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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.
Majority of player base does not have a level 80 character
Vaneras on the EU forums this morning responded to some criticism that everyone is already 80, etc... He makes a few interesting points.First, he notes that they have internal numbers that the majority of players don't yet have a level 80 character. This might be a known or assumed fact by some, but for many of us it's interesting to hear Blizzard extrapolate on the issue.Vaneras goes on to point out an important tidbit – don't assume just because all your friends are 80 that everyone else is as well. People that play all the time tend to gravitate towards other people that play all the time, and folks that only log on once or twice a week gravitate towards each other as well.This means that just because everyone on your friends list is 80 doesn't mean the whole server is yet. I know that for myself nearly everyone's main is either 80 or high 70s now, and most have alts quickly getting up there in level too.But then I'm reminded of my brother, who just dinged 77 a couple days ago.This is also good to know as it means battlegrounds and Wintergrasp will be filling up more as a greater number of folks ding. That's only going to lead to more fun for everyone.
BlizzCon 2008: WoW Insider interviews J. Allen Brack
Here at BlizzCon, we just got to sit down with the head honcho of our favorite game, J. Allen Brack, lead producer of World of Warcraft. And the biggest surprise of the interview wasn't a nice tidbit about the future of WoW (and its battlegrounds) or how class changes are made, though we did talk about both of those things. No, the biggest piece of news we got out of him is that he loves WoW Insider -- he told us that Blizzard is paying close attention to what not just us bloggers but you commenters are saying on this site, and that the community plays almost as big a part in directing the game's development as the developers themselves do.But the WoW Insider love didn't stop us from grilling him on what's next for the Wrath release and the game beyond. We talked about what changes Blizzard aims to make to battlegrounds, what kind of ideas Brack and his team have for after the second expansion, and even what he wants WoW to do that it hasn't yet. And yes, we got the story on dance studios, and why we won't be cutting a jig quite yet in Wrath.Click the link below to check out our exclusive interview with J. Allen Brack.
Tigole: Blizz wants to bring BGs back, baby
Reader Thomas pointed us to this forum post by Tigole, which contains some fun news for battleground fans, even if it is a little early in the design process to really expect anything yet. Tiggy basically says that while Arenas have gained some station in the world of PvP, the focus will eventually shift back to battlegrounds -- Blizzard would like to make BG content that "could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility." They're still working on that competitive BG idea, and they want the focus to go back to the solid Horde vs. Alliance idea that's at the foundation of Warcraft.Additionally, they're planning to let us queue up for the BGs from anywhere in the world (which, no doubt, would increase participation from both factions), and Tigole also suggests that eventually they may offer XP through battlegrounds, giving players yet another way to level up (twinks may not like that suggestion, but these changes are a long way off anyway).This last change there -- offering players a way to level up with PvP -- is seen by many forumgoers as a direct stab at Warhammer Online. That game makes a big deal out of offering battleground-style PvP, and letting players choose it as a way to completely avoid PvE and earn XP and levels. So it may be that Blizzard saw their launch, and plans to turn back in that direction to compete. Which isn't a bad thing for us anyway -- as good as WoW is, some slightly-more-serious competition will only make it better. Being as I'm a BG fan, Tigole's hints that BGs are coming back is music to my ears.
AV improvements slated for 2.4
It seems like they just can't leave Alterac Valley alone. In this case, that's probably a good thing, because there is a lot of discontentment with the state of that battleground right now. Bornakk just announced (and three different people just dropped us tips to let us know) that AV will get some "very significant improvements" in the upcoming patch 2.4: Horde starting tunnel moved back "to a more equal distance from the first objectives" Each faction's Generals and Warmasters will buff each other for health and damage: the more of them your side has, the stronger they all are. Hopefully this will more strongly motivate killing the Warmasters. Balinda Stonehearth will do more damage, but she and Stormpike will have their recent health increases repealed. Will these changes appease your wrath with AV? If not, what else is required?
