• frmorrison

http://pc.ign.com/articles/718/718310p1.html

Here is the text:

the new world PvP content will take place in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, although it may eventually branch out to other areas. Silithus and EPL are the highest-level zones in the game right now anyway (Deadwind Pass is too small to count, really), so it will generally be level 55-60 players bashing away at each other.

In Silithus, the objective revolves around collecting dust, called "silithyst," and players will activate the geysers to collect the silithysts. You get a nice "buff" (stat boost) when you turn in the resources, but you'll be flagged as a PvP player as soon as you pick the stuff up, making you attackable by anyone in the opposing faction while you attempt to make your way back the Field Duty camps associated with the Cenarion Hold faction quests. If you manage to turn in enough of the dust, all of your fellow faction members in the zone will gain a buff as well, including those in the "AQ20" Ahn'Qiraj dungeon. Also, Blizzard tells us that no new PvP rewards are on the horizon, although faction and PvP honor points will be involved.

In the Eastern Plaguelands, we'll have a PvP mode that's similar to the Arathi Basin play style, rather than the resource collection in Silithus. There are several towers in this zone, already standing, that will be converted to captureable bases. You'll need to control and defend each tower, and the faction who possesses all four will gain zone-wide benefits like in Silithus. In addition to increased damage against the many undead creatures there (and in Stratholme), there will also be PvP-specific flight paths connecting the towers to each other. Although this game type has been prone in the past to tactical exploitation by rogues and other stealthy classes, Blizzard plans to implement a feature where the time it takes to capture a tower is reduced according to how many friendly players are nearby. If you are a stun-kill-disappear commando, you may find your usual tactics less useful here. Also, unlike Silithus, there is no automatic PvP flagging.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

joki

Awesome incentive, lets get buffs for the farmers in the zone.

 

Maledict

I hate to sound whiney, but I read this as effectively saying, for the majority of servers :

All alliance players are permanently buffed in Silithus, Eastern Plaguelands and the Ruins of Ahn'Qhiraj. ]

I know it doesn't seem like much, and yes it's no detriment to the horde - but the population balance is *already* so massive on many, many servers, that adding just another little thing to it just makes me think more and more about re-rolling.

And yes, it's whiney and moany. I don't get why people who have 3* the numbers of one side get to be permanently boosted in a PvE instance...

 

Mem

Its almost impossible to rebalance existing faction balances. I don't think that these buffs will be outrageously powerful. However I doubt that the minority faction will really put up an effort to fight for these buffs. On our realm horde queues are instant, faction imbalance is pretty awful. I guess, no horde player will go to the open pvp areas if he can have a "fair" 10 on 10 in WSG instead of being zerged down by the masses.

 

DiscW

I'm alliance and agree with you Maledict. It will probably just end up that the underpopulated side just never bothers with this.

 

Falcon24

Forgive me for saying, but this seems pretty bland.

 

TheRealJon

I was really hoping for something like contested zones having checkpoint towers that can be captured by either horde or alliance, if one faction eventually gains control of all the towers the zone becomes that faction's territory for however long the towers are held.

How great would it be to get control of a place like Stranglethorn and let all the low level guys grind in peace for a bit until a tower is taken again. I'd enjoy it. Or start making use of the arena's and have a BG type 1v1, 2v2, etc tournaments set up through there for big cp or gear prizes.

This just sounds really boring, but I guess it can be a way to kill time between BG waits, which will probably not be bad at all with the cross server ones being implemented at the same time.

 

◊ Praetorian

I see it as proof of concept, basically, for ideas that will be expanded upon in TBC. Because of population imbalance issues, I imagine they're hesitant to add anything with truly significant effects on the game world (e.g., if certain points of interest are controlled one faction pays higher merchant prices across the board and the other pays lower prices). People fought over a damn tower in Hillsbrad for a month just because it was there, and other players were there. I think they're curious to see if giving a little nudge in that direction will encourage more world PvP -- even if you don't go there for the rewards themselves, but simply because you know other players looking for PvP will also be found there.

 

• Thrillho

Yeah, if this is their awesome solution to bring back world pvp, it's pretty weak. Hopefully it's just one aspect of a bigger system, but I dunno.

 

• Greybone

I want to kill jaina, or go pvp'ing outside ironforge, or even kill the archbishop again, that's the sort of thing that really needs fixing.
But yeah, lets wait for the full patch notes.

 

Krill

I'm suprised they are not trying to use experience gained from AQ opening event and AV... making said EPL towers real NPC hubs, with quests, special events (3rd party attacks - Scourge anyone) and so on would make it less AB like. In general, giving players something that make them feel like part of the army, not part of the zerg.

And it's actually even worse, because in AB you rarely can have full time zerg controlling all the nodes, while in outdoor PvP it is quite possible.

Silithus Dune-like spice harvesting is not even worth a comment.

 

Stalkman

I like the concept, but if I'm already in a mood to pvp I'll be in org queueing up. Sithilus and EPL are both pretty far to get to from org, involving at least 10 minutes travel time. The way the queues have been on MG lately I'll probably be in a BG before I get there. For servers with much more of a pop imbalance (practically all of them) the pop heavy side will just be in the zones turning in the dust and controling the towers and just griefing people trying to do quests while the other faction people that want to PvP are probably just going to be in a BG. This would be a lot more appealing to me if they changed one of two things.

1. Be able to queue for a battleground from more places around the world (gaget, all major factions cities).

2. Have battlegrounds dump you more or less right where you were when you entered them. I have no idea how feasable this is design wise.

Noooooooooooo springs... he hehe

 

aquacadet

This is what I figured it would be, if there is no bonus honor for doing either look for this to only be used to get buffs, and generally ignored by most PvP oriented people on balanced population servers.

I do hope that what gurg said is true and this is a test for the expansion. Hopefully in the expansion with PvP oriented zones they will be exciting.

 

Flubber

Ya...I can imagine that one "World Pvp, raiding is for carebears" guild just camping on the towers casting shadowbolts and aimed shot at people questing or farming scourgestones and pallys bubble-consecrating the capturable points. Only with no queues and no ability to /afk out.

Best case, 2 guilds duking it out for control in laggy world pvp with random server crashes. (Eranikus event anyone?). Worst case, a guild of 15 people in Ubrs-blues making EPL even more miserable. Itll be like CH tower camping all over again.

You want to make world PvP fun again? Make a couple goblin caravans from a horde town to an alliance town one hour, and from an alliance town to a horde town the next hour. Have the goblin sell goodie bags containing potions, trash, and recipes used by raiding guilds for the first 5 minutes after he arrives safely in the city. If he dies. He resets in the other factions town. People have to defend their potions so they can raid at a cheaper cost, while simultaneously nerfing the other factions ability to raid on the cheap.

Give the goblin 400,000 hit points and the ability to be healed. Put em between Duskwood and Stonard. Tarren mill and Southshore. Kargath and Thorium Point. Cenarion Hold and Marshall's Refuge. Basically within one hop flightpoint from any of the major raiding zones.

It prolly wouldnt work and would be ignored after the first month or so (Arena Events anyone?), but it would be an entertaining way to bring back the sea-saw from the pre-BG days.

 

Tuco

It needs to be more rewarding than BGs for people that want 'honor'. If it isn't, it will be less populated.

 

Malan

Good luck to anyone trying to grind CC rep in Silithus after this goes into place - can't really say there will be a lot of "PvP" going on in the sense of what they're implementing, but its sure as hell going to increase the random gank squads roaming around.

Honestly though, am I the only one who sees World PvP and Cross Server BGs as imcompatible? Near instant queue times 24/7 with new teams from other servers? Who the hell would ever leave Org/UC to go to EPL or Silithus?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• frmorrison

Certainly the devs need to provide some amount of Honor for holding the objectives, possibly some quest rewards as well. The harvesting, similar to Arakkiss spice farming, is an interesting idea. Druids/Shaman will be good spice runners ;).

