No new battleground until WotLK
by Amanda Miller 
Oct 31st 2007 at 11:01AM
Although this is a bit disappointing, it is hardly unexpected, and there are so many upcoming positive changes that it's hard to be a sad panda for long. Currently, the devs are focused on improving Alterac Valley for patch 2.3 and creating new content for WotLK, which will include an outdoor PvP zone, Lake Wintergrasp. Following in the wake of Halaa's undeniable success, this zone will boast siege warfare, and many other innovations in world PvP.
As for what the new battleground will be like? I'd still love to see an Aldor vs. Scryers battleground; and as much as we all love to see new content drop, we can at least try to satiate ourselves knowing that what we will be getting will continue to advance PvP as we know it. Now; a little less sad panda face please!
Filed under: Patches, News items, PvP, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9600baud Oct 31st 2007 11:08AM
"Improving" AV for 2.3? You mean making it ridiculously boring and slow again. Seriously, I think AV how it is now could not get much better. Matches are quick and very eventful. Anything less would be a step backwards.
Mad Cow Oct 31st 2007 11:10AM
I really thing they should fix the old BGs before they release other one ... however, this is blizzard ... bring on the buggy content spam.
Jack Spicer Oct 31st 2007 11:12AM
I'm not sure that having one faction control a city 90% of the time qualifies as a success.
Todd Oct 31st 2007 11:19AM
Halaa can be fun, but the rewards are really lame. I have so many of these tokens, but nothing to spend them on. I wish I could at least DE the junk. While the equipment is PvP focused, some PvE equipment wouldn't be bad either. All in all, I think the Halaa rewards need to be beefed up.
Bentas Oct 31st 2007 11:19AM
I've never seen this mentioned, but I'm sure it's not an original idea...
Rotate the battlegrounds ala the Darkmoone Faire.
The main concern they always seem to bring up is the queues. Have too many different maps and you won't be able to fill them up. Well, don't run all of them concurrently. Run 2 or 3 battlegrounds at any given time and rotate them every week. You could have hundreds of different maps and strategies.
It's one of the things I've enjoyed about the old COD is the numerous maps. The thing is it's one map at a time, so everyone playing has to play MapX or MapY even if it's not their favorite. That way there's enough people playing, and you don't get sick of the same map again and again and again.
Honestly, this is a big failure imho of Blizzard. There needs to be so many more battles, seasonal battlegrounds, monthly ones, etc. Have people actually be EXCITED that this weekend for the first time in two months the battle in Azshara's Crater is flaring up and needs recruits.
You could do this and release a new battleground with every patch to enter the rotation. How hard would that be? I mean heck you could have multipole catpure the flag maps like WSG but with different maps and people would enjoy it. They don't each need to have different concepts.
Vive le difference.
me Oct 31st 2007 11:21AM
While I enjoy BG's, such a very small percentage of WOW users actively play in. This makes me wonder if it justifies more content? Even during prime time 6pm-9pm, you are forced to queue up for 10 minutes or more at times.
This is with a subscriber base of how many million players?
A major reason for this is twinks I know, and I'm guilty of this myself (19 bracket twink hunter)
If blizzard would come up with some type of handicapping system to allow casual gamers compete, we would see alot more people in the BG's.
Deadbolt Oct 31st 2007 12:11PM
@6
Perhaps your just in a battlegroup with a low population. I play on Vengeance and at primetime I never have to wait more than a couple minutes.
Pandemona Oct 31st 2007 12:38PM
I think it's a shame that new BGs is a priority at all for Blizz when there's an obvious inequality in the current ones:
As mentioned by another poster, AV is fine - great honor, good objectives and fast progress. The only change that might be nice to mix it up would be to examinethe choke points to allow for more options in getting from one end to the other, but that's just me.
AB is great, but why is it that you can spend one weekend in AV and go from Friendly to Exalted, yet in AB the rep slowly ticks away. This falls hand in hand with the review of the rep rewards for the old BGs...why are they all still tuned for lvl 60? Why not use some of those excess tokens that will normally expire in 24 hrs in your mail for something at least semi-useful? It baffles the mind.
