.

That's pretty much it. Now go for it, and good luck!

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  • Well now I just opened the stream of WoW questions coming in. Good luck to all participants.
    – Fredy31 Mod
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 17:04
  • 1
    The third and fifth bullet points seem to contradict each other: can we ask about anything WoW-related, or does it have to be specifically MoP-related?
    – user3389
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 19:43
  • 1
    @MarkTrapp it should be related to MoP. I clarified in chat whether we should use the more specific wow-mists-of-pandaria tag, and consensus was that all expansion packs thus far are covered by the world-of-warcraft tag and we should stick with that. I realize it's a little confusing - suggestions for how to clarify are more than welcome.
    – Lauren
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 20:49
  • @Lauren I think maybe just adding that to the fifth bullet point should suffice: something like "all MoP questions tagged...". How will you determine what's an MoP question? Whether it mentions MoP in the question body?
    – user3389
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 20:52
  • 3
    I honestly don't think that this competition is going to get much participation. Mostly because not everyone has or can get access to the beta, and most people probably don't want to watch streams just to enter. Also, many people are seem to be having a bit of a problem figuring out whether questions should be closed as too subjective or not.
    – Mr Smooth
    Commented Aug 2, 2012 at 21:08
  • Is this contest over? I can't easily determine when 25-man raid testing started/finished.
    – Raven Dreamer
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 21:49
  • 1
    @RavenDreamer They're closing beta on or around September 11th, and raid testing generally goes right up until the end of beta.
    – user3389
    Commented Aug 20, 2012 at 2:42
  • 1
    @Lauren I think this 5 votes needed rule is not a good thing, only 5 questions and 3 or 4 answers have reached 5(out of 23 questions with 1 or more answers). It looks like once a question reaches 4 votes people stop voting to limit the number of eligible candidates. It could be that the quality of questions/answers are not better than 4, but i don't think this is true for a lot of them.
    – Blem
    Commented Aug 20, 2012 at 8:16
  • @Blem Or in my case... I receive 4 votes that magically "unupvote" themselves later in the day. The giveaway post wasn't even popular enough to qualify for the prizes! ;)
    – Adanion
    Commented Aug 21, 2012 at 20:44
  • @Adanion I had that one happen also
    – Blem
    Commented Aug 21, 2012 at 20:51
  • Any idea how much longer the MoP raiding will be going on?
    – Niro
    Commented Aug 26, 2012 at 17:43
  • 1
    @Lauren so who won?
    – Blem
    Commented Sep 17, 2012 at 12:23
  • @Blem *ahem* :D
    – KOVIKO
    Commented Sep 17, 2012 at 19:19
  • TL;DR, is the girl one of the prizes?
    – GnomeSlice
    Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 0:06

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
5

I know this is very early but so far I find this promotion very frustrating.

So far there has been 2 questions for this promotion:

  • One that follow all the rules, but will most likely be closed because it is a duplicate.
  • My attempt to ask something related to MoP raiding that is getting some close votes because it violates the Speculation of the future of the industry and of upcoming releases from the FAQ even though I have been trying to change it to fit in to the format of the site based on peoples comments.

I don't really see how any questions can get past the Speculation of the future of the industry and of upcoming releases since it is a beta and everything is subject to change, should this just be ignored or used less for this event?