The enemy within the Alliance
It used to be that Alliance players thought of Alterac Valley as the only battleground in which they had a fighting chance, an advantage to make up for their apparent inability to win any of the other battlegrounds. With the changes to Alterac Valley in patch 2.3, however, the idea is gradually spreading like an infectious disease among Alliance players that Blizzard loves the Horde most and purposely lets the Horde get speedier access to lots of Honor rewards. Just visit your nearest Alliance battleground match to hear the latest crying and whining about how all the other Alliance players are stupid noobs who can't tell how bad they suck and are going to lose every time. Alliance: please, get real. The more people there are in either faction, whining and moaning about how hopeless things are, the more likely that faction will lose. The whiners are spending all their time typing out their useless babble, not leading, fighting or healing. To boot, they're also demoralizing the whole group, breaking down all sense of coordination, cooperation, and confidence. If you encounter such a moaner/whiner, do not engage in any long discussion with them -- just put them in their place, "/ignore" them, and encourage others to do the same. They whiners are dead set on depressing themselves and anyone who will listen and no matter how witty your comebacks may be, and the more energy is wasted on them, the less is going into the game.If it is in fact true that the Horde wins battlegrounds more often, then this is itself the reason. The "For the Horde" mentality bolsters the idea that the Horde is good at PvP. If you think your side is more naturally good at something, you're much less likely to think "Blizzard hates us!" when you lose, and much more likely to try and improve on your game for the benefit of your faction. Yes, there are plenty of Horde-side players who moan and whine too, but these don't fit in with the "For the Horde" spirit of the group as a whole -- and everyone knows it.
Ask WoW Insider: What's the best of Ask WoW Insider?
Fridays are a time for early happy hour quiet contemplation and reflection upon the past, and in that spirit we're taking a look back at some of the best posts from over the lifespan of Ask WoW Insider. Now that we're all older and wiser -- who *did* end up being the top PvP classes at 70? Best duo for PvP or grinding"What team of classes make the best duo for PVP or for grinding?" Top PvP classes at level 70Just after Burning Crusade came out, we speculated on which classes would dominate in PvP. Were we right? Would you change the answer you gave then? Best ways to make money in Burning Crusade"What are some good ways of making money for levels 60-70 in Burning Crusade? Are there people making money from jewelcrafting yet, should I pick that up? What about good mobs to grind or drops that sell well to vendors or on the AH?" Best way to get instance invites"What are your tips and tricks for convincing a group you've got the goods despite not having seen the inside of the dungeon?" Why are you overpowered?"Dig deep, self-examine and admit it: what makes your class overpowered?" How's WoW performance on a Mac?"I play Wow on a PC, and am looking towards a new computer purchase. One thing that influences my purchase is how well WoW will run on my new computer. I'm leaning towards a Mac, but how well does WoW run on a Mac?" Best way to power level alts"What's your strategy for the quickest power leveling? How do you maximize your time with your alts?" How would you design your own battleground?"What if you could design your own battleground? What would you do different or better than what is currently in the game?" When is it fair to upgrade an epic?"All DKP ideas aside, when is it fair to upgrade an epic over an epic?" Best healing class"Which class would you roll for a purely healing role? Which would you roll for a powerfully healing hybrid who might want to take on other roles from time to time? Relatedly, which healing class is the worst?" Best DPS class"Which classes can dish out the most DPS and which ones make the least amount of DPS?" Favorite WoW podcasts"There are a ton of WoW-themed podcasts out there now -- which would you recommend? What are your favorites?" Great ding stories"Any fun or interesting stories to tell about hitting the level cap? Or more generally, any memorable or unusual dings at any level?" We see that look in your eye, and we know it means you want to send us questions. Ask WoW Insider needs 'em -- send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com!
Ask WoW Insider: How would you design your own battleground?
