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WoW, Casually: Darkmoon Faire profiteering and Arathi Basin revisited
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.Happy 2008! To begin the new year we have some PvP action and a little Faire fun. First with the PvP, the Call to Arms this weekend is for Arathi Basin. This means that queues should be shorter and honor gain should be more plentiful when fighting for your faction in Arathi Basin this weekend. When I say that the honor is more plentiful, it really isn't that much more. As I learned, to my disappointment, the Call to Arms weekends don't add much in the way of bonus honor. Normally, you get the equivalent of 1 kill (20.9 honor at level 70) for every 330 resources acquired in AB. This weekend, you will get 1 kill for every 200 resources. This equates to about 82 extra honor if you win a level 70 game.
Fired for a screenshot
Reader Marc sent us this story of why he got fired-- just by reading it you can tell that there were probably other things going on the workplace, and the good news is that he sounds like he's better off looking for another job, but basically there was a misunderstanding at work, and as a result he was sent home for a half day. And to show his (sarcastic) thanks, he emailed back the screenshot above of his Tauren hanging around a node in AB, complete with MS Paint-ed gratitude to his co-workers and boss.Of course, as you might expect, the next time he showed up at work, they asked him to pack his things and go (apparently, even though one of his managers was impressed with his HP, they considered the screenshot sending the last nail in the coffin).We can't exactly advise anyone to quit their job to play WoW, but in this case, Marc sounds like he was on his way out the door anyway. Here's hoping you land on your feet and find a job where they appreciate you, bud.
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): Idyllic Arathi Basin
All political leaders love resources. In fact, most wars are waged because of them. Most of them must've read Sun Tzu, who once wrote, "a wise General makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store." The leaders of the Forsaken Defilers and the League of Arathor must've had The Art of War in their battle chests, too, since they've been at odds for some time now over the resource-rich Arathi Basin. Unlike Alterac Valley, where one of the goals is to destroy enemy resources, Arathi Basin is all about taking them.Arathi Basin is the third Battleground to be introduced in World of Warcraft, a few patches after Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley. Situated in Arathi Highlands, the basin is the cause of conflict between the Horde-aligned Defilers and the League, who are loyal to the Alliance. The Battleground is a 15-player map consisting of five nodes that can be captured to acquire resources -- the Blacksmith, Farm, Gold Mine, Lumber Mill, and Stables. Each node has a clickable flag that allows your team to capture it; it takes 10 seconds to tag a flag, and tagged flags will convert to your side in one minute. The objective of the game is to be the first team to reach 2000 resources -- If you control a node, your team will accumulate resources. The more nodes you control, the more resources you get at a faster rate. Players can enter Arathi Basin as early as level 20, but the real fun starts at levels 40 and 60 -- when players get apprentice and journeyman Riding skills, respectively. Any sooner and Arathi Basin usually ends up being a lot of running and a little fighting. If you're in the mood to play WoW's version of king of the hill, head over to your nearest Battlemaster and enlist. And don't forget to pack your Riding Crop. You'll need it.
WoW, Casually: December 7 - 13 activities and making cash
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.This week I want to talk about how and why we should be making some in-game cash, but first let's get the schedule out of the way.Darkmoon Faire: It's still going on in Elwynn Forest, just south of Goldshire. This weekend is your last chance to turn your stuff in, redeem tickets or just get shot out of a cannon.Arathi Basin: The Call to Arms is for Arathi Basin this weekend, meaning shorter queues for getting bonus honor and your AB marks. If you are Alliance, this forum post is great for all BG strategy . If you are Horde, like me, well then you can wait until Zach posts his Arathi Basin strategy or just go back and read my brief summary.Battlegrounds: If you are trying to get a complete set of the Season 1 gear (and if not, why aren't you?), you should be doing a little bit of Battlegrounds a day. I try to do the BG Daily quests every day, not so much for the honor, but to force myself to get the marks from the different BGs. The fact is that I am a huge AV fan which means I have the marks for hats and gloves and that's it. Do as I say, not as I do and stuff.
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?
Time shifting
I've posted before about my insomnia and how it affects my WoW play: last night was a key example, as I ground AB marks on my Tauren Warrior, then ran Durnholde Keep on my Draenei Shaman, then went back to Arathi Basin on the bull until server shutdown. When I play in the afternoon or evenings, my PvP experience tends to be mostly positive, with the Horde winning about as many games as we lose and giving a good showing for ourselves even when we do lose. Last night was not like that. Instead, it was the Alliance rolling over us like a crimson zerg, crushing our faces into the dirt, every AB mark I managed to collect soaked with the blood and tears of a demoralized force that actually cheered on the eventual five caps as a mercy killing. As you might expect I found it frustrating enough that I took the time off to go run an instance on my Ally shammy, which went well enough... basically it was four 70's and a 69 (me) burning our way through Durnholde Keep, remarkably little strategy or tactical application of our abilities, very much the kind of 'Hulk Smash' run I usually hate. And I hated this one, too, as they talked to Thrall before I had a chance to and so I didn't get to finish the quest, so I'll have to go back there again to get that done.
