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Perfect Ten: Game franchises that became MMOs
Popular franchises have been known to jump between various entertainment media, from games to television to movies to comic books and even to pogs. We should not gasp in utter amazement that this is also the case with many of our beloved MMOs; we should nod sagely and accept the terrible truth. There are several video game franchises that have culminated in -- or at least have taken a detour through -- the land of MMOs. For gamers who wanted more and especially did not want to see their journey end, an MMO continuation is a welcome answer that's usually hiding its own problems. But nevermind that; let's march down the halls of history and see the yearbook photos of these franchises when they were young!
Dragon's Prophet patch adds arenas, evolution, and compendium
Three is a good number, especially when it comes to the number of big new features in a patch. If you want triple your patching value, then head over to Dragon's Prophet, where the team added three significant systems this past week. First on the docket for the patch are dragon arenas, where players can form a team of three dragons to fight others' teams. Next is the new evolution system, which allows for dragons to learn an additional skill. Finally, the compendium compiles all of the information and statistics related to dragons captured and those still untamed. The patch contains plenty of bug fixes and tweaks, so give the notes a read for the full scoop.
Changes to Honor earned in certain Battlegrounds
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted today in the official forums about some changes to honor earned in several different battlegrounds. His full post is, as ever after the break. The devs have concluded that players are earning too little honor in various different battlegrounds, specifically Arathi Basin, Battle for Gilneas, Eye of the Storm, Silvershard Mines, Warsong Gulch, Twin Peaks, and Strand of the Ancients. All other battlegrounds remain unchanged. While these aren't huge changes, which is to be expected given that they're arriving via Hotfix, every little helps. The jist of the changes is that the periodic honor earned in points-based BGs in the list above will be earned faster, so you'll get bonus honor every 130 points as opposed to 260. This is altered for Silvershard, where it's every 200, as opposed to 265. The flag capture battlegrounds will see the Focused Assault debuff applied faster in an effort to make them shorter, and there's a bonus for capture prevention. Strand will give a bonus for destroying gates, or preventing their destruction. Whether this will be enough to replace the most efficient methods of farming honor -- Krasarang rares, Isle of Thunder PvP dailies, Grizzly Hills quest and JP conversion -- remains to be seen. I suspect not, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
Transform yourself in Eclipse War Online's closed beta February 25th
A game that lets players transform into the mobs they kill? If you've got to see it to believe it, Eclipse War Online is opening its closed beta doors from February 25th to March 11th. All interested players have to do to get access to the beta is become a member of Playrohan.com, then watch the official Facebook page and Twitter for the exact times the servers open. Besides collecting transformation cards from monsters, players can also participate in PvP in arena mode or in the three-lane AOS mode (complete with minions and towers). If you just want just a bit more challenge to your PvE instead, know that time of day, geographic location, and predator/prey status affect gameplay in Eclipse War Online. [Source: Playwith Interactive press release]
Warlords of Draenor PvP: Everything is awesome!
I was already excited for PvP in Warlords of Draenor. I was already looking forward to the stat squish and the ability squish and the changes to casting while moving and the lowering of CC. Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been tweeting about the internal testing in 6.0 environments, and I was already excited. You had me at the squish, Blizzard. You already had me. And now, the latest PvP blog's arrival has basically blown my mind. If you missed it, WoW Insider published a short summary of the key changes. Skirmishes are in, Trial of the Gladiator is out. Spectator invitations are in, for wargames, as well as an API allowing addon creators to build interfaces around the invitations. And all these are really, really exciting changes. Before you accuse me of being overly positive, I've been critical of PvP this expansion, highly critical in places, because I think it's had real problems. And it has -- it's fair to say that Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion of experimentation for PvP, and as is often the case with experiments, some are more successful than others.
