Most of the news are about PvP and I think this is not surprising since it’s possible that Blizzard is starting to see that there’s indeed a large demand on that front:

What are you guys doing to counteract people from dropping their WoW accounts?

I think it’s a multi-tiered approach. The problem is that everyone has a different play style and WoW is such a big game and so diverse, that there’s not that one thing that people want. I think the revamp of PvP will be huge. I think a lot of people bowed out because of the PvP system. I think we will show people that we care about the PvP system and we want to make it how you want it to be. I think because we are doing this in such a big way it will be huge. I also think that the fact we are changing the raid cap and dungeon difficulty, will also add to gamers wanting to stay or come back.

The biggest news is about the changes to the Honor system, but after digging the details I noticed that there are still some dark spots that may lead to whatever situation.

Right now there are already two system tied to the PvP: faction points and Honor. Blizzard repeated that they are going to redesign completely the faction system but they didn’t specify anything about it in these last previews. There are just too many omissions and unanswered questions to figure out exactly how things will work.

The more I read and digged the details, the more I noticed the smell of burnt food.

The Arena system

You’ll be able to join a team: 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. There are two different modes you can play: One is called practice mode to hone your skills and the other is competitive mode, which is level 70 only.

it can be Horde vs. Alliance or Horde vs. Horde or Alliance vs. Alliance and cross-server. With that, we anticipate there will be little, to no queues for this.

You can get the best rewards in the game on par with the raid game. So, wherever the raid game loot is currently at, the PvP arena system will match those rewards. And, the arena system is a seasonal system that will last three months then reset with a new set of rewards each season. It’s a competitive-based ladder that uses a rating system similar to the chess ELO rating.

you form your team, and your team may change in rating throughout the season. At the end of each week, based on your team’s rating, you get a number of points that you can spend on the gear.

I guess the arena system is completely different from the Honor system. So: level 70 required for rewards, better rewards coming from arena matches only, different loot every three months, weekly ranks based on “skill”, no queues.

See, it *seems* accessible, but I have the suspect that this will be as hardcore as ever. That’s what I meant when I said that I saw some shady spots. For example there isn’t a clear statement saying that the Arena system won’t have decay on the weekly points you gain, and that there won’t be a point-wipe at the end of every season.

If you notice the best “PvP rewards in the game on par with the raid game” are exclusive of the Arena system and not extended to the general Honor system and BattleGrounds. If they put here the biggest “carrot” then you can be sure that they plan this system to be very hard to cap. Or at least harder to cap.

People may believe that with the Honor points becoming currency that you can spend, eventually everyone will be able to reach the rewards at the top. I don’t think this is what Blizzard is planning. What I read between the lines is that the Arena system will essentially mimicking what the Honor system is now. Points decay, maybe the three months wipe and the weekly ranking. Who’s at the top gets the reward. The only difference is that not only they are removing the persistence of the points you spend from week to week (if there’s decay and regular wipe as I’m guessing) but they are ALSO removing the points during the same week. This is MORE HARDCORE than the current Honor system.

In the current Honor system the points you gain each day are cumulative and are counted at the end of the week. Given enough persistence everyone can heap enough points to climb the PvP ranks. With the new system you don’t get any points. You are instead ranked weekly in relation to the performance of others teams. The rewards will be ranked even in the case you gain points to redeem freely. “Spend you points to get one of these rank 1 items”.

This means that in the old Honor system, with enough (insane) persistence you could eventually reach the top ranks. It was insane, sure, but it was possible. With the new system the top ranks are just precluded. Or you ARE the very top player on your server who doesn’t lose ANY match, or you’ll just have to deal with your mediocrity and suck it up. Because the point is that you’ll never have the opportunity to change that.

With this new system a “loss” insn’t anymore just a step on the place that slows down the progress you are making. A loss will actually kick you back because it is going to have a negative influence on your rank. The best PvP system (as PvE) is the one that keeps you on the move. That encourages you to try more and better. That doesn’t overly frustrates you if you lost. A loss shouldn’t be punitive because that’s the death of fun PvP. You are supposed to have fun, enjoy the battles, eventually get the rewards. If you win, good. If you lose, okay, it will be different next time. And not have you obsessed about not losing any match.

Now this system worked on the Warcraft’s RTS because there was the ladder, but just the ladder. You didn’t get better units if you were on top. In WoW the ladder auto-enables itself. You win matches not just thanks to your skill, but also thanks to your gear. The more you win, the more you’ll be stronger and continue to win. The more you lose, the more you’ll continue to lose.

