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The Art of War(craft): The handy guide to being good at PvP
Zach writes the weekly column The Art of War(craft), which focuses on good, old-fashioned PvP. He isn't really left-handed, either. Let's take a little break from beta-related posts for a while -- Cataclysm isn't going to be out for a few months at least -- and talk about some old-fashioned PvP. Something I've been meaning to write about for a while are my personal guidelines to ganking, or more generally, world PvP. There are no hard-and-fast rules regarding world PvP, although I follow a personal code of conduct when it comes to these things. Think of it as a guide on being good -- character-wise, if not skill-wise -- or how not to be an asshat in PvP. Today, we'll go through a few simple unwritten rules or ideas and my reasoning behind them. That way, I can also say they're no longer unwritten rules. It might seem futile to lay out some ground rules for world PvP, considering that at the heart of it, they're not really enforceable, but I'd like to think the world (of Warcraft) would be a better place if everyone followed a few simple rules of PvP engagement. It would certainly go a long way towards rectifying the image that some PvE players have about those who PvP. I mean, we're not all uncouth ruffians. At least, not all the time -- oh, who am I kidding? PvP players are bastards. But some of us, at least, are nice bastards.
BG Hero tracks your battleground activity
I'm really impressed with BG Hero. We take a look at these stats sites pretty often, but I have never seen a site targeted strictly at PvP data like this one, and with such a clean and interesting view. Unfortunately, it's still getting off the ground, so we're probably going to give the server a run for its money with this link, but give it a few days and head back there when they've smoothed things out.It'll track your plays and wins in each BG, obviously, but you can also get a whole bunch of graphs and numbers about how you're doing each time you play, including HKs per BG, and killing blows per battleground that you play. The app also tracks your totals daily and weekly, so if you get your character in there and let it update over a period of time, you can see just how you're doing. Pretty amazing stuff if you've been playing a lot of battlegrounds lately (and with the extra XP in there, why wouldn't you?). We're told the site is still being worked on, so expect more updates soon (and Phood is keeping info flowing on his blog), but in the meantime, it looks like a great way to look at your BG progress in more detail.
Meeting the goal of 100,000 honorable kills
Tipster Tomek sent us a note about his friend Zbijmnie of EU Vek'nilash, to see if, at level 49, he might be one of the lowest level players to every hit the goal of 100,000 honorable kills for the achievement, but after looking around for a bit, I've found the achievement is pretty commonplace. Because the count actually started way back when HKs were first added to the game (and not when achievements were), lots of people have picked up the seemingly gigantic number already. In fact, here's a level 19 who did it right when he logged into the expansion for the first time (which means he had killed 100,000 people even before patch 3.0.2.Which is kind of a shame -- after Gears of War's "Seriously" achievement (to kill 10,000 enemies) was met, they added a "Seriously 2.0" to the sequel (to kill 100,000 enemies), and that one's been met as well.So in retrospect, getting 100,000 HKs isn't too hard -- even if you got one every second, it'd really only take you about a day of playtime, which is probably a lot less than a month of realtime, depending on how long you play for and how good a player you are. Maybe in the next achievement update we'll see a really impossible goal for players to work on: 10 million mobs killed? 10,000 instances run? A million players looted in the battlegrounds? There's got to be something in the game that seems impossible for someone crazy out there to work on.
The Art of War(craft): Battleground Achievements part II
Last week we took a look at some of the Battlegrounds Achievements that can be unlocked in Wrath of the Lich King and examined how they could change the game for the better. Goal-oriented Battlegrounds PvP is certainly something to look forward to in this age of mindless fighting in the mid-field or roads. Having Achievements certainly make it prone to the glory hounds, but it also helps to keep everyone's eyes on the prize.Eye of the StormBecause it's a new Battleground not associated with any faction (which makes me feel like I'm not fighting for anything worthy), there's no reputation to be gained and no associated gear to be obtained. This means that there are virtually no retroactive Achievements for the Eye of the Storm. There is the basic Achievement of Eye of the Storm Victory, which all but the most hapless and luckless of combatants will get. There is the Eye of the Storm Veteran iteration, which requires 100 wins in the Battleground. Not quite as easy to get, but most of us will get there eventually.
Alterac Valley, the Battle-less Battleground
So much for Alterac Valley. With the Battleground Holiday this weekend, it was expected that a lot of players would be queuing up to farm their Honor points. I had looked forward to a lot of combat and hopefully rack up those Honorable Kills in the hopes of inching closer to the magic 100,000 number for a future Achievement. I know I said Alterac Valley was the place to farm HKs. Well, I was wrong.Alterac Valley is the Battleground to join if you want to avoid PvP. I've been part of countless Alterac Valley races before, but these past few days have been ridiculous. Not only do players ride past each other -- that's expected in races -- but in the times I have engaged, players even run away. If they had Achievements already in the game, I would have unlocked The Sickly Gazelle over and over.
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.
Breakfast Topic: Who's got the most HKs?
Everyone knows you can see your total lifetime Honorable Kills on your Armory profile. Most people know this number only shows up if you have at least 1,337 HKs (ha). But does anyone know who has the highest ever number of HKs? This simple question was the topic of Drifter's (US-Runetotem-H) thread on the forums; so far, the biggest anyone's found is 341,462, on a druid named Kuroma from US-Daggerspine-A. Can anyone beat that? Armory links or it didn't happen.Update: We have a new champion already! Theplague, of EU-Frostmane H, with 411,701. Anyone want to step up to that?Update 2: Fartzwrgoben (does that name mean anything?) of EU-Perenolda-A, a subtlety Rogue, handily tops that with an astonishing 560,878!