PvP plans change for WoW's Warlords of Draenor
After listening to the World of Warcraft community's concerns about the previously announced PvP arena plans, Blizzard has scrapped its original Trial of the Gladiator idea for Warlords of Draenor. Instead, the expansion will feature a return of Skirmishes and the addition of War Games. Skirmishes will be for unranked arena battles of 2v2 and 3v3 that players can queue for either as a team or solo; defeating the other team will net the victors Honor and another bonus (such as gold, more Honor, or Conquest points). While Skirmishes are meant to be more relaxed, the War Games are all about the competition. Utilizing a new Spectator Invite System, match organizers can invite two teams (who will all be wearing Tournament Mode gear to promote equal footing) to battle it out in front of a live audience -- all members of the organizers party will be able to watch the match.
Warlords of Draenor: PvP rework brings back Skirmishes, adds Spectator Invites
Blizzard posted a blog today that should make every PvPer really excited. It seems like they have shifted their thinking away from the proposed rework of the ladders and gone to a more inclusive feel, with a nod towards tournament organizers getting an easier ride too. What are the changes? Let's spell it out: Trial of the Gladiator is gone, removed. This is due to concerns about the proposed system. Skirmishes, un-rated arenas which you can solo-queue for or do with friends in 2v2 and 3v3, are in. Skirmishes reward honor and have the chance to award a bag containing gold, more honor, a small amount of conquest points or something else entirely A Spectator Invite system has been added, allowing players to put Wargames together and invite spectators. This is specifically aimed at tournament organizers, but could be a boon for streamers or casual observers in parties with players doing wargames. Tournament gear is in for Wargames only. Why should you be excited? Well, Skirmishes for one. These casual games allow players to try out arena by themselves, another solo-queue option that WoW PvP has sorely needed for some time, since Skirmishes were replaced with Wargames when Cataclysm launched. Not to mention earning honor from them! While many PvPers have allowed themselves to dream about Skirmishes' return, I don't think any of us ever dreamed we could earn honor from them! What's more, the addition of Spectator Invites and Tournament gear makes it far, far easier for would-be tournament organizers to put contests together. We can all hope to see more and more Arena tournaments coming out of the woodwork with these additions!
You're bad at WoW, and so am I
Blizzard Community Manager Lore recently posted a brief reply in an excellent thread, which brought up a topic I've wanted to address for some time: how it's OK to suck sometimes. While I'm not going to copy his two posts here, he talks about arenas, discussing how, when he and his team lose, he looks back and tries to work out where things went wrong, and what he could have done to help. He also discusses the merits of doing things like recording matches, to replay and examine what went wrong. While the option of recording your WoW play may not be open to everyone, self-examination is. And it's something we can all afford to do. None of us ever play perfectly, we are not robots. But the key to becoming better is to admit that, to see our failings, and to improve upon them. Sometimes it's you Sometimes it is. Sometimes you'll lose an arena or wipe in a raid because of someone else's error -- your tanks messed up the switching, or the person who had a debuff failed to perform correctly. Even in those situations, it's good to think back and wonder whether your performance was optimal. Sure, you weren't the reason why your team wiped or lost, but what more could you have done to perform well on your own personal scale?
PvP Season 14 end confirmed, patch 5.4.7 likely February 18
The official World of Warcraft Twitter account just confirmed the end of PvP Season 14 would take place as estimated, on Tuesday February 18. PvP Season 14 is currently scheduled to conclude with next week's standard realm maintenance. Good luck! http://t.co/MxsaULpaE1 - World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) February 15, 2014 As Brian Holinka has tweeted in the past, the end of the PvP season has, in recent instances, indicated the release of the coinciding patch. Throughout Mists of Pandaria, this is the pattern that has been followed, so it seems likely that patch 5.4.7 will be no exception. You can check out all our patch 5.4.7 coverage in the meantime. WoW Insider also put together a short guide to what you should be doing to prepare for the end of the PvP season, so get those wins in for that mount, cap out that honor by killing those rares, and be ready!
