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WoW 1.12 World PvP Patch = Major Blunder?
Paragus1
Member UncommonPosts: 1,741
After over a year of the World of Warcraft community pleading and screaming for the Devs to try to restore overworld PvP to the game, Blizzard promised its playerbase that the upcoming 1.12 patch would finally address the issues that have been plaguing players for months. Under the premise of this upcoming patch, many players who otherwise would have quit the game out of fustration watching the game morphing into the old Everquest 1 model, decided to stick it out a bit longer to see world pvp revived.
As the leader of a major guild, many of us have since quit World of Warcraft a few months ago, recognizing it for a sub-par PvE and poor PvP experience. Many decided to stick it out under Blizzard's promise. I suspected personally that somehow they would drop the ball on this issue, but I just couldnt predict how. I mean how could you screw this up? The players have been telling the developers exactly what needed to be done to restore world PvP to a shadow of its former glory. Removing the dishonorable kills, at least on the PvP servers, and / or making the quest giving civilians unnattackable like some other NPCs to try to preserve their ideology of protecting the little guy's right to quest in a given zone.
The time has come and their remedy is quit possibly one of the biggest fumbles I've ever seen by an established and successful MMO in my MMO career spanning 9 games and a decade.
One would think that the solution would be simple, make the contested zones actually contested by putting capturable objectives to create a fronts in the overworld were players would finally have some non-instanced fun, and hopefully restore the War back to warcraft.
After a year of waiting, the devs have added 2, yes 2, for the entire overworld, capturable objectives in zones on the outter fringes of the world which were already somewhat populated.
1) Plaguelands was given a handful of towers that when controlled gives a localized buff that increases your factions ability to kill undead. Thats grinding on PvE.
2) This is the one that quite honestly has floored most of the community. SThe developers want you to travel to Silithus and collect sand. Oh I'm sorry, its called Silithyst. They would have you believe that somehow sand in the desert full of sand is a valuable resource. Basically this is a glorified collection quest in a zone that is already clustered with mobs. The reason this is relevent is that if attacked, you will drop your sand and have to go get it again. After collecting X ammount of sand (Never seen this type of quest before in WoW) your team has the chance to get a 15 minute buff! Thats right, a whole 15 minutes in exchange for collecting sand in the desert!
I've read their forums the last few days, and probably 50 pages of threads regarding this topic. I have yet to see 1 single person voice support over this change except a developer who seems to be floundering in the oceans of angry players, many of which are cancelling their accounts in light of Blizzard dropping the ball.
Its simply staggering how out of touch their developers are becoming, and it only reinforces the decisions of just about everyone I know who has cancelled their accounts. I mean it seriously would take 5 seconds to come up with a better idea. All they had to do is listen to their players who have been pleading for over a year. So I pose these questions to the community.
Are we on the verge of witnesses one of the most popular games in the genre approach a major milestone turning point? This is clearly a slap in the face of anyone who had any faith in these guys to save the PvP in this game. I find it laughable that the entire war in Warcraft is limited to fightin over a sawmill, a 2 acre stretch of woods, and a snow valley, while the devs try to spin it that a PvE sand collection quest is the answer to the prayers of their community. It should be interesting to see how this affects the overall attitude towards the game the devs who have clearly become insanely blind to their own players outcry.
As the leader of a major guild, many of us have since quit World of Warcraft a few months ago, recognizing it for a sub-par PvE and poor PvP experience. Many decided to stick it out under Blizzard's promise. I suspected personally that somehow they would drop the ball on this issue, but I just couldnt predict how. I mean how could you screw this up? The players have been telling the developers exactly what needed to be done to restore world PvP to a shadow of its former glory. Removing the dishonorable kills, at least on the PvP servers, and / or making the quest giving civilians unnattackable like some other NPCs to try to preserve their ideology of protecting the little guy's right to quest in a given zone.
The time has come and their remedy is quit possibly one of the biggest fumbles I've ever seen by an established and successful MMO in my MMO career spanning 9 games and a decade.
