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World of Warcraft: Editorial: Battlegrounds
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Staff Writer Garrett Fuller makes his MMORPG.com debut with a look at PvP and the Battlegrounds in World of WarCraft.
;) WoW offers PvP to players in two forms. The Battlegrounds give players a chance to form up in forty or ten player raids and fight over specific objectives. If you play on a PvP server, you also have the chance to openly hunt down and fight players in any of the contested zones. With these two options available many hardcore PvP players continue to talk about the flaws and benefits of this system. A good friend of mine asked a question that I think sums up concerns over WoW PvP, What is the spirit of Warcraft PvP?
Many online players forged their opinion of PvP playing other games. In Ultima Online there were no rules. You left town, you were a target for Player Killers. The only warning you had was the name in red on the screen. It was truly a risky environment to play in and it was fun. Not only did you die, but you lost your gear and loot, could todays players handle such a loss? I seriously doubt it. The next big PvP game in my experience was Dark Age of Camelot. Luckily, the entire game was not a battlefield, but certain zones were. The combat was fast and furious giving rise to all kinds of tactics and theories. If you died you lost some experience and had to deal with sickness for a few minutes, but you kept your gear. The risk was not as high, yet the competition still remained. So how does World of Warcraft add to this growing phenomenon in online games? First let me say that I respect Blizzard tremendously as a company and revolutionary in video games. That being the case, why have they handed us a milk-fed version of what real player competition should be? |
You can read his full article here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Not a bad write up.
You did miss one point though. That is guilds from opposing factions getting together and setting up games to farm each other for points. And Blizzards absolute lack of willingness to enforce it's on ToS to stop them.
If your a casual player, under the current system, your absolutely hosed. Between the cheaters and those who spend 16+ hours a day 7 days a week in the BG's, you just can't figure to advance very far.
If it's fun, great, if you want advancement, it's just not worth it.
Good assesment.
My subscription just ran out to WoW last night. I have been complaining about 98% of the things you mentioned in your article.
The biggest thing WoW devs could do is abandon the whole BG idea and take them out of the game. Take their reputation and loot tables and incorporate them into outposts and keeps that can be captured in the regular game for anyone to play. There are a few complaints that can be registered about that, such as people killing quest targets and population imbalances. But if Blizzard kept quest hubs for the general game away from capturable outposts it should work. Also, give benefits to players joining a faction that has a lower population, ala DAOC.
It's funny, really. I never played PvP games with enjoyment until I tried WoW. I had a lot of fun with it, but even I saw how fundamentally flawed their design is.
Hopefully they listen to articles like this and make change. But Blizzard is not well known for listening to its customers.
PvP in WoW is a shadow of what it should be, there are two reasons for this.
The best honor points and rewards come from PvPing in battle grounds, there is little if any reward for open PvP. Sadly the only open PvP that was viable in the game and that occured before BGs came out was a massive zergfest with very few people interested in team play.
While the Battlegrounds themselves are well designed and incredibly fun, Blizzard's lack of vision in implementing the queue system has ruined what would otherwise have been a great experience.
I work full time between 60-80 hours a week. If I'm lucky I have 2-3 hours a day to relax in the evenings and a few hours on weekends. The question Blizzard needs to ask is, do I as a player want to spend 2 out of those 3 hours waiting in a queue? Because that is how the situation is for a great many WoW players.
Wait 20-30 minutes in a queue, play for 10-20 minutes, rinse repeat. For people with little free time, waiting in a queue more than 5-10 minutes is just not a viable option. Even for hardcore gamers, I can't understand how some people can spend half of the day just waiting to play. When a game makes you wait to play longer than it lets you play, you know something is wrong.
And no, you can't do anything else while you are waiting, because by the time to travel to another part of the world to do anything, and just barely get started you get called in.
So what is the solution? Well there is only one straightforward fix to all this. Cross server battle grounds.
We all KNOW that blizzard did not design the system from the ground up to accomodate this, and this is what shows a complete lack of vision and ingenuity in their creaton of this system. Guild wars shows how instanced PvP should work. Queues in that game for a team based fight never last more than 30-60 seconds. Insta-fun!
