Yes, I love WoW’s Battlegrounds. I love “Evocare” too.

Just archiving some comments. No time to organize.

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Djamonja:
You also get honor points for accomplishing certain goals within the BG, like capturing a flag I would assume. It’s also kind of doubtful that you would face the same 10 people if you entered another BG. It remains to be seen how it would compare to HPs outside of the BG, but I wouldn’t assume the worst just yet :)

I would.

The reward for winning is good. The point is that they completely inverted the model:
– It’s OUT of the BG that you CAN reward for goals and CANNOT reward for direct kills.
– It’s IN the BG that you CANNOT reward for goals but CAN reward for direct kills.

(you “cannot” reward for goals in the BG just because these goals should be persistent and have an actual effect on the environment, hence more appropriate to the world outside that is, in fact, persistent. A common examples confirming this rule is the players leaving ‘en masse’ the BG when they are going to lose in order to make it reset and prevent the opposite faction to cash the reward)

It’s fun because lots of players figured this out, but not the designers. Many begged Blizzard to stop rewarding for direct kills outside the BG. The fun is that with this system INSIDE the BG the direct kills mean jack shit. While OUTSIDE the BG the direct kills are EVERYTHING. Vice versa, INSIDE the BG the goals cannot be accomplished since the opposite faction forces the instance to reset before the other faction wins. While OUTSIDE, where this problem wouldn’t exist, we have NO GOALS at all.

They simply cannot break it more than this. Smartasses.

From a comment. I’m writing a lot from forum to forum. And busy on RL stuff. I wish I had time to delve more, organize and move everything to archive it on the site…

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I really hate this decision of Blizzard to separate PvE character builds from PvP builds and armor sets.

I love BOTH PvP and PvE, I’d like to be able to experience BOTH, instead of being forced to choose just one option while gimping my character for the other.

I do not want to specialize because the fun of the game for me is the amount of possibilities it offers. Why I should have the PvE forbidden if I choose to get PvP skills and equipment? Why the PvP FORCES me to dedicate my full time to it by negating me the possibility to compete if, for once, I go play another part of the game? Why this segregation and specialization of gameplay?

And, in particular, what’s the reason that brought to the choice of adding this new barrier?

Back to what Raph concluded on MUD-Dev a year ago:

I think we can agree that designing a game that discourages players from playing regularly is probably a bad idea (at least in terms of mass acceptance–some games, like turn based games, PBEM, etc, have some flex here). Designing a game which allows players not to HAVE to play regularly, however, seems desirable.

This last move of Blizzard is severely damaging the fun and variety of the game. Just to run after the catasses.

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Rywill:
Are they really exclusive?

That’s where they are going.

The PvP ladder is simply not viable if you cannot dedicate your FULL time to it. So yeah, you can engage a BG and getting farmed. Sitting at the lower ranks with absolutely zero hope to move from there and achieve something.

At the same time the PvE is also being locked out. It’s already hard to impossible trying to join raid groups as a “foreigner”. If you have the wrong build you are just dreaming. Or you are able to get yourself hooked to this spinning wheel or you are out and staring.

With this last patch they removed all PvP bonuses from PvE loot. I definitely see this as the direction they choosed. It’s impossible to keep up with both systems at once. It’s already hard to keep up with just ONE.

It’s not a news that the elder game is completely different from the 1-60 treadmill. Now they are putting a barrier even between PvP and PvE.

As we expected the battlegrounds are now live to be shown at the upcoming E3. As we expected there are lots of fun problems:

Problem 1- Lack of Horde players leading to infinite waiting queues or deactivating/resetting battlegrounds.

Problem 2- Early reports give the lag at levels above the average Tarren Mill raid:

I’m seeing people just slide around, no walk animation or anything.

Its real fun.

From my direct experience the situation is rather bad. Not only the players slide around like frozen as per the comment above, but there are also many “invisible” players running around (I could see just the shadow) and lots of Unknown Entities hitting you. Especially the NPCs and monsters spawn/despawn right on your face and nearly always you cannot avoid to run on something till when it’s already hitting on you. Even if you are in a quiet zone of the BG you’ll notice the NPCs despawn just as they are a few feets away from you, so you can actually see in just a very narrow “bubble”.