Welcome to this week's edition of Ask WoW Insider, where we publish one of your questions for readers to answer. Last week we scrutinized some Burning Crusade loot etiquette issues, and this week we'll be doing a little speculative PvP imagineering. Our question comes from Omegi from JETT, who poses the question: What if you could design your own battleground? What would you do different or better than what is currently in the game? Try to be as elaborate as possible and try to keep it within the realm of possibilities. Things to consider would be how many players, capture the flag, point based, objective based, types of mechanics allowed. Strap on your thinking caps and let us know what your dream battleground looks like. Also, don't forget to let us know your questions for next week -- send them to ask AT wowinsider DOT com.
Breakfast Topic: New battlegrounds
The Arena system is nifty and all, but part of me still really prefers the scale of Battlegrounds, in all their irritating glory, to what essentially feels more like a duel. I'm fully convinced that Arenas are a much better test of skill; unfortunately, I'm really bad at PvP, so that doesn't always work out in my favor. Therefore, I understand where Neia, of Malygos, is coming from when she draws up a long (and in my opinion, excellent if near unimplementable) proposal for a new Battleground, the Labyrinth. Her "TL;DR" summary:A maze-like Battle Ground, filled with temporary buffs, looted from randombly placed chests to grant the buff, then brought to the center of the maze to turn in for points. Multiple exits and entries to every room, tunnels, hidden passageways, closable doors. All made to help get your carrier to safety.The Burning Crusade only introduced one new BG, Eye of the Storm, with which many people are pretty unsatisfied. I would very much like to see one or two more BGs introduced in a future patch, and the Labyrinth is definitely a neat idea. What sort of battleground would you guys like to see? Or do you think the PvP selection is fine as-is?
Details on the BG matching system
Long talked about, mostly anticipated, and currently in testing for patch 2.1, the Battleground matching system aims to make the BGs more fair and fun for all. Twinks will be matched up against twinks, regular players against regular players, and at the higher level brackets, people in full T5 (or Gladiator, or what have you) should mostly fight similarly-geared people. It should also attempt to keep preformeds from fighting against PuGs. That's the idea, anyway. But how is it going to work? A few blue posts over the past couple days have given some interesting information: The matching system is pretty "lax" right now, since there aren't as many people playing the BGs as there have been at times in the past (due to the Arenas, is my guess). This means, in the interest of keeping queues short, people of fairly disparate gear will still get matched up against each other from time to time. Matching will be based on two factors: the size of your group and the quality of your gear. To prevent the obvious workaround of equipping bad gear and then swapping into epics as soon as you zone in, the system will look at all the gear you own and take the average quality. When you're in a group, the gear value used is the average quality of all the gear of everyone in your group. In short, according to Drysc, When it's trying to find others to match you against it's going to take your gear number, and party size, and try to find other people/teams that fall within your same gear and organization level. If you're in greens and playing by yourself it's going to try to match you up with others that are in greens and playing alone. However, as the CMs continue to point out, the system would rather have you play sooner than sit out waiting for the perfect match-up, so you're not going to get a "fair" playing field all the time, or necessarily even most of the time.One problem that occurs to me with the gear rating system: what's to stop you from "watering down" your gear quality rating by filling bank and inventory by filling them with trashy greens? That would bring your average gear rating way down, even if you had full epics equipped, and would seem to enable a determined twink to still stomp all over "regular" players. But maybe this is a fringe case, and it's more important to get the system to work for the majority of players who want to work within a system. At any rate, follow the cut for all the official info.
PTR notes: Go to the PTRs, fight Blizzard
To help test out the new battleground matching feature, Blizzard is offering players the chance to fight teams of "World of Warcraft community managers and other Blizzard employees." This Friday, May 4, starting at 2:00 PM PDT, go to the PvP PTR with a level 70 character, queue up for WSG, and prepare to battle your creators. They've done this before, and I think they lost at least a few of the games. Think how cool it would be to beat Blizzard at their own game. I wonder why they always pick WSG, though. That's definitely my least favorite of the three pre-BC battlegrounds (I haven't tried EotS yet). Anyway, full blue post after the cut as usual.