So what do WoW BG need?
1) Divide the servers into groups of 10-15 as a "cluster" and when players enter a queue from any of these servers they all join the same queue. Right now even on high pop PvP servers, the number of players participating in PvP from any faction even at peak times is around 100-200 max. This is what causes these deplorable wait times. If the active PvP population for 10-15 servers were combined then all these problems would go away and make for truley fun and competitive PvP. Sadly Blizzard clearly lack the initiative or concern for their players to invest the effort necessary for this. Maybe this is because more players care about getting phat lewt from endless carrot on a stick instance encounters than actual PvP, which is a sad state of affairs indeed.
2) Winner stays on. More than any other reward, this should be the real reward of winning a fight, no more queue for you, your group gets to rejoin the next fight without having to wait, in a king of the hillesque way. At least this would reward the extra time it takes for guilds to get into a battle ground together.
In any case I doubt blizzard will implement this in the near future, and by the time they do all my friends would have quit playing WoW as I already have.
The only hope for those who truley want to participate in fun, consensual pvp is to get their fix from Maps like DOTA for now or wait for Mythic's next mmo, Warhammer online. Hopefully they will deliver where Blizzard have so miserably failed.
Quote --- "That being the case, why have they handed us a milk-fed version of what real player competition should be?"
Stopped reading there. Nice unbiased opionion.
Nice Read, I fully agree.
Having played WOW on Horde Deathwing Server and achieving the first to rank of High Warlord. It has been my experience that instance pvp with que times is a horrid implementation of pvp. So much I canceled my accounts and am now looking for the next great pvp experience.
I loved old school UO, bought and played UO from day one for many years. Daoc pvp was great til the great Midgard nerfs that led quickly to my cancelation. (left axe, and damage to armor types) I agree with your article on these games.
Hopefully soon we will have the next great pvp experience
By "unbiased opinion" I'm guessing you mean "Your opinion is different to mine, therefore you are wrong", and that was the real reason you stopped reading.
See, thats the nice thing about opinions... Everyone has one, and very rarely are the identical. That's what promotes discussion.
Well-written article that points out the major flaws of WoW's PvP Honor system and the Battlegrounds. Personally, I enjoy the Battlegrounds. Yes the queues are tedious, but I usually pass the time grinding up my crafting skills that I neglect while I'm grinding experience with quests... it passes the time, and also helps out my guild.
Is the WoW way true to "the PvP spirit"? Well, one could question what that spirit really is. I would suggest that to 100 different players, that spirit would be 100 different things. Almost every current MMO on offer has PvP in some shape included (EQ2 the notable exception), and each of them is different in its own way. Is the WoW way a "milk-fed version of true PvP"?
Only you as a player can decide that for yourself.
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Same here.My sub ran out on the 5th and i dont think it will be getting reactivated till i see some improvment from blizz across the boards. I loved TM and SS pvp fights and hoped that they would incorporate some sorta system that didnt involve instance pvping.
Blizzard have show they are arrogant beyond belief tbh ,riding on the coat tails of "Blizz have never made a bad game " rep. They are akin to SOE and SWG, when soe were slack cause they knew star wars sold no matter how crap and flawed.
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regarding your paragraph:
[quote]Knowing I would be writing this editorial I purposely entered Alterac Valley to try something. I did not engage in one single combat for an entire hour. I wracked up honorable kills from my party and looted any corpse that allowed me. In doing so, for one full hour of play I was able to gain honor points and turn in several quests to boost my faction.[/quote]
In practice this does not actually work. you can of course gain minimul honor and faction by leeching off others but there is always someone watching for and booting "leeches" in AV due to the strain they put on any combat action. also you gain far more honor by actually participating in the combat then you do by standing around quietly. although with the current estimated honor feedback given in chat it makes it difficult to quickly quantify this, to get a more accurate honor recieved try doing that test again, spend say 10 hours in one week standing around near your guildies in AV doing nothing and then after the points are counted up on tuesday, do it again, 10 hours in AV fighting beside them and compare the 2 weeks results, I think you may be quite suprised by the results.
