eye-of-the-storm
Latest
Breakfast Topic: Battle of the battlegrounds
In The Burning Crusade, Blizzard implemented the Eye of the Storm, brinding the number of battlegrounds up to four. They each manage to create an interesting dichotomy in the playerbase. You either love a battleground, or you hate it. Personally, I adore Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm. I hate, hate, hate Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. Most of my friends hate AV and love WSG. And of course, there's always the people that hate them all. My first question to all of you is, where do the battlegrounds lie in your mind? Which do you adore, which do you loathe? Second, Wrath of the Lich King will be bringing us another battleground. We don't know anything about it, but what would you like to see? What do you think we'll get? Personally, I would like to see some sort of urban warfare. Maybe Warsong Gulch style Capture the Flag, but placed in a village rather than a wide open field. Instead of the flag carrier and their pursuers running through an open field, they need to weave between buildings and through alleys. It would probably make hiding way too easy, but I still think it's a fun concept.Again, here's your questions for today: Which battlegrounds do you love, which do you hate, and what new battleground do you think is coming our way in Wrath?
Shifting Perspectives: PvP as a moving target
Every week, John Patricelli of Big Bear Butt presents a well-researched, educational, and entertaining look at the state of the Druid class in WoW today. This week we said, "Screw that," and got someone off the street. Veronica: Look at you, all helpful.Logan: Your peskiness being unleashed on Connor brings me joy. Annoy, tiny blonde one! Annoy like the wind!-- Veronica Mars, "An Echolls Family Christmas" With apologies to Diane Ruggiero, the writer of the episode quoted above, but I find Logan's snarky comment (did he even have another kind?) to be a perfect, albeit general, means of describing successful Druid PvP.Let us be frank; I am not, nor am ever likely to be, a hardcore PvPer, and to a great extent this post is directed mostly at people like myself. If you're one of those Druids carrying a 2K+ rating in full Vengeful, then I invite (nay, implore) you to leave comments and corrections based on your own experience, but the article's mostly for regular folks like me, who may not even particularly like PvP but recognize that it is desirable or perhaps necessary, given our ingame goals. As such, most of this applies to battlegrounds, and on a later date we're going to get into arena. Today, we are simply going to talk about how to avoid letting your PvP experience turn you into a miserably unhappy player who would rather undergo an appendectomy via Roto-Rooter than set foot in another EOTS.
Breaking news: In Eye of the Storm, towers > flag
Let's get one thing straight: in Eye of the Storm, capturing towers is more important than capturing the flag. I don't care how shiny and cool the flag is, that's not where the points are coming from. Well, okay, maybe some of it, but if you don't have any towers to begin with, the flag isn't worth squat. For the past week or so, I've seen a disturbing trend from the Horde on my Battlegroup -- there seems to be a growing fascination with fighting at the middle of the map, right where the flag is.I wrote about Eye of the Storm and the basics of how it's played. In Patch 2.3, the Battleground was modified so that flag captures will scale with the number of towers your side controls. I can't stress the importance of capturing towers enough. In EotS, unlike Arathi Basin, points are awarded constantly every 2 seconds, regardless of how many towers you control. However, these points scale with each tower you control, as shown by the table on the right. Capturing the flag with only one tower (I mean, why?) will award your team 75 points. If your team controls two towers, it's worth 85 points; three, it's worth 100; and controlling all four towers means a swift and painless (ok, maybe not painless) death for your opponents as each flag cap is worth a whopping 500 points.It scales, people. And here's the one, brutal truth about the whole thing: it is mathematically impossible to win the game if you control only one tower. Go ahead, make some calculations.Done? The only way it can be done is if you can capture the flag every 37.5 seconds, which honestly is barely enough time and necessitates complete unmolested passage. Good luck with that. If your side controls only one tower, just don't bother with mid. Get another tower asap. If your team is down one tower to your opponents' three, and you still go after the flag, you are an idiot not helping your team at all. The one and only time it becomes acceptable is with the intention of keeping the flag until your team secures another tower. That way it actually becomes more strategic and less moronic.
