perhaps one more final note... with the 1.11 mage revamp, they sort of had to adjust at very least mage pvp gear since it completely sucked. They couldn't adjust just 1 class for obvious reasons.
I agree with your post, but they actually did "just adjust one class" when they updated arcanist, and they just adjusted two classes when they updated nemesis and netherwind. It's not unprecedented.
I think it's terrible that they keep updating these items. For a one time achievement you get free upgrades forever? Is that fair towards the people focusing on PvE, spending hour after hour after hour wiping to get equal gear?
I read a random whine thread on the subject where someone said that his friend had stopped playing 5 months ago after he hit rank 14. Now he came back and had better gear than his friend who had been farming bwl/aq for months. It's probably a bit exaggarated, but it certainly makes you ask what they are thinking.
I'm eagerly awaiting the fixes to the system which will hopefully adress this somehow.
This is the best comment I've seen regarding this, from Kyan Mehwulfe
You can't put an absolute or definitive value on the achievement of earning Honor ranks or killing a Raid boss. The former may indeed be soloed mindlessly on one Realm but on another it may require twice as much work and also organized guild effort to compete with other organized guild efforts. The latter may indeed require an immense amount of organization and strategy in order to pioneer those encounters and execute the kill but it may also be piggy-backed through allied assistance and borrowed strategies.
Point being that Blizzard reconizes the spectrum of challenge both gameplay types can demand -- not simply the absolute easiest end of spectrum for one and just the hardest for the other.
Additionally this is likely a one-time event and the new Honor system that Blizzard is working on will likely be designed better for post-pinnacle(as of that patch) progression and around re-earning PvP item rewards when they're updated but in a more natural and appealing way that how it would exist now (simply re-grinding Ranks.)
Whatever. Maybe when PvP is fun again I'll care about it, but realistically this isn't going to change raid progression at all. H4rdc0r3 guilds on new servers will roll the tired old raid zones a little faster, but it doesn't matter for the fun parts of the game.
perhaps one more final note... with the 1.11 mage revamp, they sort of had to adjust at very least mage pvp gear since it completely sucked. They couldn't adjust just 1 class for obvious reasons.
I agree with your post, but they actually did "just adjust one class" when they updated arcanist, and they just adjusted two classes when they updated nemesis and netherwind. It's not unprecedented.
pve epic item aquisition has been improved numerous times. To compile a complete list:
mc #1 Initial wide spread changes to all classes
mc #2 select class changes (arcanist received significant changes)
zg
bwl
bwl #2 for select classes (nw received signifcant changes)
aq20/40
tier .5
nax in 1.11
aq/zg updates in 1.11
quest epics in silithus (and soon ad quest epics),
outdoor bosses
craftable epics
PvP items we're introduced before any of these changes and have never seen a single change or addition, with the exception of the HWL items while they were still in testing. Perhaps it was right at the same time as the initial MC upgrade, or a patch before I can't recall exactly.
I'm sure just updating the mage pvp set (which imo was by far the worst of the sets) would have been their first choice... buying time for the complete 1.12 pvp revamp. While not exactly unprecedented, try to imagine 2m+ people trying to say what i just said on the general wow forums after they saw a selective pvp upgrade for one class. The forums wouldn't work for weeks. oh wait...
i think bliz begrudgingly upgraded the pvp gear. I just don't see that they had any other choice, save for appear to completely turn their backs on the entire aspect of pvp which they were already taking a proliferating amount of flak for. If they could have put it off till 1.12 without losing a sizable portion of their player base, or at least losing the faith of said player base I think they would have.
Have any of you who are against PvP gear being retroactively upgraded actually attempted to PvP to rank 13 or 14? It's all fine and good till rank 8-10 depending on your server, but you really start to feel the pain after that.
Nevermind the math on ilvl66 to ilvl75 upgrades... how about the math of pve raiding for 1 year upgrading though 3 sets of gear vs pvp farming for 3 months 16 hours a day for 2 sets of pvp gear.
pvp: 12 weeks x 7days x 16 hours= 1344 hours invested
pve: 52 weeks x 4days x 4 hours= 832 hours invested
These are my estimated figures from my personal experiance. I was in the top horde guild on my server and that's actually more then we raided but most guilds now raid slightly more on average. I also knew dozens of HWL's and pvped up to rank 10/11 twice, as well as finishing 2nd in the 'test of honor' contest. I just couldn't stomach going for rank 14 after doing the math on the time investment and seeing its effect on others. Yes the numbers will change from server to server and guild to guild. Some guilds raid 5-6 hours every single day, and some servers probably only need 75% as much time to rank up due to lower populations and less competition.
