Overheard at BlizzCon: Changes to the bgs?
by Amanda Rivera 
Aug 4th 2007 at 12:39AM
Well, as I stood in line for food this afternoon at BlizzCon, I found myself behind some Blizzard employees. They were very nice, and evidently from the QA department. As the the line moved on, their conversation turned to some of their PvP exploits from the day before. Evidently guys who spend all day playing WoW go home and....you guessed it, play WoW.
What was interesting wasn't really what battlegrounds they were playing in, or how they did. What was interesting was what they let drop while they talked about their PvP exploits. Evidently fairly soon Blizzard will release a method of dealing with those pesky AFKers in AV and WSG. They said something along the lines of "I can't wait to select all those guys hanging out in the caves and just hit 'report.'" Perhaps this will be a system similar to that which has removed all but the most tenacious gold spammers from my whispers. Intriguing? I thought so, and also thought you should hear about it. I'll keep my ears perked for anything else tantalizing I hear tomorrow.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scott Aug 4th 2007 12:52AM
Bitter sweet
scott Aug 4th 2007 1:00AM
Would it not be easy to program the battlegrounds so that if a player is AFK for more than 2 minutes they are booted from the battleground? Seems like an easy solution. Add something to prevent even that from being abused, perhaps a limited number of AFKs per battleground.
HiWay Aug 4th 2007 12:59AM
uber sweet
coconut Aug 4th 2007 1:01AM
Even if you can just click 'report', if it's an actual player hitting spacebar while watching a dvd (or whatever), if the player answers the GM then nothing will be done because Blizz can't tell you 'how' to play. It's not against the rules to just be standing there.
Just making a player reportable doesn't mean that player is doing something against the rules.
Personally I think those Blizzard employees were probably expressing a desire that the devs do something about it, and nothing else.
If they were going to do something, it would have to be built into the game, like a debuff applied if you didn't leave the cave within a minute or so of turning up there.
Dack57 Aug 4th 2007 1:26AM
That Actually is out right now on the PTR's, you just right click their name, select report for afk, and poof! They're reported for being afk. It's just like report spam, simple and a great idea.
scott Aug 4th 2007 2:28AM
I like my idea because players and GMs should not be required to police the AFK situation. It should be and automatic guideline. AFK battlegrounds must go!
hashpipe Aug 4th 2007 3:18AM
lfm for premade AB....brb
/afk
warren Aug 4th 2007 12:40PM
This idea is a joke, what's the difference between an afk'er and questing, fishing or leveling weapon skill in the middle of a in bg? Nothing.
So how is somebody supposed to enforce this?
True PvP is it's own reward, taking out all rep and honor gains is the only way to elimnate afkers.
Otherwise instead of standing in the cave you'll see people standing at the pond instead, because while jumping in place may not be legit who says fishing's not?
Tyler Aug 4th 2007 7:03AM
It's VERY VERY simple!!!
If you have ZERO kills/damage/healing done etc, you get ZERO honor.
Try that. You're trying to reinvent the damn wheel here! All these genius programmers overlook the easiest answers.
PhilG Aug 4th 2007 7:28AM
The suggestion of a report feature will not fly. In my battlegroup Alliance rolls over Horde. When that happens if you are behind the enemy lines you are ok, but if you are in front of their lines you will be invariably spawning in the cave. You can't help it, that's where you go when you die. Almost every time this happens to me, I'm accused of being an AFKer. But, I never AFK in a BG. I can see it now, being accused of AFKing for no reason. The more I think about it, the more I loathe this idea.
Hobbes Aug 4th 2007 8:15AM
Holy crap amanda....
So I just made a regular standard day check on WoW Insider and lo and behold... I see a picture of me and my friends at blizzcon WTF? I couldn't believe it and I had to stare at it awhile to make sure.
I'm the one on the left... LOL not kidding.
I don't really know what we have to do with the article though... I think you may have heard us talking about the afking in AV? :P
schroey Aug 4th 2007 9:43AM
@9
Go kill one wolf/ram, heal yourself. Return to AFK.
People will find ways around it.
Monistatus Aug 4th 2007 12:03PM
@9.
Sorry. That doesn't work.
In our Guild pre-made runs, oftentimes I will be tasked with stealthing around, sapping and recapping towers.
There have been plenty of occasions where I didn't score a single point of DMG, or didn't make a single kill.
According to you, I'll get zero honor.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Scylloga Aug 4th 2007 12:49PM
@12 YOu are capping a objective that would register in the system and you wouldnt be short changed the bg honor.
@13 You can no longer fish in AV they took that out a couple mini patches ago.
Vision33r Aug 4th 2007 7:37PM
Don't hate the player, hate the game. IT IS Blizz who designed the honor system that rewards player this way. The tokens that once were turned in for honor is now wasted mailbox stuffer. Make a honor system that rewards for participating instead of stupid reporting system that will surely get abused.
Arithalion Aug 6th 2007 4:35PM
tyler, get a grip.
If they implemented that 0 dmg done / 0 healing done thingy, ppl would simply kill a ram and go afk.