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  • 8
    Ignoring rules for the sake of a promotion sets a double standard, which will confuse users much more. I, for one, recommend not relaxing the rules at all, specifically because it sets a very bad precedent.
    – Frank
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 19:57
  • 2
    There's no relaxation of the rules necessary. People just need to not freak out at the word 'beta' and understand what is and isn't speculative or subject to change.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 20:02
  • 5
    @LessPop_MoreFizz As I understand it, there's nothing that's not subject to change. Blizzard hasn't come out and said, "Yes, this is exactly how it will be once we release it."
    – Frank
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 20:06
  • When it comes to World of Warcraft (and pretty much any online game) everything is subject to change. Developers change, tweak, and flat out remove things all the time. Especially when a game has a competitive side as well (Arenas, Battlegrounds, etc).
    – Adanion
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 20:38
  • 2
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but my thinking is this: just because things are subject to change doesn't mean that asking questions about how they are now is speculation. Just don't ask questions that can't be answered without speculating about future changes. There must be enough material to go on now without having to do that, right?
    – Lauren
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 21:03
  • @Adanion Right, so it's not black and white, but there's a level of stability and real-world data required to make questions have any value. Questions about the general nature of the new talent system are probably safe, since it's been around for months and Blizzard seems mostly satisfied with it, but the exact nature of raid encounters isn't, because even Blizzard treats it as totally up in the air right now and is actively soliciting feedback. Same with specific details regarding abilities: beta/PTR is just nowhere near as stable as live content.
    – user3389
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 21:04
  • 4
    @Lauren Granted, we've only gotten 3 questions so far, but if they're any judge of the types of questions we're going to get during this promotion, it's really unlikely we're going to have content that's useful post-launch.
    – user3389
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 21:05
  • 2
    At this point in a Blizzard beta 90% of it is set. Quests will be pretty much done, talents will be largely set (although there may be some slight shuffling still to come) and dungeons and raids will be done, i.e. the bosses won't change. The numbers themselves might change in any of these (rewards, damage, etc), but overall most questions asked now that doesn't rely on numbers should still apply post-release. Speaking from Wrath beta experience, plus a dedicated WoW-ite when TBC and Cata betas were leaking info.
    – dlanod
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 10:52
  • 1
    With a game like WoW that's constantly changing regardless of whether or not it's in beta, you could argue that you can't ever answer a question because it's subject to change. At this stage in the beta, it's close enough to what they're going to release so I would say it's safe. If it does change (same as it would if they changed something in a patch), we all have the ability to edit answers.
    – Ben
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 15:19
  • @Ben That's sounds good in principle, but I wished we'd just use a Beta tag for Beta questions. I personally feel the Diablo 3 Beta questions were a disaster. They had a few negative contest implications, but more than that it was just an open opportunity to speculate and ask low quality questions. I don't see why Beta questions should not be allowed, but I feel like they should be quarantined as a completely separate version of the game. Creating the need for mass edits is always a bad policy, IMHO.
    – EBongo
    Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 4:13
  • Then it really comes down to if you'd rather edit questions based on whether or not the content ends up changing or edit tags after the content becomes "official." I'm for the former, personally. Since based on my experience, WoW Betas this far in are pretty set.
    – Ben
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 21:01
5

For people's reference in terms of figuring out quality and what is eligible for the contest, below are all the Mists of Pandaria questions from the start of the contest:

4

We're starting to run into some logistical issues in relation to this contest; namely, it's not immediately and unambiguously obvious what counts.

  • We don't have a tag, so we can't just say "all tags tagged with it count."

  • Not all -tagged questions count, so we can't do the same with it, either.

  • Some features, like pet battles, aren't going to be MoP-specific, but are nevertheless going to be released around the same time and are marketed as part of the expansion push.

  • Some features, like class changes and balances, are just not MoP-specific—and aren't marketed as such—but will be released at the same time as the expansion (or just before).

I'd like to propose, for the sake of clarity, that when we say "MoP-related questions", it really means, "questions related to content that will be released with the expansion and/or released in the 5.0-series of patches". This would allow questions like:

  • Changes/updates for existing classes
  • MoP-specific content like Pandaria, the Pandaren race, the Monk class, etc.
  • MoP-marketed content available to all, like pet battles
  • Tier 14+ raid content

I think this corresponds to roughly what everyone was thinking, just said explicitly. This would also narrow the gap between now and when people can play live content, as the 5.0 patch is expected to land a couple of weeks before MoP proper is released.

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  • 1
    Good suggestion, I added your explanation to the list of rules and linked to this answer. Thanks!
    – Lauren
    Commented Aug 6, 2012 at 15:24
2

I tried my best to ask a question that was about a problem that I was facing, it was upvoted twice, downvoted twice and has a good answer from Mark Trapp. I agree that questions about Beta games fall into grey area for being "too localized", but at the same time we also had hundreds of questions about Minecraft before it was officially out of the beta stage.

As the community cannot decide if the questions should or should not be left open and the downvotes on questions are going to make achieving 5 upvotes almost impossible, I guess I am going to sit this one out. Thanks Mark for answering my question though it helped me a lot the next game I got in.

3
  • Minecraft is an exception because the Beta status was perpetual. For WoW, Beta has a known expiration date.
    – KOVIKO
    Commented Aug 2, 2012 at 12:26
  • 1
    @Koviko I see... So if Blizzard wouldn't have announced a release date for MoP and the beta would have be continuing without a known expiration date (like Minecraft), it would also be an exception? I think people are getting all up in arms over this just because it is a beta when we have had several questions about games in a beta stage. We had questions about Mass Effect multiplayer preview and the demo, both of which were subject to change. This isn't the first time we have had questions regarding a beta.
    – Adanion
    Commented Aug 2, 2012 at 13:33
  • Would it be an exception? It'd depend on if the question is about the Beta or about the Release. We make exceptions based on what we know. That's what makes them exceptions - that they don't follow the rules. As for Minecraft, there was no stable version separate from the Beta... The Beta was the game. But going down the road of answering questions with incomplete data is potentially detrimental to the quality of information on this website.
    – KOVIKO
    Commented Aug 2, 2012 at 13:48

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