Problem 3- Paladins with speed potions and vulnerability shield on are fun:

haha i saw something really funny when i tried the CTF Battlegrounds, a paladin took our flag, took his shield and a speed potion and we’ve never saw him again.

He did it three times in a row, and won the CTF battleground kinda lonely.

Problem 4- Mine fields and guards give you a 10% durebility hit. 15 minutes in the Battleground and I had my equipment completely broken. Nor enough money to repair it.

I’m already done with testing.

I wish I could have seen what killed me. I just kept dying to invisible “Unknown Entities”.

Problem 5- If you happen to log out while dead on a BG (or crash), you’ll enter a Limbo. You’ll have to walk out till a spirit healer to res and you will be locked out of every PvP instance.

Problem 6- If at some point one of the two factions is near to lose, it can organize to disconnect en masse, forcing the instance to deactivate itself for the lack of players and preventing the winning side to get the reward.

Problem 7- Most of the armor sets have been considerably nerfed of their PvP bonuses in order to directly separate the two systems (PvE raids for PvE armor sets and PvP raids for PvP armor sets). Obviously the players are ranting after having spent months to achieve gear that now lost the use it had.

Doubt 1- No mention of the effect of the old policy on these battlegrounds:

Repeated killing: you only get full CP for killing the same player once per day. The second kill on the same player on the same day gives 75% of the CP, the third 50% and the fourth 25%. Subsequent kills give no CP at all.

This will be particularly fun when paired with this:

Players may now see an “estimated contribution point value” in the combat log for an honorable kill. Note that this value does not take diminishing returns against the same player into account, and is therefore “estimated”.

So the battlegrounds may become just a trick to make players believe they are getting points when, instead, they are getting none (if not from completing the BG). A masterpiece.

Doubt 2- From the patch notes: “Dishonorable kills – gained by killing a trivial Civilian NPC – now has a negative impact on a player’s honor. Enough dishonorable kills will reduce a player’s rank all the way to zero.” Thanks for the notice, but maybe explaining the actual rule? How much is “enough”? What’s the size of the “negative impact”? What type of feedback the game will offer to let peoples know about this without reading the patch notes?

Notice 1- From the main page: “The current plan is for the public test to last several weeks to fully test all aspects of the upcoming Battlegrounds content.”

Notice 2- From the patch notes, a welcome new option: “Added a “Maximize” windowed video option which will maximize the game window and remove the borders for a fullscreen experience which allows popup windows.”

All for now. I had other things on top of my head by they seem gone.

Btw, the official downloader for the patch is here – I’m not sure if I’ll mirror the actual patch here.

Oh, and do not log off when you have the flag…

If you kept looking at the american World of Warcraft site and forum for official news about the upcoming patch with the implementation of the Battlegrounds, you looked in the wrong place. The news appeared today only on the european site:

International Public Test Realms
We’re happy to announce that we are now just a few days away from being able to deploy the first round of public test realms for our international audience. Due to the need to conduct as much testing of our initial Battlegrounds content as we can, the schedule calls for the next major content patch to go live on the US public test realms shortly. We will then roll out the public test realms for Korea and Europe as soon as the hardware setup and configurations are completed.

To conduct a targeted test of specific character classes for the Battlegrounds, we will be providing testers in Europe and Korea with access to a variety of high-level, fully equipped characters to choose from. More information on how players can access the test characters and the public test realms will become available as we get closer to launch. Assuming everything goes smoothly for this round of testing, we plan to deploy public-test-realm content for future patches simultaneously in Europe, Korea, and the US. We’re excited to see players from around the world on the test realms in the days ahead, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the new PvP Battlegrounds content!

I don’t know if my reading comprehension is getting worse but I really do not get what is written there.

What are these International Test Servers? If they are going to launch shortly along with the new content patch, why the announce names specifically the US public test realms?

Or maybe it’s just a fancy way to say that they’ll try to open the test servers all at once without delays from a zone to another, without an actual international public test server.

Anyway. This week or the next we should be able to know some more.

This is the last official statement from Blizzard. It doesn’t add much to what we already know.