One would think that the solution would be simple, make the contested zones actually contested by putting capturable objectives to create a fronts in the overworld were players would finally have some non-instanced fun, and hopefully restore the War back to warcraft.
After a year of waiting, the devs have added 2, yes 2, for the entire overworld, capturable objectives in zones on the outter fringes of the world which were already somewhat populated.
1) Plaguelands was given a handful of towers that when controlled gives a localized buff that increases your factions ability to kill undead. Thats grinding on PvE.
2) This is the one that quite honestly has floored most of the community. SThe developers want you to travel to Silithus and collect sand. Oh I'm sorry, its called Silithyst. They would have you believe that somehow sand in the desert full of sand is a valuable resource. Basically this is a glorified collection quest in a zone that is already clustered with mobs. The reason this is relevent is that if attacked, you will drop your sand and have to go get it again. After collecting X ammount of sand (Never seen this type of quest before in WoW) your team has the chance to get a 15 minute buff! Thats right, a whole 15 minutes in exchange for collecting sand in the desert!
I've read their forums the last few days, and probably 50 pages of threads regarding this topic. I have yet to see 1 single person voice support over this change except a developer who seems to be floundering in the oceans of angry players, many of which are cancelling their accounts in light of Blizzard dropping the ball.
Its simply staggering how out of touch their developers are becoming, and it only reinforces the decisions of just about everyone I know who has cancelled their accounts. I mean it seriously would take 5 seconds to come up with a better idea. All they had to do is listen to their players who have been pleading for over a year. So I pose these questions to the community.
Are we on the verge of witnesses one of the most popular games in the genre approach a major milestone turning point? This is clearly a slap in the face of anyone who had any faith in these guys to save the PvP in this game. I find it laughable that the entire war in Warcraft is limited to fightin over a sawmill, a 2 acre stretch of woods, and a snow valley, while the devs try to spin it that a PvE sand collection quest is the answer to the prayers of their community. It should be interesting to see how this affects the overall attitude towards the game the devs who have clearly become insanely blind to their own players outcry.
Comments
There are only 10 types of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that don't
i have been playing wow since release and well i canceld my account 3 times and few weeks ago
the nax patch was a major let down so im not suprised by any of this i think brain dead hamsters lead the wow dev team.
I don't think the EPL world PVP is all that bad. I mean most PVPers like to PVP for strategic human vs human fighting, and capturing and holding 4 towers 24/7 provides for that. HK with meaning, not running around ganking helpless lowbies that aren't paying attentions.
If the reward includes some sort of slow a.dawn faction gain if all 4 towers are being held, then it would be awesome indeed. But it sorta is anyhow, b/c with a bonus against killing pve undead mobs, wearing your a.dawn insignia, you can prbly farm for the scourge stones much faster.
Agreed with the Silithus pvp idea ... it seems like a total joke. A PvP + Collection quest hybrid? wth?
BUT, it could be a foundation of something cool... think RTS Warcraft miners running to mine gold or chopping trees, but at the MMORPGs individual level
To the OP you are obviously an experienced MMO'er, why are you still playing the Fisher Price version of Everquest?
No annoying animated GIF here!
If you read the second paragraph I mentioned that I quit and withdrew my guild from the game about 2 months ago.
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I wish I had a dollar for every person that posted such a thought.
That's not quite what you said, silly me for thinking no-one bitches about a game they no longer play.
No annoying animated GIF here!
its not only like noone cares about a mmoprg they dont play -blizzard also forbids to comment
the crap they are doing on their offizial forums- as long as you dont pay you arent allowed to post
found it out over google after I
tried it on my own couse i was damn pissed off
- I waited a long time hoping that a rouge review
would make it worth to reactivate
my rouge but they only gave him more pvp power
by changing the skill-three a lil bit
well i really wonder sometimes
if the blizz guys who made wow turned to another project
and some old chinafarmers are the new devs...
Pi*1337/100 = 42
Yeah but wow has a few million players and better support, let alone people -- smoother play.