I have no idea how they will balance factions, but on a PvE server you choose to flag (if you feel it is safe enough to do).

Also, this preview isn't everything, another thing I know they are going to do is allow more people to get rank 10 and below (maybe by lowering honor decay at those ranks).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Mem

Or at least instant BGs for the minor faction. But I think, don't speculate too much about it, wait, how people react to this. Sometimes the momentum of the masses can produce truly unpredictables results.

 

◊ Praetorian

The problem is largely what was hit on in the first replies to this thread: Population imbalance across factions is the elephant in the room when it comes to designing world PvP objectives.

Would it be cool to be able to attack Kargath, kill the tower guards and an elite named inside, and defend it for 15-20 minutes while Horde rushed to defend it after hearing the call on WorldDefense, and shift the outpost to Alliance control? Hell yes. Would it suck to be a level 40 Orc trying to level in Badlands on an Alliance-dominated server if that were possible? Hell yes.

On a 50/50 server, you could have all sorts of cool back-and-forth, with territories and outposts shifting from one faction to another on a regular basis. But on an imbalanced server (almost all of them), all that means is further inconvenience to the already-ganked minority who have no power to stop it.

Blizzard doesn't want to force world PvP on anyone, particularly on PvE servers. Their attitude in that regard is clear. That's why they limit it to high-level areas, and that's why they've structured the rewards the way they have. I think that philosophically, if Horde A kills Alliance B, they don't want that to have an indirect negative effect on Alliance C who hasn't participated at all. At least not in the old world.

I know for a fact that world PvP is far more integrated into the Outlands, which are being designed with it in mind, so I wouldn't give up hope just yet. Playing at E3, if I brought up the map of the Hellfire Peninsula, I could see the Horde and Alliance outposts marked as red-flagged points of interest on the map, and I'm fairly sure I recall quests available at the Horde outpost that sent me to the Alliance outpost to do stuff. They were clearly fortifications with NPC guards beyond what you find at a typical settlement like Stonard or Nethergarde or whatever -- there were named officers and other elites -- and I expect that Outlands will bring a new meaning to the term "Contested" zone. Or so I hope.

 

oldmandennis

The underpopulated side just woln't bother. Why fight the odds when you can easily go to a BG and face even odds, while getting PvP items for rep? On PvE servers, it woln't change anything. On PvP servers, one sides farmers get a buff, while another sides get a bunch of kiddies trying to gank them all the time. Cheaper agility enchants - another benefit of playing the pretty toons. Now I have to consider if I want to try and grind out CC rep and badges, while I have a chance.

To the extent that its not underwhelming, it seems pretty stupid. If anything it should be in the lower level zones, that way even on PvE servers people would have a chance to opt in to a bit of PvP action.

Edit: Jebus, this topic is moving fast. These remarks weren't so bland when I started typing them.

 

Kazanir

The way Gurgthock proselytizes for the expansion you'd think he was a Mormon missionary or something. ;D

I think the major point made earlier is the "fought over a tower because it was there" statement. World PvP is actually remarkably easy to generate as soon as you get a certain number of people in a place such that you know others will be there. Last night a group of Alliance rolled up outside Orgrimmar and started killing the duelers and within about 5 minutes there was a group of about equal size rolling out the gates of Org to chase them off. This repeated itself about 4 times before I had to log off and do some real work. If the PvP objectives do nothing else, it will give you a way to know that there will be people to fight at those locations, which Light's Hope and Cenarion Hold were good for anyway (especially LHC pre-patch.) I think it's a given that the rewards will not be anything very significant, and that based this, I don't think that the faction imbalance is a huge danger.