WSG is just plain silly - another poster mentioned the WSG "grind" for tokens, which is totally true. Blizz really needs to implement a timer of some sort on WSG. Sitting in the middle and farming people for 1 honor while both flag runners are hiding for 1 hour is a waste of time. Almost everyone I know dreads the WSG grind - why Blizz ignores how mundane and time wasting WSG is is a mystery to me. Don't even get me started on how one can gain 200-400 honor out of a 20 min AV but walk out of a 1 hour WSG with around 100...
EotS gets full marks - grats for making a well balanced, fun and fast BG with decent honor gain.
I'm all for new BG digs - but Blizz needs to relax on whipping out new PvP content and fix what's there already. Rep gain, honor gain, old gear for unused marks, etc....
superfrank Oct 31st 2007 12:38PM
@6 The queues are more likely to be imbalances in your battlegroup (e.g. you are alliance and there are less horde)
I rerolled horde in order to minimise BG queues which use to frustrate me immeasurably as alliance.
Paw Oct 31st 2007 12:40PM
@6
You hit the nail on the head. Those of us without twinks go in...are immediately pegged...and die repeatedly without much ability to retaliate. That doesn't equate to fun. Nor does the ridicule non-twinks will get from their counterparts at the entrance. Why would anyone intentionally subject themselves to profane-ridden tyrades from immature people about how undergeared you are and how much you suck because you're undergeared, and how they're going to lose because you suck and you're undergeared, etc. That is not fun. I've done a lot of things in my life that are far more important and meaningful than a BG in WoW, and I don't intend to subject myself to the type of verbal harassment doled out by twinked out assholes in a video game. If they grow up and ever do something important in their lives, they will likely look back on their time in WoW and wonder why they were such pricks. But unfortunately for me, here, now, that is not soon enough.
So, I look at the addition of a new BG as an opportunity to be o a better footing with the twinks as they will not have the map and the methodology memorized to production-line efficiency. They will get stuck on terrain, lost on their way to the objective, etc. That will take away some elements they have over me and maybe allow me the opportunity to enjoy the damn thing.
Erika Oct 31st 2007 12:58PM
On Halaa if the research tokens where easier to get it would be better. I have 96 of the battle and 3 research with nothing to use them on. 70 Rogue btw
Dog Oct 31st 2007 1:03PM
4 BGs total in 3 years almost since the game came out? Compared to how many raid instances? This is the world of PveCraft sadly. :( I hope Warhammer will actually emphasize the War part of the name.
Dogmeat
http://www.uberotaku.com
Mike Schramm Oct 31st 2007 1:13PM
This post totally should have had a battleground themed "Not yours" picture to go with it :)
Daghol Oct 31st 2007 4:45PM
Didn't they get rid of Ashara Crater because it was too much like AV? Well, why not have only one open every week. Gives us some more options.
I like the idea of different maps for each battleground. While having completely different rules for each battleground sounds great, if the current one's are fun, why not just give us some different terrain to do it.
AB would be great with a few different battle maps.
Tim Nov 1st 2007 5:22AM
Yeah. While I understand that the ideas behind AB/WSG are probably the most basic 'games' that you can easily play and everyone understands, it'd be nice at least if they swapped up the maps a little so it wasn't always the same. I'm definatly not a 'hardcore' pvp'er, but, well, how many raids have been added to the game since release and how many new bg's?
Or, gosh. Come out with some new pvp areas and just rotate through them, as others have suggested here.
I can think of a number of things that would probably be pretty fun.
1) As mentioned on speak like a pirate day - something to do with ships, each side has a ship, you have some npc's that you have to kill, you take over the other ship. Once you hoist your flag on their ship, you win.
2) A simple 'push' pvp match. Think the center of eots, but that's all there is. Someone on side A picks up a flag, and has to carry it past a line on side B and hold it there for, like 5-10 seconds. Basically, mass carnage, but, it'd be a nice alternative to wsg where the POINT is to farm hk's.
I'd thought up of some others, but they're not coming to mind now. But, in a nutshell, some pvp love would be nice.