PvP all day, everyday: Concerted Efforts (A) or For Great Honor (H)
It's back! Perhaps of all the new daily quests that have arrived with the goodness-filled Patch 2.4, arguably the most confusing and mysterious one is the repeatable quest called For Great Honor for the Horde and Concerted Efforts for the Alliance. It is a dinosaur quest from the days of the old Honor system but made its stealthy return last Tuesday with a few tweaks. It was so stealthy that it didn't even make it into the official patch notes. It is also not searchable in wowhead through filters (e.g. added in Patch 2.4, PvP, etc.) or by name (e.g. "For Great Honor"). The references to the quest in thottbot or allakhazam both refer to the old repeatable quest albeit the quest description themselves have been updated to include the new requirement -- an additional Mark of Honor from Eye of the Storm. Unlike the old quest, the new and improved For Great Honor -- which probably has the same ID tag (confusing poor old wowhead) as the original quest -- does not give any reputation for old world Battlegrounds. Players grinding Battlegrounds rep for the Conqueror or Justicar titles are flat of luck and must do it the hard way aside from being crazy for trying (yeah, okay, I'm one of those people). The very first time players complete the quest, it awards 11g 99s and 314 Honor points at Level 70. Subsequent turn-ins will only award the 314 Honor. Because of the removal of diminishing returns to Honorable Kills, Honor points are available for use immediately, making this quest the most efficient way to earn additional Honor. Because it is repeatable and not a daily quest, players with stacks of 100 Marks of Honor from all Battlegrounds can accrue 31,400 Honor points right away. Of course, it is possible to earn more Honor from more turn-ins. Winning in all four Battlegrounds, for example, can give an additional 942 Honor from Mark of Honor turn-ins. For the many players who have full unusable stacks of these items, it's an excellent way to free up space and gain Honor points at the same time. Needless to say... make sure to save some Marks for those welfare epics! On a final note, try to complete this quest in the less populated cities such as the Exodar or Thunder Bluff, specially if you're turning in a whopping 100 times. Less populated cities will have less lag and less chances of players zoning in from Arenas or Battlegrounds to get in the clickable way of your turn-ins.
Breakfast Topic: Should there be honor in PvP?
And by honor I don't mean the honor-as-currency system that's currently in the game -- I mean a sense of personal honor as in, there are things you make a conscious decision to avoid doing just as a moral gesture. I thought of this recently after a truly miserable losing streak in Arathi Basin. I wound up in three consecutive matches with a full complement of 15 Alliance players to 7 or 8 Horde (with both sides being PuG's, mind you). Being out-numbered and out-gunned sucks no matter what, but it's made immeasurably worse in places like Arathi Basin and EOTS due to the dwindling number of sites you'll have to rez when your side is being utterly destroyed. There was one particularly awful game where the Alliance decided to see how much honor they could get from us before the inevitable 4 or 5-cap ensuring their victory, and simply zerged us in the graveyard as we rezzed (or tried to). The feeling was made worse by knowing, having also played Alliance in BG's, that Horde would almost certainly have done the same thing had the situation been reversed. PvP is the subject of a lot of emotional dicussion in the WoW community as a result of situations like these, and I think we can all agree that it's not the losses that drive you nuts so much as knowing that the game is full of places and times where no amount of strategy or skill will keep you alive.There are a lot of things in PvP that I just don't like being a part of. I don't attack fellow Druids unless I'm attacked first (yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but a surprising number of Druids subscribe to this). I don't join in when an enemy player is obviously being dog-piled. I don't /spit on opposing players or do other rude emotes, and I don't participate in griefing. There's not much about WoW's PvP system that's really all that fair to begin with, especially when compared to games more explicity designed around PvP combat, but in the back of my mind there's still that notion that your opponent should at least have a sporting chance. I risk being called a hopeless carebear for this statement, but I think "honorable kills" are a lot more enjoyable when there's a measure of actual honor involved.
