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For your consideration: an AB/WSG flame post form letter
Have you won or lost an AB or WSG match to a cross-server team lately? Did this win or loss stick in your heart, causing you to burn with pride/resentment? Now you, too, can share the exciting details of how much you crit for against those noobs with their entire realm forum, using this handy fill-in-the-blank PvP Flame Post Form Letter! I'm sure you've seen about five hundred of these on your realm forum, so it should come as no surprise that making your own is both easy and fun with our template!
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All I want for Christmas is a giant staff with a skull on the end
It's been four days since the big patch that was supposed to revitalize PVP, and at least on my server, we can safely say that PVP is alive. Aliiiiiive! With up to 240 Arathi Basins and 110 Warsong Gulchs to choose from, it looks like everyone and their mother are shooting for High Warlord/Grand Marshal weapons for leveling. Even the most uber-leet, overpowered warlock I know, who has 30 pieces of the Staff of Atiesh, wants some PVP gloves -- and judging from the kind of groups Alliance has been putting up in AB, quite a few Naxx guilds have been spending more time chilling around the Lumber Mill than facing the buggy boss encounters inside Kel'Thuzad's citadel. A lot of healers seem to be trying to pick up the PVP armor sets that will help them level, while DPSers -- and newly dual-wield specced shamans -- are aiming for the weapons they've been unable or unwilling to get in raids. Slightly left out (again) are druids, who have somewhat underwhelming PVP armor and no "plus feral attack power" weapon. Personally, I'm shooting for the High Warlord's Blade and High Warlord's Quickblade, since swords are much easier to level with when you're a lazy rogue who likes to read while grinding. I also might pick up the PVP legs to replace my last remaining blue item after a year of raiding (damn you, Ragnaros!) What are you grinding for, and how long do you think it will take you to get it?
More on the Battlegrounds Matching System
There have been whispers of some sort of battlegrounds matching system in the past, without any real information on what such a system would try to match. Today, Drysc responded to a post with some additional hints on the kind of the system we can expect. The system will only be viable with the new cross-realm battlegrounds system, due to the increased size of the player pool, and will attempt to match people with specific levels of gear together. It seems like such a matching system would be darned complicated, but if this really works, my Zul'Gurub-geared priest will be quite happy to not again be one-shotted by Ashkandi-wielding warriors. [Thanks, Tommy]
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!
The Puzzle of Battlegrounds Reputation
Since my current character-of-choice isn't running in a raiding guild, I've recently turned to PvP as a possible alternative way to acquire new and interesting gear for myself. In my travels through Azeroth's battlegrounds, I've noticed something puzzling about reputation gain in each - some are easier to get than others. Specifically Aterac Valley reputation - which has some simply incredible weapon rewards - seems to come a lot easier than Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin reputation. So I sat down and decided to do the math and see how it really works out - is AV reputation given out like candy, or am I just imagining things? Read on to find out.
Ramp! Tunnel! The life of a flagrunner
I've recently started spending much of my day in that eternal WoW timesink -- the battleground queue. Fed up of terrible random groups, I've joined a casual PvP team in search of honour, glory and extreme violence towards the Horde. With something of a druid shortage on my server, I'm often the only one in the group, and thus the chief flagrunner.Having partaken of the odd PvP game since I was in my mid-forties (not to mention playing games other than WoW which involve flags, teams and death) I'm no stranger to the concept of flag running, but I've found my ability as a flag carrier has vastly increased since getting into a good group. Not only have I become much faster at shifting between shapeshift forms in PvP, setting up easily-accessible keybinds for the various forms has helped me in PvE as well -- I'm developing a reflex for shifting into bearform when I start taking damage, which is useful in tricky aggro situations.However, there's one common theme to my flag carrying; one thing I spend most of my time doing, and I'm not ashamed of the fact. My chief activity is running away, and staying alive. I make a lot of mistakes -- I run away from healers, I hit Dash and sprint off into the middle of several cows with big pointy swords -- but I'm learning, and enjoying it. The druid class makes a perfect flag runner in my (extremely biased) opinion, and with the right support a match can be over in a few minutes. Here's to more victories, and losses that help me learn.
Breakfast Topic: PvP in Patch 1.12
It's no secret that there are PvP changes coming in the next content patch. There are going to be new cross-realm battlegrounds, auto-joining battlegrounds groups, world PvP objectives, and it's been hinted that the honor system in general will be a bit more lenient (though there haven't been any specifics on this). I've never made serious attempts at achieving the game's highest PvP ranks, simply because I know its impossible for someone who can't dedicate more time than I have to the cause. However, this patch may encourage me to head to the battlegrounds - or perhaps Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands - a bit more often for some PvP action. Am I going to hit rank 14 sometime soon? I doubt it - but the changes to the system may make it where I'll enjoy spending more time accumulating honor than I have in the past. However, what about the rest of you - are the changes to the system encouraging you to spend more time in the battlegrounds, or driving you away?
What Do Cross-Realm Battlegrounds Solve?