For this particular situation i think a flat upgrade is warrented, especially considering some of the pvp sets were designed when the devs honestly thought +20spi was a highly desired set bonus for mages among other mishaps. This is more of a fix for some classes then it is an upgrade.
Free upgrades for life? no, that would be stupid but bliz is clearly not going to do that and we will see changes for upgraded pvp gear with the 1.12 pve revamp imo. Free upgrades this time? makes perfect sence. Ideally bliz would have held off on a pvp gear upgrade untill the pvp revamp, but that's many months away and pvp gear was already lack-luster compared to current items. The outcry would have been 'ginormous' had they completely neglected pvp itemization in yet another patch when compared to nax gear.
one final note, rank 12/13 gear had it's stats changed, so anyone wearing it would see new status upon logging in come 1.11. Rank 7-10 gear has all new item id's such that you won't see new stats unless you grind back up and buy them again. At present anyway.
perhaps one more final note... with the 1.11 mage revamp, they sort of had to adjust at very least mage pvp gear since it completely sucked. They couldn't adjust just 1 class for obvious reasons.
Obviously you haven't PvP'd high in the ranks, or progressed anywhere in PvE. If you grind GM style CP from you're first week, you're merely being a complete moron. Also with regard to your PvE numbers, we were running 6-3/4AM M-F, and 5-3/4AM during the beginning of AQ/BWL progress. You won't hit those nice small numbers until you've been farming the instance, and the one after it for months, and blizzard nerf's the hell out of it.
Well, we only ran our normal MC/BWL/Ony, after we ran out of people for AQ, usually between 1 and 2 AM. So then we'd have to do a clear of MC/BWL, sometimes with only 30 people.
We pretty much never raid for more than 4 hours in a day unless something goes horribly wrong (read: people suck and we have stupid delays, or the servers crash), and never on a weeknight. The only difference is that we probably raid ~6 days a week when we're learning new content, versus 3-4 days a week when we're farming. I have time to lead pretty much all raids (98%+ attendance over the last 15 months) but I know I don't have the time to get past rank 11-12 no matter how hard I might try, unless I quit my job or give up sleep entirely.
Time-wise, it's really not a comparison.
These changes raise interesting questions from a design perspective, and there's plenty of room for intelligent discussion of them. If you want to bitch and whine about how PvPers are getting freebies and how it makes your e-peen shrivel, or if you want to rant about how PvP is so much harder than autoshot and afk in a raid zone, go here and post away.
PvP gear does need to scale. I think we can all agree that if they keep giving people permanent retroactive upgrades indefinitely, that's ridiculous and removes any incentive to even try to better oneself once you've gotten your rank once. So let's treat this as a one-off occurrence. How should Blizzard handle long-term parallel progression of PvP and PvE gear?
We pretty much never raid for more than 4 hours in a day unless something goes horribly wrong (read: people suck and we have stupid delays, or the servers crash), and never on a weeknight. The only difference is that we probably raid ~6 days a week when we're learning new content, versus 3-4 days a week when we're farming. I have time to lead pretty much all raids (98%+ attendance over the last 15 months) but I know I don't have the time to get past rank 11-12 no matter how hard I might try, unless I quit my job or give up sleep entirely.
Time-wise, it's really not a comparison.
These changes raise interesting questions from a design perspective, and there's plenty of room for intelligent discussion of them. If you want to bitch and whine about how PvPers are getting freebies and how it makes your e-peen shrivel, or if you want to rant about how PvP is so much harder than autoshot and afk in a raid zone, go here and post away.
PvP gear does need to scale. I think we can all agree that if they keep giving people permanent retroactive upgrades indefinitely, that's ridiculous and removes any incentive to even try to better oneself once you've gotten your rank once. So let's treat this as a one-off occurrence. How should Blizzard handle long-term parallel progression of PvP and PvE gear?
