Wrath of Lich King Stuff (was 'Blizzcon' thread) - Page 306

• alcaras · 09/23/08, 10:31 AM

Originally Posted by glowacks

Nevertheless, I suppose that the tournament realms' existence now gives a place for those that are only interested in games of equal gear

My problem with the tournament realms are:
- It costs $20 extra on top of the normal subscription, for each "tournament"
- It's not permanent; you can play for few months, and then you can't play
- You only get three characters.

I'd happily pay $15/mo for _just_ tournament realm access, without access to the normal game, provided:
- There's no extra fees on top of that
- It's always up and I can always play
- I get as many characters as I want

• Nisu · 09/23/08, 1:40 PM

Originally Posted by ZeroWashu

Other than weapons most of the gear isn't on par with many heroics. It was far worse for the game when they lowered the reputation requirement for Heroics to honored. That did more damage to the game than any BG did. This ended up making it very hard for late comers to get in on the action. Why run a normal instance when you can do the heroic? So instead of encouraging higher end players to group up with lower levels they put a mechanism in place that separated them. It used to be a lot of runs to get your rep up, that was fine to me. It meant that as we grouped with those coming up that hopefully they were learning to play in a team environment.

Have you ever tried to key an alt for TK heroics? It takes bloody ages unless you armtwist guildies into it, because nobody except the relatively small number of people who have level 70 alts that aren't currently honored and want to be cares to run normal TK, because they've done it to death already. As Blizzard has said, rep requirements for heroics are bad. If you need something from normal, you run normal. If you want a heroic, you run a heroic. If you want to avoid having green-geared arms warriors tanking, you armory people.

Tunch · 09/23/08, 1:47 PM

Originally Posted by Nisu

Have you ever tried to key an alt for TK heroics? It takes bloody ages unless you armtwist guildies into it, because nobody except the relatively small number of people who have level 70 alts that aren't currently honored and want to be cares to run normal TK, because they've done it to death already. As Blizzard has said, rep requirements for heroics are bad. If you need something from normal, you run normal. If you want a heroic, you run a heroic. If you want to avoid having green-geared arms warriors tanking, you armory people.

To be fair, that was just a very simple mistake by Blizzard to not allow any easy quest-related (or whatever) rep gain for The Shatar. As long as all of the heroic reputations have ample quests and other ways to acquire rep for the honored goal, it's fine. Lower City comes to mind as another one that could have been a bit better, but not nearly as bad as Shatar.

Sydane · 09/23/08, 2:09 PM

It's very easy to get Honored with the Sha'tar without running a single instance, Scryer/Aldor rep rolls over up to 5999 and there are several Sha'tar specific quests in the camp near Auchindoun. Both of my alts were keyed for heroic TK before they dinged 70 without putting any real effort into it. Personally I prefer the Magister's method for Heroic keys, at least it requires everyone run an instance once in order to run the heroic. The problem I have with lower rep heroic keys isn't that people don't want to run the normals, the problem is that people are in heroics who don't know the instance at all and have no business being there.

Poncee · 09/23/08, 2:13 PM

Sydane beat me to it. Please delete

Mman · 09/23/08, 2:19 PM

Yeah, having rep be the qualification for keying heroics is not bad as long as it does not require you to grind non-heroic instances. Ideally you would reach the required level just by doing the majority of quests for that hub and completeing a single run of the regular instance. Could include a rep grind quest to supplement if you cannot get a group together for the regular istance. Although if you are going to go down this route you might as well just make the requirement be a simple quest chain in that zone (or a level 80 quest that requires you revisit zones that you did at a lower level).

e: I think it is also important that the role of heroic dungeons has sort of changed from the original idea in TBC. Originally they were setup to be a challenge to people who had ran the regular version lots of times. But, eventually they became a way to gear up for raids. Either a stepping stone gear wise or an alternative method to get a certain gear slot. As such, the need to get into them relatively quickly at level 80 is important.

• Nisu · 09/23/08, 2:23 PM

Originally Posted by Tunch

To be fair, that was just a very simple mistake by Blizzard to not allow any easy quest-related (or whatever) rep gain for The Shatar. As long as all of the heroic reputations have ample quests and other ways to acquire rep for the honored goal, it's fine. Lower City comes to mind as another one that could have been a bit better, but not nearly as bad as Shatar.

Right, I pointed out Sha'tar because it's the only one that doesn't have an easy/obvious way to hit honored. What I meant is that if they didn't drop the revered, requirement, every heroic key would be more annoying to get than Sha'tar is now.

Originally Posted by Sydane

The problem I have with lower rep heroic keys isn't that people don't want to run the normals, the problem is that people are in heroics who don't know the instance at all and have no business being there.

The issue here is either you're forced to do tedious grinds for alts, or you have idiots in your group. Armory lookups generally solve issue two, but there's no way to solve issue one other than grind.

