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Isle of Conquest gameplay screenshot gallery
The new Battleground coming with Patch 3.2, the Isle of Conquest, is live on the 3.2 PTR as we speak, and we've been running some games on said Isle to see how it measures up to the current BGs. We're pretty happy with it so far -- it certainly looks great, as you'll be able to tell by checking out the screenshot gallery we've compiled for you. It shows the BG and all its sundry parts in action. We'll keep you up to date with new Isle info as we get it. If you're on the PTR too, then be sure to queue up -- who knows, it might just be one of us you're ganking! %Gallery-66277% Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
What Patch 3.2 means for PvP
Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you've been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It's something I'd wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there's more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That's right -- twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn't about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. After the jump, we'll take a look at a whole bunch of changes that will impact World of Warcraft PvP from the obvious (Arena and Battleground changes) to the not-so-obvious (item and ability changes). Let's hit it.
First screenshots from Patch 3.2's Isle of Conquest released
Blizzard just released some screenshots from Patch 3.2's brand new super massive Battleground, the Isle of Conquest. For those unfamiliar with the Isle, it's a large-scale 40v40 Battleground that features siege combat, good old-fashioned melee, capturable resource points, NPC bosses like Alterac Valley, steady Honor ticks from capping certain areas, and more. It's essentially the Battleground with something for everyone. We just recently posted a Q&A with World Designer Cory Stockton, with a lot of questions about the Isle answered. And now we've got screenshots to give us a feel for the place. They show bits and pieces of the Isle, including the Alliance Keep, part of the Refinery, what appears to be the Airship Hangar, and the Lighthouse. It's all very Northrend and very exciting. After all, in the grim, dark future past World of Warcraft, there is only war. As long as you're in a Battleground, anyway. But only if you're fighting instead of fishing or killing harpies. Regardless, there's definitely war going on somewhere. Check out the shots in the gallery below. We'll keep you posted with all the new info we get! %Gallery-66277%
The Art of War(craft): Examining the Isle of Conquest
Wow. Can I just say that again? Wow. When Blizzard announced that they were introducing a new Battleground with Patch 3.2, I personally thought it was going to be some mid-scale map similar to Strand of the Ancients or Arathi Basin. Being a Battlegrounds nut, I was completely stoked. When Zarhym hinted that the new map would be "Wintergrasp combined with Alterac Valley," it became clear to me that Blizzard was thinking on a much bigger scale. If we look at their development patch for Battlegrounds and world PvP, it's no stretch to say that the Isle of Conquest is their most ambitious PvP project yet. More ambitious than Wintergrasp, in fact.How can anything be more ambitious than Wintergrasp, which proved to be so tremendously popular that it tends to break realms? Well, the only real limitation to Wintergrasp was because it had no limits with the number of participants. That was the only thing that brought servers down to their knees. The Isle of Conquest takes care of that problem by limiting participation to a (mere) eighty people. This then leaves Blizzard free to implement all sorts of cooler stuff like parachuting into enemy territory. The new Battleground brings the much anticipated aerial combat element into World of Warcraft PvP.
Blizzard gives preview of the Isle of Conquest battleground
Blizzard community manager Nethaera has announced some more details of the new battleground coming to World of Warcraft with Patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade.The "Isle of Conquest" will be a new place for Horde and Alliance to face off in forty-vs.-forty PvP across different locations offering their own unique challenges and rewards. Blizzard has put together a preview site for the Isle of Conquest explaining about the battleground and its objectives and resources that the Horde and Alliance will struggle over. Each location will have a certain advantage, ranging from Glaive Throwers and Catapults to an airship that allows players to parachute into the enemy keep. Have a look at the Isle of Conquest preview site for more on what to expect from Call of the Crusade's battleground. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
The Art of War(craft): The future of Battlegrounds
I love the Battlegrounds. In my mind, it's the halfway point between general world PvP (no objectives), which is a free-for-all, anything goes brawl and Arenas, which is a tightly controlled deathmatch environment. The former epitomizes war in its absolute sense -- no controls or limits for balance in terms of numbers or levels or gear, there are no match start times, and there is no set ending. Think of old school Hillsbrad PvP or run-of-the-mill gankage. It's pure conflict with no constraints. The flip side is Arenas, which is as close as the game can get to a sport, as much as possible trying to pit evenly matched teams against each other.Battlegrounds are the compromise. The format tries (admittedly sometimes unsuccessfully) to control numbers as well as limit the instances where organized teams are matched against a rabble of random players. Brackets limit level disparity and map objectives give direction to the encounters. Battleground objectives give a little flavor to the PvP, although players can treat it like a deathmatch, too, sometimes at the expense of prolonging or losing the game. Solo players -- playing any class of any spec -- can have a go at it and come away with a good experience, as Battlegrounds aren't as harsh as Arenas in terms of team composition. In Patch 3.2, Blizzard plans to introduce a new Battleground, which should be pretty exciting. The fun doesn't stop there, either, as it looks like developers are at work on even cooler things for this aspect of the game.