How’s this accessible?

I’ll repeat again: if Blizzard is going to put the biggest carrot here, you can be sure that the carrot won’t be accessible at all.

Three months, seasonal rewards. Tigole says that to be ranked you only need 10 matches. Ten matches for three months? Come on, that’s just too odd. In fact the ranks are weekly. You are ranked weekly depending on your performance. Let me quote:

Awards for the (Arena) competition will be more lucrative than those available in the honor PvP system.

They are opening a chasm here. The Honor system and this arena system will be detached. The Honor “points” you gain mean nothing in the Arena system. Moreover, the overhaul to the Honor system that transforms Honor points into a cumulative currency isn’t going to be valid in the Arena system.

Let me reconstruct the steps:

– The Honor system is pure catass, players complain for two years
– Blizzard gives up and transform Honor points into currency
– But doing that then every player will be able to eventually get the best rewards! *SHOCK!*
– So they nudge back the Honor system in the food chain
– And add on top an Arena system that is more Hardcore than ever and whose rewards dwarf everything that was in the game till that point

You know, in a mmorpg “value” is relative. It’s true that maybe the Honor system will become more accessible, it’s also true that they it will be worthless after its rewards will be replaced by the NEW and TRUE pure hardcore mode that is the Arena system.

This PvP system is going to be more hardcore than ever. Even the weekly persistence of points is going to be replaced by a rating system that will become even more selective. Where the players at the top will gain even more advantage and where the players at the bottom will just have to give up.

The scenario? The scenario is that those who have access to the best PvE gear will also dominate the PvP ranks, while those players who cannot get that initial advantage will just have to resign to bite the dirt.

Hint, hint: nothing is going to change. You’ll still be ranked toward your own faction and the system will be even more inflexible and accessible than how it is currently.

They gave the illusion of change, but at a less superficial look it’s obvious that they are going to persist in their mindset.

Moreover, it’s just sad and deluding that the best rewarded form of PvP will be an endlessly repetitive form of small and quick skirmishes between an handful of players in an instanced space.

I like this fire, mostly. I like it more than how I expected. <– (that’s the first impression, then it changed)

Facts are coming from an interview with Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan its mirror interview with Tom “Evocare” Chilton (it’s quite obvious that they agreeed beforehand what they were going to say since they use even the exact same phrasings) and a preview on IGN.

Summary:
– Honor points to tansform into cumulative currency (bound-to-BG in some cases)
– Raids capped at 25 players
– Arena system for smaller fights (2v2, 3v3, or 5v5)
– Arena seasonal rewards and ladders based on weekly chess ELO rating
– Arena matches between same-faction groups (no queues)
– Arena PvP gear to be kept in line with the best PvE gear
– World PvP objectives in the expansion zones (town control)

Lum is back on his chair. The commentary was so good that I decided to not write anything here, even if I disagree on some points.

Then I examined things more in detail and finished to write even too much. So I have to split.

I written about next patch world PvP additions already. But there are some new details that are unbelievably bad:

Four towers are crucial to establishing complete strategic control over the Eastern Plaguelands. Capturing these towers works very much like a tug-of-war. Control over a tower shifts depending on which faction has more characters with an active PvP flag in the tower’s direct vicinity.

I really didn’t make this up.

To conquer a tower you just need to zerg it and sit around. Combat is optional.

The main purpose of a PvP system is about giving an occasion to fight. This one *discourages* any attempt to actually have a battle. At least in Alterac Valley you had to fight your way to a tower and then manage to cap it uninterrupted. It opened up at least a possibility for an effective defence.

This system instead not only is totally unplayable due to faction balance problems, but it will even encourage the players to avoid each other (the same in Silithus), running away to go zerg that other tower that is left empty. Instead of the heat of a battle it will be like chasing each other’s tails without never actually meeting.

The buff is also quite silly. Why would you need a PvE buff if the second you leave the tower you just conquered to go kill some undeads in an instance the other faction would go cap the tower and make you lose it?

It’s even paradoxical, it’s because of the uselessness of the buff that maybe the players will stop and fight. Or, if the players cared for the buff, the gameplay would be just about the downtime of running from a tower to the other for the great majority of the time instead of actually fighting.

