I don't think pvp dailies need to have better rewards, just identical rewards and people will do them.

My guildies and I frequently put together premades just to do the daily pvp quest, then we play maybe 1 or 2 extra games (sometimes no extra games) and disband.

It doesn't have to be better, it just needs to be there to give us the option.

And I think some of you are kind of missing the intention of Halaa and Terokkar. We "asked" to have more influence in the world.... Controlling Halaa and Spirit Shards IS influence. The only flaw is, no one cares -_- unless you are leveling up an alt in the zone or something. Imagine if those towers in Zangarmarsh affected SSC. Oh yeah, THEN we'll be seeing pvp.

Others in this thread have made references to enhancing Halaa and other existing outdoor PvP areas. I'm merely stating that they need to be careful when potentially bringing in dozens of people hell bent on ganking anyone on sight.

Or you are going to have a large area that is largely unpopulated (or imbalanced due to server population) that no one will go to.

I guess I just believe that Blizzard has so badly broken the PvP to PvE balance that at this point you can't just smash the 2 together. While I support any attempts at making the game more fun for any segment of the population, it shouldn't come at another group's expense.

I don't question many of your points, but I just don't see how suddenly "This time it will be different". The faction ratio won't go away.... any repetitious task (eg: capture this, kill this, collect these) will become mind numbing regardless of the reward.

WoW PvP suffers from the fact that it will NEVER be a fair test of skill and ability. No amount of lipstick can dress up this pig. A game with so many classes and so many potential spec's will never provide the level playing field needed to make this viable for competitive gaming.

On stormscale, BG queues were long because most PvPers were in BRM/Silithus/Plaguelands/etc. when they wanted to PvP. We had a very large community of players dedicated to world PvP (myself included), and the only time they hit up BGs was when all the world PvP spots were dead. I can personally say that I never had more fun solo-queuing BGs than I did ganking in BRM. And fighting over azuregos was easily as much fun as the best premade v. premade WSGs. Death actually means something in world PvP, and that adds an element of fun for many that is tough to replace with anything else.

Also, I kind of feel like people who don't want to engage in world PvP should consider rolling on a PvE server. Unless I absolutely need the gold from my dailies to buy consumables for the raid in an hour, I would much rather spend the extra time it takes to PvP a bit while I do my dailies. If I'm getting griefed, it usually just takes a few minutes in /1 or /g to grab some allies and turn the tide on the griefers. It also never hurts to remember names so that you can wipe them on outdoor bosses as a bit of payback

I think this would be a phenomenal idea (with some restrictions on how many you can have to give incentive to come back regularly) And the don't need to be very strong, just like the BEM ones, say a 20 stam, 20 res, 20 other stat.
Even another option would be to make it buyable with Spirit Shards.

As it is, the first few months, Towers in Terrokar were a lot of fun, when people actually needed shards for rings. Now most people could care less about the potions.

In reminiscing, I remember the North Tower buff in EPL that we would be sure to enable before killing Loatheb each week - I believe it was +5% max HP or some such. Unfortunately, it wasn't "PvP" in its rawest sense, but small bonuses like that in raid dungeons for at least minor PvP would be nice.

Both raiders and Blizzard have asked to stay away from needing World Buffs for PVE content though. While 5% HP might be minor, in bleeding edge content guilds will surely strive to have that buff for first kills, something people complained about in the past.

There was an interesting one of those fake patch posts that cropped up today (though I somehow lost it in the shuffle) but one of the things mentioned as a 2.4 thing in them (again, fake notes, so possibly just plain crap) was the mentioning of Armorsmithing Specialities being added in.

Platesmith
Mailsmith
Shieldsmith

It would certainly help to add some more viability to going Armorsmithing as opposed to just Enchanting (for ring enchants), Jewelcrafting (for unique gems), or just a couple gathering professions for moneys (at least for people who are min-maxing in raids and whatever else).

Likewise, it would be fun if they actually did a second pass at rewards for the specializations - give the profession specialists some new trained gear from the rep grinds - either the Sunwell Rep Grind or even stick it on Ashtongue Deathsworn. For now, being a Spellfire Tailor means I get to make two cloth per week - no gear to use from it at all - nothing that keeps up with the profession.

