As long as world pvp objectives can compete with honor-per-hour from battlegrounds, everything will be great. Honor is the only persistant reward system (yet used) that continues to have significance. Even if Halaa's rewards were 115 blues, or even low level epics, it would still die out quickly once everyone had their 1-2 items they wanted.

If they were to put in significant honor-per-hour in ADDITION to specific reward items from, say, tokens... that would be ideal. Then you have the option of a guaranteed pvp situation for solid honor-per-hour (battleground), or when that is boring, you can go see what the status of the PvP zone is, and still probably end up with roughly the same honor. You need the option, because due to the nature of world pvp objectives, and the lack of a cap on participants, occasionally you're way too vastly outnumbered for any meaningful encounters, and one side dominates, resulting in little to no honor for the other side.

Honor is a terrible system. Right now how big of a percentage of people are botting? It's dumb. The system doesn't promote people to actually play. BG's will probably need something innovative to happen to them before it gets worse.

It's not so much that the Honor System as it stands is a terrible system as it is that the current scale of the Honor System promotes the grinding & botting mentality.

This has been talked to death in other threads, I'm sure, but when people want to gear up (especially alts), they're not interested in the 'fun' factor of the BG or World PVP when they have to do it five thousand times. Their concern is "How can I get this over with the fastest and with the least aggravation," and that, for a lot of people, leads to AFK/Botting in BGs.

Or issuing new 70s gear for the effort. Maybe the city reps can award that (cap it at revered so it's not a grind). Make honor as the optional way to obtain the gear.

This is arguably because there's no point in PvPing there because the rewards suck. If you want to gank, you'll always go to pve places, but if you want to pvp and get something out of it, currently you run AV, cause everything else is useless. If they added good rewards to a pvp objective in the middle of smv, I'm sure you'd see people there.

The city reputations already reward you with a decent amount of gear. The main idea behind the honor rewards is to bring new players into arena easily. Sadly this can be done by running 3 weeks of arena at 1400 for your resilience, but most people don't want to wait that long.


In any case, back on topic: Any new information about 2.4?

First off, you missed the boat on what were talking about what is Random. I'll comment first off on your experiences with Naxx. For my guild, we never experienced any of those besides the Razuvious one, but then, everyone had that at one point in time. Maybe your guild just entered Naxx to early and your raid was far to undergeared.

There was not one encounter in Naxx that was dependent on luck to pass the encounters as is with TBC raid zones. Take IC, if the mages Spell Steal resists, unless he was at 15k health, Arcane Prot Pot, and got healed up in another 1.5~seconds, it is a wipe 99% of the time on that 1%. Or how about the Punt+Lash on Mother Shahraz? The 40k spike damage during Fel Rage on a clothie? Doesn't matter for normal phase, a tank is healable. Or that always lovable charge+melee swing 1 shot? Not many encounters pre-TBC had an actual charge mechanic, three I can name, Lord Kri, the knights on Gothik, the non-mc adds on Faerlina, and those had a threat/range component to them, and a max range that they couldn't charge anyone at. In TBC they took out the range/threat portion, and made it random to anyone on the threat list, making clothies more susceptible now, Doomwalker, Al'ar, Bear boss in ZA, Attunemen in Kara. Only the Bear boss charges the farthest away, Attunemen the same. Both have a minimum rage to charge.


As for the pvp problems. If they rewards are to long out from when you start, most pvpers frown on that. Need to make it high cost, high reward, but disappears after x time, a consumable would be nice. Unless they keep up with upgrading the rewards in the zone, it will take the way of Halaa and Spirit Shards.

Simple solution: 2h duration, persists through death, class-specific flasks, works in BG's only a la shat flasks, make them attainable through a few halaa(or the new version) tokens. I'm sure Halaa(or whatever new zone) would see regular world PvP action, during prime time at least.

Well, clearly for you a 1% chance to wipe in BT is something much worse than a 1% chance to wipe in Naxx.

I don't know about your server, but in my server (wannabe pvp server, eu-magtheridon), there is sometimes, tho quite seldom world pvp in halaa. And I must admit it rocks big time. Halaa is imo well designed for world pvp, and having 100man+ world pvp with raid groups, where you can flank your opponent or just rush over them is really nice. However, as I said, it's way too rare. Currently that kind of world pvp happens like once a month if even that. Add destructible buildings and other things Blizzard has promised for WOTLK and it looks really promising. Only problem is how to get people to join it.