Add this to the fact that the PvP players not only don’t get any faction reward from this, but not even Honor, thanks to those retarded diminished returns that shouldn’t have never been implemented. So, really, this world PvP has no reward outside an useless +4% maximum PvE buff that those PvP players that are supposed to power this system will never take advantage of and care about. And in the practice it’s all about who can bring more people to a fight that will never happen (being outnumbered doesn’t open any alternative possibility, it just leads to players quitting).

If it’s about gameplay and reward, this system does BOTH badly.

I also don’t understand the point of the system used in Silithus. If it’s about which factions delivers more “dust”, then the best strategy would be about doing that as quickly as possible. Why would you instead go kill the other faction players to steal their dust? You can only carry one. So whether you take it yourself from the source or gank a player it’s exactly the same. With the only difference that in the second case you would waste time. Inconsistent design, really.

Have you played that kids game with the players aligned in two rows, with someone in the middle holding an handkerchief and then calling numbers corrisponding to one player for each row? Then the two players called need to run to the guy in the middle and then decide the right moment to steal the handkerchief. If one of the players gets it, the other can run after it and try to touch the player. If the player with the handkerchief reaches its row, then he got the point. If instead the other player manages to touch it, then the point goes to the other group (english name for this game?).

This is PvP. The sense of it is quite simple: there are two players, and only one handkerchief.

That’s the competitive nature and that’s why in this game the two players have to confront directly instead of competing separately. That’s what’s wrong in that mechanic used on Silithus. Everyone can go take some dust from the source. It’s a separated competition instead of a direct confrontation.

Now think to the alternative. Let’s say that only five pieces of dust can be active at the same time. It’s in this case that there’s a reason for a player to go kill the opponent who is running with the dust to steal it. If the player doesn’t get the dust from him, then he wouldn’t be able to get the dust at all. Limited resources, OR he gets it, OR you get it.

It basically would turn into a large-scale capture the flag. Where the two factions fight over those five pieces of dust that need to be returned. So, instead of just fetching garbage, you would have to actually *fight* for it.

Does it make sense?

If this is true it’s great, because it could lead to a “paradigm shift”. I saw it at FoH’s, here the quotes from Blizzard CMs:

Eyonix: The advantage for players in current tier-3 will be having a bit of an easier time leveling through the initial content. After that, the current tiers won’t really qualify or be comparable as end-game loot.

Leveling-up gear will begin to replace current end-game raiding gear.

Let me mock myself and say that: I had anticipated this already a few days after the expansion was announced, in October:

The rise of the level cap is a quick “fix”, both in the sense of game-drug and as a functional and effective way to give back to the players that experience that they loved along the way and that faded when they hit the top, when they had to adapt their habits to the bigger raids and guilds. It works basically like the nostalgia. It’s like if you are warped back ten levels without even remembering to have gone through them and have to repeat the experience like if it was the first time. In this genre the possibility to refresh the sense of awe and achievement is definitely something precious and satisfying for the players. So: why not?

While we can argue whether the current content will go or not right in the toilet, what is sure is that the current *progress* will.

We could assume that the players will retain their current gear for most of the hike to 70 but if this is true Blizzard would lose one of the strongest “fun” points: the sense of achievement. In the current game levelling is fun because you acquire new skills, spend talent points, get access to the mount and acquire progessively and constantly new gear. If the next 10 levels become just a grind with each level just giving out higher stats and nothing else, the “magic” would vanish easily and the expansion would finally feel rather dull. A game where you retain the same sword for 10 levels is a game that isn’t fun. So what could happen? Where is the line that will part the brand new level 60 character ready to move to 70 and those other players that have been at 60 for more than one year and collected all sort of powerful items? From my point of view the expansion will HAVE TO replace the gear for *all* the players.

Tobold was also right:

But a raised level cap also would have downsides. Most importantly you basically lose all motivation to continue playing your level 60 from now to the release date of the expansion. The way the game works now, you level from 1 to 60 at a pretty steady rate, and then you get stuck at 60. Your only way to advance further before the cap is raised is improving your equipment, which is relatively slow. To get the best level 60 equipment, an immense effort is required, organizing raid groups of up to 40 players for a tiny chance of finding something you need. Raise the level cap, and the reward for all that effort will become pretty much meaningless. The epic level 60 equipment from Molten Core will be considered as junk at level 70. Whether you did Molten Core fifty times or never will not make much of a difference on the power of your character at level 70. Oh, and if you continued questing at level 60, you will have “lost” all the experience rewards from those quests, and will wish you had waited until the cap was raised.