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: Of Arathi Basin, the Faire and patch 2.3
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.Those of us who are playtime-challenged usually have more time to play on the weekend than we do during the week, so I will tend to favor weekend activities in this column. This weekend has a lot of fun stuff for the various types of casual player.Are you into farming mobs for drops or leveling your Blacksmithing, Leatherworking or Engineering? Then you'll be happy to know that the Darkmoon Faire is still in Terokkar Forest until Monday. Last week, we talked about what to gather to exchange at the Faire for tickets. If you want the full list, WoWWiki has all the info you need. Of course, the Darkmoon Faire isn't all about the bling bling. You can also shoot yourself out of a cannon or chase a kid around so that he can sell you pet frogs. And there's beer. But if the bling bling is really what you're after, you can also collect the Darkmoon Decks and turn them in for some serious purplez, but I haven't found that too easy as a casual player.
WoWWiki reaches 45,000 articles
Kirkburn from the great WoWWiki (I like their one line description of us, and yes we do link to them all the time) writes to tell us that they have cracked 45,000 articles on their site as of last night. From Arathi Basin to Zul'jin, they now have over 45,000 articles on everything having to do with World of Warcraft. Congrats to them!I've only ever created one over there (and it was for a joke), but all of us here at WoW Insider have nothing but respect for all the diligent archivists over at the Wiki. They have a terrific resource over there, and it is as clear an authority as they come, especially on a lot of the lore and background information on the game. Great job, all, on 45,000 articles, and keep up the good work.Kirkburn also tells there are updates due over there as well-- sometime before the end of the year, they're planning an update to MediaWiki 1.11. And they're also going to incorporate more with the Wikia network, which runs all kinds of niche wikis like this one, by creating a single logon across all the sites. Sounds like things are jumping over at WoWWiki, and we're glad to hear it.
Patch 2.3: Twinks become gods
As you know, in patch 2.3, many of the previously ho-hum mid-level dungeon drops are set to actually become useful, worth the trip you make to go get them in the dungeon (in most cases). Overall, this is a blessing for players everywhere, either starting out with their first characters, or leveling up long-forgotten alts.Twinks, however, are going to become a much greater nuisance than they were before. Some of their old items are going to be upgraded by default as the new patch comes in and the old items all around the world get replaced with the new. New twinks, however, will have the privilege of setting their sights on the best of the best items for their particular class and level bracket, putting an even further distance between them and other players who just want to enjoy a bit of PvP as they level up. This is particularly true with new low-level epics such as the Deadman's Hand which, at level 29, seems designed to be the pet dream of twinks everywhere, regardless of race or class. Does Blizzard intend to support twinking? And what's the whole point of twinking anyway?
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?
More battlegrounds in our future?
Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley have been part of World of Warcraft since way back in June 2005 (patch 1.5). That's given us all plenty of time to play both of those battlegrounds until we know every inch of the map by heart and could capture the flag (or, in the case of AV, the bunkers/graveyards/etc) with our eyes closed. Arathi Basin is a bit newer than that, released with patch 1.7 in September 2005, but by now, even its most dedicated fans have had a chance to play it to death. And even the most recent battleground, Eye of the Storm, has been in the game for nearly seven months. Doesn't running the same maps endlessly get old at some point? And doesn't the battleground system deserve a little love?Well, Nethaera lets us know that there are more battlegrounds in our future (though she can't tell us precisely when), but that Blizzard is concerned about longer queue times that could result from giving players wanting to participate in the battlegrounds a fifth choice. For my part, I think even some new maps for the existing battlegrounds could liven them up some.
Blizzard announces level 70 PvP weapon rewards
In my continuing quest to explore the PvP side of things, I've often been wondering if I should've been saving my honor for level 70 rewards. I had no idea what kinds of things would be coming out of the BG's for my little orc hunter until now. Blizzard has updated a lot of PvP information today. For each individual battleground, you'll notice the elimination of faction requirements (no more friendly, revered, or exalted rquired), and the changes in pricing from gold to honor points and pvp tokens. For general PvP weapon rewards, the list has been expanded upward to level 70, and includes a lot of new weapons. Check out the new information at the links below:
