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Potential traffic jams in WotLK
Adding up all the traffic jams in World of Warcraft would probably make an insightful list-- I can remember some crazy days in Ironforge, a huge mess near the battlegrounds when they first opened, a lot of clustering during the AQ World Event, and anyone who logged on in the early days of Burning Crusade knows that Hellfire Peninsula was a laggy mess as well.But Blizzard claims, once again, that they've finally learned their lesson, and in Wrath of the Lich King, things will be different. Shattrath will be designed to stay up in the air (even if landed on by thousands of players), and when we played the expansion at BlizzCon earlier this year, we already saw one way Blizzard plans to split the load: Horde and Alliance players are starting at different zones on different sides of the continent.I doubt things will be perfect-- it seems like players always think of some way to ruin even the best laid plans of Blues and men. But we can say this about Blizzard-- they are visibly learning from every iteration they release. It'll be really interesting to see what they've come up with to improve upon the expansion experience in Northrend.
WoW, Casually: The best gear for the least play-time
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.As the title says, we're going to talk about gear today, but first, let's talk about the events for the week. Starting Friday, it's Warsong Gulch for the Call to Arms weekend. This means shorter queues for those of you (like me) who need WSG marks for purchasing gear. It also means bonus honor, but I get more honor out of Alterac Valley than I do out of WSG bonus honor weekends. So get out there and earn some WSG marks, but please, don't waste everyone's time by fighting in the middle. You should be doing one of the following: Getting the flag: It's amazing how often the stubborn "run past everyone, get the flag and run out" tactic works. And if you die and drop the flag? Someone else has a chance to pick it up in a less defended place. Protecting the flag carrier: Heal, stun, root, sheep, kill -- do whatever you can to keep the flag carrier healthy and unmolested. Stop the other team's flag carrier: Even if you aren't a mighty DPS class, you can still do a lot to get back the flag. Root, stun, slow, etc. It's a team effort and often the best thing you can do is keep the flag carrier in place while everyone else finishes him off.
PvP reward inflation leaves newcomers in the dust
Ever since Arena Season 3 started, it seems as though everyone else in the battlegrounds has mostly epic gear. I myself have just a few now, but strangely I feel less powerful than I did before all the new gear became available. Perhaps a lot of the people I used to beat had been saving up their honor and arena points a lot longer than I had, so now they all out-gear me by a wider margin. Or maybe I've just been unlucky in the teams I've been matched against.Either way, it strikes me that newcomers and casual gamers just now hitting 70 must be having a terrible time in PvP. They sign up for their first matches with their mix of greens and blues, and find themselves like a mouse before lions, with every opponent decked out in the kind of gear they only dream of attaining. Even if they really want to, is there any chance for them to learn how to PvP when they get killed in just a few seconds? Furthermore, even if they have the dedication for it, they may feel like leech on their team, kind of like a level 61 player in Alterac Valley, who knows all to well that he or she can't really contribute that much -- except the newcomer to level 70 is already at the level cap. The only way they can improve at PvP is to somehow get matched up with good enough teams to carry them trough many many battles until they finally have enough points to buy some good gear. If not, they get virtually nil from losing all the time no matter which battleground they join. Of course they may keep losing at the Arenas for a few months until they finally accumulate enough points to buy a few pieces of gear, but in the meantime their opponents are winning and saving up points a lot faster than they are. If there's no way to shape up, can they only ship out? Are the doors of entry into end-game PvP completely shut off in the face of newcomers? If such a person came to me asking what they should do, I could only suggest they try to maintain a positive attitude, keep doing their best, and possibly get new gear from PvE as much as they can. I might also remind them that another expansion is coming next year, which should level the playing field. How would you advise a new level 70 to get into PvP?
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?
Are Daily Quests bad for Battlegrounds?
When the Call to Arms weekends first started for Battlegrounds, there were a lot of complaints about the honor junkies causing losses and generally noobing it up. The regulars were right to a point, playing Battlegrounds on non-honor bonus weekends usually means you are playing with people who know what they are doing. But, in my opinion, because both sides had honor farmers during the Call to Arms weekends, it pretty much evened out.Since Patch 2.3, we have the Battleground Daily Quests. They are great for cash, honor (if it works) and even experience if you aren't max level. They are also easy to get, since you just have to be the qualifying level of the BG in order to do the quest. You don't have to do pre-quests or collect anything -- nothing except win a BG to complete the quest.So now, on weekdays and when other BGs have honor bonuses, questers are infiltrating the games that used to be reserved for the well-practiced BG regulars. The difference between the Daily Quests and the honor bonus weekends is that it is different by realm. During the Call to Arms weekends, everyone has the same Battleground for bonus honor. If your Daily Quest is for Warsong Gulch on your realm, the other realms in your Battlegroup have different BGs for their quests. The noobs may all be on one side, with the other filled with veteran twinks.
Guide to Battleground Daily Quests
I talked about the Battleground Daily Quests in WoW, Casually this week, but I have since found out more information. Here are some need-to-know tidbits about the new BG Daily Quests: You pick up the quests where the Battlemasters are in a major city. The Alliance talk to the Alliance Brigadier General and the Horde talk to the Horde Warbringer. You have to win the Battleground in order to complete the quest. It is not for the collection of marks or completion of any other objective. The Daily Quests are random for each realm. This applies to Regular Dungeon, Heroic Dungeon and Cooking Daily quests as well. So, if the Battleground for the quest is Warsong Gulch on Daggerspine, it does not mean that everyone else in the Battlegroup has the same Daily Quest. [Source: Bornakk]
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.
The Daily Grind: Your best MMOment
What's the best time you've ever had in an MMO? I can think of two really good ones.In Dark Age of Camelot, way back before they introduced New Frontiers, I found the joy of fighting in a battleground. We were playing the one where your group needs to conquer a fortress in the middle of the map (it's been a while, I forget the precise names), and somehow leadership fell to me. I shouted out orders to everyone in the battleground, people actually listened, and we actually took the thing and held it. It was really the first time PvP had actually worked for me and while I've played some good matches since, that was still the most exhilarating.The other great memory is probably downing Hakkar for the first time in World of Warcraft-- I'd been on other raids with my guild (and many raids since), but Zul'Gurub was an instance where I was always in group one, always there for the progress when it was made, and when we finally, after many tries, finished off Hakkar, I really felt like we'd cleaned that instance out and I'd made a big difference in getting it done.What are the best moments you've ever experienced in your time playing MMOs?
More AV changes coming
Big changes are coming to the Alterac Valley battleground in patch 2.3, and, as is often the case with these things, players are already expressing their discontent. Nethaera responded to a thread on the official forums yesterday in order to address such complaints. She reminded everyone that the developers are currently monitoring the changes to AV and are tweaking the honor earned in order to keep the overall gain as similar as possible to the current rate on the live realms.The most interesting part of her post, of course, regards a change being implemented regarding the mechanics of capturing a mine. When a mine is captured by a player, his or her team will be awarded a steady stream of reinforcements. According to Neth, the capturing team will receive about one reinforcement every forty-five seconds or so. Since I haven't played the new AV on the PTR, it's difficult for me to develop an opinion on this change. What do you think?Update: Blizzard poster Salthem has posted a few more details of the change to the mines.
No new WoW Battlegrounds until WotLK
PvP in World of Warcraft isn't perfect, but it is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there are only four Battlegrounds (and the Arena) to choose from at present, so it can get a bit, well ... old after a while. That's why we've been itching for a new one. We've been promised one in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but that's so far away! Will there be another Battleground somewhere in the middle to keep us interested until the WotLK launch?Blizzard rep Nethaera said "no" in a post on the official forums yesterday. Our friends at WoW Insider have previously cited Blizzard's concern over stretching the Battlegroups too thin (thereby increasing queue times) as a reason for the hold-up. This time, though, Nethaera just said the devs at Blizzard are too busy working on patch 2.3 (which includes improvements to the Alterac Valley Battleground) and the expansion, which "includes a new battleground and of course the outdoor pvp zone, Lake Wintergrasp." So how are they going to solve the queue time problem when WotLK ships? Hmm.Well, get comfy, fellow PvP fanatics; it's going to be a long wait before we get something totally new to play with.[Via WoW Insider]
Yes, Virginia, there is an honor cap
Drysc confirms that the 75k honor cap isn't going away, in response to a post on the forums discussing the situation. Since I'm doing it myself, I know full well that a lot of posters are hoarding honor so that they can buy the Season 1 Arena gear as soon as it comes out for the honor system. Drysc points out that with 75,000 honor it's possible to buy the entire armor set whereas the arena is capped much lower, comparatively, and while in the past I've found myself disagreeing with him on this issue we're in synch. If anything, the honor cap is a bit too generous.Honor hoarding for future gear isn't seen as a big problem by Blizzard right now. I would think one of the reasons for that is because they know that the honor cap will keep people from going too insane when the arena gear comes out, and that if the cap wasn't in place then they might well impose a lower one. I'm fairly sure that a whole lot of people are grinding various battlefields with Season Three in mind: I've been running a few arenas and am planning on getting more heavily involved once my wife's hunter has the patch behind it and we can form a 2x2 team. I also know that long-tern arena players are going to sneer at our gear and wipe the floor with us, since they've worked a lot harder to get their season 2 and (eventually) 3 gear and I'll be walking around with stuff I got from running a bunch of AV's. Of course, the goal in starting a 2x2 is that I hope to improve upon that, and I want to use the S1 gear as a base, not as my end goal, but I still don't imagine that folks who have been running the arenas for the past two seasons are particularly impressed by the complaints about the honor cap. What do you think? Too low, too generous, what's your opinion about the honor cap?Edited to add: because folks have asked and it seems pretty relevant, here's our previous post on Season 1 gear available for honor, with links to MMO-Champion. The weapons are included, not just the armor.
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!
The sad state of BG healing
The pic above, via The Nameless One on WoW Ladies LJ, shows you just how bad the state of battlegrounds healing is. In a WSG where she was healing, she topped the healing meter, and second place went to a Warlock. Drain Life and healthstones for the win. They're already OP-- do we really need them topping healing meters, too?Of course, this is just one screengrab from one match, but it's true that healing in the BGs is just plain sad. And it's not surprising why-- there's a huge focus on DPS and taking the other side down in BGs, and there's almost no reward at all for healing. Out of the eight stats listed on that screen, only one of them has anything to do with healing (OK, bonus honor and HKs might get a nice boost if you're a good healer, but at this point, odds are they'd get an even better boost if you're DPS). Healers get all of the damage (since healers are targeted first), and none of the glory.I'm not sure how we can fix this, either-- tracking "average lifespan," as a way of recognizing healers who stay alive? Providing bonus HKs, just for healing? Providing better PvP healing talents and gear? Personally, I love healing the BGs-- I love sitting behind a tree and keeping my faction alive long enough to take the flag or kill the other team. But right now, it's pretty much its own reward. When a Lock takes second place to a Priest in PvP, you know players need a little more incentive to break out the Greater Heals and Healing Waves.
Major Alterac Valley changes coming to Patch 2.3
Blue poster Vaneck announced on the European Forums that Alterac Valley would be undergoing some major gameplay changes in Patch 2.3.In order to emphasize strategy more in AV, they are introducing the concept of "reinforcement count". Both teams will begin with a starting number of reinforcements which can be reduced in various amounts according to what is lost. A team loses when its reinforcement count is reduced to zero. The death of Drek'Thar or Vanndar will still end the game, as all reinforcements will automatically be eliminated. Losing towers and Galvangar or Belinda will cause significant amounts of reinforcements to be lost. And staying alive will now be very important as player deaths will reduce the reinforcement count by one.To quote Vaneck:Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley. More on the AV changes after the jump...
The Light and How to Swing It: PvP Healing Build
Greetings Paladin fans! Once again, we're here to examine the various aspects of one of the most beloved (and reviled) classes in the World of Warcraft. This week we're looking into the mechanics behind healing in a PvP situation. Reader Draeth from Deathwing wrote in recently to ask why so many successful Paladin PvP healing builds are 41/20/0 (or some variation thereof).The 41/20 is quite common for Paladin healers that are interested in maximizing their chances for survival in Arenas and other PvP venues, and there's a number of reasons why...
Does the Horde really win every battleground?
I hear it constantly from my Alliance friends... Horde always win in battlegrounds! The Alliance is seriously gimped and never manages any success. The conversation then goes on to blame specific racial abilities or terrain issues that cause the battleground to favor the Horde. And then I go chat with my Horde friends, and those of them who PvP can't get over how unbalanced the battlegrounds are. The Alliance always win! How will they ever collect enough tokens to buy that trinket when all the Alliance has to do is...By this point, my eyes will have glazed over and I'll be trying to remember which of my alts are unguilded and unknown so I can play in blessed peace and quiet. But sometimes it makes me wonder... why do both sides feel that the other is dominating in battlegrounds? Does either side dominate in battlegrounds? And this afternoon, Kalgan has hopped on the forums to provide an answer to my question:...generally speaking the win/loss percentages for WSG, AB, EotS generally fall somewhere around 55% to 45% on any given day (with Alliance also represented on the higher side).... AV has gone through greater swings, with alliance winning as much as 75 to 80% of battles (NA servers again as an example) before patch 2.2 and horde winning about 60% so far after 2.2. When asked about trends over the past month or year, Kalgan replied that they were about the same. Much as I suspected -- a lot of winning and losing is a perception issue.
Battleground and Arena instability across all realms
Are Battlegrounds and Arenas your favorite things to do in-game? Well, for today at least you may want to reconsider. Both US and EU realms are reporting problems with Battlegrounds and Arenas that are causing players to get stuck inside after the Battleground or Arena has finished. Having not heard of any issues with PvP yesterday, I've got to wonder if this might have something to do with the hotfixes applied early this morning. (Though I don't have any details on what the hotfixes were applied to fix -- it could have been related to voice chat -- rolling restarts to apply them started in the US at 5:00 AM PDT and ended at 7:20 AM PDT -- with the initial post about Battleground and Arena issues coming at 7:25 AM PDT, the timing is suspicious.) Though Blizzard is working on the problem, we don't yet have any information on when the issue may be resolved, but until then, EU CM Aeus says that if you're stuck in a Battleground or Arena, you may safely escape by either exiting and restarting your game client or by entering /afk (which, if done when the Battleground is finished, should kick you out without marking you as a deserter).
Breakfast Topic: AFK debuff
I got the idea for this breakfast topic when I saw the following two posts virtually back-to-back in the WoW forums: Reporting AFK'ers - a Pleasant Surprise, and AFK Reporting System Broken And Abused. The former tells the story of the AFK system going well, all the AFKers being removed from the game, and the Horde going on to win. The latter is from the perspective of a player who was erroneously flagged AFK, and asks for several changes to be made, including a limit to the number of AFK reports a player can make in a given amount of time. (It turns out that limit, while not user-visible, is already in place.)So there are obviously some diverging perspectives on this AFK debuff system thing. What do you all think of it, having had a couple days to check it out?
Whoops, I'm level 20
If you've ever been ganked by a twink in 10-19 WSG, you might chuckle at poor Neflm's predicament. He accidentally leveled his Witching Stave-wielding Warlock twink to 20. Apparently all it takes to kick a twink out of the battlegrounds... is 200 experience.Of course, this is exactly what that XP toggle is for, if Blizzard ever chooses to implement it. Or if you want to go the other direction, you could just award experience in the BGs, which would definitely put a stop to twinking forever (and make Neflm's problem much more common).But he can't be too distraught-- even if he's accidentally leveled his 19 twink to 20, there's always the chance to be a terror at 20-29. As even he says, in the comments, "at least Stonetalon should be a cakewalk."
Why can't the Alliance win in Battlegrounds?
Recently, Phaelia over at Resto4Life wrote an article about a specific aspect of battlegrounds: the Horde (almost) always win.She's backed up this fairly common viewpoint with some compelling reasons, and I have to admit they make sense to me.I've played Alliance almost exclusively for 2+ years, and I remember wanting to try and get into some serious PvP, but I also remember getting my spirits crushed, along with any desire to continue running BGs due to the constant losses. I realize that you can't win all the time, but it's hard to continue playing if you don't win one at least once in a while.Even Alterac Valley, the battleground that Alliance supposedly wins most of the time, is only won in my battlegroup if both sides race. If the Horde plays even a little defense, Alliance loses 9 times out of 10. And with the changes Drysc mentioned recently coming to AV, I wonder if Alliance will have any way to gain honor.