There is no way under the current system. For example, let's say they added ranks on top of the ones we have now. Seems like a good idea right? Except the fundamental concept of the system, a pyramid, means that these are no harder to aquire, than it was to get the old items last week, or last month. Basically the only solution is for Blizzard to admit PvP is a silly sideshow, and WoW is a PvE game, which it is.
given that i have a rank 13 druid (only stopped at 13 because there was nothing especially attractive at 14 back then) and a hunter decked out in striker's garb, i feel like i'm in a reasonable position to see both sides of this issue. then again, it's possible that my view is colored by the fact that striker's is a terribly budgeted set, and the FM hunter set is simply ridiculous, but it seems pretty absurd to me that someone who got rank 13 a year ago and then quit the game could log in the day of the 1.11 patch and have better gear than me. not comparable, not almost as good - better. the same 5 pieces of the rank 13 hunter set have more agi, stam, and hit than strikers, along with a 4% bonus to multishot damage from the gloves, which makes them downright better than the gloves off the emps. i stopped PVPing at rank 11 on my hunter almost a year ago when bwl came out. if i'd kept it up for another month or two, i could've just never bothered with all that silly raiding i did in BWL and AQ over the past year and been in just as good or better shape gear-wise than i am today.
we were running 6-3/4AM M-F, and 5-3/4AM during the beginning of AQ/BWL progress.
Well, given the results I for one am even more grateful for our schedule throughout all the content we've done so far. Though that's pretty commendable, especially running MC/BWL after AQ learning attempts :o
we were running 6-3/4AM M-F, and 5-3/4AM during the beginning of AQ/BWL progress.
Well, given the results I for one am even more grateful for our schedule throughout all the content we've done so far. Though that's pretty commendable, especially running MC/BWL after AQ learning attempts :o
Different strokes for different folks I guess. One of my favorite weeks since WoW has been out was when the instance timers bugged out, and we got 2 MC's, 2 BWL's, 3 Ony's, and 3 AQ's through Emps. We had fourth AQ scheduled for that monday, but they fixed the timers.
PvP gear does need to scale. I think we can all agree that if they keep giving people permanent retroactive upgrades indefinitely, that's ridiculous and removes any incentive to even try to better oneself once you've gotten your rank once. So let's treat this as a one-off occurrence. How should Blizzard handle long-term parallel progression of PvP and PvE gear?
I love to pvp, and I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at it. However, I've never had much incentive to really rank up because the rewards were always mediocre compared to what I could get raiding (at least for a warlock). More recently, I've been trying to rank up my warrior alt because he's an alt who doesn't get access to the really good stuff, and some of the warrior rewards are actually pretty good. (Warrior itemization is about the best in the game, imo, but thats a topic for another thread.)
I don't think giving away free loot upgrades is a good idea, and its definitely not something blizzard can continue to do forever. But I'll completely agree that the current pvp system sucks and needs to be changed. I think something involving world pvp and pvp quest objectives would allow a much more realistic form of progression. Make pvp'ers complete pvp oriented quests to get gear. However, this would require a complete overhaul of not just the pvp system, but likely the game world as well. I think we'll see something like this in the expansion though, as the Outlands are supposed to have pvp objectives, similiar to DoAC.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see what 1.12/the expansion bring to the pvp system, but right now I think blizzard is making a major mistake handing out free upgrades.
hearing other guilds' raid schedules makes me thankful for the priorities of my own guild. we raid tues-wed 6:30-11, with mon reserved for finishing if we suck and can't kill bosses and thursdays when we're still learning zones. we never raid over the weekend - guess that's what you get from a guild of almost all college kids. i'm one of the old folks at 25 :-P
Here's the only blue set I could snag. Basically the way the blue set is itemized now, such that it's virtually worthless to get rank 13. Get rank 12, and wear the amazing BP/Helm (BP is arguably better than HoER), and snag the 40 AP upgrade.
Here's the only blue set I could snag. Basically the way the blue set is itemized now, such that it's virtually worthless to get rank 13. Get rank 12, and wear the amazing BP/Helm (BP is arguably better than HoER), and snag the 40 AP upgrade.
and yeah, that hat is pretty crazy for champion gear.
Thanks Moz. Wow, that makes me glad i got my warrior back to Centurion, after deranking to Senior Sergeant due to inactivity. Any word on if the blue sets are retroactive, or will you need to re-rank? The patch notes are pretty clear on the epic stuff, but vague on the blue gear.