So it’s actually quite good. I support that choice.

The real problem is now the one I outlined in that old link. Hello mudflation? We continue to repeat that the production of content is the bigger problem today, and still we erode the little content there is through the unscrupulous use of mudflation.

People complain now about the lack of endgame content. In fact the devs are buying time by adding those endless grinds. Now, instead of expanding, they are resetting all that work.

Then people also talk about creating techniques or systems for player-created or auto-generated content. We don’t really need those. We just need to unfuck the model that is used right now and that is, honestly, just terrible.

So that we can at least valorize the content that we can make.

In short, Blizzard has still to figure out things on two important fronts:
– How to recycle the current endgame content so that it doesn’t get pushed/mudflated out of the game.
– Figure out a more fun, involving and accessible (inclusive instead of exclusive) endgame at level 70.

Samflam: Kinda makes me wonder why I am bothering raiding at all right now.

Because it’s fun!1!!

Announced on the forums:

As part of our efforts to eliminate cheating from World of Warcraft, we recently banned approximately 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts in the month of June, and with that removed well over 22 million gold from the total economy across all realms. While we regret having to take such extreme action, these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft’s Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately. We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the community for their assistance in reporting suspicious behavior. Numerous account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in-game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com.

Moving forward, if you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction using one of the methods listed above. All reports will be investigated, and the appropriate action will be taken when warranted

We appreciate your support and wish you the best with your continued adventures in Azeroth!

Observation #1: Wow… That’s more than what most other mmorpgs have in TOTAL subscriptions.

Observation #2: Blizzard is crazy? No. They are just making the game a better place for all the other players who respect the rules. That’s “quality” as well. It is also important to not legitimate what goldsellers do.

Observation #3: Uhm, is this really a news as big as it appears? The announce says nothing about WHERE those accounts were banned. In USA? In Europe? In China? Everywhere? I cannot remember right now, but isn’t creating new accounts in China really cheap? Without those details we cannot know the real consistence of that announce. Even if I guess it’s just the USA (the announce wasn’t copied on the european forums, for example). In that case it would be around 4% of total subscribers.

Anyway, the goldsellers and bans are still only consequences of a problem. That problem is still a design problem that is waiting to be addressed.

I don’t care much but I didn’t see any thread on the forums I use to browse. So here’s the news:

These new developments with the Draenei and Blood Elves mean that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will allow Alliance players to create shamans, and Horde players to play as paladins, using the newly uncovered races.

Source is european forums. A few minutes ago also confirmed by american community guys. So it’s official.

Full text/fancy justification/lore spin:

As we draw closer to the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, more of the secrets shrouding the Draenei and Blood Elves are being revealed. One legend involves the noble leader of the Draenei, Velen, and his vision. Velen’s vision was given substance in the form of Nobundo, a one-time Draenei priest who had devolved while the orcs decimated his race and tore the planet apart. Like his fellow Broken, Nobundo had lost contact with the Light, and so he ventured far into the deserts of Outland to meditate and pray for guidance.

After decades of silence, an unfamiliar voice finally answered his prayers. It was not the Light that whispered to him, but the wind. The breeze spoke to him of lost truths, of the might of the elements–of the delicate balance of power embraced by the shaman. Nobundo listened eagerly and learned all he could. When he judged the time was right, he departed the desert determined to use this knowledge to help the Draenei race.

Meanwhile, the Blood Elves busied themselves by establishing the fearsome Blood Knights. Their founding was made possible through the capture of a naaru from Tempest Keep by Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider. Kael’thas delivered the naaru to Silvermoon, where Magister Astalor Bloodsworn began months of study and experimentation on the naaru. Eventually, Astalor and his fellow wizards learned how to manipulate and corrupt the naaru’s luminous energies. In the end the wizards devised a process by which the powers of the Light could be transferred to recipients who had not earned such abilities. Instead of feeding upon the naaru’s magic, the blood elves would wield the naaru’s Light-given powers themselves.

Lady Liadrin, formerly a priestess, had recently renounced her vows, for she felt the Light had abandoned her people. She learned of the wizards’ achievement and volunteered to be the first to bend the stolen powers to her will. With her decision a new order was born: the Blood Knights. These renegade paladins are able to harness the sacred powers of the Alliance’s noblest heroes.