Tips for the Wrecking Ball achievement
This forum thread is full of great advice and tips for the Wrecking Ball achievement, in which you've got to get 20 killing blows without dying in a battleground. The key here seems to be to find a place with lots and lots of folks to kill (a spawn point, like the graveyard in WSG, works great, or you can hide behind the big groups in AV), and then just hanging out there as far out of the way as you can get. Having a pocket healer won't hurt either, and playing fair isn't really part of this one -- you want to duck in when you're sure to win the fight, and run like crazy when things even threaten to go against you.Some people say that doing it at a lower bracket can help, too, because unless you're uber geared, it'll be better to go after lower levels than have everybody in the BG be 80. It actually sounds like it's easier than it seems -- as long as you set yourself up in the right place and be really careful about getting stuck in a fight you can't win, you should be able to walk away with the points. Good luck!
The Isle of Conquest and Season 7
The new, rapid pace of Blizzard development continues as the Under Development page let slip that the new Battleground will be called the Isle of Conquest. We'd known for a while now that the next major content patch, Patch 3.2, would have a new Battleground, there were little details beyond that. For a while, there was some speculation that the abandoned development in Azshara would be revisited, but it looks like this is an entirely new Battleground that implements more siege weapons and vehicles.Even though vehicle combat has gotten fairly mixed reviews, we know for a fact that it works rather well in PvP implementations such as Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients. Wintergrasp, in particular, has been so popular that it has created all sorts of problems for Blizzard, leading to the development team finding ways to actually reduce the number of people playing in it. If Wintergrasp is any indication, the Isle of Conquest should be incredibly fun, as well. The key word here is "large-scale", which hopefully indicates a return to Alterac Valley-level epic battles.
The disappearance (maybe) of faction pride
Kinka of Spinebreaker posts a question that I haven't seen anyone ask for a while; does the Horde really have more faction pride? Various reasons are this feeling are offered, from the lack of a strong Alliance-side leader (with Varian Wrynn feeling like a shoehorned, and controversial claimant to that position), to the less unified Alliance leveling experience, to more philosophical assertions from Filara of Terenas concerning early Horde differences continuing to exercise an influence to this day. In classic WoW, Filara observes, the Horde population on each server was typically small and outgunned. People knew each other, could network easily, banded together againt superior Alliance numbers in world PvP, and -- when battlegrounds became available -- could typically get games significantly faster than their Alliance counterparts. Add the numbers up and it's easy to see how faction difference became part of WoW's conventional wisdom.What interests me more is how rarely we see this question come up nowadays. During and shortly after classic WoW, comparison of the two factions was both inevitable and the source of major fights on the forums. Despite being outnumbered on the vast majority of servers, Horde routinely encountered more battleground success -- or so went the popular theory. As BC went on and the Alliance slowly lost a bit (though by no means all) of its population advantage thanks (let's be perfectly honest here) to the influx of Blood Elves to the Horde, it's possible that some of both factions' finer "cultural" distinctions have been somewhat eroded, if they ever existed at all.