My reconstruction is that the guild was able to build a bad reputation on the Uther server, it doesn’t matter if well-deserved or not. That brought to a direct collision with the other guilds in the server and the involvement of GMs. The problem is that this guild probably defended itself from the badmouthing, stating that they were victims of it. For sure there was a split at some point. Some member could have taken the offense more seriously and started to blame each other till the point where a GM intervention was required.

From a side there were peoples blaming this guild, from the other the guild itself self-proclaimed victim of the drama-conspiration. When the reputation of a guild is ruined (it doesn’t matter if the rumors are true or false, that’s part of the drama) there isn’t anymore a lot to save. This is why the GM probably decided to give the supposed innocent part of the guild (not the whole guild was moved) a “second chance”. On a brand new server they could have demonstrated their innocence and that all that happened wasn’t their responsibility.

But, you know, it’s not that hard to spot a big group of strangers coming in your hometown. In particular when so badly disguised. And now their reputation is ruined even more ;p

Earlier this week, characters belonging to a guild on Uther were moved to Eldre’Thalas to protect them from harassment. Understandably, members of the Eldre’Thalas community were very concerned about this and contacted us through the proper channels, so we investigated the matter internally. After reviewing the steps that were taken, we’ve determined that the appropriate procedure for addressing harassment was not followed.

The person responsible for making this decision saw this case as a good way to test the complex realm-to-realm transfer functionality that we would like to make available to players, while at the same time addressing the harassment concerns in a positive way for everyone involved. Unfortunately, the action caused confusion for both the community and the characters moved to Eldre’Thalas.

We have decided that in order to correct this situation and put the resolution in line with our current policy, all characters transferred to Eldre’Thalas will be moved back to Uther. Furthermore, the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken in regard to the harassment that took place on Uther. In addition to this, we will be reevaluating our communication procedure as it relates to enforcing policy, in order to avoid similar situations in the future.

We apologize for the confusion caused by this matter, and we want to reaffirm that the complex procedure of transferring characters between realms is in no way appropriate for addressing harassment concerns or other policy violations. We also apologize to the players on Eldre’Thalas for having disrupted the current state of their realm with this issue.

I guess… it makes sense?

*goes back to snicker at Lum*

EDIT: Terra Nova is all over this. Timothy Burke wrote a very good analysis of the two important aspects. The importance of the reputation within the game between the players and the reputation of the company itself.

EDIT-2: Ahahahah, oh my god. Comedy Gold on the Vault boards:

– Scott Jennings, How’s WoW treating you?
– Isn’t he the guy that won all that money on Jeopardy?
– That’s Ken Jennings
– Isn’t he the guy that did all those text based adventures back in the 70’s and 80’s?
– That’s Scott Adams
– Then who the hell is Scott Jennings and why is he playing WOW?

Ahh the drama… (that I missed)

I was on this a couple of hours before Foton, my spider sense was weakly tingling so I decided to investigate some more. Unfortunately I discovered just what everyone already knew. I spent some time asking question to their guildmaster but only to discover how idiot he is, so I decided that there wasn’t anything interesting behind to write about. I guess I should have searched the right name on google…

Not “Displaced”, the name of the guild after the transfer to Eldre’Thalas, but “Crusaders of Apathy”, as they were known before the move, on Uther.

I find asolutely hilarious how Lum is able to attract and produce drama no matter how carefully he tries to avoid it. The more he pays attention, the more he drowns in it (and goes “mad”). Come on, this time Lum’s wife happens to be in the guild, Lum offers them a subdomain to host a board and the result is a marvellous drama masterpiece filled with nostalgic remembrances. Bwhahahaha!

Now. Maybe this time he really has no responsibility. But when a year and half ago Mythic introduced spellcrafting along with the unintended possibility to enchant the cloaks (quote: “My wife has, since the introduction of spellcrafting in DAOC, been crafting cloaks non-stop. THE CLOAK FACTORY IS IN MY LIVING ROOM.”), I believe Lum had some influence when it was time to decide if those cloak should have been reverted or not.

How could have anyone have guessed that? Lum is just a puppet in the hands of his wife ;)

(btw, I really doubt that Lum has good contacts at Blizzard. Last I heard, October of the last year if I remember correctly, he had to beg to a Blizzard guy during a conference in order to get a beta account for the game.)