It's been suggested before, but I'd really like to see the PvP system changed so that you maintain your CP and add to it each week and then use it to purchase items.
Here's the problem with that though: At what rate? What would be acceptable to individual players, and what would be acceptable in terms of gamewide equipment balance?
What if each individual epic required 1mil CP to obtain, for example? That'd probably be balanced on a gamewide level, but would that be too much for you personally? At least it'd be doable over the course of six months with 15 hours a week instead of 80 hours a week for one month. How do you balance people on servers/factions with instance queues vs. those with 30-min queues.
But from Blizzard's perspective, what matters is the flow of epics into the gameworld. That's why we have raidIDs and lockouts. That's why quests that yield epic items have a quest drop for a single player (Ony head, Nef head, C'Thun eye, Red Scepter Shard, Draconic for Dummies, etc.) while blue quest rewards have drops for the whole group. I'm sure Blizzard has internal guidelines that govern the rate at which epics can enter the gameworld. And the PvP ladder/pyramid system fits into that. It guarantees that, at most, a handful of players per server per week will gain access to a handful of new epics.
If you remove the curve/ladder aspect of the system and just let people grind towards fixed caps, now there's no limit except players' dedication, and that's not something you want to underestimate. Fuck it up, and a few months down the line you have a huge chunk of level 60s running around in high-end epics, and all your 5-man and early raid content is suddenly obsolete.
Basically the only solution is for Blizzard to admit PvP is a silly sideshow, and WoW is a PvE game, which it is.
This makes me sad :-(
I really enjoyed PvP back when the honor system was first released. There would be gangs of alliance and horde clashing in the plaguelands, massive battles going on in Hillsbrad, raids on cities, etc. Sure the honor system was a bit flawed from the get-go, but it was easy to get past that if you treated PvP as an enjoyable thing and didn't focus entirely on ranking up. Then came Battlegrounds and dishonorable kills... basically Blizzard's attempt to stuff PvP into a nice, neat little package that's completely insignificant to the world as a whole. I don't understand the logic behind this. I've always thought that one of the best things about an MMO is the fact that you have a living, breathing fantasy world controlled and inhabited by real players.
Why implement dishonorable kills to discourage players from interacting with the world? Why introduce instanced PvP that has no effect on the world whatsoever? If I wanted that, I'd go play Counter-Strike, Halo, or Project Offset when it comes out. Now we've got talk of them "reviving outdoor PvP" come the expansion, which seems to me like it will merely be outdoor battlegrounds. PvP is less exciting when you know you're doing nothing more than accomplishing artificially-created objectives. It's boring attacking targets that were created for the sole purpose of being targets in the first place when you could be doing something significant, like conquering cities. I'm just ranting now about my preferences in game design, but you're right: WoW is completely a PvE game and the PvP is a mere sideshow.
I used to have a huge image here, but then it got removed and now I\'ve developed chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. /wrists http://ctprofiles.net/7275
I don't feel it's all that different to the Cenarion item quests that are either entirely soloable or at least 5 manable that eventuate in epic quality gear (and some of it is damned good.) A different system then, the first allows folks to spend CP to gain blue/low quality epic gear, the second (the current system) for gaining access to the rank 14 gear. I can see a few advantages to this; firstly the real casual players can eventually get some decent gear, and the hardcore folks can still feel that their effort is being rewarded. Secondly, when it comes time to upgrade the armor sets so they're still 1 rank behind the top tier PvE gear you could pay to upgrade your armor using CP you've earnt. Although some problems might be that folks who have ground to rank 14 have accumulated such a tremendous amount of CP that they can pay for upgrades for many tiers to come - perhaps a gradual decay in the earned amount over time.
Certainly not the best solution, but I think it's a start.
In my opinion, upgrading the pvp sets is an unfortunate but necessary amends for the the fact that the honor system the sets were obtained in is so horribly broken. It is stupid that past participants will reap perpetual benefits for work they did perhaps a year ago, but the alternative is to completely invalidate three of what were probably the worst months of their lives.
Regardless, a more elegant solution would have probably been to borrow from the tier 0 upgrade system, and make it so the right to upgrade is earned through some series of tasks and at some cost.
Hopefully this whole ordeal will only occur once and the expansion will bring with it a faster and more reasonable system for distributing PVP reward items to the people that deserve them, those with ability.
05/20/06, 5:03 PM
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