The challenge of twinking out a healer
When you think of PvP twinks, you usually think of DPS. People usually twink rogues, hunters, or sometimes warriors (even though at level 19, where people usually twink toons, there's not much difference between a fury and a prot warrior). The idea, of course, is to see how much damage you can push out at the lower levels (usually by finding early blues and upping stats like strength and agility with extra enchants). But Lane over on livejournal has another plan: she wants to twink out a healer.It's an interesting thought, but it seems a lot harder than a normal twink. For one thing, most healing classes don't really come into their own until you get the higher level talents involved; at 20, most of them don't have a lot to play around with. And healing gear isn't as easily found at the lower levels-- I'm sure there's a few +healing pieces around at 40, but I can only find three at level 20 (and those aren't anything to write home about). Sure, you could still twink it, just by maxing out intellect or buffing out on armor or stamina (come to think of it, a paladin with a ton of armor and stamina would be hilarious to play as a healer in 10-19 WSG), but you don't have nearly as many options as the DPS twinks.As for classes, most priests would get eaten up, especially if you're playing with other twinks. As a few people point out on the LJ thread, both shaman and druid don't really have all their worthwhile abilities until later in the game (a shaman will have ghost wolf, but if you're seriously healing, you shouldn't be in that form much anyway). A paladin would probably be the best (because a healer in mail is always fun), but it would be tough, too -- you wouldn't have that bubble yet (not quite true-- see update).Have you ever twinked a healer or heard of anyone who did it well? A good healer is already a pretty rare thing to find in BGs, so if nothing else, it might be fun to forge a new playstyle as a healer twink.Update: That's what I get for never playing a paladin-- they do have a bubble at level 18. (Thanks, cluelessnoob).
Blue Notes: Devastate reverted, BG matching system in for 2.1
Here's a couple of 2.1 changes that may have slipped by some people's radar amidst the furor about T6 graphics and whatnot. First off, the Warrior skill Devastate, which had been changed to "strike with both weapons when dual-wielding," is being reverted, since it seems to be doing too much damage:The change to Devastate in 2.1 is being reverted and will not be a change for the patch once it goes live. We've done some additional damage testing and the output is in far excess of what we had thought it would provide.And secondly, the much-discussed battleground gear matching system is in fact in for 2.1, although it wasn't in the patch notes:The matching system is in for 2.1; however it picking and choosing is fairly loose to match the amount of people playing in the battlegrounds currently. There simply aren't as many people playing now, from say when the new honor system had launched, and we would rather get players into battleground matches sooner than have them wait around just to match them with the people they were probably going to be matched with anyway. We'll be continuing to tighten up or loosen how stingy the matching is as the number of players in the battlegrounds increases or decreases, respectively. Bottom line is that with enough people in queue you're going to see some better matching, but in the lower levels where there's generally already slim pickings the chance you'll see a twink every once in a while is probably pretty good.The matching system is an attempt to get around the issue of twinking, basically. By trying to match players with similar gear together, twinks will fight other twinks, and non-twinks will fight other non-twinks, which I think is how most people would want it. When asked why the matching system didn't make the notes, Drysc responded: I would guess it's because the patch notes don't fill themselves in as we make changes.
Is There Too Much Honor in Crossrealm BGs?