GSH · 09/23/08, 2:28 PM

Originally Posted by ZeroWashu

I never understood why AFK detection was so difficult.

Because it's really hard to tell if someone is defending or is just afk if they are not being attacked. And getting people to actually stay back and defend is already hard enough.

Skulli · 09/23/08, 4:11 PM

Honor reset with wotlk:

As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system

World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Upcoming Honor Items and Honor Reset

The items should be on the PTRs now, or very soon.

edit:

Mark reset too:

All Honor Tokens will be wiped as well. This reset should happen right before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

Mideci · 09/23/08, 4:21 PM

Originally Posted by Akka

I'm quite pleased with the systematic addition of rating on every arena gear. Keep the reward in the competitive part of the game, to the competitive players. That's all ok.
But I'm much more worried about the PvP/PvE balance.
For now it's good.
But then, arena S1 didn't cause an uproar either, because the "open to all" PvP gear was still the blue honor one.

Where the PvE/PvP balance is at risk, is two or three arena season down the path, when the "entry-level" PvP gear won't be the blue ilvl 200 Savage, but the previous-season-top-arena epic ilvl 213 or 226. When you will be able to welfare your way into full purples for PvE while skipping all the PvE content at the same time.
PvE gear may be better itemized for PvE than PvP gear, but with enough ilvl, the "entry level" PvP gear will end up outclassing the "entry level" PvE gear, and it risks to be S2-honor season all over again.

That is the (admitedly in the long-term future) problem we will have if they keep the season increase in gear.

And I can't disagree more... You are worried that 12 months from now people are going to be able to welfare their way into helping our Naxx 25 raids and perhaps have adequate-ish gear for Ulduar raids -- and really the PVP is not particularly well itemized for PVE, so it's going to be nothing more than adequate. Aside from being a year away, this seems like a non-problem. It will allow people with new alts, etc. to have a chance to PVP at all reasonably. Which is the idea. The fact they'll be able to bypass Naxx -- maybe -- which few guilds will be running anyway, hardly strikes me as a problem. And btw, there'll be better rewards from the heroic badge by then for PVE folk that keep running heroics.

I'm sorry, but the main problem in BG seems to me that there is too much "free honor", and not that you should add even more incentive to AFK in them.

So I have no idea if you PVE or what your experience is, but this notion of free honor is just not true -- except in AV. You don't get free honor from AFKing in any other battleground. Yes, you can steal a free EotS, WSG or AB mark for being on the losing team, but you don't get honor. Certainly not now. I realize that an honor pulse every minute would change that equation and so perhaps it does have to be coupled with a serious upgrade to a "prove you're at the keyboard mechanism".

levk · 09/23/08, 4:42 PM

He's worried that better pvp gear gets easier to get which isn't the case for pve gear, probably gets more of a pain instead. Ideally whenever they start new seasons and make better pvp gear available to AV grinders, they should just as well put in new pve gear available via 5 man tokens or something.

Macblade · 09/23/08, 4:50 PM

Originally Posted by frber

If they are going to add arena ratings on everything they really needs to make the arena into a real ladder system. With different level of progression. If they are still going to let players with all the gear reroll and fight fresh players just starting out then the system isn't going to be very fun.

Something simple would be to use the personal rating on the gear you have as a minimum team rating when queing. For instance buying a piece of gear that needs 1650 rating would mean any team you are on would automatically count as at least 1650 rating (while you are queuing at least). Or something slightly less harse like the team counting as 1650-50=1600 or so.

So as skill improves you do move up in ratings permanently; and also drops out of the pool of players who still try to reach the lower tier gear. Othervise this whole personal rating thing just isn't going to add anything fun to the game.

I really don't understand why they haven't done this already. It seems like an incredibly easy solution. Take the highest piece of arena gear anyone on the team is wearing and that is the minimum team rating for that team. Nothing is more depressing than playing games against people that are clearly much better geared than 90% of the people in that bracket and it seems to happen far too often for it simply to be people playing past to a higher bracket.

Yes people could take gear off and there will still be huge differences in player skill. But again, this seems like a really easy solution to fixing at least part of the problem. It is really not fun trying to get arena gear for an alt when you are playing in the 1400 and 1500 bracket against people with all S3 S4 gear.]

Edit: As far as the honor discussion and the debate between AFKing and WSG/AB/EOTS not being worth it. The quality of play (at least alliance side in my battlegroup) is so terrible that people AFKing wouldn't really change much. On the other hand, if they were actually worth going into honor wise, then I wouldn't constantly get the comment from people in guild saying "even on other honor weekends AV is the best honor." So actually provided some incentive would in fact bring more quality players back to those BGs.

As far as getting honor mostly from wintergrasp. Does the honor gear still require marks? I.e. are we simply replacing AV with wintergrasp and we're still going to be forced to farm marks from the other crappy honor BGs?