Preparing for PvP season 15
Back on February 4th, we had the warning that PvP season 14, the current season, could end as soon as two weeks from that date. Well, it's now ten days from February 4th, and we've had no announcement that the season end is delayed. So, assuming the season will end on February 18th, how should prudent PvPers prepare for the season end, and season 15? First up, save your honor, spend your conquest if you can get upgrades. The caps are working just the same, so all conquest will be turned into honor, and all honor will be retained up to a cap of 4,000. So if you have 2,000 honor and 2,000 conquest, you'll have 4,000 honor. If you have 5,000 honor, you'll end up with 4,000 honor and a bit of silver. If you have 5,000 conquest, you'll end up with 4,000 honor and a bit of silver. The good news is that this season's 522 conquest gear will be available for honor. The bad news is that the 496 honor gear won't be available to crafters, as Holinka confirmed. Makes sense, as the Timeless Isle gear would be even more irrelevant than it will become! In more bad news, the Krasarang rares are being nerfed to drop honor only once per day, so that farming method is gone come the patch. If you need to cap out before the patch, they're the most efficient way.
Totem Talk: Falling in love with PVP Healing
Every other week, WoW Insider brings you Totem talk for the shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. With the end of season 14 announced, and the imminent arrival of Patch 5.4.7, I thought I would take some time and get involved in some PVP action. I've always had a fondness for PVP, but raiding always took so much of my time in game, that between out of game things and raiding I just didn't have the time to invest into any amount of PVP. That's changed with a new guild, a new raiding schedule and a new work schedule out of game, so when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to start PVPing again, well I jumped at the chance. While I'm not nearly as well versed in PVP as my fellow shaman of awesomeness Oliva Grace, I still manage to have a lot of fun in both Arenas and Battle Grounds. That said, I've been away from the PVP scene for a while, not setting foot in an arena since the middle of Cataclysm. I thought I would share my experiences and thoughts from this past week.
Does PvP need more queueing options?
WoW Insider received a question to our tip line from a player who's lost their way a little when it comes to PvP: I greatly enjoyed PvP during Cata, but I just haven't been able to get into it during MoP at all. I'm part of a small guild (4 active players), and none of them enjoy PvP. Since I usually have to go it alone, I have a preference for the larger BGs -- AV and Isle. It's easier to be a part of the crowd where individuals carry less weight, but still feel useful and able to help in the smaller skirmishes along the way. PvE has several queuing options -- LFR, Flex (with a group), Scenarios, regular dungeons and heroics. There's a size and activity for everyone. PvP on the other hand has BGs (random or rated) or arena. While not quite adding more options, do you think Blizzard may consider separating out the BGs into different sized-based queues?
Why do we still have separate PvP and PvE gear?
While seeking out questions to a Queue I wrote, I was asked by a Twitter follower why we had separate PvE and PvP gear in the first place. A question I love, and that I wouldn't be able to respond to briefly enough for The Queue. I'm not going to go into a complete, exhaustive history of PvP gear. For starters, I didn't play in Classic, so I can't really comment on the gear then, but I gather that there was a lot more overlap between the two. Then, with Burning Crusade, back in 2006, the combat rating system and Resilience were both introduced, along with arenas. PvP gear was born. It's been through many different iterations since then -- too easy to get, too hard to get, too bad for PvE, too good for PvE, different effects, stat budgets, you name it. But history, while it merits repetition, shouldn't have too much bearing on this question in today's game.
Patch 5.4.7 PTR: 5 minute Dampening reverted to 10 minutes for 3v3 and 5v5
Community Manager Lore has delivered some news to the official forums that has made me rather cheerful. Lore After some additional discussion, we've decided to make this change only apply in the 2v2 bracket. Dampening will remain at 10 minutes in 3v3 and 5v5 arenas. source I've been posting a lot about this potential change, since Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted about it a while back when changes went in by accident after BlizzCon. And while I am still not a fan of the change, I can agree with it way more in 2v2 than in 3v3 or 5v5. Why is that? Well, in 2v2, especially in healer-DPS versus healer-DPS, matches can go on longer, and even result in draws far more often than in the other sizes. Simply, a healer is not designed to be easily killable by a single DPS. As a result, it's harder work to take them down in 2v2. I won't pretend that I like the Dampening system, but it's better at 5 minutes in 2v2 for (hopefully) just one season. What we don't know yet is just how far it will go.