WoW Insider Show live on the air today at 3:30pm Eastern
It's a European invasion on the WoW Insider Show today -- somehow we've wrangled me and three folks from the EU. Turpster will be on as usual, Lesley Smith will be joining us again, and the one and only Patrick Beja will be on the air as well live from France. Don't worry, Americans, I'll patriotically represent us as best I can. On the menu, we'll have discussion about the Martin Fury controversy, both Children's Week and Noblegarden (and if Children's Week really is ruining the battlegrounds), and the changes in patch 3.1.2, out on the PTR right now.And of course we'll answer your emails (you can email us at theshow@wow.com) and generally have as good a time as we always do. The show starts up at May 2, 2009 3:30 PM EDT var date_span = document.getElementById("date"); var date = new Date(date_span.innerHTML); var monthname=new Array("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"); var weekday=new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday", "Friday","Saturday"); var year = date.getFullYear(); var day_of_month = date.getDate(); var month = monthname[date.getMonth()]; var day = weekday[date.getDay()]; var hour = date.getHours(); if (hour > 11) { if (hour > 12) {hour -= 12} am_pm = "PM"; } else { am_pm = "AM"; } var minute = date.getMinutes(); if (minute < 10) { minute = "0"+minute; } date_string = day + ", " + month + " " + day_of_month; date_string += " at " + hour + ":" + minute + " " + am_pm; offset = -date.getTimezoneOffset()/60; if (offset >= 0) { offset = "+"+offset; } date_string += " in your time zone (GMT"+offset+")"; date_span.innerHTML = (date_string); over on our Ustream page, or you can just click below to find the embedded Ustream feed in the second half of this post.And two more things: one, our auction over in Brigwyn's charity drive is heating up already, but if it's worth that much to you to come on the show with us (and oh yeah, help some sick kids, too), get your bid in now! Or just find something over there you like to bid on, it all goes to the same place. And if you have a full afternoon that you want to fill with podcasting, stay tuned after our show today, as I'll be on the Rawrcast. Should be fun -- see you this afternoon!
Children's Week ruins Battlegrounds
I'm sorry Blizzard, but I'm with the whiners on this one. The School of Hard Knocks is so badly designed that it's ruining, instead of enhancing, the Battleground experience. Take, for example, the requirement to return a flag in Warsong Gulch. First of all, the requirement is that the player return the flag personally as opposed to being in the vicinity of a flag return. This means that all ten players on one side are angling to return the flag... which is great in theory but in practice encourages entire teams to wait inside the base hoping to get the Achievement. This results in extended stalemates that don't actually encourage what needs to be done, which is to capture the flag.In Alterac Valley, we have forty players and four capturable towers or bunkers. Sure, the opposing faction can defend the towers/bunkers allowing it to be recaptured, but the whole business of racing to capture one -- again, personally -- turns every Alterac Valley into a race. This means lesser chances of defended towers. Realistically, if players tagged and defended until the objective burned down, only 10% of the team would be able to accomplish the Achievement requirement in every match. I'm sorry to tell all those who are allergic to PvP that you'll actually have to play quite a number of Alterac Valley matches just to get this one. Unfortunately for me, on my Battlegroup, playing Horde-side AV is like pulling teeth.
Breakfast Topic: Never Gonna
World of Warcraft does have a decent variety of things to do. Arenas, Battlegrounds, Soloing, Professions, 5-mans, raids, the list goes on. Some may focus singlemindedly on one or two aspects of the game, while others dabble a bit in most or even all of them. All this variety also ends up meaning that some people just won't like certain aspects of the game, and will generally shy away from doing them. This can also be true of classes, of talent trees, of playstyles, and all the rest. Of course, sometimes we swear we'll never do something in game, then do it anyway.