PvP for the beginning HK: 11 rules for the starter weasel
It is not unusual for younger or less experienced players to approach me with questions on my PvP experience."Allie," they ask. "How can we avoid sucking like you?""Well, first it helps to have a functional mouse," I always say, favoring them with a benevolent smile whilst swirling a fine glass of port. "Click-to-move is usually impossible when neither your right mouse button nor scroll wheel actually work. You'd be amazed at the number of problems you can pin on your refusal to replace a relatively cheap piece of equipment. Never, ever, get rid of Mr. Gimpy if you want a ready excuse for being a keyboard turner."They scribble this and then look at me reverently, hopeful for any additional pearls of wisdom I might drop. However, after receiving so many queries and accidentally mistelling most of them with, "I can tank, but gimme a sec to get rid of this punk who's bugging me," I have decided, in the spirit of all gifted Machiavellians, to preserve my bad advice in a medium more lasting than /w.For beyond faulty mice, children, we get into more advanced and underhanded PvP tactics...
Forum Post of the Day: PUG Player Archetypes
Once Patch 2.4 goes live, we will most likely be able to queue up for all of the major battlegrounds as premades. There will always be PUGs, since even the three battlegrounds that allow premade groups to play have them. Sideways of Korgath posted a thread on the official forums on the most annoying PUG player archetypes. The original list included: The Aloof - This guy appears to be guarding a flag or, but the chickens at the farm in AB are actually doing a better job. It's hard to say whether he's AFK, chatting in vent, or just didn't get enough sleep last night, but a guy caps the flag behind him and he doesn't even notice. If he's in gulch and the enemy flag carrier runs by, he just keeps on doing whatever it is he's doing as if nothing happened. The ADD - This type of player just can't live with less than continuous action. The concept of defending a flag is foreign and distasteful to him. Therefore if he is defending something and no enemies show up within 30 seconds, he moves on despite the fact that he is leaving the flag unguarded for a friendly neighborhood rogue to ninja. The Instance Mob - This type of player makes you swear aggro generation applied to players. He simply cannot understand why he hasn't been able to kill anything despite the fact that he put forth his best damage attacks against the protection specced shield wearing warrior that had 2 priests, a paladin, and a druid healing him. Much like I expect Rend Blackhand or Nefarian would, he attributes his ineffectiveness to inferior gear.
WoW, Casually: The year of the casual
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.For the purposes of this column, I am defining a casual WoW player as someone who has 2 hours or less to play at a time. If you spend 2 hours playing solitaire, then you are considered a hardcore solitaire player, but for the World of Warcraft, a couple hours really isn't very much time. There are a lot of people who have more time to play that consider themselves casuals and there are casual raiders and there are hardcore raiders and, well, these categories really don't work very well. But there are definitely also hardcore raider elitist types and many of them are bellyaching that Blizzard spent last year making the game easier for the casual players. I think that Blizzard made the game easier and more fun for everybody and while casuals got a whole lot of benefit from last year's development, raiders got some goodies specifically for them as well.But this column isn't for the raiders, it's for those of us who don't have enough time to raid on a regular basis and have to squeeze as much fun and value out of our playtime as possible. And regardless of who else it helped, Blizzard did a lot for us:Getting from 60 to 70:If you've played the original EQ, you may have expected (like I did) that getting to 70 when Burning Crusade came out would take as long as getting from 1 to 60. But that was not the case. Getting from 60 to 70 was easier for me than getting from 40 to 50 and from 50 to 60. It was fast, fun, full of quests and easily soloable.