What do Battleground win-loss numbers really tell us?
MMO Champion recently posted an interesting graph indicating win-loss percentages for the different battlegrounds from different factions. Now, they were clear, as any good data gatherers should be, that their data isn't perfect. It's very hard for anyone except Blizzard to gather perfect data on these sorts of things, and MMOC made no bones about it. Nonetheless, Blizzard's Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka confirmed over the weekend that they were representative of the trends: @Demonflavor The general trend looks accurate. We've done this comparison in RBGs to see if those maps have imbalances (they don't). - Holinka (@holinka) January 20, 2014 It's interesting to note that Holinka is quick to dispel the notion that maps are imbalanced. But let's look at the ones completely outside the RBG rotation for a moment. Isle of Conquest (IoC) is a really interesting one. It's one that it is definitely easier for Alliance to win, thanks to how the Docks is marginally closer to their base than to the Horde one, but in no way does it account for that magnitude of difference. Indeed, looking back at MMOC's 2011 figures tells a very different story. What this tells us is which battlegrounds Horde downvote. Horde have a minor disadvantage in IoC, and so the experienced PvPers will downvote it. This means that the Horde players who are in IoC are often newer players, less likely to be able to stop the Alliance Docks-->Glaives-->Win strategy.
Star Trek Online adds small craft arena PvP
Fans of flying around in small spaceships and shooting at other, equally small spaceships are due for a treat in Star Trek Online. Cryptic Studios has just unveiled a new PvP arena mode for the game that focuses on pitched small craft combat. Due to the popularity of small craft PvP via community events and Star Trek Online's private PvP queue, the development team designed to go ahead and implement an official queue into the game. The arena is available to level 50 players and takes place in the Cracked Planetoid map. Each match lasts until one team earns 15 kills. Expertise and energy credits will be awarded to all teams, as will credit toward daily arena missions. To be eligible, you must select a default small craft at the nearest shipyard. Small craft PvP is set to launch with Season 8.5 on January 30th, 2014. You can check it out now on the STO test server.
How can Blizzard improve Honor with Warlords?
If you read my recent initial PvP gearing post, you'll know that we're in a bit of a strange situation right now with earning honor. Honor points are the points for the mid-level PvP gear, where the entry level is crafted gear and the top level is Conquest gear. They are currently not earned at their best rate via PvP. Instead, in order to maximise your Honor point gains and gear up with Honor gear as quickly as possible, players would be best advised to do a few different things. First up, you should farm the three rares in the opposing faction's Krasarang base. They drop 275 honor per kill, more if you have a Guild Standard or similar. Their respawn time averages out at around 30 minutes. There are sometimes oQueue realm-hopping groups, which, while frowned upon by many, are the most efficient ways to farm them. Other than that you should do Wintergrasp and Tol Barad whenever they're up, they're usually deserted and an easy way to get some fast honor. And if that all seems too much waiting around doing nothing, then you can farm Justice Points by running heroic dungeons, and converting them to honor. Yes that was changed with patch 5.4 to be less efficient, but it's still far more reliable than what you should be doing: random battlegrounds. Yes, your first win of the day is worth getting, it nets you conquest points too, but if it takes you five tries to win one, you're wasting your time.