Face the developers on the PTR tonight
Tonight from 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. PDT / 9:30 p.m. EDT the Blizzard developers will be on the PTR facing off against players in Battlegrounds and in Arenas. The developer's home will be Alliance on Broxigar (PvE), however the Patch 3.1.2 PTR servers are all linked together for PvP Arenas and Battlegrounds, so you'll be able to face them no matter where you are.We've previously covered some of these events, and you can see results in our gallery below. There is no word if the infamous Ghostcrawler will be making an appearance. But I suggest all you disgruntled <insert your class here> show up and hope for the best. After all, he promised you a pony and you didn't get it.%Gallery-18020%
Nordenwatch scenario weekend in Warhammer
Mythic has just announced their first special scenario weekend for Warhammer Online. The Nordenwatch scenario will be available to players across all tiers and will grant a unique title and an additional 10% renown and experience from now until Monday, May 4, 2009 at 8:00AM EDT.Those familiar with Warhammer scenarios will know that Nordenwatch is usually only available to characters in tier 1 (ranks 1-11) and is widely considered one of the best scenarios in the game. Nordenwatch is an island off the coast of Nordland containing a lighthouse, barracks, and lookout fortress. Each of these three locations is capturable and grants points the as you hold it. The zone's terrain and openness make for some truly epic battles.When the teams are evenly matched, it's anyone's game and stealth capture tactics are well rewarded. It's not uncommon to see all manner of RvR in this scenario from zerg rushes to smaller 3-on-3 skirmishes to 1-on-1 action. It will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out in tiers 2 to 4, as players generally get more powerful crowd control abilitites as they rank up. A well-placed knockback at the fortress or lighthouse could result in a long swim back to the action.
Randomizing the Strand of the Ancients spawn points
Strand of the Ancients is a battleground that's gotten relatively short shrift lately -- it came along into the game with the crown jewel of Wrath PvP so far, Wintergrasp, and while it's still frequented on honor weekends (it's one of the best ways to farm honor, actually) and for achievements, lots of players, specifically those on the Horde, aren't happy with it. Why? Because right now, Alliance always starts the battle on offense first. The battle is a regular attack-and-defend map, and Alliance reportedly has a "significant advantage" by beginning on the attack side: they only have to play offense for a few minutes, and then defend for the same amount of time, while Horde have to defend the whole first round and then attack if they want to win. Plus, the battleground doesn't always start full, which means whoever attacks first usually is fighting fewer defenders.So how hard would it be to throw a coin flip in there and randomize who starts first? The good news is that Blizzard is working on it, but the bad news is that it's taking longer than they thought. It's not as simple, unfortunately, as choosing a faction randomly -- there are apparently mechanics in the spawn points that make it difficult for them to randomize who shows up on the moving ships. Go figure? We've never understood how Blizzard's code works, and we're not starting now.But again: Zarhym says a fix is incoming in a future patch. So if you're Alliance and you want to do some honor farming, better start now.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow as a secondary spec in 3.1
Every week, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host today is Alex Ziebart who doesn't have as many cool links to plug up here as Matticus does but will try anyway. This week we get our Shadowform on.. Dual specs are coming, probably only a week away, and I suspect that many Holy and/or Discipline Priests out there will be picking up a Shadow build as their second spec. Priests, like most classes, can have many little build variations to fit your playstyle: Raiding, soloing, doing Battlegrounds, doing arenas, all of that. I'm going to look at a couple of good PvE specs to use in patch 3.1, but unfortunately avoiding the PvP specs for you arena junkies in our audience. Trust me, you don't want to take my advice there. Discipline PvP maybe, but not Shadow.PvE Shadow - RaidingMMO-Champion has a great tool for setting up talent specs, because you can include your glyphs as well, so we're going to be using that. This spec (14/0/57) will be a fairly cookie-cutter raiding build in patch 3.1, with only very minor variations from person to person. The Shadow tree isn't a very complicated one. Either a talent boosts your DPS, or it does something else. For a raiding spec, you want all of the DPS talents and you can skip all of the 'something else' talents unless they're mandatory for a DPS talent. It's pretty straightforward. Even in the Discipline tree the ultimate goal is to pick up the DPS talents, Twin Disciplines and Improved Inner Fire. Meditation isn't a direct DPS talent, but having no mana is certainly a DPS hit.
The Daily Grind: Does a game need PvP to be successful?