Sydane · 09/23/08, 4:58 PM

The frustrating part about BGs other than AV is there is no reason to go in them at all other than marks. So often people come in expecting to lose (for that matter they make premades trying to lose). The only reason they are there is to get the marks they need and get out. Even the bonus honor weekends doesn't really change that, and if you're farming honor, just going into a BG and waiting for the slower queue of AV to pop is the norm. Plenty of times I've been in a BG that stood a good chance of winning, only to see a chunk of people jump out to AV completely sabotaging it.

The rep gains in WSG are also a shining example of how horribly bad it is to have a system where you get nothing for trying hard and not succeeding, spending an hour in WSG and only getting 40 rep to show for it is brutal. The fact that WSG games are consistently the longest and slowest just exacerbates the problem even more. Doubling the rep gains from a flag cap and adding rep gains from recovering your own flag would help a lot to bring it in line with AB, which consistently gives you rep as long as you are achieving at least to an extent.

Originally Posted by levk

He's worried that better pvp gear gets easier to get which isn't the case for pve gear, probably gets more of a pain instead. Ideally whenever they start new seasons and make better pvp gear available to AV grinders, they should just as well put in new pve gear available via 5 man tokens or something.

To a certain extent, that did happen. When S3 hit and S1 gear became available for honor, T5 level badge gear was added. When S4 hit, the T6 level badge gear had been released not long before. Personally I felt like the bigger hole wasn't the fact that the Honor gear was there, it was the fact that there were so many gaps in the badge gear. Some slots have been exceptionally hard to upgrade throughout BC (shoulders and helms primarily, there was also a lack of badge weapons before IQD), so grinding the honor/arena version was often the only real source of an upgrade for those slots. If they keep the Tier pieces on the badge venders as they are currently, this will be solved to a large extent.

Addled · 09/23/08, 5:08 PM

Originally Posted by Skulli

Mark reset too:

All Honor Tokens will be wiped as well. This reset should happen right before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I should spend the honor I've been stockpiling

Incidentally, are marks used for anything in WotLK? I've been checking out the costs of various pvp items on mmo-champion, and they only have Honor and Arena Points requirements. Did Blizzard remove marks entirely from the game (and the quest "For Great Honor!") or are they just slow on adding the requirements to PvP items?

Cirocco · 09/23/08, 5:09 PM

Originally Posted by Skulli

Honor reset with wotlk:

World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Upcoming Honor Items and Honor Reset

edit:

Mark reset too:

Interesting. My immediate thought on reading this is that gold doesn't reset and large amounts of gold will give people an advantage buying gear/patterns at 80, just as large amounts of honour would give an advantage.
I don't think the comparison is asisnine, if you played a lot of hours and you wern't interested in pvp you probably accrued large amounts of gold, if you played a lot and where pvp focused then you probably didn't accrue much gold but accrued large amounts of honour instead.
You might think the comparison isn't a valid one. But both gold and honour stored on a character equal time invested.

Harwin · 09/23/08, 5:17 PM

Originally Posted by Cirocco

Interesting. My immediate thought on reading this is that gold doesn't reset and large amounts of gold will give people an advantage buying gear/patterns at 80, just as large amounts of honour would give an advantage.
I don't think the comparison is asisnine, if you played a lot of hours and you wern't interested in pvp you probably accrued large amounts of gold, if you played a lot and where pvp focused then you probably didn't accrue much gold but accrued large amounts of honour instead.
You might think the comparison isn't a valid one. But both gold and honour stored on a character equal time invested.

Gold doesn't turn into gear at the start of an expansion the way honor does. Yes, you can get your crafting up faster by buying crafting materials from others, and you can buy some nice BoE gear that drops. But of course you're now in a bidding war with the other people who stockpiled gold. The stuff drops at the same rate, it's just who has more gold to spend.

In contrast, the honor gear is available from day 1, no matter how many skinners or miners are on the server, and there's no inflation - my honor has no affect on your ability to purchase honor gear since I can't raise the price by bidding with you.

Obviously, gold has some effect, but it has more limitations than honor, I think.

Macblade · 09/23/08, 5:23 PM

Originally Posted by Cirocco

Interesting. My immediate thought on reading this is that gold doesn't reset and large amounts of gold will give people an advantage buying gear/patterns at 80, just as large amounts of honour would give an advantage.
I don't think the comparison is asisnine, if you played a lot of hours and you wern't interested in pvp you probably accrued large amounts of gold, if you played a lot and where pvp focused then you probably didn't accrue much gold but accrued large amounts of honour instead.
You might think the comparison isn't a valid one. But both gold and honour stored on a character equal time invested.