In DAoC, if you had significant faction imbalance, it created major endgame issues because it severely impacted the gameplay experience for the other 2 realms. Fortunately, no one faction was ever so imbalanced that they could single-handedly wipe the floor with both other factions at once; and with a limited number of PvP objectives available, the amount of hardcore RvR players on a given server was limited just by the amount there was to do (only so many towers to hold, and so on.) In WoW, with only 2 factions, this could be a much bigger issue, but I don't see this new content giving rise to groups that continually (i.e. more than a couple hours at a time) lock down a given tower or a given zone, even with major population imbalances. Alliance significantly outweighs Horde on Sargeras to my knowledge, and yet Virakar never has any trouble enjoying ourselves in BRM or Silithus, or camping boats on any given Tuesday. If factions were more organized around consistent, continuous domination of PvP objectives, this would be a big issue, but I don't see it happening, especially given reasonably mediocre rewards.

Edit: WTB New items!

Glyphs of Cenarius. Requires level 60. Requires exalted with the Cenarion Circle.
Creates a portal to Cenarion Hold.
Circle of Light. Requires level 60. Requires exalted with the Argent Dawn.
Creates a portal to Light's Hope Chapel.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

xkmonkey

I think the biggest problem with world PvP is the honour system. The reason hillsbrad was such a big pvp area before the Battlegrounds came out was because there were other people there. It was a pretty decent spot to grind honour. But once the battlegrounds came out, with bonus honour for winning, there just wasn't any way to compete with that with world pvp.

My fondest memories of pvp before the AV and WSG came out were from the Plaguelands and Felwood. Usually in groups of 2-4 of us going around everywhere running into other groups looking for pvp as well. The hillsbrad zerg was always there, and I did spend a lot of time there, but I found myself more worried about the guards then about the horde. The guard zerg just seemed to be what pushed the front lines more than anything else. I still have no idea why some people still claim those fights as some of their fondest memories of world pvp.

I like that Blizzard is moreso trying to just give a small nudge to world PvP, instead of trying to force it. Unfortunately, world pvp comes down to numbers above all else. Geared and skills groups can overcome certain numerical discrepencies, but given enough opposition, all groups will fall. Which is really the reason I like the concept of battlegrounds so much more than world PvP. Groups are even on both sides to an extent.

If I were to redesign the system, I would add ladder system. To stay at the top of ladder, a team shouldn't have to play all the time, but rather beat all other teams consistently.

Either way, when the patch comes out, I'll probably be in EPL ganking horde because there were more alliance or being destroyed because a raid decided to come take out my small group. Could be fun for a bit, but I'm not sure how long it'll keep my interest.

 

Oneiros

PVP with a chance of paying repair costs vs PVP with even odds and probably more HK's, probably more CPs(honor).. hmm

the honest system right now is pretty dumb, but i dont know how to fix it so i guess i cant really say much. i do think they need to nerf honor earned in bg's though, to encourage more world pvp.

oh and this will make it exponentially more fun, and by fun i mean not fun, to:
1) farm CC rep
2) farm cultist sets
3) do lords/dukes
4) get to AQ

I believe in Harvey Dent.

 

malthrin

I think this will be fairly popular on some servers (and totally dead on others). A significant segment of the Battleground population isn't particularly enthused about the Honor system and either has better gear or just doesn't care about exalted BGs; they just want a fight, and right now they play Battlegrounds because they're the only place to find one. These are the players that will be drawn out to these new objectives. As long as both sides can regularly field a competitive force, this should be a healthy niche for people that just like to PvP. On the servers where Horde isn't too whipped to leave Org, anyway.

Hopefully the Honor doesn't surpass Battleground honor. If it does, both the previously described segment and the honor farmers will be out in full force, which will likely drop the full weight of the population balance onto the system and smother it before it can start to build a community.

*Had some power flickers while writing this, took a few tries to post, hopefully its not too redundant

Travian - Resto Druid
Malthrin - Priest

 

TheRealJon

I don't know about anyone else but my guild has a blast rolling the top alliance guild on our server sitting in front of the entrance to AQ40, trying to keep us out. I'd love to maybe see some kind of "King of the Hill" type thing in the same vein ... rethinking it, the premise sounds dull, but it will get people out there and that may be all the spark needed to start some type of fire, the more stuff you put out there, the more inclined people will be to take advantage of it ... arena events, world bosses, etc.