August News/Discussion

[Mirajj]

Aug 5 News
~~~

Lythrdskynrd starts a post on the WoW Europe forums about how the new Achievement system, and how it may promote bullying. There is also some great discussion over here, too about it. It is an interesting question. It's already 'bad enough' that folks can't be taken about their word about gear or skill or talent levels. It's quite common on the main WoW Blizzard forums to see someone say "You don't have a 2000Arena 2v2, you can't talk about 2v2" and things along that line. Is the Achievement system, if it's viewable by others than yourself, going to cause more problems than good?

Arena matches between lvl 71 to 79 will be Skirmish only, it turns out, and not count for points. This is already polarizing folks, who are either saying that it'll be a great return to skill based PvP for the duration, or those who think the only measure of a toon is their Arena Rating.

Eluminite has a nifty video up showing the new pet and mount interfaces, and then showing that non-combat pets will have a new trick to entertain us.

From the "Ask a Beta Tester" column, comes a question I had been wondering about, too. Are the current crop of Daily quests going to be useful in levelling your toons? The answer is pretty much "no". You get around 3.5g and 9500xp/turnin for a daily. Why bother when you can be charging around Northrend getting around 4-5g and 20,000xp or so per quest. I think there might be a place for Dailies, but I'm a voracious content devourer, so you know where I'll be.

[Concillian]

From the "Ask a Beta Tester" column, comes a question I had been wondering about, too. Are the current crop of Daily quests going to be useful in levelling your toons? The answer is pretty much "no". You get around 3.5g and 9500xp/turnin for a daily. Why bother when you can be charging around Northrend getting around 4-5g and 20,000xp or so per quest. I think there might be a place for Dailies, but I'm a voracious content devourer, so you know where I'll be.

This has more factors than money / XP per quest if you're going to approach it from the optimization perspective... things like:
- population density of new zones (waiting for spawns)
- time to complete quests
- quest density (proximity to other quests)

The SSO island dailies are really high density and have minimal travel time. I can do the non flying quests (I think there are 8) in less than 30 minutes now. My experience with leveling zones is more like 3 or 4 per 30 minutes at best. So it may still be worthwhile to do the dailies if it's easy enough to travel between the isle of QD and Northrend.

I imagine it might be good for alts, who can basically log in, do 8 quests for the day, log out, and retain most of their rested bonus for when you have more time to get them through the Northrend quests. Because I imagine they will make it fairly difficult to travel between TBC locations and WotLK locations.

Obviously from a "see more new content" perspective Northrend is far, far better, but I was more looking at it from the perspeective the article used.

[Artega]

I actually intend on taking a 2-3 week hiatus on release of WotLK, since I don't think there'll be much point in playing it till the quest zerg is a little ways ahead of me:)

[Bolty]

I actually intend on taking a 2-3 week hiatus on release of WotLK, since I don't think there'll be much point in playing it till the quest zerg is a little ways ahead of me:)

To me, that was the best part of the expansion. Playing Alliance, it was *awesome* to head out of Honor Hold with dozens of other players around me. I'd go to a quest area and there would be an army of players there too. Except for a handful of quests that were poorly designed to handle the rush, usually involving killing one particular non-elite mob, it was pretty fun. It felt like war; like we really were at war with the Burning Legion and there was massive violence everywhere.

A few weeks later, I brought an alt through it and it was empty, stale, and boring by comparison.

No way I'm missing the opening-weeks experience. It's a blast.

-Bolty

[Artega]

To me, that was the best part of the expansion. Playing Alliance, it was *awesome* to head out of Honor Hold with dozens of other players around me. I'd go to a quest area and there would be an army of players there too. Except for a handful of quests that were poorly designed to handle the rush, usually involving killing one particular non-elite mob, it was pretty fun. It felt like war; like we really were at war with the Burning Legion and there was massive violence everywhere.

A few weeks later, I brought an alt through it and it was empty, stale, and boring by comparison.

No way I'm missing the opening-weeks experience. It's a blast.

-Bolty

It'll only be worth it if it's a massive PvP orgy. If it's just going to be a bunch of people standing around waiting for spawns, I'll definitely pass.

[Taelas]

To me, that was the best part of the expansion. Playing Alliance, it was *awesome* to head out of Honor Hold with dozens of other players around me. I'd go to a quest area and there would be an army of players there too. Except for a handful of quests that were poorly designed to handle the rush, usually involving killing one particular non-elite mob, it was pretty fun. It felt like war; like we really were at war with the Burning Legion and there was massive violence everywhere.

A few weeks later, I brought an alt through it and it was empty, stale, and boring by comparison.

No way I'm missing the opening-weeks experience. It's a blast.

-Bolty

QFT. If I could multi-box and do both starting areas at the same time, I would.

[Mordekhuul]

It'll only be worth it if it's a massive PvP orgy. If it's just going to be a bunch of people standing around waiting for spawns, I'll definitely pass.

Perhaps it sucked on PVP realms, then.

On Terenas (PVE), respawn rates were very high, and I had zero issues completing quests in the starter areas. It was a blast.

[Artega]

Perhaps it sucked on PVP realms, then.

On Terenas (PVE), respawn rates were very high, and I had zero issues completing quests in the starter areas. It was a blast.

It sucks because no one ever wants to fight... they're all so busy waiting for some kind of mob to spawn, nothing interesting happens. I don't get why those kinds of people (the fluffy, fuzzy, cuddly kind) play on PvP servers.