These new developments with the Draenei and Blood Elves mean that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will allow Alliance players to create shamans, and Horde players to play as paladins, using the newly uncovered races. The ability for players of both factions to use any class opens up exciting new gameplay opportunities, with fresh group-play dynamics. Those who have faithfully pledged their allegiance with one faction or the other will finally have the opportunity to try out a class that was once unavailable to them. While Alliance shamans and Horde paladins mostly share the same talents as their counterparts across the battlefield, they will also enjoy some unique abilities to themselves, similar to the priest class’ racial specialties. Stay tuned to wow-europe.com for more information.

This was quite expected and already rumored. In fact I remember Cosmik anticipating exactly that (yep, here and here). After all the bitching about PvP/PvE balance between Horde and Alliance, here’s the fix.

Mythic learnt with Camelot that striving for uniqueness between the PvP factions is a quality with a very high price. Blizzard preferred to lower the risks and balance issues by just adding some minor perks in the form of racial traits and one “gimmick” class for each faction. Just for a spark of originality and uniqueness.

It seems that they gave up, and proceeded to uniform the game even on that front.

This also means that for the first month the expansion will be out about 80% of the new characters will be either Blood Elf Pallies or Dranei’s shamans. My God, the game will be totally unplayable in the new zones, completely desert in all others. Of course Blizzard will realize how significant are these dangers only when it will be too late.

Expect the servers to crash and burn, like at release. Just worse.

I think I’m the only one left in the world who thinks that asymmetry in PvP is a quality that is worth keeping. No matter of the costs.

Also: think of Starcraft and how different was the gameplay between Terran, Zerg and Protoss. Or even Warcraft itself. I guess those developers are not somewhere else.

It looks like the patch notes for the next WoW update were leaked again. They seem legit, but remember that I’ve been fooled in the past (only once, though!).

Follow the first link and read them from FoH, because I’m not backing them up here.

Beside the cross-realm BGs that were announced and confirmed a while ago and the world PvP objectives that I commented yesterday, there’s some of the very best bugfixing EVER.

Here are some highlights:

—
– Your Friends List and Ignore List has been expanded to hold 100 players.

– Reputation loss from killing NPCs has been drastically decreased across the board, and applies only to the players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.

– Fixed a bug that caused the sound level to increase when alt-tabbing in and out of the World of Warcraft client.

– Fixed a bug that would sometimes result in player names being magnified.

– Dishonorable Kills now apply only to players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.

– You will now be placed in a raid upon entering a battleground.

– Players can now see how many battleground instances are running, but are not able to choose specific instances to join. (Abalieno’s note: it will make harder to arrange a match)

– You can now leave a battleground from an option on the scoreboard at any time.

– Token systems have been implemented in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Tier 1 and Tier 2 Class Armor sets are now acquired like the Tier 3 sets are through turn-in quests. Bosses that previously dropped the armor have had their loot tables revised. In addition, new items that appeal to a greater variety of playstyles have been added to ALL raid instances as both quest rewards and drops!

– Meeting stones no longer automatically search for party members. Instead, joining a meeting stone for a dungeon now adds you to an interactive list (sorted by name, level, class, etc) of players looking for a group. Groups can be formed by contacting players through this interface. The meeting stone queues for all dungeons can now be accessed from any meeting stone in the world.

– A Guild Calendar has been added to streamline guild management. Upcoming raids and other events can be posted for all guild members to see.

– NPCs that repair now have a Repair equipped items button.

—
Too good to be legit? Probably.

That radical switch in all the raid instances to a token system made me a bit suspicious. No more armor and weapons drops? No more public, immediate catwalks?

I also have to point out that at least two lines from these patch notes are directly taken from the patch notes leaked in September of the last year and that revealed to be fake”

– Dishonorable Kills will now apply only to the players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.

– You can now exit a battleground from an option on the scoreboard at all times.

– Meeting stones no longer search for party members. Instead, joining a meeting stone for a dungeon now adds you to a viewable list of players looking for a group. Groups can be formed by contacting players from this list.

Exact same phrasing. Plus a lot of similar changes.

EDIT: Yep, confirmed as fake. With a funny detail:

First and foremost, they’re being spread by “Spybot”, the same guy who faked the 1.8 patch notes.

There. I’ve said it.

They started with horrible game design (post-launch with the Honor system, before it was great), and they will never get out of that hole they dug.

