"Hey, if the season is going to end next Tuesday, we need to hit 1930 so I can get the offhand and the wand to bump up my resilience, then get the battlemaster's trinket for the last stand effect." - Guntir

So, we walked into the arena at 1883 knowing we had a little work ahead of us. Thankfully, we ended up only needing to play 13 games... and we started on a hot streak. It seemed like probably 8-9 of the matches we had were against holy+dk, and only one of them was very good, so they ended up being pretty decent wins. Sadly, I was trying out the in-game video recording to see how it compared to iCapture (lag-wise, quality-wise, etc) and some how the options were set to not record the interface... so all the videos are of me running around with animations but no numbers and no unit frames and no action bars. These captures can still be useful in an end-production video, but we had some really good dk+pally matches that showed off the strengths of our comp really well... so I really did want them to come out well >_<.

We also lost to a double-rogue team. It was hilarious, we spent the first 3 minutes walking around while guntir was getting sapped over and over again... then it happened: they finally found me. Double sap. Open on guntir, I click my trinket button, nothing happens, I am confused, so I look at my character window and see I'm still in full PvE gear... interesting. Anyway, they did the ghost-shot on guntir (tricks-trade, cheapshot+ambush, cbmut x2, evis x2) and instantly exploded him, then they restealthed and did it to me. It was hilarious. I doubt we would have won even if we were wearing PvP gear, I would have simply ended it in blind instead of sap.

Our second to last match was against a ret pally and an arcane mage. We were winning, then the mage got a full-duration Poly off against guntir and things went downhill. I ended up dying with the ret pally at 50% and the mage at 30%. Guntir got angry, and started holy fire and smite-spamming the mage, which proved to be pretty effective. I'm still sitting in my corpse, and I watch the ret pally run over to me (not sure why). He just stops moving in a corner, I assume to drink... but I don't really understand at the time, so I swing the camera back around to guntir, who has popped shadowfiend and is out of LoS while the mage is evocating (but he only gets 2-3 ticks off as the fiend is eating him). Guntir ends up smoking the mage (don't forget, he played Shadow in s4 with my warlock, so he knows how to duel offensively), and we end up winning. The ret pally APPARENTLY afk'd or dc'd or SOMETHING, but when the mage died, we got the recap window and it had said we won... we weren't complaining. We have been doing PvP for 4 years now, arena for 2, and it is about time we got some actual luck.

Our last match was on Lordearon, and it ended up being our team versus a priest... as his rogue didn't join in time. This win took us over 1930, so we called it a week, or season if tomorrow is the last day. However, it's unclear still whether tomorrow will indeed be the release of 3.1. There are a number of facts that make me lean either direction in my predictions.

Firstly, they announced that the end of season five would be April 14 or perhaps the week after. Secondly, they have previously said that they do not want season five to continue into the release of 3.1, so it stands to reason that season five would end the same day that 3.1 was released, as they are giving arena one week off to hand out titles and what-not (presumably the argument could also be made that this one week hiatus would allow players to familiarize themselves with the 3.1 changes before stepping into the competitive arenas again). Thirdly, we have the fact that basically all scheduled testing for the 3.1 PTR has ceased and the patches are coming out in shorter instantiations with fewer and fewer changes (the last one had a few tooltip updates, new icons, and some bug fixes, but nothing 'new').

On the other hand, we have some facts supporting the thought that tomorrow will NOT mark the release of 3.1 or the end of season five. Firstly, we have the fact that in the past, Blizzard has ALWAYS given a definitive statement more than two weeks prior to the end of an arena season; we have yet to hear "April 14 will be the end of season 5" and therefore it stands to reason that April 14 will NOT be the end of season 5. Secondly, it seems that there are still a fair amount of bugs present in the latest release of the PTR client which are actually game-breaking, not to mention the laundry list of concerns from players about dps balance and the spirit changes making healing a nigh-impossible task for long fights. While Blizzard does not always give out coos of "it will all be okay" at the QQ of the playerbase, they do often give out statements along the lines of "this is fixed in the latest PTR build, look for it on the next push" or "this is fixed internally, it will make it to live."

I am sort of on the fence post about whether I want 3.1 to be released tomorrow. On the one hand, I want it to come out tomorrow so I can stop paying to respec a few times a week to do arenas. I also want it to come out tomorrow because I will get Primal Gore which will really improve my ability to pressure an enemy opponent in PvP even more, making arenas that much more enjoyable. On the other hand, we are actually at a decent arena rating, and growing higher would be something that I think would be neat (there's an achievement for 2000, and guntir is an achievement whore). Plus, getting higher arena rating means that we would start next season with a higher MMR, which would mean getting higher faster earlier in season 6 (which is going to be important).

All things considered, I suppose my current stance is that I want 3.1 to come out tomorrow, but I will not be heartbroken if it doesn't. I really would like to hear from a Blizzard rep if it doesn't come out tomorrow, though, as all this anticipation is making me anxious (and I'm not getting any work done because of my anxiety... I just keep trolling the forums expecting a speck of news at any moment).


UPDATE:

The patch is definitely coming... shortly. The "severe lack of info" might simply be because we announced it, gave further details about it, put it up on the PTR for testing and now we are basically on the verge of releasing it.

We certainly haven't been quiet about it. It is coming. And it is coming... soo... er... promptly.

A blue poster on the European boards has made this announcement today... so that definitely supports the idea that the patch will be released "promptly", but again that is a very ambiguous statement. Promptly means "with little or no delay"... one can hope that tomorrow is prompt enough.

UPDATE 2:
Every single US forum has been taken down for maintenance... looking more and more likely that tomorrow is the day, although this could be a huge coincidence.

UPDATE 3:
Looks like the forums went down for an update: The Blizzard Blue Tracker. For all intents and purposes, they have simply implemented something that every WoW fansite has had for years... but it's a welcomed change. No word yet on whether this is being rolled out as part of a 3.1 release or just something that happened to fall today.