Commenting some of the issues about World of Warcraft latest patch. The mantra “we are reading bug and suggestion reports for the players” doesn’t have anymore a value. All these issues were repored months ago, with solutions to fix them. With this new patch they addressed nothing and pushed in brand new problems and breaking the game systems more.

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This was a joke. Now in the PvP this is REAL. PvP now directly cost a fee if you want to take part.

Aside this. There were three big issues that where reported over and over by the players during the previous beta:

1- The experience in instances was too low
2- The item decay forced players to interrupt the gameplay to go back to towns, becoming the second cause of “group breaking” after the quick quests
3- The PvP need a different death system to address the various issues

Now. FOR ALL THREE, Rob Pardo came on the boards to type three answers. The answers were basically the same:

1a- Don’t worry, we are fixing the exp in instances next patch
2a- Don’t worry, the item decay is indeed a moneysink but it isn’t suppose to interrupt the gameplay and become annoying, we’ll retune it properly next patch
3a- Don’t worry, the PvP system isn’t finished and it will adjusted to address the problems

The patch arrived and we had three new anwers:

1b- Fantastic! We have increased the exp in the instances as we said. Woot! But we also increased the exp requirements! Teehee!
2b- Superb! Not only we didn’t change the item decay system, but we have consolidated it, now you take a 10% durability hit each time you die!
3b- Awesome! The death system for PvP is unchanged, but we added the item decay to it as well. Want PvP? No money? No party.

Now the fun part is that all these three changes not only break the previous problems that were reported, But they CREATED A BUNCH OF NEW SERIOUS ISSUES:

1- The increase in experience in the instances comes with an increase of the experience requirements, making any change at all. The fun part is that solo players are, by definition, out of instances and so for them the “present” is a +20-25% for each level. Fun!
2- The decay system wasn’t broken because it was a (perhaps needed) moneysink. It was broken because it broke the gameplay, forced you to stop in a middle of an instance or a quest to return to a town. It was broken as a boring timesink. Now they even improved this by adding another 10% for each death. As a consequence this becomes a major *game breaking* for new players that use to die often since they need to get use to a new genre.
3- The PvP was broken, who cares? Instead of implementing a different death system to address the issues, they broke it even more, adding problems. Now it’s the grief paradise. Normal players will have to avoid PvP if they don’t want to loose money, while organized grief guild can have way more fun because now not only they can corpse-camping, but they can also inflict money penalties to their victims, forcing, at best, a res at the spirit healer and a 100% item decay.

Want solutions to have fun, not-broken PvP? Here:

The “incentive”, about which you write, shouldn’t be “excused” by a penalty. But it should involve a *purpose*. Give the players and groups objectives to achieve, give them reasons to fight for. *This* will make the combat meaningful because there will be a structure that tells you what you should achieve and why.

If the reward is about the rejoice for the winning group because they made the other group face a downtime and a moneyloss, well, the game is really weak.

A better idea, spawning from your graveyard solution, could be about building a very simple CTF (Capture The Flag) system. I agree that both Horde and Alliance should respawn at their own graveyard (no corpse run if you die in PvP, *just a respawn* at your graveyard. No choice.). But we also build a system so that EVERY contested zone has “generic” graveyards that can be “conquered” and flagged. Once the Horde (for example) own the graveyard, they’ll be able to respawn there, while the Alliance will only able to respawn at their nearest “owned” graveyard (which can be in a zone nearby).

In this way we start to offer something to fight for and with a purpose.

I also DO NOT accept this. It’s a PLATE armor.

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While I was writing Blizzard posted two updates:

– They announced that they’ll take away the durability hit from PvP.
– The release policy to respec talents is a new moneysink. Each time you respec the cost goes up.

So we are back to the previously broken state. Fun. Bad signs coming from this game, these glaring mistake at the base of the design aren’t acceptable.