What exactly does this mean? That all the pieces become as wanted as the weapons? That they like how the weapons are popular with the pve crowd?
His exact quote was:
"Well, certainly something that we want to do for Lich king is better crossover so that when you're doing PvE you are actually able to accumulate some PvP gear in case you decide to try out some PvP you'll have a good
starting point. The same would go in reverse, if you're doing a lot of PvP, you might have a couple of really good items that you could use into PvE and do pretty well."
While we can only guess as to the exact implementation, there are some vestiges of this system in TBC already:
- We get a starter PvP set from Rep vendors
- We get a PvP cloak and trinket from Badges
- We get old season PvP armor from PvE tokens
Then there's your mentioned PvP weapons being great for PvE, but I'm not so sure they really intended for that, given the rating system.
It's a good cinematic. It's just not a good introduction cinematic.
We've already had two cinematic trailers for the game, both of which had 'us' in them. Why need a third? I thought the trailer was perfect in what it was designed for, giving us a look at why Arthas is once again a threat. Huge army of undead, and a really badass -looking dragon (Sapphiron? It's a serious ret-con if it is, though I can't imagine we're going to have to fight two undead frost dragons in Northrend), presumably itching for a fight.
Perhaps this is the dragon that is sent to raze Orgimmar in an upcoming world event tie-in to WOTLK. THat would appease alot of the 'but what relevance to the story does this cinematic have?' concerns. We'd basically be witnessing here Arthas sending his most powerful assistant to wage war on us ingame - and our obvious response will be to buy the expansion and go to Northrend and fight him before that huge army gets a chance to come to us to finish the job.
A proactive war, so to speak.
The cynic in me is wondering what Sindragosa's token frost aura (like Sapphirons) is going to tick for.
I find the PvP/PvE crossover statement a bit confusing too.
While - outside the weapons - the PvP items aren't exactly brimming with awesome, taking into account the (non)effort involved in getting them... If I wanted to gear up a brand new character for PvE, that's where I'd go. My spreadsheet informs me that I actually have 25-man raiding pieces I could very well replace with PvE gem'ed PvP epics and gain a DPS boost, on my main (No, I'm clearly not competing for world first kills). In reverse, "rogues in PvE gear" is what I'd refer to as a recognized issue (see Cheat Death change).
Now... Without stepping too deeply into my baseless but optimisitc speculation, I'm wondering if they're looking to make it "harder" to aquire items in PvP. If PvE provided PvP items in a more structured fashion - and based on the way he chose to express it in that interview - you could make PvP give less gear and/or demand more to get the gear, but because of the gear from PvE still allow players to engage in both meaningful PvE and PvP without having to spend additional time playing to do so. Same gear, same option to PvP, but same amount of time invested with more effort.
And I quite liked the cinematic. Though in fairness, I know my tendancies usually goes to being more interested in being a part of the story, than being it's focal point, which isn't every gamer's cup of tea.
Last edited by Calixtus : 08/21/08 at 12:21 PM.
Reason: Spelling
While we can only guess as to the exact implementation, there are some vestiges of this system in TBC already:
- We get a starter PvP set from Rep vendors
- We get a PvP cloak and trinket from Badges
- We get old season PvP armor from PvE tokens
Even back at release, there was the low-level pvp gear available from the Auchindoun spirit shards (and i believe they've mentioned wanting to implement an expanded version of that system, based around control of Lake Wintergrasp).
* PvE and PvP gear to be not so exclusive. You're expected to get some items for one area by doing the other.
Alas, if they take this too far it will drive me out of the game. I don't enjoy PvP, and today I can get away with ignoring it entirely without much penalty. The day that changes...
So, anyone have some concrete idea of what this statement actually means? How is it playing out in Northrend?
Lake Wintergrasp is unhabited at the moment, and there have not been any PvP rewards released as of yet. I have noticed however, that the PvP dailies in the Grizzly Hills (I think I counted 4 or 5 of them) reward you with stacks of Venture Coin, which as far as I am aware cannot be redeemed for anything yet.
I have noticed however, that the PvP dailies in the Grizzly Hills (I think I counted 4 or 5 of them) reward you with stacks of Venture Coin, which as far as I am aware cannot be redeemed for anything yet.
The cinematic was definitely a departure from the norm, but I liked the use of narration and dramatic irony. It sets the stage for WLK. It does so in a different way than the rest of the cinematics, for sure. It could set a different tone for the expansion as a whole, being about Arthas' fall and character with us as voyeurs, rather than us as central heroes (and Illidan and some dude somewhere). As for players... there was an army of scourge, your job is to not become part of the cinematic.
[e] I guess that mitigation cloak (Venture Coin Mitigation Cloak - PH) might indicate what sort of stat distribution we're going to see on tank gear. Roughly 1:1:2 threat:avoidance:stam. Based on the name, the whole point of that cloak is to have dodge, and yet it has more strength than dodge rating. It could be leveling tanking gear, but based on what blizzard has said they want tanking to be I suspect it's representative.