Player suggestions for fixing Alterac Valley
In response to a post-patch-2.3 post about the limitations and issues with the new AFK reporting feature for battlegrounds, many people commented with some interesting ideas for improvement. They vary greatly from fairly lenient to quite harsh, making it ever more apparent that this is a controversial topic. Many of you agreed that the system should automatically report players that are AFK, rather than relying on those of us who are fighting and defending to point them out. There also seemed to be an agreement that AFK'd players should not be allowed to remain so; after a certain period of time, they should indeed be booted from the battleground. In order to avoid harsh penalties in a legitimate and unavoidable AFK situation, jr suggests that whatever punishment is implemented, it should not be so for manually /AFK'ing oneself, or when the player is disconnected. Our own Matthew Rossi does point out; however much we might like to impose a more aggressive system of punishment, players will find a way to exploit and abuse it. Malachi145 also pointed out that, no matter what, AFK'd players should not be gaining credit for the daily battleground quests. Several players even outlined complete systems that could be implemented in a future patch to further reduce the problem that AFK'd players in battlegrounds pose for their teammates.
Breakfast Topic: Quitting battlegrounds
Battlegrounds, one of the main resources for PvP action in World of Warcraft, may be growing less popular with the average player. On the flip side, they may be gaining in popularity for players who are new to the whole experience. Why are so many avid battlegrounders boycotting the queues? The most popular battleground that is off-limits is Alterac Valley, and many are getting fed up with the afk'ers and Blizzard's attempts to solve the problem they create. In fact, ever since the dynamics of AV changed in patch 2.3, some people have been longing for the honor grind to return. Queue, run north/south for 10 minutes, gain much honor. Not everyone is enjoying the actual PvP action they're seeing. The recently explained honor calculations have also been causing controversy, especially regarding holiday weekends. At the same time, many battleground regulars are becoming annoyed with the increased population of players new to the grounds popping in, either for arena season one gear, or for the daily battleground quests. Some are even spewing their opinions on the subject rampantly in /bg chat, making the experience less fun for everyone. How much time do you, or have you, devote to battlegrounding? How are you feeling about battlegrounds these days?
Around Azeroth: That was a close one
Reader Kragragh offers up this screenshot of a very close match in the Eye of the Storm battleground. (How close? Just check the score in the top center of the screen!) Says Kragragh, "We were doing some frantic math trying to make sure we'd win.... the points were escalating and I wasn't sure how it was going to go."Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see your idea of the best looking instance on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!%Gallery-1816%
Nethaera explains Honor calculations
Ever since Patch 2.3 was released, there have been some honor controversies -- particularly with Alterac Valley. The way AV honor was calculated was changed and, for a while, not working. Though honor is working as intended now, people are still confused. This is understandable because it took quite a long forum post for Nethaera to explain how the whole thing works. Here are the main points: Diminishing Returns: In all PvP in WoW, every time you kill the same player, you get 10% less honor. After you kill the same person 10 times, you stop getting honor for the kill. Estimated Honor: This number does not take into account Diminishing Returns. Also, all fractions of honor are rounded up to 1, causing the Estimated Honor to be inflated. And the time of day that you view your Estimated Honor could affect the accuracy because the honor just earned may actually not be added until the next day's honor. Battleground Bonus Honor on Call to Arms or Holiday weekends: Bonus Honor is not a percentage of honor earned in a Battleground on a holiday weekend, but it is instead awarded for accomplishing certain specific Battleground objectives. Nethaera posted a long chart detailing all of the objectives for the Battlegrounds for Normal days and Holiday weekends. I've broken out the specific Holiday objectives and the Bonus Honor each awards as well as included the entire chart after the jump.