This question seems to be getting more and more play on the forums recently - and I can certainly see where this poster is coming from. When I played Alliance myself, I rarely participated in PvP battlegrounds for the same reason - queues tended to last about an hour and I always seemed to think up more interesting things to do than wait around. When I started playing Horde, I found myself doing battlegrounds much more frequently - and would consider ten minutes to have been a long battlegrounds queue. However, if most realms have higher numbers of Alliance than Horde, won't the problem be the same, only on a larger scale? CM Nethaera explains that "some people may see their time go up, others may see theirs go down" - as populations and queues are averaged across many realms. However, Nethaera also notes that cross-realm battlegrounds have not yet been tested on the test realms - and, in my mind, any test realm environment still won't give us a good view on how this will impact the live realms.
Healing in PvP
The priest I'm currently playing is the first character I've made any serious attempts to PvP with. And, no, I'm not blazing through Alterac Valley in shadowform - I heal, much to the amazement of people I end up grouped with. At first I was surprised by the shock of other players when I healed them, but after spending some time in all of the battlegrounds, I've come to realize that healing in PvP is quite a headache.In PvE groups and instance runs, players are arranged into parties. In a raid group, where there are multiple parties, there's usually a healer in each and we stick to healing our own parties. We move forward as a group by necessity - because a single player would be highly unlikely to stand on their own against the monsters we're fighting. I watch my party's health bars, and I heal them when they get low. Easy enough, right? But in a PvP situation...
The Waiting Game
It was 8PM, local time for me, when I got home. An hour's drive in traffic. I hop on the computer, intent on working out the stress of the day in some PvP matches, but there seems to be a 400 player queue to log on to my realm - that's another half hour. Well, okay - I can go find something for dinner and it will be done by the time I'm back. All I want is to run a few Warsong Gulch games, and hopefully get my new priest up to friendly with the Warsong Outriders - humble enough goals, right? But, wait - now that I'm logged on, there seems to be an hour's queue to get in to Warsong at all. Hmm, I suppose I do have a good book I've been meaning to read. But, honestly, I have to wonder - when did I start to spend more time waiting than I did playing? Because this new waiting game is not nearly as fun as the game I used to play.Of course there's hope - new servers and hardware improvements, as well as the possibility of cross-realm battlegrounds will both cut into this waiting game - but, until then, all there is to look forward to is more of the same. I know I'm not the only one out in Azeroth who's hit this wall - what do the rest of you do when all you want to do is play, but the game is, for one reason or another, out of your reach?
Easy Mode: Alliance or Horde?
While I don't personally subscribe to the theory that one faction is better than the other, they both have their advantages and disadvantages. My current main character is in an Alliance-side raiding guild, yet I'm considering the prospect of raiding for the other side and starting to think that, perhaps, my days in the Alliance really have been "easy mode." The key to this argument is, of course, the paladin - whose blessings can easily be applied across a whole raid of players (though each paladin may only have one blessing per player). Shaman totems, alternately, only buff those players within their group, and have a limited range (rendering them useless for fights that require movement) - and unless you're running a raid with 8 shamans, this means that some players simply won't have access to these buffs at all. So while Blessing of Salvation is something I've grown accustomed to, Tranquil Air Totem might not be something I should become too attached to. On the other hand, I'm enjoying the relative ease with which more organized Horde groups seem to be seceding in the Battlegrounds - though this is more likely to do with the specific groups I'm playing with than a faction imbalance. And, of course, this may change once I level into the 20-29 bracket for Warsong, as Ghost Wolf comes into play. Who do you think has it easy in Azeroth - Alliance or Horde?
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:
More Battlegrounds with Blizzard!
It looks like players will have one more chance to tussle with Blizzard in the battlegrounds before the contest realms close down on Monday. Players on US servers can find Blizzard in Warsong Gulch today, playing Alliance, between 5 and 7 PM PST. So get out there and fight the good fight![Fan art by Guillaume Bonnet]
Warsong Gulch with Blizzard
Did you miss out on last week's PvP match against Blizzard? Well, if you were interested, it looks like you have a second chance. Blizzard will be fielding a Horde team in Warsong Gulch on the US Honor Contest realm, so if you'd like to try your hand against the game's creators, roll Alliance and be ready for a fight! The match is scheduled for Friday, March 17th, from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PST.Update: EU players will also have their chance with Blizzard's Europe staff. Look for them in Warsong from 17:00 to 20:00 CET (game time) on Monday, March 20th![Fan art by Guillaume Bonnet]
Warsong Gulch with Blizzard: Results
Miss Friday's Warsong Gulch with Blizzard? Well, there's plenty of chatting going on about the match on the forums, including accusations of cheating. (Apparently one of the Blizzard characters was flagged to be untargetable during their first match, though Eyonix tells us it was unintentional.) Eyonix thanks everyone for coming here, and opponent Marlyn discusses the match here. Update: Video!
PvP with (or against!) Blizzard
Community manager Caydiem has posted that Blizzard employees will be running Warsong Gulch on the PvP contest realm from 5:00 - 8:00 PM PST Friday. So if you're interested in this sort of thing, best hop on the contest realm and level up to 19, Alliance side, for a chance to try your skills against Blizzard's own.[Fan art by Guillaume Bonnet]