No matter what (being a beta player from SWG and quitting at the NGE) I can tell you that NOTHING compares to that clusterfuck.
I don't care if Blizzard crapped on your porch, they still would not be at the level of SWG and SOE.
At least WoW runs...and works. PvP cross server issues are the least of anything SWG tried.
Crap for 4 months you could not force run in a city ..lol (Yeah, you could not run without agroing every building , terminal and person) --- and it would not break.... but this is just one of the thousands of issues.
______________________________
I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process.....
SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE
Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
I've said it before and I'll say it again...
WOW at launch = one of the best MMO's in history. WOW today = dumbed down version of everquest.
Before I cancelled my account, I argued with a rep over the phone who swore that PVP was perfect in WOW. This was three months ago. Upon hanging up, I cancelled my account and sent a nasty email to his supervisor. I'm glad to see I made an impact (sarcasm).
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
So, world PvP is only for levels 50+ in WoW now?
I still can't get over them leaving DKs in.
I really don't think these guys have ever played on a PvP server (The devs) in another game. Hell I remember back in AC1, you got a pop-up warning letting you know life would be harsher, and even on Andred / Mordred in DAOC, there is a disclaimer. Isn't that the reason why people go to those servers? Its a given then when you play there that you are signing a waver understanding that your quest giver may be dead, or your town may be under attacked, and probably at some point you might *gasp* actually get killed!
The city leaders who rule the races drop virtually nothing! Kill Thrall and you get a runecloth and a few copper. WTF is that? The guy is the leader of the orc army, and he drops nothing but his loincloth? They give you around 10k honor, which is basically the equivilent of 1 on the 10 or 15 man BG games which can be won in about 5 minutes time. They created a nice looking overworld and let most of the zones go unused. And in regard to the new Silithus PvP addition, picking up the sand in desert actually "Flags" you for PvP! Holy god! The humanity! This is absolutely irrelevent when your already playing on a PvP server, which conincidentally the vocal majority of people screaming for more PvP are playing.
Cross server battlegrounds are a neat addition if it works, sure. The bad news is that battlegrounds, or the prospect of adding new ones, only contributes to the over instancing of an overinstanced world. Its this same overinstancing that force people to be a part of a large guild like the one I ran because you'll never see anyone else in a dungeon to work with if you wander in like the other MMO's out there.
I pray to the Gods of MMOs that this does not become the trend in this genre. Devs who are so far beyond clueless, when their paying customers are screaming viable ideas at them on their own boards for a year straight. Hell it took them 6-8 months just to get a blue post on a thread having to do with world PvP. I've seen Developers post on everything from "Whats ur favorite colorz?" to " I'm a liottle teapot" threads while the issues that really matter to their players get deleted silently or get ignored. When a thread has over 100,000 views on your boards where the other threads have under 10, you might think it would attract some sort of a response or at least an acknowledgement. I hope if the devs of thew next generation are reading or watching, they remember this sort of idiocy and not turn a blind eye to the most important component of their product, us the paying customers.
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even more embarrassing is the fact that this "long awaited world-pvp fix" was patched in in a rush. It's so damn bug ridden and unfinished no other "content" ever were.
besides, how long did it take to make this ? 1 day ? 2 if done by an intern ?
when I saw the bugged npcs in epl I had very bad reminder of unfinished games - yet this is wow.
truly embarrassing...
@Paragus1
don't get me started on the forums.. 30 day autopurge. threads that break with a certain postnumber. bugged search function in europe - SINCE RELEASE.
The disconnect between players and devs has grown quite sizable.
In an interview a couple months back (http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/05/jeff-kaplan-interview-in-ny-times.html):
Q. Overall, what percentage of level 60 players do you think have killed Ragnaros?
A. I don’t have firm statistics, but my gut feeling is around 25 percent.
Q. And what about Nefarian?
A. From the gut, I’d say maybe 15 percent.
You're kidding me, right? Not even close to 15% of players have downed Nef by now, let alone in May.