Player vs. Player combat seems to be a love it or hate it scenario. Players either engage in the behavior with an extreme liking, wondering when their blades will get to silence a screaming newbie or go up against the best of the best in battlegrounds, or players hate the activity with a passion to the point where they'll avoid it as much as possible.In any case, this feature certainly has become a staple of MMOs, even going so far to have a couple games, like Darkfall, EVE Online, and Aion: The Tower of Eternity, making it one of their core focuses. So this leads to today's question: Do you think a game needs to include some form of PvP to be successful? Or can a game go with a purely player vs. environment or cooperative approach and still succeed?Drop your thoughts into the comment box below and sound off.
Disembodied skull confirms new Battleground, your grim future
In what can only be called a grim portent, a disembodied skull haunted the official World of Warcraft forums today. A local farmer noted that the skull had visited the area previously, but "only in times of dour weather, or when death was near for m'cows, or when someone was trolling.""We were just complaining about Battlegrounds," said a priest who witnessed the visitation of the gruesome geist, "when all of a sudden it appeared, and we knew right then that it was an omen, and one of us was going to die soon, or possibly that it was going to tell us about an upcoming game feature we hadn't heard about yet."The skull, floating ominously above the gathering crowd, apparated a set of evanescent words, formed likely of the spirit's own ectoplasm, tinged with a blue color known only to come from the world beyond. Unencumbered by gravity or PR sensibilities, it augured that a new Battleground is in the works. The reaction was one of fear and of somber gratitude for the spirit, and its otherworldly masters, for passing along an omen as important as this. When the prophesied Battleground would appear is still unknown, as the spirits who visit the forums are not wont to reveal such information.Before it disapparated as quickly as it had come, the skull also noted that you're going to die.
Official site updated with new UI additions
The official World of Warcraft website updated recently with an addition to their Under Development section. Call it a preview, reminder, whatever you want. They've added a listing of all of the new UI features coming in Patch 3.1, and I'm willing to say that there's more UI additions in this patch than in any content patch before it. Am I wrong? Possibly, but I can't remember this much coming all at once before.If you've been following WoW Insider since patch 3.1 hit the PTR, not much of this stuff will be a surprise to you, we've tried to cover the UI additions as they were pushed onto the test realm. Regardless, the new UI page details all of the following: Talent Dual Specialization Equipment Manager Updated Objectives Tracker Looking For Group Improvements Queueing for Battlegrounds From Anywhere Go on, give it a read, and make sure you're not caught off guard by all of the shiny new UI elements slapping you in the face the day you load up patch 3.1. You can also check out the galleries below that we've done previously, which will walk you through a few of these things. If you're the type that likes surprises? Well, don't look at them!%Gallery-45754%%Gallery-45780%%Gallery-45755%%Gallery-45767%
Season 6 PVP sets are a true upgrade
Here's a really interesting followthrough by Blizzard I never thought I'd see. You may remember a thread a few months back where the OP complained that the PVP sets were boring-looking or visually uninspired; Zarhym responded matter-of-factly replied that the looks of the armor sets would improve over time. While PvE players receive loot that was (ostensibly) culled from the sinewy piles of continually larger and more powerful foes, PvP players receive gear crafted by their faction's tailors, smiths, and leatherworkers -- gear made to get the job done. As one became more and more renowned, their gear would reflect said prestige. I imagined that statement meant that the new models for Season 6 gear would be (subjectively) cool-looking and (objectively) different. Well, MMO Champion has put up a mostly-complete preview of Season 6 gear models pulled from the seedy underbelly of patch 3.1's data files, and I'm a little surprised and a lot impressed.Yes, you're probably having the initial reaction that I did upon clicking the link above. "These sets look like what's available now," you're saying, brows furrowed, lips pursed. They do look quite similar, but take a closer look. Things have changed! We talk a lot about upgrades here, but these new sets go beyond stat increases -- the armor has been visibly beefed up, more parts of your body covered, more adornments added, more magic seeping from its seams. The shaman head and shoulders appear to be morphing from the pebble-smooth surface into something far more menacing. The paladin's armor has become adorned with glowing gems and the neck protected. There's a gradual metamorphosis going on here that really shows what Blizzard was talking about when they said that the PvP set models would improve over time, and I can't wait to see what Season 7 looks like.