This is true, but gold held will be essentially wiped out by the huge inflation that will likely occur. I haven't played on the beta enough to know for sure, but there was certainly huge inflation from vanilla to BC. So while the gold itself won't be wiped out, the purchasing power of it will be so far reduced that it will probably be less meaningful that you'd think. Anyone have any idea how much gold you could expect to earn simply questing your way up from 70 to 80? Comparing that to current amounts of gold that people hold would probably be a good indication of inflation.

• Caniki · 09/23/08, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Macblade

This is true, but gold held will be essentially wiped out by the huge inflation that will likely occur. I haven't played on the beta enough to know for sure, but there was certainly huge inflation from vanilla to BC. So while the gold itself won't be wiped out, the purchasing power of it will be so far reduced that it will probably be less meaningful that you'd think. Anyone have any idea how much gold you could expect to earn simply questing your way up from 70 to 80? Comparing that to current amounts of gold that people hold would probably be a good indication of inflation.

I don't really have a number as to how much gold you can expect to get, but in general, most quest on beta give 5g in addition to their XP rewards. You'll obviously earn additional money by vendoring stuff.

Skulli · 09/23/08, 5:28 PM

Originally Posted by Cirocco

Interesting. My immediate thought on reading this is that gold doesn't reset and large amounts of gold will give people an advantage buying gear/patterns at 80, just as large amounts of honour would give an advantage.
I don't think the comparison is asisnine, if you played a lot of hours and you wern't interested in pvp you probably accrued large amounts of gold, if you played a lot and where pvp focused then you probably didn't accrue much gold but accrued large amounts of honour instead.
You might think the comparison isn't a valid one. But both gold and honour stored on a character equal time invested.

Saving honor and marks is more like saving tier 6 tokens for t7 at level 80 than gold.
I like the decision and they should have done it with tbc and i would like to see it with every new arena season.

Qwivoth · 09/23/08, 5:31 PM

Originally Posted by Nisu

If you want to avoid having green-geared arms warriors tanking, you armory people.

Using the Armory to check people out for PUGs is a pain in the fourth point of contact. They need an ingame version of the Armory or the ability to remotely inspect a person's gear either by a command such as /inspect <so and so> that doesn't rely on relative distance but only on if the person is online at the moment or not. Personally, I prefer the remote inspection tool. I can't count how many PUGs I would have avoided had I been able to quickly inspected someone in SMV while I was in Netherstorm or whatever location(s).

Cirocco · 09/23/08, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Skulli

Saving honor and marks is more like saving tier 6 tokens for t7 at level 80 than gold.
I like the decision and they should have done it with tbc and i would like to see it with every new arena season.

As I understand it, just about everything worthwhile in pvp in WOTLK requires an arena rating, honour on it's own won't be getting anyone T7 equivalents.

I wouldn't have minded this change so much if they'd announced it some time ago. Leaving it this late in the day to announce it seems like a collosal waste of people's play time. I could have done any number of other thing's instead of Battle Ground's if I'd known the honour was going to be useless in WOTLK.

There is a precedent for honour resetting in an expansion, the last expansion, and there was no honour reset. Given that, and no announcement to the contrary from Blizzard till now, I think it wasn't entirely unreasonable for us to go by precedent and assume that there would be none this time.

inksy · 09/23/08, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by Qwivoth

Using the Armory to check people out for PUGs is a pain in the fourth point of contact. They need an ingame version of the Armory or the ability to remotely inspect a person's gear either by a command such as /inspect <so and so> that doesn't rely on relative distance but only on if the person is online at the moment or not. Personally, I prefer the remote inspection tool. I can't count how many PUGs I would have avoided had I been able to quickly inspected someone in SMV while I was in Netherstorm or whatever location(s).

There was talk of this at one point along with the backpack that grows as you level. It just kinda got left behind possibly due to tech issues. Very similar to the way the talent bookmarks discussion just faded away.

Riddel · 09/23/08, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by inksy

There was talk of this at one point along with the backpack that grows as you level. It just kinda got left behind possibly due to tech issues. Very similar to the way the talent bookmarks discussion just faded away.

Didn't the keyring use to scale with level? If so I don't see why that would be different from a scaling backpack.

inksy · 09/23/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Riddel

Didn't the keyring use to scale with level? If so I don't see why that would be different from a scaling backpack.

As far as I know, the keyring grows to stay slightly ahead of the number of keys you have.

Lord Loom · 09/23/08, 7:01 PM

Yes, now - but when first implemented it used to grow at certain levels: quote of old announcement (can also be found in 1.11 patch notes)

We're pleased to announce that the keyring functionality has been completed and will be in place for patch 1.11. When a player first acquires a key, they will automatically acquire a keyring that will hold permanent dungeon keys. The size of this keyring will increase as the player goes up in level -- as seen below.

Level 1-40 = 4 slots
Level 41-50 = 8 slots
Level 51-60 = 12 slots