So now lets delve, because this will be the main endgame and the most important thing happening to the game.

“Designing a game which allows players not to HAVE to play regularly. A possibility, not an obligation.”

I guess we can agree on that point. But if we even do a step backwards you can see that even DAoC isn’t THAT catass. In DAoC you achieve ranks the more you play. But even if you aren’t a PURE CATASS you can still try and, with the time, you will be able to achieve something decent.

Eventually you’ll gain something.

– There are 14 ranks.
– These ranks are based on the amount of honor points.
– The honor points are piled up, they do not get wiped, they do not decay with the time.
– The ranks above the sixth are capped.

What this means? This means that, for example, rank 8 isn’t equal to 560.000 points. There isn’t a fixed limit. It’s capped by players. The more points the players achieve, the more points the ranks require.

A casual player (or a normal player that isn’t able to keep up, maybe because he is sick for a week) will NEVER EVER match a skyrocketing treadmill. You can gain +1 each day and the next rank will be set at 10. The day after you gain another +1. Whohoo, you are a 2. But the next rank insn’t anymore at 10. You aren’t 8 points away from it. No, it’s at 20. Tomorrow will be at 30. You’ll be at 3.

It’s pure insanity.

Just so you notice, the famous PvP epic mount is at rank 11.

When you kill other players in your level range, you will receive an honorable kill. All your honorable kills for a week are then calculated to give you an honor score for that week, which then translates into an honor ranking.

We will not reset players’ points each week, so players don’t start at zero and on equal footing each time we recalculate honor scores.

The ranks above the sixth will be populated by fewer and fewer players. The highest rank of 14, for example, will only be occupied by the top 0.1 percent of players (one in every one-thousand characters).

This piece is the same written below, but the version I posted on Q23. For redundancy.

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“Catass Supremacy” may be as well the title of this “expansion” about the introduction of the honor system and related rewards in World of Warcraft. I really suggest them to publicize it like that.

Blizzard released the honor system plans here.

My opinion is that everything that they could do wrong, went so. The worst nightmares came true.

Not long ago I posted even on this boards my point of view on the actual PvP system, with its strengths, its weaknesses and the possible developments.

The biggest part of the fun is that an encounter is never “set in stone”. You always meet varying situations. You can meet a ganker, you can meet a friendly opponent that may even save your ass. You can just pass by without much bothering and mind your own business. Emergent situations and interesting developments show up each day. The environment is rich and lively.

Forget that:

When these systems are deployed, there will be many more incentives for players to fight each other than just the thrill of the kill.

With this new system the players become Bag Of Improvements. They are tasty meat to satisfy your treadmilled greed (and you’ll see what sort of treadmill).

It will be Kill On Sight EVERYWHERE. No matter what. Dedicated ganking squad will patrol along every zone to raze players attempting a quest. Organized groups of two-three stealthers will block all the main roads and choke points. Zergs of lower level alliance players will invade constantly the nearby zones.

Also, your honor points for the week are a percentage of the total honor points available based on your contribution to your team’s overall effort for that week.

The highest rank of 14, for example, will only be occupied by the top 0.1 percent of players (one in every one-thousand characters). You’ll need to fight furiously and honorably to climb up the ranks of our PvP system and keep it up to stay there.

Goodnight casual player. You’ll always be 0.000000001 of the average catass. You can play for two-fucking-thousands years straight and you’ll still be at rank ONE.

And say goodnight to a proper goal-based reward system. Gank for the win.

P.S.
Someone also forgot that on the PvE servers you can have both Horde and Alliance characters. Happy farming everyone.
And I hope this is a warrior. Because IT’S NOT a shaman.

My worst nightmares are confirmed. World of Warcraft wonderful PvP system is going right in the toilet.

They just released a bland design plan. So head there if you want to read juicy stuff because here you’ll see just rants about how clueless and damaging are those ideas for the game.

When these systems are deployed, there will be many more incentives for players to fight each other than just the thrill of the kill.

Say goodbye to emergent systems and tense situations. Please welcome the new Kill On Sight. Goodbye PvP servers. Every player passing by is a nifty Bag Of Improvement. Enjoy the new treadmill.

Say goodbye to goal-based rewards. Gank for the win.