I'm not going to go the shrill alarmism route and cry "The game is dead!" However, people will continue to leave. 1.12 is a bad, bad patch. Rogues got snubbed, and "Forced World PvP" is the gameplay equivalent of Meeting Stones. People will try it, shrug, and go back to farming AB.
Ultimately, stubbornness will be the end of WoW. The devs are convinced it's their way or the highway, and probably that their bloated playerbase can withstand a few hits. What they ultimately fail to realize is that their game was never truly good, it just combined an exhilarating 1-59 with brand recognition.
From Tseric on the General Boards:
There are two distinct lines of thinking between people who want World PvP that I am seeing.
One side wants spontaneous World PvP.
One side wants rewards for PvP.
These two opinions are very much at odds.
There are two points I would like to insert here:
Spontaneous PvP can not have significant rewards, otherwise it
becomes something people do repeatedly for rewards. This is why rewards
for the upcoming PvP objectives are buff-based, not item based.
Significant rewards draw attention and traffic to
particular zones which creates a great deal of player collision and
negative effects along with that. While we would like to see DKs
removed at some point, we would like to have more directed toward the
design of open PvP rather than just yanking out DKs and hoping for the
best.
In other words, Blizzard has taken the position of "status quo, innovation be damned." I'll be cancelling soon, and I think Eve will be next.
blizzard died when some of their team broke of and created the greatest company known to man
i never really figured out the difference between the PvP servers and the normal servers in WoW. They were both carebear lame. PvP was always weak in WoW. For a game that was designed around war, I was totally amped before WoW was released. However, a few months later, I finally gave up on it and just PvE'd most of the time. When 50 or so Allies would raid the Crossroads it was kinda cool, but then they would just pop right back up after you killed them because they respawned in the graveyard RIGHT NEXT TO TOWN. We would battle it out until we go bored. There was no consequence one way or the other. Lots of times when level 60 players would raid Splinter tree post, we would just go kill Satyrs until the Allies got bored and left. WHAT KIND OF SHIT IS THAT?! The enemy controls your major town for that zone and you don't even have to worry about it?! That's not PvP. WoW never had PvP. The BGs completely wiped out any chance of fun on the PvP servers. You simply can't design a GOOD PvP game if you are worried about players who can't deal with consequence. If you logged into AC Darktide, you had to accept a disclaimer that said you COULD NOT complain to the CSR if someone griefed you. Turbine said "Darktide is tough; you better be tough if you wanna PvP in our game."
I am not suggesting that any game force a person to PvP, but I really wish that any new game would realise that there are alot of us who want the training wheels taken off. I would probably still be playing WoW if it had a real PvP server that was FFA and that allowed one player to loot the other players corpse. I bet Blizzard (and the MMORPG business, in general) would be really surprised at how successful that server would be.
Which FF Character Are You?
Pop Quiz: What break immersion more? The fact that a few NPC can't be killed to preserve a developer cearbare attitude in a PvP environment, or the fact that the entire backstory of their game involving 2 warring sides is limited to a lumber mill, a 2 acre stretch of woods, and some snow covered rocks?
I think this will go down as one of the major turning points for this game. There are literally tens of thousands of players or likely even more, who have been waiting for their answer to this issue. Now these people know that there is truly no hope. In the coming weeks we will probably witness a surge in account cancellations and Ebay listings.
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I remember peope complaining over lack of things to decorate a house with, so what happens? we stack items ontop of one another to try and create a new unique item.
WoW admittedly has less of a "sandbox" feel, but elements are there to make the game what you want. In essence, you complain all you want about Dev's and bigwigs not caring about what you want and you may be right. But ultimately the creativity and the game come down to those who play it and those who live in the world.
With the creation of the quest system that leads players through a game like an MMO the lack of creativity is astonishing to me.
Please don't take this as a flame for it is not meant to be one. I understand that WoW has many constraints, but at the same time those constraints can often be used uniquely to achieve a goal.
good one..