Raid Rewards from a Rep Grind that pair with a Crafting Specialty would be fantastic.

Patch notes 2.4 from the mage forums.
The fake patch notes, along with blue response decrying them as fake. Posted here for entertainment purposes only.

Except that if it was a 'Raid Reward' it would be so incredibly exclusive at this point (T6+) that the amount of people that would actually get it would be a pathetically small minority of what few crafting people raid, not to mention the uproar from the many other crafters who would not have access to it and do the usual rants...

I think the problem is after the previous issues with crafting gear, they are being very cautious about having any 'amazing must-have' items from crafting exclusivly else not only does it completly eliminate other items for that slot, but it becomes a 'required' profession for people that can use it.

The question really is, how can they provide equalistic character progression on an un-equal time-invested playfield that has meaningful purpose and has access across the board without diminising its worth.

They just need to work out a way to have PvP, PvE-Raiding, Crafting and Raid-Reagent-Crafting working out in a nice balanced environment that allows acceptable character progression while still rewarding those who push ahead to physically be there without being overly strong. Walk in the park to be fair >_>


Consider if there was a next generation of Spellfire, Primal Mooncloth gear etc that required:
*Illdari Shadowcloth (crafted in BT at an object behind Illdari Council)
*Tempest Spellcloth (crafted at an object at the back of Kael'Thas' chamber)
*Eternal Mooncloth (crafted in the waters under the World Tree)
*Illdari infused Khorium Powercore (behind IC..)
and so forth...

The recepies(ideally BoE, or some BoP which create BoE items) could come from either trash drops or repuation rewards, throw in a mix of BoP and BoE items once crafted to prevent everyone being required to be a crafter to use it all.
Combine this with a reduction in the size of boss drops (so perhaps a total of 4-5 different possible item drops per boss), resulting in more chance of getting the gear people want instead of the annoying 'randomness' that so irks PvE players in comparison to the 'take your pick' style of PvP gear.

Not to mention Blizzard seem to feel 'casuals' want to make lots of money (to buy their way up?), and well raiders want money to cover all the astronomical fees for raiding, everyone technically gets something.
That way you get off the Primal Vortex annoyance on the BoP gear, provide bonuses for the crafters (you can add in enhanced ores and leather too..) and keep the availability fairly open regardless if the people wanting the items raid or not.


Ah well, and yes we really have gone off-topic quite badly, I guess everyones just bursting with things they want to say about the state of raiding, the game, and so-forth but without any real reason to create a new topic about it as theres a drought of information from Blizzards end. Perhaps this should be locked or something untill more 2.4 information is known.

Well, to be fair, this is functionally the "Pre-2.4 Discussion" thread; not much sense in making a new one when this has continual healthy discussion. I suppose the entire discussion on crafting specializations is a bit of a tangent, but it is something that they had zero follow-up on. They created this fancy specialization system for launch, but there hasn't been anything added to any of the specialties at all - all the BoP Crafted Gear or BoP Patterns for BoE Crafted Gear require no specialties at all.

Honestly, I would have preferred it if the Healing Haste Bracers pattern required Mooncloth Specialist or the Spell Haste ones Required Spellfire or the Belt pattern from TK/SSC took Shadowweave Specialist. The telling thing there is that they require those types of cloth to craft - you have to use 4 Spellcloth to construct the Spell Haste + Damage Bracers yet they're just a generic Tailor item.

It would be nice to see them reinforce the benefit to staying a specialist through additional recipes instead of just three that were in at launch on the specialist trainer.

They need better rewards, because they require more from players then other dailies.

Basically, what is the main problem with outdoor PvP is having people that want to perform it all in one spot and time. In fact, its all about having as many people as possible for that and at various hours. That's how BGs were founded + and that's how they were developed more by making queves to them clustered in battlegroups. Before that, there was always a possibility (and it was a reality on mayority of realms) that people won't meet their opponents even in staged fight.

So to ensure that there will be continious flow of people in Halaa, it got to offer better net money return then for example Skettis or BEM. Otherwise it will be getting worse each time some player comes to the supposed outdoor PvP hub and won't meet opponents. After a while such guy would just stop coming there.

Argument that "me and my friends would come there anyway" is not valid. It's not about occasional bunch of people coming there - it's about giving masses real incentive to be there everyday for most of the server time. Only in this way something similar to old Hillsbrad/Southshore battleground can be bring back to game.

As for argument "diehard PvPers will choose those quests first, so we don't have to give other incentives", it's simply wrong. To have true outdoor PvP, you need more then just diehards - especially that on one server it might be half of the server, and on the other 3 people of each faction. When you make global solution, it should be "bulletproof" enough to ensure that it will work for mayority of servers, not just for some of them. By providing reward good enough to bring to Halaa more then just diehards, but also common farmers, raiders that don't mind more active daily then collecting ore for Netherwing and simple players that try to obtain money for their mount. Since global (and local in Halaa) number of dailies will be limited anyway, adding 2-3 dailies that give the same reward as normal and 2-3 other that give better one would not break the economy of the game.

It's not so much important only for Halaa (although I would love to see this place more alive then its now) - but those are all important issues WoLK will have to deal with its non-instanced AV (or so called "outdoor PvP zone").

What was the biggest problem with old world buffs? Dire Maul was a long, long way from Naxxramas, and Onyxia/Nefarian head buffs were somewhat limited by instance timers, as well as distance. Is a world buff from the same surrounding zone as the raid instance too much? "Too much" would be very dependent on the time it took to obtain the world buff and the number of people needed, but I would welcome a way to get a minor buff to help out on first kills as long as I didn't have to travel half way across the world or have to raid out-dated content.

The major gripe was the fact that Blizzard had to tune bosses while taking into account that guilds could get them. Sometimes it really, really made the encounter a whole lot easier.

Examples: Loatheb, Sapphiron, Gothik, ...

I was under the impression from a recent Blue post somewhere that they wanted to increase the Daily Quest limit to 20/25. It would almost definitely be a casual thing for the players who like to grind out multiple Exalteds to hit their WoW quota for the day. As it is now I'm not sure I could even find 25 daily quests, but as Sunwell is going to be a bit similar to Ahn'Qiraj (in terms of server wide contributions) it's probably to be expected that the camp the Aldor/Scryer have set up is going to have several daily quests involved to help control how quickly the bigger realms can open up Kil'jaeden himself. This effectively gives Blizzard more time to develop Wrath of the Liche King before release, which is probably a good thing. If you look carefully, the last few major content patches have nearly always had something interesting in them for the more casual/semi-core players. 2.4 will continue that trend if it does indeed have daily quests involved, and that there is a 5 man wing attached to the 25 man is going to make the majority of players feel that they are involved in the lore, something Blizzard has stated is important to them and that will be very evident in Northrend.

Now that I think about it, I wonder how long Sunwell has been in development. Illidan was said to be the 'end boss' of outland, but raids are released after him. I am not sure how far back they said they were working on Sunwell, it came up at blizzcon, but before that I dont know. Was it always something on their instance 'road map', or was this something they came up with later and said we need a new raid and to finish some lore?

I believe they have said they can spend more than a year on them because they dont just suddenly all focus on one dungeon, rather they have multiple ones (and zones..?) being designed and planned sumultaneously at different stages throughout their development cycle, its just some are put on the back bench in favor of others.

For instance you know since Kael was first killed (or was the sphere reward implemented later, I forget) that Kael was not dead, there was something 'bigger' than Illidan and that it was back in Azeroth.

Technically Kel'Thuzad never died (again the reward posed the knowledge of his return...), if it was at that point decided it would be Naxx v2 in WoTLK who knows, maybe he was intended to star in a 3rd dungeon in future, only time will tell.

Wether or not they have a planned progression 'road map' where they fit all their potential raid dungeons on I doubt we will ever know, that there are ones being conceptualized before theres even a reason for their existance is a fairly safe bet.

Remember the old Emerald Dream files and talk? nothing has materialized out of that (and the blue links are so old I doubt they exist anymore) since, I doubt its gone much further than what people caught a glimpse of back then.
Perhaps that was put on the 'road map' very far ahead even back then, and as a result it was left on the back shelf untill its closer to the time its needed.

Sunwell was mentioned at least as far back as Blizzcon #1 (they described that they were adding three zones to the blood elf area - the third one being the Sunwell Plateau), but during the course of the beta it got pushed back and eventually they took both it and Zul'Aman and played "let's stop talking about them and hope people forget so we can "announce" them as a big new surprise".

I think Blizzard also needs to 1)take basic Geography or 2)decide where the hell they're putting it. All the maps put it off the northeastern tip of Eversong/Silvermoon, and now they're moving it over to directly north of Eversong? And they're all "Oh, you won't have to go through Silvermoon to get there" - well, considering that the Dead Scar goes completely through Silvermoon, and both the questing half and the capital half are sealed off from the Dead Scar, why would having to go up the Dead Scar be a problem? I mean, that's the path to the Sunwell, so I'd figure you clear this rubble out of the way and make it a path, wouldn't enter the city at all.

Of course, what do I know, I just pay more attention to these things than Blizzard does...

Sure about that? I recall that Sunwell was indirectly confirmed at Blizzcon in response to a question from the audience and never before was there any mentioning it. Shortly after it was confirmed in earnest. At that time there were lots of people in BT.

EDIT: ah, thanks Groat.

I wonder how much world PvP Blizzard could inject into Outland simply by adding a daily quest that asks you to capture Halaa. The reward could be 24g and one Halaa Research Token.

The original Halaa rewards (pants/belt/recipe) were great idea, but as with everything else, runs into a problem: It gets outclassed. All you did by going for the belt and pants was delay having to get the High Warlord/Gladiator version for a while by putting in a piece that already has resilience (and available at level 68, to boot).

Any static reward offered somewhere is going to be replaced eventually, whether the battlefield is in the Hand of Gul'dan, the Twin Spires or even A'dal's throneroom.

The only way to keep people plugging away at a place where you want PvP action is by letting them earn something that they will always need.

The simplest resource of course is honor, although this is simply a means to an end. The real "something that they will always need" are the PvP gear upgrades, honor merely providing the medium with which to buy them. The honor system "works" (despite its rather glaring flaws) because you can keep updating the gear and people will keep buying. You don't have to craft a whole zone's worth of lore, just keep adding new stuff to the vendors.

Another very simple resource, which I mentioned above, is gold. Everyone will need more gold at some point or another. Letting people PvP for it just encourages the more PvP-centric players to pursue that route.

Consumables are another potential item, but are way more limited: A casual doesn't really *need* a Super Mana/Health Pot, and raiders have far easier ways of acquiring them.

If it's a Flask/Elixir-like effect, it will really only appeal to someone who plays both ends of the spectrum: I get to prepare for SSC tomorrow AND I earn some honor while I'm at it too.

A hardcore raider has their own means of farming for consumables, while a hardcore PvPer won't be interested because they can't use them in Arenas anyway. On the other hand, if these Halaa Battle Flasks (to invent a term) are usable in Arenas, then suddenly they're just another part of the required grind. If acquiring them for use in raids is easier/faster/more efficient than farming for an Alchemist's Flasks, the rest of the normal methods of acquisition suffer needlessly.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that even my Halaa idea is going to peter out once honor diminishing returns come into play. AV (and battlegroups in general) are appealing because you're reasonably assured of a good rotation of fresh, non-diminished enemies, plus bonus honor. I suppose it goes without saying that Blizzard needs to find a way around the diminishing returns rule and perhaps a bonus honor mechanic in any of their planned PvP zones.

They could just take out the diminishing returns on honor in PvP to solve a bunch of the world PvP problems too...

That would be the ideal solution, what with rez timers preventing spawn camping in the game world anyway.

However, that still leaves room for an elaborate scheme such as spawn camping in WSG/AB/EOTS between organized premades. WSG can be made to last forever as we all know, but so can AB and EOTS if nobody caps anything.

That being said, I really wouldn't care. If someone wants to go through all that trouble, I say let them, possibly with bans being handed out on a case-to-case basis if Blizzard really feels that this kind of behavior is exploitative.