I’m really surprised about how well the game design is on certain aspects, and how completely retarded it is on others (LFG system, PvP, faction grinds).

IGN has an article about upcoming changes to WoW’s PvP. In particular they reveal how Blizzard plan to revitalize the world PvP. Something that the players have been waiting from a long time and that Blizzard kept hyping still without giving out any concrete detail. As you could guess from the title, the result is terrible.

The big news today is the scoop on world PvP objectives.

The new world PvP content will take place in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, although it may eventually branch out to other areas.

In Silithus, the objective revolves around collecting dust, called “silithyst,” and players will activate the geysers to collect the silithysts. You get a nice “buff” (stat boost) when you turn in the resources, but you’ll be flagged as a PvP player as soon as you pick the stuff up, making you attackable by anyone in the opposing faction while you attempt to make your way back the Field Duty camps associated with the Cenarion Hold faction quests. If you manage to turn in enough of the dust, all of your fellow faction members in the zone will gain a buff as well, including those in the “AQ20” Ahn’Qiraj dungeon.

Eastern Plaguelands. There are several towers in this zone, already standing, that will be converted to captureable bases. You’ll need to control and defend each tower, and the faction who possesses all four will gain zone-wide benefits like in Silithus.

Increased damage against the many undead creatures there (and in Stratholme).

So, uhm. Travel back an forth beween a resource node and an NPC to fetch back stuff and get a buff in Silithus, and control four towers to get another buff in Eastern Plaguelands.

The motivation is nothing deeper or more involving than a buff, that also risks to be PvE oriented.

I guess the players are so desperate for PvP that even a so bland objective and context could be enough. But it will get old super-fast. It’s really nothing more than a minor gimmick, risking to be exploited instead of becoming an excuse for a fun and lively PvP environment (as it should).

The article doesn’t say if those objectives will also lead to honor and/or factional points. I guess they will since those two are what keeps alive the shrinking PvP crowd in WoW. But even if they will, Blizzard is still forced to keep the rewards small to not compete with the BattleGrounds.

It’s quite obvious that the PvP will never improve till they don’t address what fucked it up: the honor system.

Anyway. None of the new changes is particularly interesting or bright, nor I think players reading about them get the desire of playing that. It’s again another missed occasion. Nearly two years from release and the PvP still sucks despite the strong demand and the promises from Blizzard (the PvP world objectives were on the “on development” page since release, then they were removed along the war machines). With uninspired and dumb ideas incoming that won’t change a thing.

I hope you weren’t one of those waiting expectantly about the awesome new changes that Blizzard has hyped on for so many months. Because the result couldn’t be more deluding.

It’s also not so encouraging that a similar style of world PvP objectives will be used in the zones of the new expansion.

(my counter proposal)

P.S.
On FoH’s someone noticed another important potential problem:

Doing PvP in zones with a lot of potentially annoying mobs isn’t exactly attractive too.

dunno but I can’t wait to pvp in silithus. Where every inch of that god forsaken zone is covered in snaring, rooting, stunning, charging mobs. JFC It’ll BE SO MUCH FUN

The irony of choosing Silithus is that most PvP servers have had an unspoken truce in Silithus for months. With all the triggered mob spawns, faction/xp grinding and questing going on it has been more logical and reasonable to leave everyone to their own devices and not have constant, all-out pvp going on.

People all over the internet are ranting about the global LFG channel introduced with the latest patch (1.11.0. btw, I updated the repository) in WoW. For example Tobold and FoH.

As they say: “the sacred cow of the retard rocks has been slaughtered”. Referring to the previous clueless idea of the “meeting stones”. This one about creating a server-wide LFG channel surpassed its stupidity. After MONTHS passed saying that they were actively working on a better solution they definitely deserve some mockery if this is the result.

Quite interesting because with all the praises that WoW’s design receives and deserves, they still cannot get right something as simple and trivial as a LFG system.

My previous article on this topic couldn’t be more actual.

In the past I wrote that you can guess the quality of the design in a mmorpg from its LFG system and I still believe there is some truth in that claim. I always considered these tools as the real core of these games and I think they should be the starting point from where you design a new game. Not a feature that you consider later on, but the very first one around which the rest of the game is built.

While the debate goes on about things belonging to the previous century, let me remind you the *essential*:

It is fundamental for a LFG system to let you search specifically for groups already formed and active (both full or LFM)