When all else fails, Poke 'em in the eye with a good sharp stick.
WoW is trully a watered down version of pvp. What is the point of pvp in WoW? The only point is to collect honor points. Well and afk macroer can gain just as much or more honor than an active person. So were is the pvp? What risk is there in pvping or pking in WoW? There is no real risk, if you die you do not lose any items from your inventory or your equipment. All it does is make you do a 2 to 5 min run back to your body. In a true pvp enviroment there would be something to lose either you would lose some of your precious loot or you could possibly lose a player built city (that takes 100s of man hours to build like in Shadowbane). Also there would be real rewards to pvp besides the fun as in gaining some precious loot or gaining a new player built city that you did not have to put 100s of man hours in to gain.
As for the que system it is fubar. The only solution is to lock people into one of the BG instances ( like they do Molten Core and other high end pve instances) for 30 mins to 2 hours depending on which battleground you are in. This would also slow down the powergamers and would be a draw back to the people that just leave the instance when they see a group they can not beat and go looking for an easier fight. Also it would shorten ques because some people would still be locked into instances.
Well those are my opinions yours might be different.
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I somewhat agree, however, you are most likely one of those lucky players who just happend to pick a populated server.
For me, being on the Silver Hand server it is near, if not completly impossible to get into a good Alteric Valley instance.
The battlegrounds is good on maby 5 servers, the rest dont get it at all.
I think the article should have took a more agressive approach against blizzard, instances is not and will never be a good way to pvp, especially when they add the que system onto that.
The whole purpose of pvp is to kill your enemy, not have a little game of tag in some pointless unknown mountain that no one gives a %^@# about if it is taken or not.
There needs to be reason to attack the enemy at their home, take their homeworld and effect the entire server... imagine the horde taking over stormwind for good, raising the clans banner, making a new king.. you have no idea how exciting this would be.
Dark age of camelot was closest to this, yet still way off, then, as most of us know, they seem to have went a completely different way.
It's sad really, how you casual sensitive gamers have ruined this and turned every game into this complete waste of time of getting the latest and greatest purple item with +1 bonus to some unkown crap that no one cares about.. it's sad that armor is more important then skill, it is sad that devs are focusing more on the casual gamer then the hardcore gamers now aday. It's sad that this way of gaming with MMORPG's will never end, and it is sad that I am left to play WWIIOnline, an extremely outdated MMO, YET, the only real MMO out right now, the rest are just trying to amount to what Everquest and Ultima online use to be a LONG time ago.. without realizing they dont stand a chance in hell.
Maby someday one of these all mighty companys will be shot down one day making room for the thousands of other companys with some real ideas on what a mmorpg should really be...
As a generally non-pvper, this is kind of wierd discussion for me to get into, but it was clear from your article that you have a definite opinion of how PVP should be (completely without rules) and that anything else would be substandard. You are clearly intelligent, and after discounting the bias your article was well written. I liked the thoughtful suggestions at the end as well. PVP is an item that has been extensively market researched by every company that is thinking of producing an MMORPG. The biggest drawbacks to unlimited PVP (that I can think of offhand are):
1. PVP'ers are outnumbered by non-pvpers by a factor of something like 10:1.
2. In an unlimited environment (think lineage 2 for example) ganking is usually rampant, and new players almost always are discouraged within minutes of trying the game. Since 9/10 of those new players dont care for PVP already, you've just lost 9/10 or your potential player base. NOT SMART MARKETING!
3. Its a money making business, so Wake Up and Stop Dreaming, the good old days when game developers were ignorant are long gone.
So that brings us to How can we make both sides of the aisle happy. Clearly the answer to this is PVP and Non-pvp servers (AKA WOW). Now here is where we begin to agree. If your going to do it, do it right. PVP servers should be PVP all the time almost everywhere. (I would create safe zones for shopping, starter characters), but anyplace you could gain xp (except for starter zone) would be PVP all the time. Yes, allow character looting (to a certain point) and yes there should be a penalty for dying. PVP should be challenging and fun.