[Frag]

I don't get why those kinds of people (the fluffy, fuzzy, cuddly kind) play on PvP servers.

Because of circumstances you may not have considered.
/shrug,
~Frag<_<

[Chesspiece_face]

Because of circumstances you may not have considered.
/shrug,
~Frag<_<

*gasp* sometimes, even people that play on PvP servers, want to complete a quest without getting ganked and corpse camped. Doesn't matter if it's PvP or PvE, sometimes people just want to get $#!@ done without a hassle.

[Artega]

*gasp* sometimes, even people that play on PvP servers, want to complete a quest without getting ganked and corpse camped. Doesn't matter if it's PvP or PvE, sometimes people just want to get $#!@ done without a hassle.

Then they should be on PvE servers where it's an option and not a requirement.

Though it's not like PvP servers are even PvP servers anymore with the way people can just chicken out and fly away.

[Quark]

It sucks because no one ever wants to fight... they're all so busy waiting for some kind of mob to spawn, nothing interesting happens. I don't get why those kinds of people (the fluffy, fuzzy, cuddly kind) play on PvP servers.

Have you, perhaps, noticed that raiding on PvE servers is slowly inching to dead? How a bunch of top-tier guilds on PvE servers decide, even after having 5 legendaries from TBC, that rerolling on a PvP server is a better idea than keeping their characters because they can't get any recruits?

These people don't necessarily want to play on PvP servers, but they choose to because it's much easier to get a recruit to try out transferring to a PvP server (that can be undone) than a PvE server (you're stuck on PvE for life).

PvE is broken because you can go PvP -> PvE but you can't go back. Thus you get players on PvP that are there to raid, a contradiction in itself.

[Bolty]

It sucks because no one ever wants to fight... they're all so busy waiting for some kind of mob to spawn, nothing interesting happens. I don't get why those kinds of people (the fluffy, fuzzy, cuddly kind) play on PvP servers.

As has been said, if you want to do high-level intensity raiding, you pretty much have to roll on PvP servers. The average skill level of players on PvP servers is higher.

And I know you're trying to come off as hard-ass, Artega, but come on. This was well documented when TBC came out; people just want to get to the level cap before the action starts up anew. It's retarded to go around picking fights with everyone because you *both* lose - that was time lost for both of you getting to the level cap. Congrats.

-Bolty

[Taelas]

Have you, perhaps, noticed that raiding on PvE servers is slowly inching to dead? How a bunch of top-tier guilds on PvE servers decide, even after having 5 legendaries from TBC, that rerolling on a PvP server is a better idea than keeping their characters because they can't get any recruits?

These people don't necessarily want to play on PvP servers, but they choose to because it's much easier to get a recruit to try out transferring to a PvP server (that can be undone) than a PvE server (you're stuck on PvE for life).

PvE is broken because you can go PvP -> PvE but you can't go back. Thus you get players on PvP that are there to raid, a contradiction in itself.

That doesn't make any sense. At least on a PvE server, you actually CAN get recruits from PvP servers -- if you're on a PvP server, you've cut yourself off from all PvE servers.

[Pesmerga]

That doesn't make any sense. At least on a PvE server, you actually CAN get recruits from PvP servers -- if you're on a PvP server, you've cut yourself off from all PvE servers.

The issue is, if someone transfers from a PvP server to a PvE server, they can't go back, and most people aren't willing to risk that.

[Frag]

Then they should be on PvE servers where it's an option and not a requirement.

Take note that you're telling other people how to spend their time and money here.

Though it's not like PvP servers are even PvP servers anymore with the way people can just chicken out and fly away.

On that we agree. It can be difficult to keep someone from simply cc-ing or outracing you long enough to drop combat, mount up and fly away. Which in turn meant that a lot of the actual fun of being on a PvP server for some of us; the ambushes, fighting over a small objective, building a rivalry over resources, etc... has been trivialized to some extent.

Cheers,
~FragB)

[Quark]

The issue is, if someone transfers from a PvP server to a PvE server, they can't go back, and most people aren't willing to risk that.

It started a feedback loop. The more PvP becomes a standard for raiding, the less raiders roll PvE, the less are willing the transfer to PvE, and thus more rerolls to PvP. As an example, check out Juggernaut. They gave up trying to get PvE recruits after killing M'uru, their last raid was early July (though it looks like their last serious raid was early June). Where are they now? On a PvP server, they're already working on M'uru again.

Not allowing PvE -> PvP transfers is one of those bad decisions (like being able to chain-chug pots) that does its best to destroy some fundamental aspects of this game while people sit there and voraciously defend it.

[Taelas]

The issue is, if someone transfers from a PvP server to a PvE server, they can't go back, and most people aren't willing to risk that.

Yes... I know this...

You're still cutting yourself off from half the population.

The only way this would make sense is if the majority of the population currently resides on PvP servers.

[Ruvanal]

Yes... I know this...

You're still cutting yourself off from half the population.

The only way this would make sense is if the majority of the population currently resides on PvP servers.

The thing is that for the progression raiding groups, the player population that they want to attract does have its majority on the PvP servers to start with. That was pretty much the case at launch of the game. The difference is that at that time it was probably 55% to 45% split at launch and as time has gone on the shift is even more to the PvP side now.

[Bob the Beholder]

Take note that you're telling other people how to spend their time and money here.

Funny thing is, for the sort of people who'd be out and about ganking people (such as myself), other peoples' time and money is worth a little bit less.