The Art of War(craft): A Poke in the Eye of the Storm
The Burning Crusade brought in many new things to the World of Warcraft -- new spells, ten new levels, outlandish new zones and more -- quite a lot of things, really. For PvP enthusiasts, BC also ushered in the era of Arenas and introduced a sort of brand new Battleground called Eye of the Storm. I say sort of brand new because even though it's an entirely new map, it rehashes elements from Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and the outdoor PvP objectives in the Eastern Plaguelands. Eye of the Storm fuses resource gathering elements from AB with the capture-the-flag aspect of WSG, creating a familiar feel in a new, almost alien environment. The result is a fast-paced game where fortunes turn very quickly. Unlike the other Battlegrounds, there is no faction associated with Eye of the Storm. There is no Frostwolf Clan defending their territory against the Stormpike Guard; no Defilers and League of Arathor squabbling over resources; there are no outraged Silverwing Sentinels decrying the rampant logging of the Warsong Outriders. Even though Blizzard has stated that Battleground reputations are now obsolete -- you can buy PvP items using relevant Marks of Honor regardless of reputation -- I personally felt that the various Horde- or Alliance-aligned PvP factions added depth and character to the game. While other Battlegrounds have "real" locations one can access through an instance portal, the Eye of the Storm isn't even situated anywhere one can reference -- it's simply, nebulously somewhere in the Netherstorm.
WoW, Casually: December 14 to 20 and Feast of Winter Veil
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.The weather outside may be frightful, but the Feast of Winter Veil begins Saturday which is always delightful. Well, the weather isn't frightful where I live, but I used to live where there are those season-things, so I feel for you in my high 60s and sunny. Really, I do.Of course, the seasons don't change in Azeroth either, but the weekly Call to Arms bonus weekends do. This week it's Eye of the Storm. My EotS tip for this week is: let the Wookiee win. Er, let the Droods run with the flag. Otherwise, they're going to spend all their time whining in BG chat about how slow Ghostwolf form is, etc. Seriously, life's too short to listen to all that bellyaching -- though I suppose there's not much else to whine about in EotS. I mean, this is a Battleground where standing around doing nothing (as long as you're at a tower) watching everyone else fight in the middle is actually a good thing. So take advantage of extra honor and shorter queues while getting your marks this weekend.
Breakfast Topic: Why do we hate playing defense?
After a bad run of battlegrounds recently, I began wondering why so many players are so reluctant to play defensively. I myself generally prefer offensive maneuvers, but I see the value in having a solid defensive base. I personally have neglected to play defense, because every time I do, I feel like everyone else thought "oh good! now I don't have to". Then my character gets zerged, and spanked. Hard. Sometimes there is laughing.Of course, this sort of begs the question doesn't it? If we're all not playing defense because we feel we'd end up alone, then we are ensuring any defense will indeed go it alone (and fail). Are we suffering from poor leadership, or are there other reasons why so many of us are so genuinely reluctant?When speaking with some of my guildmates on the issue, they mentioned that you don't feel very useful when you are run over by a group from the other side. It's hardly how one wants to spend an evening. Offense also sees more continuous action, as defensive positions sometimes have long periods of time where there is no one to kill. Failing that, you may also spend a great portion of the match being killed. We have previously talked about how you might go about designing a new battleground. Would there be any merit to designing one where defense is more important, to force players to learn its value and its technique? Or, on the other hand, would it be beneficial and interesting if we had a battleground based solely on offensive maneuvers? Do you prefer defense, or offense, and why? Why do you think the defensive seems to be the least popular choice? What do you think, if anything, could be done about it?
Season 1 Prices revisited as items go on sale tomorrow
We heard a long time ago that Arena 1 sets would be purchaseable with battleground honor and marks, and it looks like tomorrow's the day-- all those marks and honor you've been saving up will be able to get you some Arena PvP gear.We posted prices a while back as well, but just in case you missed them, here they are again, at Curse's website. The full list of prices is after the jump-- lots of people will probably be headed for the weapons, but make sure to bring lots of honor and marks. While the offhand weapons are the least pricey (at 9k honor), the marks are probably what will break people-- you need 20 Eye of the Storm marks for all the one-hand weapons, and 40 AB marks for the two handers. Librams, relics and totems are the cheapest-- only 8k honor and 10 EotS marks.The full list is printed for your convenience after the break. Got honor? If you want to grab some of that season 1 gear tomorrow, you're gonna need it.
Do BG's need diminishing returns?