Although I really like the way guild wars works at times, I also enjoy that feel of danger on a PVP server where you know you could die at any time. I also agree that PVP should encourage guild making and territory holding. anarchy online does a decent job of this and other games could learn from thier solutions for guild combat and lag issues.
Thanks for a good thought provoking article.
Rigghawk
Rigghawk
That is an accurate description of WoW PvP, dry and tasteless. But i always like to go into detail.
I left the game 3 months ago for those same reasons. And, a little more. Battle grounds got boring quick, and most of the time i was left wandering around helping the opposite faction level its lowbies. Most people would go out and gank, and gank.. Which really defeats the purpose of the battlegrounds, or indeed a honour system. They were put in place to slow down lowbie ganking, and to keep high level players in the game for a while longer. It failed SPECTACULARLY at both.
Let me go into detail..
1. High level player(HLP) joins que, waits and gets bored fast.
2. HLP goes to gank lowbies to while away the time.
3. Eventually both the lowbie and the HLP go complain on the forums about their respective problems, until like smoke in the wind of the general forum, their comments, however constructive and helpful they may be, are swept away easily and are forgotten in seconds, and the few that did read the post forget about it and go to try to summon a blue CM, bringing the problem further from the devs ears.
4. Both HLP and lowbie leave game in disgust.
Its a chain. Although, i left because town raids were removed.. Ahh.. the good old days of TM<->SS and Ashenvale to XR. Where the battle could turn on a dime at any second. The knowledge that a group of rogues could be coming around behind you to cut off your retreat.. And in a time of need a surge of reinforcements could come either way, tipping the balance again.
They lasted longer than AV ever did. And you know what.. there werent any rewards for it! People raided cause it was FUN. Not because they could get a new epic hammer!
Why does blizzard have to take all of the good ideas off the forum and mutilate them horribly and take their point away from them, just so they can say they made it up themselves to save a tiny bit of their pride and dignity.
Oh, and /Flameproof suit On
Im not anti social, im just pro solitude!
Is the spirit of PvP griefing? because that's the impression given by your article. The oppourtunity to deprive another player of hours or even days of achievements by ganking them with superior gear and a higher level in UO was set up as the standard against which WoW is deficient.
You can't build an mmorpg on griefing because even griefers don't like being ganked. Blizzard is trying to make griefing as close to impossible as it can be and encourage more skill-based (and more team-based) pvp and WoW is better for it.
WoW after the honor system, but before battlegrounds, was pretty much a griefer's paradise. There were virtually no mid to high level zones that were soloable at any time of day and getting together a group of four was often of little help with level 60s roaming the plains in squads of equal number.
Now I admit battlegrounds have swung the pendulum too far the other way, but so does blizzard. Now out-of-bg pvp is a waste of time so leveling on pvp servers is even less dangerous than before the honor system. I do miss the rampant city raids of the afformentioned era and blizzard is working to implement raid quests to bring those back, as well as return the "sense of danger" pvp servers once had. Queues are an issue if you don't want to pvp during peak hours (where the waiting time is commonly <1 minute), but these greater out of instance rewards should help satisfy the impatient. Similarly, they're standardizing the rewards between AB and WSG with the Bagges of Honor in the next patch, which will also up the rewards of winning rather than just being there.
In short, I agree with the issues mentioned regarding battlegrounds, but they're going the right direction and making pvp a free for all would only serve to reduce WoW to the popularity of morps which have such a system.
It's incredibly hard to have any sort of balance especially when people are buying massive amounts of gold to get rare, high powered weaponry. The items-based game really hurts the game far, far worse because of groups who exist to sell in game cash for real gold, allowing anybody to power up even further.
For the occasional gamer, attemping PVP with a fully rigged out character is near impossible. Another problem I have with the battlegrounds is they seem geared towards Level 60 combat more than anything. I've waited HOURS to get into the Battlegrounds with my sub-40 characters, only to see the single most imbalanced combat I've ever witnessed.