As some people have stated, honor grind for alts etc is quite boring, and AV-powerafking is best way to do it with minimal effort. One reason for this is crappy gear. I dont feel like wanting to even try pvp'ing 1v1 with my mage who has 5k hp, 0 resi and 500spelldmg. Some have suggested free gear attained with reputation but maybe this lack of world pvp and desire for honor could be somehow combined. After all world pvp is always unfair and since numbers are rarely even, 3 oneshot mages could have some chance against even mightest season3 pvp master.

Halaa definitely has potential, but as it stands now, there's virtually zero reason for anyone to pvp there other than pure fun. And it's quite hard to get people there, so Blizzard should give some extra incentive for people to pvp there. Maybe 5x normal honor for hk's and no diminishing returns or something like that.

I wonder if salvation for world PvP is not something like putting easy PvP-dailies in places like Halaa and any other world PvP objective, obviously paid better then current PvE ones dailies.

As most of the people stated there, people most of the time PvP outside the arenas and BGs when they are motivated by something. What is more obvious motivator then gold, that is always needed? Of course world PvP dailies should give slightly more money, because they don't give neither marks nor badges, but usually take more time then other dalies.

I don't see a reason to not have 3-4 Halaa dailies related to PKing in the city, bombing runs and taking over the city. There could be also a daily for spending time in the city (say, 15 min. ?) "defending" it, leading to viable defense motivation for players.

Aside from the rewards part that people touched on for world pvp, there are other reasons to pvp but its not standalone. There are some people, not many that really hate the other faction, or even care at all. No one cares at all what the other faction does.
Its very hard to say, organize an attack on a city that does anything except kill some guards. However after someone does anything there is that response to retaliate. Rather than relying on players for that spark, have NPCs that attack every couple hours outside org. Make it a daily quest with some objective, burn a tower, or kill Lt. Grunt, and also for defending.
Once you realize that damn druid healing is preventing you from your objective, you are more likely to try to kill him, outside org or outside the zone in to the Eye.
The key behind making world pvp work is that people have to want to kill the other faction, not just achieve points for a reward.

Honestly, I don't think there is any other good way to bring some life into outdoor PvP then good old gold passed to players through dailies. Making rewards higher then in Skettis or BEM hubs (Netherwing is different because you need elite mount for it) would solve one of the main problems of outdoor PvP - "make people come there". Selection of quests that would vary from "do something when there is no one around" (bombing, "defending" by staying in city limits for 10/15 min.) to "reward for kills" (similar to current token collection, big bonus for taking over the city - because it takes time, reward is higher then for common quests) would do a lot to bring people back to Halaa for something else then just occasional jewelcrafting/alchemy recipe.

And higher rewards from such dailies should not affect global economy all that much, since it would be just 4-5 quests ot of 10 possible everyday - so they could be significantly better rewarded (50%?) then any other BEM/Skettis daily.

Anyway, it's not thread about what should Blizzard do about outdoor PvP, but about 2.4 patch.

One thing that I think would boost outdoor pvp would be to bring back the old pvp ranks but just apply them to outdoor kills. With some extra protection against repeated ganking and kill trading it could really boost random fights, especially on pvp servers. Throw in some small but significant reward and it would be a blast. Even pve players could be attracted to it.

Besides this, I think random daily or weekly pvp objectives could be produced in such a way that areas could become involved but not completely disturbed. Things like killing a certain innkeeper at a certain time (the other faction would be aware of a death-threat) or recovering a cargo/treasure on a specific area could do the trick. Even today the Gurubashi arena provides random pvp, if you think about it.

For arenas something like a weekly realm tournament/monthly BG tournament would really increase player interest while strengthening the community, something a bit lost after x-servers went live.

I love the notion of getting more money to get steamrolled by the 2 Alliance per every Horde on my server.

World PvP is fundamentally flawed by the population imbalance. Adding a reward system that encourages people to go there - especially one that makes it inexplicably more valuable than PvE for time investment (???) - makes for lousy times for people on servers with bad population imbalances. Last I checked, my server has an Alliance:Horde ratio of literally 2:1. Yeah, we can cap Halaa, right up until an Alliance fellow wants it back, because the faster the area fills up, the worse it gets for Horde.

BGs were introduced specifically to fix this problem, and I still don't understand why people are so fundamentally opposed to them.

I also don't see why PvP'ers need these buttloads of gold they keep asking for through daily quests. There is absolutely no reason to make the PvP objectives more fulfilling than the PvE ones apart from trying to force a preference for PvP over PvE.

You don't need to make the rewards, or at least the cash rewards, any better than any other available daily, and in fact I would strongly caution against it. If they're equal, then everyone who wants to PvP and likes to PvP will simply choose that as their daily rather than grinding mobs and you'll get good interesting fights. If the rewards are strictly better you'll get people who don't really want to fight joining a raid and AFKing in Halaa instead of AV. Alternatively, you can make the rewards something that would only appeal to people who would be interested in world PvP anyways like tokens that can be redeemed for resilience elixirs, or building rep towards your guild-rated WSG heroic key.

Even minor incentives should be sufficient. If there are daily quests that are roughly half as productive as other daily quests, then people who prefer PvP will still participate in them. It's really just that discouraging feeling of "here I am, accomplishing absolutely nothing when I could be using this time more productively" that gets to people.

It's the same effect that kicks in when you've gotten all the drops from an instance and maxxed out the available rep; even if the clear is fast and smooth, it's still just technically a waste of time. 5-mans could also use more incentive, like a much increased drop rate on consumables or potions, so that people can choose to cleanly clear an instance for their farming needs rather than grind outside. Coilfang armaments are an example of something that they just need to extend a little bit to fill a need that exists in both small group PvE and world PvP.

Late reply but yes, until I joined Fusion I was the raidleader for a mid-T6 guild and an officer handling much of the guild-running stuff, including, for example, all of the recruiting.

You are talking about the out-of-raid coordination and thinking ahead -- which yes are part of the skills of being a raider in this game (someone has to have them, ideally multiple someones.)

I'm talking in-raid. Encounters that require thinking ahead not just reacting to "the fire is at my feet." More avoidable elements (avoidable if you plan ahead, think ahead, etc.)

I really can't see why everyone is pushing for more "World PvP", as if it's somehow this magical goal. The reality is that A LOT of people even on PvP servers don't choose to engage in PvP for a reason. Forcing them to PvP by bringing in outdoor dailies where they will become prey for the PvP players is akin to making high level arena teams get an attunement from Kel'thas.

There are very definate lines between PvE and PvP.... Blizzard would be wise not to try and muddy the water. No one enjoys being greifed for hours when they are just trying to spend the few minutes they have to play. Any attempts to encourage outdoor PvP would have to be in areas that aren't used for leveling or doing basic tasks. This leads to the creation of outdoor PvP "Zones" which is really just what Battlegrounds are.

Perhaps all the PvP players forget what it was like before they had cross server PvP. On my server you could have 30-45 minute waits for battlegrounds. That is how popular PvP was!!

That is not an indication of how popular PVP was. That was the average duration of the existing battleground instances; Back then, I believe PVP was more entertaining and more rewarding, as well as more popular. However, there was a limited number of people per realm at one time, and that could only fill a certain number of battlegrounds, leaving a few more scattered people in queue. Basically, to get in, you had to wait till a battleground ended and its population was pooled for a rematch, or until someone quit. The long times suggest it was popular enough for people not to afk out that often.

You're making broad statements based on incorrect assumptions you've made about how such a system would work. Nothing Blizzard has stated relates in any way to "forcing" anybody to participate, and for that matter, I don't think anyone in this thread has seriously suggested it either. Why are you doing this?

I don't get what you're saying at all. You're complaining about getting griefed, while Blizzard has already indicated that their vision of outdoors PvP makes it contradictory to the objectives of people questing. If anything, having a real system for outdoors PvP would prevent players from going out and griefing lowbies as a means of getting some semblance of outdoors PvP. A dedicated PvP zone is not just a glorified battleground. The fact that it exists in a large, persistent world implies that you're going to get a much more variable experience than you would in a battleground. Much more give and take, and an opportunity for unpredictability. And potentially much more emotionally involving. I know from your past posts that you're perfectly happy to spend you entire WoW career locked in a raid instance, but having options for deep outdoors PvP is part of developing an immersive world. And a great place for Blizzard to experiment with dynamic, changeable zones, that aren't exactly the same every time you enter them.

This statement suggests to me that you're willfully ignorant of (a) the fact that a lot of queues were a result of numerical faction imbalances, such that one side wouldn't have long queues while the other would, (b) that this wasn't the case on all servers anyway, and (c) many other aspects of the PvP system were significantly broken and unrewarding in the past, contributing to a lack of long term interest.

This idea of "forcing" people to world PvP is WoW forum troll-talk, frankly. If you have 10 daily quests a day, there are like 20 available, and 3 of them are PvP-related, and the rewards are all roughly equivalent... do I really need to finish that sentence? The idea is that people who have some sort of interest in it will be drawn to those dailies instead of the more grind-tastic ones, because they want to. Choice is a good thing, it lets people play the portions of the game that they want to experience.

As far as world PvP in general... I'm not particularly for or against it myself, I'm a carebear player on a carebear server. However, given that blizzard want to have it exist, and that they will be putting in a dedicated outdoor PvP zone in WLK, there are things they can do to make it suck more or less than world PvP as it is right now.