On PvP and PvE items, Chilton's exact quote, as posted by mmo-champion, is:
We made that decision because prior to The Burning Crusade, what we found as people increase their gear they die quicker because PvE gear is specialized gear. For DPS classes as an example it is designed to do the most damage as possible in the shortest time as possible and it does not have a lot of survivability. If that's the best gear players have available, then what happens is they take that into PvP is that they die very quickly and there's not much time for their strategies to evolve. What we've found is that in PvP we had to create gear with balanced offensive capability and survivability and because of that we had to create this separate set of gear with the new stat called resilience to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth. [...] Well, certainly something that we want to do for Lich king is better crossover so that when you're doing PvE you are actually able to accumulate some PvP gear in case you decide to try out some PvP you'll have a good starting point. The same would go in reverse, if you're doing a lot of PvP, you might have a couple of really good items that you could use into PvE and do pretty well.
To me, that sounds like a certain portion of the item budget will be reserved for survivability or possibly longevity. I.e. We will no longer see items where 100% of the item budget goes to pure DPS. It sounds like the percentage of the item budget devoted to DPS or healing throughput will be the same for both PvE and PvP, and that would be why items are more interchangeable.
The Venture Coin vendor is at the lighthouse at the southwest end of the Venture Bay harbor. He only shows up if your faction controls the lighthouse, which seems to work like the towers in Hellfire. The coins themselves come from various daily quests at Venture Bay and the two other settlements further up the river. They are sort of PvE/PvP hybrids with asking you to kill either enemy guards or players and forcing you to be PvP flagged.
It's unclear from the content of the post whether he's talking about two different points related though being about PvP itemization, or using one as a lead-in to the other. "accumulate some PvP gear" and "have a good starting point" is still ambiguous as to whether PvE DPS gear will require two shots to kill instead of one, or if it will be just as squishy but supplimented by spare PvP items obtainable by PvE means (like the 'overflow' token system and badge capes currently). The one thing that might indicate one way or another is the lack of a paragraph break, but it's a transcription of an oral interview, so that's meaningless =P.
Nice for who? Stun removed from both, Rogues get 10% CRIT damage, and Warriors get 10 RAGE per proc?
How the heck is this fair or nice on any level for Warriors. -_-
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.
The Rogue one is critical damage bonus, and heh I was looking at it more from a pve dps viewpoint, it makes maces more worthwhile.
Ninja edit to reflect that. :0
However my point is still valid. It seems like the only specialization worth while at the moment for Warriors is Axe spec.
Axe: +5% Crit, +5% crit damage
Sword: 1 extra attack with internal cooldown of 6 seconds
Mace: 10 rage per proc.
The other 2 just don't compare, I've calmed down a bit since reading this and of course it's still in beta and changes are coming, but please don't say the mace change is "nice". ^_^ At least not for Warriors.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.
However my point is still valid. It seems like the only specialization worth while at the moment for Warriors is Axe spec.
Axe: +5% Crit, +5% crit damage
Sword: 1 extra attack with internal cooldown of 6 seconds
Mace: 10 rage per proc.
The other 2 just don't compare, I've calmed down a bit since reading this and of course it's still in beta and changes are coming, but please don't say the mace change is "nice". ^_^ At least not for Warriors.
It's "not nice" in the sense that Mace Stun and Improved Hamstring are often the only things that really allow me to do damage to many classes in PvP.
It's "nice" in the sense that it allows Blizzard to balance warriors in ways not-related-to-RNG. I eagerly await a similar change to improved hamstring, as well. Hopefully this is a harbinger of larger balancing changes to the warrior class, deemphasizing RNG and instead emphasizing intelligent use of abilities.
Anyhow patch is apparently 668MB so I'm guessing that has to include a few instances if not a whole new zone too. Since patches of that size are generally art/music assets.
We've already had two cinematic trailers for the game, both of which had 'us' in them. Why need a third? I thought the trailer was perfect in what it was designed for, giving us a look at why Arthas is once again a threat. Huge army of undead, and a really badass -looking dragon (Sapphiron? It's a serious ret-con if it is, though I can't imagine we're going to have to fight two undead frost dragons in Northrend), presumably itching for a fight.
Assuming we killed Sapphiron in the level 60 version of Naxx (what is still valid from the lore confuses me), this could be showing how Arthas brings him back. Or it could be Sindragosa. Or something else.
What's wrong with fighting two undead dragons in Northrend? Frost Wyrms aren't unique by any means, and there were multiple dragons in Karazhan alone.
The level cap will be 80. Storm Peaks will be available. Icecrown is still unavailable.
We'll also make the following dungeons available:
# Halls of Lightning
# Halls of Stone
# Caverns of Time: Stratholme
# The Occulus
# Utgarde Pinnacle
# Heroic: The Nexus (No attunement necessary -- just get level 80)
Gundrak and Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom almost made this patch but there were a few issues which held them back. Also, we sped up the leveling curve from 70-80. We're still dialing in the leveling speed so feedback is appreciated.