If Battlegrounds would be promoted as a fun way to progresse for low level characters, more people would probably play them, but as it stands, they've always seemed targetted to the highest level characters to have a chance to improve their ranking and their gear further.
As a rogue, I had the hardest time contributing to the action in level 60 WSG. But luckily I could play in Arathi Basin and be useful. But even then, that sometimes took too much time. And I never had 4+ hours to devote to Alterac Valley. So I avoided it, and just prowled Gadgetzan for short durations, i.e. inbetween homework problems.
All the kills I got in Gadgetzan were next to worthless to what one could get in battlegrounds. If you aren't playing in a battlegrounds, you aren't getting any reasonable amount of honor. The Out of BG kills need to be made more meaningful.
Come on, rank 1-6 are a dime a dozen and easy to kill. But to actually take out a rank 11-13 solo? That takes skill and is risky. But it's not worth it. Case in point: As a rank 4 60 rogue, killing a rank 4 60 gets about 200 honor. But killing a rank 12? Only gives 300.
If getting high rank is so special, then why not make killing a high rank special?
Good report. I agree with almost all of it. My main thing is that I bought WoW because it was heralded as being made for the casual gamer. It's not. I don't have much time to spend playing except for maybe one or two days a month and it's not worth the subscription price when I have to wait even on those days.
Confessions of an ex-Blizzard fanboi.
When a game is called "WARcraft" its reasonable to expect some kind of warfare right? Conquer towns, take control over armies and anything else connected to the word "WAR".
I never thought the war would be over the same bunkers day in day out(AV). Why the hell dont alliance just invade Orgrimmar and kill all the orcs? The defense in Orgrimmar aint exactly the best.
WoW is a lost case when it comes to PvP! The only reason you play WoW is to get better items, wait for the next expansion and get even better items and so on. Why do everyone want better items?
The PvP future lies in games where you can conquer areas. PvP without purpose is so last year :P
You are all noobs!
Cross server battle grounds is the only way to fix the problem. I'm really surprised that Blizzard didn't do battlegrounds cross-server after Guild Wars showed how good it works (Guild Wars E3 for Everyone event was before WoW beta).
After all, it's not that hard to code cross-server battles and maybe even a world guild ladder (like Guild Wars one) with all the huge money they get from a subscribers.
Instance PvP was a mistake that has only caused frrustration and lack of interest from the community.
What purpose does PvP serve in WOW? None. Is it fun? No. Was PvP better before Battlegrounds? Yes.
Don't play WOW if you enjoy PvP. There is no sense of danger or accomplishment when killing another player in WOW. The only sense of anything you get is actually entering the BG's!
I think the biggest problem in this article that wasnt mentioned is the formula that blizzard uses to tabulate honor points and rank. In most bg's, I always finisjed first on my teams stats with with killing blows, number of kills, and flag returns. Yet, many of the people that teamed with me aquired more honor points then i did on tuesdays when theyre tabulated for the week. Blizzard has said they take many things into consideration when they calcualte honor such as killing the same player over and over, contribution to the battles, (i.e. healing and healing effects), and the other factors listed above. But it makes it difficult for all the players trying to advance in the ranks to figure out why they're receiving less honor than other casual bg'ers when they are contributing more to each game. Blizzard steadfastly refuses to show how they weight the important factors for pvp ranking, which makes it all but impossible for pvp gamers to know if theyre working torward their goal, or wasting their time. Another problem on my sever is that often the only people in the queues for the opposing faction are teammates using third party chats like vent and teamspeak. While i totally understand that third party chats and preformed teams are fair, most of the pick up groups i enter bg with have barely formed a raid party before the bg begins. It would be nice to see teams that are randomly formed or teams that join the queue pregrouped only engage teams from the other factiop that join pregrouped. At least that gives us PUGers a little better chance to earn the bonus honor for winning. In essence bg's on my server boil down to 20 people running around in the dark with little or no clue what theyre fighting for.
Zacknafein Lvl 60 warrior Alliance On Aggramarr