As we all know, with the changes to Alterac Valley in patch 2.3 have come changes to the tactical balance of the game. Specifically, if you're not willing to put some real effort into defense, you're not going to win, and you can end up in a turtle game waiting for one side to run out of reinforcements. Which leads me to wonder: if the games are inherently limited by the reinforcement factor... if by killing opposing players you will eventually win the game and as result there's no way the games can last indefinitely... then what do we need diminishing returns on honor for? Battlegrounds are limited in that you have no real choice but to kill the same people over and over again, after all.There's never going to be a setup where one side agrees to be honor famed by the other in AV now, if that ever happened in the first place. One side is going to lose, the game is going to end, and a new game start up: but if you've played in a lot of AV's lately where one side put up a vigorous defense and the two factions clashed for a significant melee, then you may have noticed as I have that your estimated honor for the day will often be wildly overstated. For instance, yesterday I managed to squeeze about 4k honor out. But when I went to bed, it said I had almost 6k honor estimated. I understand what estimated means, that it's not accurate, but the idea that the system estimated an additional 2k honor over what I had actually earned made me wonder if there was a way to improve this. With Arena 3 coming out tomorrow, people have either acquired the honor they want or will be working to do so, so it seems like a good time to consider if we need what seems to be an outdated means of preventing repeated ganking or honor farming.Then again, I suppose you could do it in Warsong still. AB and EoTS also have their limiting factors built in, but Warsong keeps going until someone caps 3 flags. Maybe we could just eliminate the honor decay in the other three BG's? That might make Warsong drop in popularity, though. What do you think? Do we need diminishing returns on honor in battlegrounds?
WoW, Casually: The increased benefits of Battlegrounds to casual players
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.Happy Patch 2.3! I know that Blizzard gave raiders Zul'Aman, but the rest of the game really became much more casual friendly. This week we're going to talk about many of the Battleground benefits that are there for those of us with limited playtime.First, let's talk about this weekend's Call to Arms. Eye of the Storm is the battleground giving the bonus honor this weekend. Levels 61 and up can participate in EotS and the battles are often only 15 minutes, not including queue time. Or course, one of the benefits of the Call to Arms is the reduced queue times.I can't guarantee that the EotS queue times will be that much lower this weekend, however. The fact that Alterac Valley has recently been changed may mean that a lot of people will be trying that battleground out instead of EotS. Also, whatever battleground is in the PvP Daily Quest may affect queues as well.
Prices for Arena Season 1 items revealed
As expected, Patch 2.3 will bring Arena Season 1 items down to the battleground mark market, which means that for the first time ever, you'll be able to buy Arena gear with regular battleground honor and marks (good to know-- I've been saving up all my marks for just a day such as this). And MMO Champion has delved into the PTR and come back out with prices for every piece of Gladiator gear, so now you can know exactly what to save up for on the new patch.Almost across the board, you're going to need some EOTS marks, either 10 or 20 for most items. And you'll need to save up honor, too-- it's about eight or nine thousand for low ticket items like the Paladin's Librams and the Shaman Totems, all the way up to 25-27k for the major weapons. That's definitely not impossible, considering how easy it is to get honor in the BGs, but odds are you'll want to get EOTS bonus honor weekends on your calendar (what a coincidence-- this coming weekend is one) and plan to spend some time playing WoW on those days.Sure, the gear's not the latest and greatest (you'll have to get a great Arena rating for that stuff), but if you like the BGs as much as I do, these are still some great items that you can pay for with the points and marks that you're already getting anyway. Oh, and we need some help at Mage, if you can manage it. Thanks.Thanks, Boubouille!
Breakfast Topic: Favorite battleground
There are four battlegrounds in the game right now, but you can still only play one at a time -- which means you've got to have a favorite. You know, the battleground you hope will come up even while you're in another. I have to say, I think my favorite is still Alterac Valley. I've always loved the massive battle that plays out there, and how it integrates PvE elements in a PvP framework -- however, I can't say I'm fond of the AFKers these days... But this isn't about my favorite battleground -- today we're asking which of the four you favor, and why. So tell us, do you have a favorite battleground?