Four reasons why PvP Dampening shouldn't start at 5 minutes
This is something I discussed, in vague and mysterious exchanges, with Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka on Twitter. While he certainly didn't confirm that Dampening would be moved to starting at 5 minutes, like it was at the BlizzCon tournament, he certainly implied that that was something the devs were considering. For the uninitiated, Dampening is a debuff currently applied to all arena players after 10 minutes of a match that reduces their healing and absorbs by 1% every 10 seconds. @Topikal @holinka As mentioned in my article on it, I'm concerned about Dampening potentially moving to 5 mins with S15. Do not want. - Olivia Grace (@oliviadgrace) January 9, 2014 @Topikal @oliviadgrace I was addressing the claim that I was live testing WoD PvP changes with my statement. You may be sad still Olivia. - Holinka (@holinka) January 9, 2014 Now, first and foremost, I have to make it very clear that on a purely personal level unrelated to game design, I dislike this debuff immensely. I dislike the change in power, I dislike knowing that as a PvP healer, no matter how carefully and efficiently I play, my effectiveness will decrease and decrease as the match continues. It's a horrible feeling, and I think Brian Holinka was right, way back in May 2012, when he said the devs "didn't really like the idea of your power changing over time" in response to a tweet asking for an ever-increasing Battle Fatigue. And yet, here we are.
Warlords of Draenor: PvP Power's proposed re-design
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been posting up a storm in the PvP forums, talking about the proposed redesign to PvP Power with Warlords of Draenor. There's also another post after the break. Lore Quote: If you guys are doing as much number tinkering as you claim I don't know why you wouldn't take this opportunity to rethink pvp power altogether I'm all for differentiating gear but I find it pretty silly that a stat called "pvp power" exists at all. We are planning to revisit PvP Power in Warlords. Our current thinking is that, instead of a flat percentage increase to your normal damage/healing in PvP (as it is currently), it'll be a bonus amount of your spec's primary stat (Strength, Agility, or Intellect). Here's an example with some completely made-up numbers: lets say a piece of gear has 80 Strength and 30 PvP Power on it. In a PvP environment, that would total out to be 110 Strength. Meanwhile, an equivalent piece of PvE gear might only have 100 Strength on it. Again, those numbers are purely hypothetical, but hopefully it illustrates the idea. That change accomplishes a couple of things for us. First, it lets us keep PvP and PvE item levels closer together, while still ensuring that PvP gear remains best for PvP and vice versa. It also "demystifies" PvP Power quite a bit; a percentage-based increase can be hard to really quantify without a lot of math, but raw stats are much easier to understand. As to the name, we can talk about it, but part of why we chose the term "PvP Power" to begin with was that it makes it extremely obvious that the stat only functions inside PvP environments. We want to be sure that players who purchase PvP gear know that it's going to be less effective in PvE situations. I'll bring it up, though :) source
Warlords of Draenor: More on PvP damage and potential Resilience removal
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted on the official US forums in response to a thread about PvP target dummies. He also, in doing so, ha added some more detail to the changes to Battle Fatigue and Base Resilience that Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted about late last week. Lore Great suggestion. I'll be sure to bring it up with the team :) That said, we're doing a lot of retuning of how health works in comparison to incoming damage in Warlords, with the hope that we won't need (or can significantly lessen the effects of) things like Battle Fatigue or Base Resilience. If all goes well, there shouldn't be as nearly as substantial of a difference between PvE and PvP damage output. Still, it's a great suggestion, and there will likely still be at least a small difference (due to PvP Power if nothing else), so I'll make sure to pass it on. source So it looks like the way Blizzard might be trying to work Resilience and Battle Fatigue out of the game is to rework how health is tuned relative to incoming damage. Maybe, as Celestalon has tweeted in the past, the way that stamina converts to health could be altered, allowing PvPers a larger health pool. The problem is, of course, that at the moment the damage output in PvE is necessarily higher than that in PvP. Players don't have the health pools of raid bosses, and there's an eternal arms race to generate bigger numbers in PvE that means player abilities hit way harder. I've seen Chaos Bolts crit for huge numbers, often over 1m. My PvP characters have around 550k health on a good day. This is the issue that Resilience and, as a result of having to heal raid damage, Battle Fatigue are there to fix. While I really hope that Blizzard can repair the issues they have right now, I am glad they're not removing resilience completely just yet.