Since my Shaman hit the big six-oh, I've found myself checking more and more into the BGs, especially Alterac Valley (where we picked up a hardwon victory late last night, with the help of a gigantic Ice Lord). And from everything I've seen, they're as much of a hit as everyone first said they were-- queues are almost nonexistent, there's always lots of people around to play, and quality of play in there is-- well, it's not entirely terrible. Sometimes. But at least the honor and rep flows quickly.In fact, that's exactly the problem Luriah has over on Detheroc. He hates the new cross realm battlegrounds, not because he isn't getting more honor-- he is-- but because he isn't getting better ranks for it. This past week, he reports, he picked up three times the honor he had the previous week, but his rank rose by barely half of one. Because of that, he says the honor system is actually worse.Now, technically the point is moot because the expansion will bring a complete revamp of the honor system, and ranks as we know them are going bye-bye. And I'm not one to stand up and defend the honor system as it is now-- any way you look at it, it's a grind. Players who spend way too much time in the battlegrounds will get the highest ranks, period, and I think Blizzard should be rewarding skill in battle, not necessarily the time investment.But I don't think Luriah's argument holds much water. The new honor system isn't worse-- it's the same, with more players (namely me-- this last week, I played more than I ever have). More time in the BGs means everyone has more honor. Blizzard didn't ruin anything if you can't get ranks-- they just made the gameplay better, so competition is more fierce. Is that good news if you're trying to reach HWL or GM before the expansion hits? Nope. But it is good news for those of us who were tired of spending more time in the queue than the BG itself.
Cross-Realm Battlegrounds... or not.
It seems like just yesterday (or was it actually yesterday?) that the cross-realm battlegrounds were the talk of the town. However, something seems to have gone wrong with the system, as illustrated in the screen-shot to the right, which was taken last night. One Arathi Basin up? One Warsong Gulch? One Alterac Valley? And interestingly enough, they're all full of players from my realm and only my realm. Now, I can't find anything about this on any of the official forums, but it seems to me that cross-realm battlegrounds are... well, not! Are cross-realm battlegrounds down for the count? Blizzard, say it ain't so!
Cross-Server BGs are a Hit
Considering all the trouble with the hardware the past few days, you may not have even seen them yet, but if you have, chances are you love the new cross-server BGs. I know a few commenters here said they didn't work out so well, but it seems like a good majority of forum posters can't get enough of them.Reports from the front are saying queues are almost instant, and up to 40-50 games are going on at any one time. A guidie of mine said he hadn't been able to get so much rep and HK in so little time ever. MBAzeroth loves them (and says it's wonderful that Alliance are lining up to get killed-- although they're working on getting better), and Kissedbyluck over on the WoW Ladies lj group says she actually lost her boyfriend to the BGs (since they used to quest together while he was waiting for an AV game).It'll be interesting, then, to see how this plays out with the new PVP system-- with rep and rewards so easy to get, will we see Blue hike up the requirements? Or was this how they originally intended the system to run? And for all the twinking going on, will we see more of it now since it's so easy to enter the BGs, or will it start to disappear as people get burned out quickly after playing the BGs for a few days straight? It's game on in the BGs-- see you there.
Cross-realm battlegrounds on the way
Gaming Steve brings us the long-awaited information that cross-realm battlegrounds, of a form, will be coming to Azeroth. By patch 1.12 or 1.13 "at the latest", battlegrounds will span sixteen realms, allowing for shorter queues and new opponents.There are also some more exciting BG changes planned for the future, turning WoW PvP into a truly competitive sport with tournaments, ladders and worldwide rankings to take part in. It looks like we'll have to wait for the Burning Crusade to see most of the changes, but bringing cross-realm combat in sooner rather than later is something I'm definitely looking forward to.[Via Joystiq]
Warsong Gulch Quickstart Guide
"Look before you leap". Wise advice, but it's easy to fall into a trap of complacency in WoW, believing that you can conquer anything and everything. Throwing other players into the mix as opponents can make the game change drastically, however.With the PvP Honor Contest coming to a close this Tuesday, this weekend is an excellent chance to stock up on honor and try to make it to the top. In fact, thanks to the battleground holidays, there's extra honor available this weekend than throughout the rest of the contest. Having seen several players on the Honor Contest Realm who evidently have no idea what Warsong Gulch is all about, here's a quick guide to what's going on:
