pdpi

This is where it gets hairy, IMO. It can't be as simple as "Kalimdor is a server, Eastern Kingdoms is another", while still being true that TB caused problems because it's a small region . What you're arguing is essentially that all the GM said was "there's a high player density because it's a small place and there's loads of players". Yet if continents were the server divisions, very high player density problems in one area would cause lag for that whole server and, therefore, the whole continent. The division must be finer-grained than that.

 

Camaris

Well, part of the reason (or the main reason) for the Belf and Draenei starting zones being 'part of' Outland was that those loading screens also perform the "Do you have a TBC account?" check. That is, people without TBC cannot enter those parts of Kalimdor and Outland.

It looks to me like the DK starting zone is basically located in EPL. The difference is that now, people without WotLK can still enter the new area, although they aren't able to be 'beamed up' to the Archerus necropolis, I would reckon. This means that DKs will put load on the Eastern Kingdoms server, which is probably not a real problem (but still, many people close together translates into more updates and more work for your client, so lag of some kind is still a factor).

Going back to the wider topic. First, apologies for jumping the gun and replying to that list This is an interesting topic, so I'll make it up by posting something proper.

Regarding art direction, I've never been terribly opposed to the 'space age' seen in TBC. The fact is that overall, the quality of art went up. But there were a few problems:

- The "Clown Effect" of re-using pre-40 armor models on levelling gear. It was a clear attempt to make us, in some way, look like 'noobs' below the level cap, and a way to stand out with armor sets at the end-game. In many ways, lore and appearance wise, our characters went from Ragnaros-killers back to 'ordinary' mercenaries. From WotLK previews, it seems this issue gets addressed in the form of a new Nordic/Viking style of armor exclusive to Northrend, and hopefully very little obvious re-use of armor models.

- Netherstorm. Don't get me wrong: it's not ugly. But it's not Warcraft. Habitat domes, energy converters, dimensional spacecraft. It's fun for a while, but in the end, it doesn't feel right. Hellfire Peninsula, in contrast, was somehow a quintessential piece of Warcraft. It echoed the Warcraft 2 expansion, it had you fighting Orcs in a red wasteland.

Mideci: I think part of the problem of many bosses being 'random' and generally not very interesting is that in TBC, instances generally were not really explored via quests. Or at least not via more than 1 quest. I suppose the TK instances are the worst offenders: I cannot think of a single quest really explaining what it going on, and what our objectives could be. But this is a widely supported criticism I think: TBC improved levelling and questing in general, but storytelling was hit and miss.

 

Romerz

Zones and quests in TBC were just bland and boring. They apeared on the surface to be seperate totally, but it all felt merged into one. Like someone said previously, the story and lore of TBC general day to day game play basically wasn't there. Wrath has lore and story stamped into it - as much as vanilla wow did.

 

pdpi

Regarding the art direction, there was one overarching problem that really ticked me off: color themes. Every single bloody region has a very very narrow palette (Nagrand being the exception). By the time I'm done in HFP, I can't see reddish-brown, when the marsh is over I'm puking bluish purple, when I leave Terokkar behind I'm overflowing with pastel greenish blue, then I get a reprieve, back to brown (this time a duller brown though) in BEM, then pink-purple Netherstorm or grey plus bright green in SMV. There was such a big effort to theme things that all the themes became excessively in-your-face.

 

Pharmacon

Infraction incoming I'm sure. Can the OP change the first post so this stops happening? Or is this some clever way to get people infractions and weed out the dumb?

I think a lot of the problems people have with the lack of storytelling that went on in TBC have to do with a general lack of storyline. Kara is nearly completely removed from anything to do with T5 and T6. T5/T6 were a little better together but there were still problems with the Lore behind it (ie. Kael becoming a maniacal loon). I think this will be fixed at least to some degree come WotLK due to at least T7 will be linked to T9 via the Kel'Thuzad/Lich King connection.

 

Raised

Returning for a moment to the 'good instance-bad instance' discussion.

The linear vs. non-linear discussion is a bit of a misnomer in my opinion, and is more accurately described as interactivity vs. non-interactivity. Making a 'non-linear' dungeon is just one of the more obvious and simple ways of making it interactive.

A lot of the dungeons people consider 'the best' are extremely linear. What makes them good is the fact that you they are grounded in the game: The player has a reason to go, the boss has a reason to die, and the environment has a reason to exist beyond loot pinatas. You're collecting keys to advance, blowing down doors with cannons, sneaking in through the sewers to get inside instead of walking in the front door, moving a storyline forward, or battling through waves of enemies while being under fire in gauntlet-style events. Non-Linear dungeons are tagged with this because they give the player a sense of exploration, as if they are in a real environment rather than a long hallway. The core mechanic, however, is that the player is an active participant in the instance, making it so that the world of the instance itself feels changed after the player moves through more than just having all the dudes that were waiting around in groups of 3 and 4 are now dead.

Take Mana-Tombs for example, often considered one of the worst, if not the worst, instances in TBC. The main quest involving that instance is that the Consortium wants to get inside to nab all the goodies. Right now, you clear to an arbitrary point, hit a doodad, and suddely having the consortium teleport in, meander around, and do nothing of value.

Now picture that you instead had to activate multiple portals around the zone, which then ported in Consortium mobs that would fight alongside you, give you buffs, or change the instance map in some other way. The player is now actively changing the world of the instance, rather than passively moving through it. A boring instance suddenly turns into an interesting one.

Why are the CoT 5-mans often considered the best of the expansion? I would posit it's not because they are outdoors (although that helps.) Instead, its because by the end of the instance, you've *changed* the instance itself (rescued Thrall from prison or saved Medivh.)

 

• Juice

We're pretty happy with how this is going. We'll have all the dumbasses weeded out before long.

 

pdpi

This neatly ties in with all the discussion before about linearity. Not only is the instance layout on both pretty linear, you don't even get to decide on the size or pace of the pulls, it's all hard-coded. Yet, because there is a clear motivation and context for both instances, the linearity is completely forgotten.

 

Endoscient

This one of my favorite aspects of TBC, Heroics were very hard and challenging. They were living up to the title of "Heroic", while now a days pretty much every instance you do is assumed to be a Heroic (even for rerolls that just hit 70) and they are pretty easy. Part of it was the gear level, but a lot more of it was the huge nerf heroics got in a patch. Doing the pre nerf Heroic Shattered Halls timed event for TK attunement is the fondest memory I have of any 5 man instance.

I also liked how there were essentially tiers of heroics, Underbog and Slave Pens could be farmed pretty easily once you were able to clear them. While the same group that could clear Underbog in less then an hour might not be able to finish heroic Shattered Halls. It gave you something to work towards and show off your skill. Heroic Durnholde was a great example, which was one insanely difficult heroic when TBC came out. I remember it took me and a group of 5 people almost a week to finally complete it, since you could only wipe 3 times, while with same group we could blast through Underbog/SP easily. When we finally did cleat it, it was a great feeling. Knowing we were the only people on Horde at the time who were able to clear this heroic.

The main problem with how Heroics were is how you overcame the difficulty, which normally involved stacking of CC (particularly Mages). Blizzard seems to realize that, and should be something to easily balance around. Just have very few mobs susceptible to CC, and balance it around that. Another problem was the lack of item rewards, with gear that was generally on par with normals. If you did instances just based on rewards then a lot of heroics sucked.

I really hope that when I hit 80 that LK heroics will have the same difficult feeling that they did when I first hit 70, and not just become the de facto instance type after a couple weeks.

 

KamPa

Biggest problem I had - and still have - with heroics, is that most of 'difficulty' is just higher numbers. There's no creativity in making stuff hit twice as hard, except straining healer and making it more punishing to go there without CC. You are still running the same instance you did before, same mobs, same bosses, same drops for lvl70 instances. Worse, bosses were often exactly the same as on normal, and quite often you wondered, if they just 'forgot' to tune them, as trash was far more dangerous compared to them.
What I'd prefer is something like Murmur/Mechano Lord - new mechanics not present on normal mode, making it feel at least a bit different. Sure it will all be the same after you farmed it several times for Badges, but even simple change gives a bit of fresh air to old instance. Maybe adding some new mob types to pulls, etc. 1 new skill per boss - even if it's just for final one - would help a lot.

 

Nethris

As mentioned before, at least at one point, and probably even now, Kalimdor was almost certainly a single server - the AQ gate event both caused lag throughout Kalimdor far more than it did in EK, and with world server crashes affecting everyone in Kalimdor, the Theramore end of the boat trip from Menethil randomly having about a 50/50 chance of instead teleporting to someplace in the air over Stonetalon, etc, gave very strong indications that the continents are linked as such, and Outlands/Shat/Draenei/BE areas all seemed to go down together in TBC beta and early after TBC release with the world server crashes then.

Your observation that high player densities don't lag the rest of the continent just as badly is likely due to one of 2 things: A) The servers intentionally limit how much bandwidth/processing is spent on any given area/client connection to avoid this result. B) Lag only becomes really noticeable and bad when the server can't get all the necessary updates to you consistently - and even if the updates are coming slower from the server due to load elsewhere, if you only need updates on 20 things you'll be much more likely to get all of them without packet loss, etc, than if you need 200 due to being near multiple 40 man raids for instance. One likely server structuring that would affect both of these is if the server is using many processors to split the load, and only has at most one working on the crowded area, and the network interface is giving equal priority to each processor or limits how many packets each processor can be trying to send at a time, more processor power and bandwidth will be available per packet in the less crowded area even though the processors share enough infrastructure that they all crash together, etc.

And that's almost certainly totally offtopic :P


On instances, until it got nerfed I'd argue that Black Morass was one of the worst heroics just because of the risk/reward factor, as had a dps requirement really high at the time for a heroic, and had gear that was at best mediocre compared to other heroics. Mana Tombs suffered a similar issue with the last boss really, in that the dps required to actually keep the adds dead was much higher than was likely to be in a heroic, and the other option was to kill him before he killed you, which wasn't an easy dps race either. In both cases, being a decent bit above the required dps made both much simpler, but MT was still long with that dps, while BM wasn't and isn't, so the opinion of BM has gone up a bit. I'd argue that binary dps requirements tend to make bad 5 mans while being an OK raid mechanic, though "soft" enrage timers tend to be more interesting in both cases while allowing more flexibility in group makeup.

 

Mideci

Since we aren't fixing Wrath here -- the die is cast, and largely from what I've been told in a direction i'm not very excited about -- it's worth recognizing something about the instances that is beyond the game designer's control. I'm fairly sure my very first Botanica run took on the order of 2+ hours -- in normal mode, with solid WoW players. By the end, in badge/tier 5ish gear, my groups could do heroic in ~30 mins. Part of that was due to the nerfing of the instance, part of it was due to massive gear growth from a mix of quest blues and greens (personally, I dinged 70 on my characters in Terokkar and BEM, so it's not like I tended to have the best quest items anyway).

I think most of us agree that originally a few of the instances (BM certainly comes to mind as mentioned) were overtuned and the nonsensical 270-degree cleaves and pack-a-mage requirements were less than optimal. Given that the expansion has a shelf life, I'm a lot less bothered by the difficulty level "changing" over time as gear improves than I am by anything that requires you to bring a "replenishment" buff going forward to survive a long mana test. Especially because the option to use potions won't even really be there.

On the subject of non-linearity, while I agree that it's not required per se, there was something to being able to farm select bosses in the old game that seems lost. Maybe I'm wisftul and the TBC were dungeons were relatively small and it doesn't really much matter. But even if you had willing friends in TBC and wanted nothing from, say, Shattered Halls except an item off the two-headed boss, there was absolutely no way to bypass content -- and reward -- to get there. Seems to me the 1-day heroic lockout was enough to prevent this mechanic from being overly abused and the loss of rep and other possible rewards on the way would've been sufficient to discourage this. But instead it's just not there. Even when you can see the next bosses (Magister's Terrace), you can't get to 'em in nearly every case.

ZA, when it was brand new, was an exception to this and allowed you to fumble around and learn the encounters at your own pace. In fact, it was probably one of the best and worst things about TBC. Fast reset instances are a win (gone in Wrath), unique 10-man content as a change of pace from raiding the same old 25s was nice (gone in Wrath), a challenge that initially seemed insurmountable (the Amani War Bear), but eventually become something routine you could look back on and remember having achieved.

I feel like beating the ZA timer, killing Vashj and killing Kael were about the closest things to "achievements" in TBC. And that's both a credit to the game -- it offered those opportunities -- and an insult. We did BT when you needed to get attuned. Our guild, fairly "serious casual" had really little trouble with it and eventually took a weekend to beat Illidan. I think it was exciting, but somehow less so than Vashj and Kael. To me, Kael was / is the greatest boss fight in WoW to date. I've not seen Muru and KJ so take that endorsement with the appropriate grain of salt.

 

Randyll

By the logic that a loading screen is the same thing as logging into a server, it would make sense that continents and such are on the same server. Thus what the person you quoted mentioned in the AQ event causing lag in the whole of Kalimdor could be true, since they're on the same 'server' (or process or whatever). What this server is and how it works can't really be known until Blizzard discloses official information about it... which I doubt is going to happen.

Whatever the truth about that is, it's pretty irrelevant. Dalaran isn't much larger than Ironforge and everyone who's been to that city and witnessed a raid to Magni knows the true meaning of server lag. Whether this lag affects everyone on the continent doesn't matter much, since a zone that's unplayable is still unplayable.

 

Darian_TruBlade

One of the worst arguments I saw in BC was over Nethermancer Sepenthrea. Our tank needed the breastplate but the other three in the PuG didn't want to deal with her. Cue group implosion.

The issue of bypassing content is a sensitive one for many reasons, all of which have appeared in one form or another throughout this thread. The issues of common goals, overhead and engagement are at the forefront of this.

First and foremost is the issue of common goals. If we look at the loot table for Warbringer Om'rogg we find he has mail caster shoulders, a caster dagger, cloth caster boots, a bow and a two hand DPS mace. There is little/no incentive for any tank to care about this boss beyond ties to their guild/friends. It has already been suggested that instances in BC were too compartmentalized, I can't imagine that further segmentation would be helpful for the formation of groups.

There's also the issue of overhead. Even if getting together a group for one boss is feasible, the time spent attempting to do so can be prohibitive. Spending an hour in a major city putting together a group that will last the ten minutes it takes to bypass content to the desired boss isn't particularly rewarding.

Lastly, there's the issue of engagement. As one apologist for BRD stated very clearly for all its faults it was indeed epic. The scale of the instance contributed greatly to that. Raids like Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair get away with smaller scaled instances because the bosses themselves are gigantic in form and mechanics. Some of Warbringer Om'rogg's substance is lost when he is effectively removed from his environment.

I think the real problem here isn't that content couldn't be bypassed, but that it wasn't optional. For many classes there was one, maybe two items per slot for their role in the dungeons, some of them locked in heroics. If you needed gear for that slot you had to run one specific instance until you got it, rather than having options in the form of quests or alternative drops. Not all slots were that bad, but I'm sure a number of Warriors could tell you of their frustrations trying to get Shoulderguards of the Bold. If itemization were somewhat better the issue might be alleviated.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

pdpi

That's the whole point though: is the lag because of pure player density (and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it, short of tossing more computing power at it) or because of server architecture having only a small amount of resources attributed to that particular zone (in which case a load re-balance is in order)? The discussion was "what constitutes a small zone"? Other people have pitched in to the effect that this sort of thing really *does* bring a whole continent to its knees, so it would seem to truly be an issue with player density, quadratic growth of the server load , etc etc.

 

Enova

These are just observations from the beta, but I had my warrior camped in Silvermoon, and my Death knight leveling through Outland. Whenever Outland got a 'world server is down', my Northrend and Azeroth based characters would likely be available, unless multiple servers were down, but my warrior would be unavailable, and /who checks for the areas would yield no results.

The DK starting zone is initially an instance, and is on the same server as Northrend. There is also a non instanced version of it, on the Easter kingdoms server but it's only accessible after the entire Death Knight chain is completed. In that sense, it's expected that the whole Northrend server requires WotLK, and generally the people chosing to reroll to DK will experience the same server failures as people leveling in Northrend.

EDIT:
Zones and Quests
Hellfire felt epic, and more than that, it felt familiar. Overall, it was a great area to start the expansion.
Zangamarsh was pretty nice, but it suffered from an insanely implausible story line, even for a fantasy game. The design was great, but... come on... Nagas stealing water?
Terokkar was just... bland. And what the fuck is Auchinodoun doing there anyway? Because there's no quests to actually tell us what the story behind it is. Remember all the quests telling us what the Blackrock Mountain story?
Nagrand is great. It has its share of problems, though. Firstly, Halaa, and everything it implies. Then the Elemental plateau, concentrating much of the crafting productions' raw materials in one single place.
Blade's Edge. Awesome in design, but rather cumbersome to navigate.
Netherstorm and Shadowmoon were both very original, and they felt epic in their own individual ways. Both of them were very rich lore wise (especially Shadowmoon Valley - remember Cyruk? but the Kirin'Var village was also great) but they suffered from a lot of bugged quests at first.
The daily quests were a great addition to alleviate the grinding, but even more so, they reinvigorated fishing and cooking, and they added some incentive for the antiquated battlegrounds.
Overall, the massive problem that BC suffered from was that the lore was concentrated in Hellfire and Shadowmoon, mostly, and the Horde got a bit of a history lesson in Nagrand.

5-men content
While vanilla WOW offered us very little (Scholo, Strat and Dire Maul for end game, and BRD\LBRS for leveling and preparation for MC), BC hit us with a multitude of dungeons and their heroic versions. Diversity, no question about it, but it made looking for groups a lot more difficult. Also, the dungeons had some more inherent problems. Firstly, they were short and straightforward, which is great for PUGs but that's a horrendous loss in terms of feeling. The lore, as I said, is sublime, but it's completely missing for most dungeons.
And there's the heroics. Totally abysmal idea. The rep grinds for the heroic keys were a bad idea, but by no means the worse. Heroics were meant as something to prepare you for raids; something to do before you jumped into Karazhan. Except they needed full tier 4 groups for that, which kind of defied the point of going there. Oh, and there were 360 cleaves And you needed to run every guild member through some of the hardest if you wanted to raid beyond gruul.

Raids
Pretty piss poor tuning prior to 2.1. Some exceptionally well designed encounters (KT, Vashj, Hydross, bar the absurd resist check, ROS, Teron, Illidan, Kalegc, Magtheridon). The problem was that you couldn't bypass tier 5 content to Kael and Vashj while progressing in BT/MH, and the attunements were probably a good idea turned bad. BC is full of those. The systematic nerf system was probably a good idea, in terms of progression, even for perfectly tuned fights like SWP.

PvP
The battlegrounds turned stale in the absence of a ranking system. The daily quests sort of rejuvenated them, but there's still work to be done.
The arenas started as yet another great idea, but it turned tits up somewhere between S2 and 3, for various reasons *cough* class balance *cough*.

Professions
Jewelcrafting was a nice profession, but the fact that you could only pick it up after you had upgraded to burning Crusade created some massive economic problems. Apparently, Inscription is trying to avoid that, so Blizz learned the lesson.
Blacksmithing had a nifty idea to reward crafters, but sadly that was a massive fuck up, as warriors and shamans found themselves pigeonholed into Hammersmith, with little other benefits. Every PVPer had a stunherald. Every PVEer had a Drakefist.
Engineering still sucked, especially since you couldn't turn in shells for arrows, and there was little utility except for a tier 5.5 ish helm.
Everything else was rather fine, after the 2.1 Alchemy changes. Oh, yeah, the discovery system wasn't a good idea for must have items like flasks.


Misc


Best and Worst
Best: Kael'Thas 25 man, Hellfire Peninsula, bombing run quests,
Worst: rep grinds, the place of heroics in the progression chain, the distinct lack of lore surrounding dungeons, the arena balance

Guilty as charged ^

 

mclem

To put my stance on these things into context - I was in a mediocre raid guild in original WoW; completed Molten Core, Razorgore down in BWL, but that was about it. Crucially, that means that we hadn't really had the opportunity to see much of how Blizzard refined and improved their instance design; hence coming into TBC, while I agree that artistically the instances were fairly dull (with a few nice touches such as Magtheridon being audible and visible in Blood Furnace), in gameplay terms the content was actually a bit of a (positive) surprise for me and my friends. One I recall vividly was our first run through Shadow Labyrinth; three of the four bosses in there felt *new* and *exciting* to us, and the tactics that were required for it engaged me far more than Baron Rivendare or Darkmaster Gandling ever had. I also have to echo the various statements about the Caverns of Time instances; rethinking the concept of an instance in two very different ways made those instances really stand out as fresh experiences.

Karazhan worked very nicely as an introduction to raiding. A lot has already been said about the appropriateness of a 10-man entry to a 25-man raiding world, which was a very major flaw, but as an instance in itself it felt like it was paced very nicely and there were no fights anything like as bland as Golemagg or Sulfuron Harbinger; it was a much better introduction to the playstyle than MC ever was.

Breaking away from the original guild to try to make reasonable efforts into 25-mans did bring about a few further problems; recruiting shamans on alliance side was extremely difficult for quite some time for a guild which didn't already have a name for itself. We played through much of the T5 content with at most one shaman if we were lucky; I do sometimes wonder if we'd have had more success if we'd been able to pick-and-choose our raid groups a bit more. In terms of the instances there, Tempest Keep always struck me as designed in the wrong order, where the boss closest to the entrance was significantly harder than either of the bosses in the wings. Vashj and Kael were two excellent fights, particularly the latter; and one of the achievements I'll be proudest of from TBC was beating pre-3.0 Kael.

Zul'Aman always struck me as a little too hard for the gear you'd be doing it in if you'd just come out of Karazhan. Clearly, given there were success stories in that respect I was somewhat incorrect, though! The timed run was a nice idea, always felt achievable but required effort to get there; I'm looking forward to more things like that in Wrath (if not for real rewards then at least for achievements).

There's been quite a bit of talk about the pacing of the release of content, but for me being in a more slower-paced guild, it never really affected me negatively; however, the constant injection of 'new' content by gradually removing attunements kept our raiding interest alive, I feel, and helped us immensely in avoiding getting stagnant.

While I've spoken mainly about instances, there was one class balance issue that cropped up which bothered me a bit; our MT originally was a long-standing and experienced prot warrior, and I was dabbling at launch with the new and exciting prot paladin spec. Due to circumstances beyond his control we lost the warrior for a considerable length of time, which meant I was thrust into the position of being MT in many situations. I was adequate, certainly, but there were enough situations which I really wasn't suited to that I found a bit annoying; I sometimes felt that I was a hindrance to the guild (but contrarily, the best-geared tank, so still the best choice). I hope they do nail the equality issues for Wrath; I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

Petrus

I have to agree with some people who have noted the problems with Sunwell drops. I would rather have seen them more like some SSC/TK patterns that drop *slightly* more frequently but can also drop from the bosses (i.e. Kalec).

Zones and questing were fun, save for BEM. It's a rather lovely zone in general, but it's a horror to level through. Terokkar felt weird because its quests were reallllly spread out. In Zangarmarsh/Hellfire, there were about 10 or so quests that you didn't pick up at a quest hub. In Terokkar, the large majority were not at hubs. I loved the art and looks of the zones, but questing in them was no fun.

I liked a lot of the 5mans the first time through. Heroic loot wasn't good enough quality, though - especially in the level 70 heroics (i.e. SV, Arc, Bot, Mech) where the only real difference is the epic at the end and badges along the way.

I'm not a fan of arenas, so I won't go there.

BT and Hyjal are pretty easy instances. I wish there would have been a way to make guilds do Vashj and Kael more, as they're AMAZING fights, two of my favorites in the whole game.

 

• Disquette

My biggest disappointment with Burning Crusade was how Blizzard handled PvP.

They continued the thrashing of AV that began before BC.
They added a single battle ground.
They repeated their mistakes regarding world PvP.

Alterac Valley
AV at its onset was extremely complex, long, and more like a true War environment than anything the game has offered since in size, scope, objectives, and # of players involved. The quests for it were many, the rewards were great and unique. In a single (Vanilla) patch Blizzard decided to take out most of the complexity of the game, leaving only a few quests. A few more patches, and Harpies and crafting materials were gone. In TBC, the optimal strategy for honor/hour, win or lose, was to Blitz the opponent and re-queue.

AV should have gone the opposite direction, starting out simple, adding more of the excitement over time. Instead of people talking about how AV had languished, those of us who had known the easier game would have had new strategies to work on. AV's treatment is BC's second worst PvP failure.

Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and EoTS
The only failings I see here are that Blizzard didn't institute a timer aspect to Warsong Gulch, while leaving in the deserter debuff. That's a personal preference, and I don't have too much to say about them. I have no real issue with Blizzard leaving well enough alone. EotS: A *very* bland environment detracts from an otherwise OK battleground. Blizzard deserves any criticism they get from people saying "it's WSG + AB, without green in the color palette". The mechanics aren't all that bad.

Arena
It's fine for the people who choose to do it (I'm not one of them). Given that it is the smallest (players-per-side-wise) PvP system that gives rewards, I am not sure that Blizzard did right in giving the best rewards in a min/max environment. Also, forcing Arena folks to do BGs was a bad decision, in my opinion. The class balance issue doesn't seem too major to me - anyone that chose to put themselves in an environment that pit 2 people against 2 people is asking for a class-balance nightmare. Again, the issue here is that Blizzard gave the best pvp gear through the most unegalitarian matchups. At least in raiding the deficiencies of having someone with an offspec could often be covered by the rest of the raid.

World PvP
Sandlol. Who would have thought that after the Sandlol experiment in Silithus that Blizzard would be similarly shortsighted and straight up wrong about how to make world PvP work in the expansion? Maybe they just didn't have enough time. Most world PvP I experienced (anecdote =/= data, but it seems to be the common refrain) was in one of four places:

1) Elemental Plateau
2) Black Temple ramp
3) Fishing Tournament
4) Other high-value resource points (mobs, resource nodes).

Blizzard (and Mythic, actually, but that's another game) has not figured out the simple way to incentivize people to world pvp. The answer is that you put people in the same place as each other, and have them be there not via some contrived reward, but because that's the best or only way to achieve goal X.

Elemental Plateau, Black Temple Ramp, and other High-value resource points had lots of world PvP because those were commonly known as some of the best spots to farm gold (or items to sell for gold). The same was true for Tyr's hand. The same was true of the spots in Arathi highlands when people needed elemental earth and elemental fire for Huhuran, Viscidus, and Ragnaros. The same was true for the summoning crystals and the mobs that spawned the drops to use them in Silithus. The fishing tournament was the only place to get the rewards associated with it, and much pvp ensued.

If Blizzard were to implement a elemental-plateau area (but with even better rewards than elemental plateau) that auto-flagged you upon entering, much world PvP would happen.

Blizzard did not figure out in TBC that the way to make world PvP happen isn't by making world PvP rewards great - you can never guarantee that you will find opponents there, or that you won't get steamrolled by a zerg, etc etc. You instead make people want to go to the pvp area for their own selfish reason, whether solo or in a group, and let the PvP happen naturally.

 

Duilliath

I hate what they've done to AV. A mindless zerg where you try to keep it as short as possible doesn't hold a candle to what it used to be. Sure, 48 hour matches were a pain to get mark from, but I've had a lot more fun in AV than I did in all of TBC. Achievements seem to help a bit though. People are more keen on defending or capping stuff.

Never had much of a hassle there, as I dinged 68 about the time I entered BEM. Given a flying form, it's a really nice zone. I do agree with the comments about navigating it on foot, as well as the lack of 'safety' on the roads.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Denogran

The original AV was terrible. Just simply terrible. 6+ hour queues to get into a game that had been going 12 hours and might not end for another 3 days? The reason you remember the quests is because the actual PVP in AV didn't accomplish anything. The only way to feel like you were doing something useful in AV was to turn in items and watch your rep bars shoot up. It was just a pointless honor grind, and systemic of the larger pointless honor grind that was happening in those days.

If you're on a PVP server, this happens naturally. If you're on a care-bear sever (like yours truly), it's in a large part because you probably don't want this to happen. If I want to PVP, I'll flag. If I want to farm stuff, I won't flag, and don't appreciate getting ganked doing it. I've been part of epic fights at Halaa when there was enough of a critical mass. Is it there on command? No, but that's why there are the battle grounds.

 

• Disquette

I'll break your post up into points as you raise them:

6+ hour queues would not have been that way with cross-server battle grounds.

Some of us like the fact that a WAR isn't simply a quick in and out event. There are 3 other battlegrounds that can service the population that likes that. I think, personally, that a combination of resources as they exist now, with the old quests and complexity which was AV, would be very nice..

What I remember of old AV actually was the PvP instead of two ships of opposing factions crossing in the night. Using shredders on opposing faction members and dancing around the minefields, spotting people with Capt. Grayson's all-seeing eye - those were pvp-oriented quests. As a melee player, the only quests I truly hated were the warmasters.

The game today is also a "pointless honor grind" in all of the battlegrounds. Is it really that much to ask that one of the battlegrounds be something like a War, after which this game is named?

It's Blizzard's call to make - if they want open world pvp, they can accomplish it using something along the lines of my suggestions. If not, they can continue with Sandlol. I can completely respect that most of the world should stay without auto-flagging pvp. That's why PvE servers exist. I'm saying, however, that if they want to introduce world PvP to the game, there are highly superior methods to that which they currently use.

 

Duilliath

That's okay. You've got EotS, AB, WSG if you want some pure PvP slaughter. I for one enjoyed the feeling of a mass battle, where you were a pawn in the entire fight. I was hoping for something similar to crop up in WotLK. It doesn't even need to end - make it a never ending battle between Horde, Alliance and Burning Legion where you can do small scale battles and assist NPCs, killing Horde/Alliance and Demons or assisting/thwarting your own faction or the other one. Running around in a Shredder was fun. Releasing the Cavalry was fun.
Praying for a mark wasn't.
So balance it around the fun bits, rather than a mindless zerg.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Nolanhadhoof

I'm most disappointed with the battlegrounds.

1. The queuing system discourages premades by making them wait longer for games.

2. The queuing system fails to match premades with premades.

3. In many situations mere presence (as opposed to participation) is sufficient for reward in battlegrounds.

4. The honor system promotes fast games and honor objectives instead of effort towards victory.

5. Since the honor system provides the most gear to the least geared those with the greatest incentive to partake in matches are those with little or no gear. This in itself isn't problematic until you have the gear and want to play a competitive game. Walking around round-housing clothies does in fact get old.

6. We have little variety in battlegrounds. Three of the four battlegrounds are carryovers from classic and the fourth, Eye of the Storm, just doesn't flow well. By this I mean, momentum in this game shifts too readily. Given the state of battlegrounds and the fact that many of us have accumulated points for four different sets of gear, these battlegrounds have been played ad nauseum.

7. The system fails to attract the best players. Arenas simply are the more enticing PVP venue for the most competitive players. Part of this is relates to my third point because it creates no inclination to improve. This is most apparent when a quality geared and quality skilled player steps into a battleground and is 20-0.

I'm not advocating for the old grinding system but it had its positives and these positives are sparse in our current game. As you have probably already inferred, I absolutely loved the competitive battleground matches that we had in classic WoW. No one is more hopefully than I for Wrath's competitive battlegrounds.

 

Morlark

You say that, and yet I had more fun in the old AV than I have done in any battleground since. Sure, it had its problems, and the insanely long queues to get into insanely long games were one of those problems. But I tend to think that was the largest of the issues, rather than being the icing on top of more deeply ingrained flaw the way you seem to be implying.

You say "the reason you remember the quests...". I barely remember the quests. What I remember is the PvP, something that simply doesn't happen in today's AV. And it was fun too, pushing the enemy back all the way from the Field of Strife, and knowing that you'd earned that victory. Surely the only criterion by which you can measure the success of any aspect of a game is whether it's fun? Even the pointless honour grind that you mention. Was the old AV a pointless honour grind? I don't know. I'm sure some people treated it that way, but I only ever did it for fun. Is the new AV a pointless honour grind? Absolutely. And that's why I think that for all the flaws the old AV might have had, it was superior in every way to what we have now.