Enjoy the orc spitting on the nigh-elf six levels below and still worth points. Enjoy low lever zerg squads to grind points. Enjoy permanent gank squads in all the zones farming solo players desperately trying to complete a quest.

I anticipate to everyone a 200% increase of the rogue-stabbing population for easy farming of players busy fighting monsters. A two-three members squad will grant a sure success.

Also, your honor points for the week are a percentage of the total honor points available based on your contribution to your team’s overall effort for that week.

The highest rank of 14, for example, will only be occupied by the top 0.1 percent of players (one in every one-thousand characters). You’ll need to fight furiously and honorably to climb up the ranks of our PvP system and keep it up to stay there.

Goodnight casual players. You’ll always be 0.000000001 of the average catass. You can play for two-fucking-thousands years straight and you’ll still be at rank ONE.

Not long ago on MUD-Devs we were discussing where the design should head:
“Designing a game which allows players not to HAVE to play regularly. A possibility, not an obligation.”

Congratulations Blizzard! You just FUCKED UP every possibility of good design. Whohoo!

Idiots.

So the patch is out. It doesn’t matter if it’s only on the (invite-only) test server, what is important is that now we can understand what happened in the last two months and set better expectations on how this game will develop through the months and years.

The first remark is that, maybe, my prediction wasn’t that wrong. I was right about the battlegrounds delayed and we are still in the first week of March. The patch is out but only on the test server.

But what about the patch itself? What about the expectations? We waited too much. I’m not one of those with no memory who goes all happy after two months of grumbling and attacks. This patch is late and considering that it’s the result of more than two months of work, not that impressive.

But.

The changes go in the right direction. There are many, many usability fixes that will do good to the game. This patch is mostly a collection of serious bugfixes. So it’s a “level up” for the game no matter what. If there aren’t programming errors (I hope the test server will nail this down because I remember the trainwrecks at patch release during beta), the patch shouldn’t have side effects. They addressed the problems directly without dodging the main issues and without adding band aids and workarounds. So the development can still be judged as painfully slow but at least heading in a good direction. This is something to underline.

The doubts about the “meeting stones” are still there since they didn’t release details about them:

We still don’t know how they designed them but they sound weaker than the current system.

An LFG system just needs one requirement that defines directly it’s quality: how many players it is able to reach. Right now I can use a channel visible to a whole zone. What will these stones add?

We still have to see but, supposedly, you’ll have to walk till that point to flag yourself and beg the randomized system to not build a group full of tards. It’s rather obvious that the “pool” of players from where it will draw will be the two other guys that ARE JUST SITTING NEXT TO YOU, waiting from two hours at a stone that noone uses.

At best these stones will be an altar of sacrifice for high level players to raid and laugh about.

What the game needs is a server-wide system. The “LFG” flag visible on /who lists worked in beta and was removed for unknown reasons. Same for the useful “grouped or not” flag.

In general all the comments I wrote till now still apply. Same for the concerns expressed by others. The leet speak seems addressed but there’s no word about its serious exploit. The most important parts of the game, the battlegrounds and honor system, are still shady. They are supposed to “close the circle” and transform this game in something that feels more like a “world” and less like an infinite treadmill. But we cannot know how this will go since they haven’t disclosed the details. I believe they’ll become a fun digression but I don’t see them really providing a depth and a serious endgame purpose.

The introduction of better PvP systems and goals integrated with the whole game-world would help a lot more and build a better community but the honor system can still be seen as a danger instead of a positive evolution. In the case it’s kill-based and not goal-based.

The conclusion is that to form more outright opinions I’ll have to wait some more time. In general it seems that they are adjusting and preparing a base. But they still need something concrete to build there. That isn’t simply limited to “more stuff” that will just enlarge the game without adding any real depth.

So I’m still in a “observing and waiting” mode.

Some of the most important changes (like the caps to the instances) are still too late now. And I was hoping to see more quests added and fixed. I’m still waiting the Uldum line of quests to be delivered. It sucks greatly to go through a long (and awesome) cycle to just discover that it ends abruptly with no reward.

I’m also looking forward to Dire Maul. With a cap of five players and an upper cap due to the maximum level it will introduce something new in World of Warcraft: the challenge.
I hope it will be HARD. I also hope it will be worth it.