The Art of War(craft): Wintergrasp in Patch 3.1 and beyond
by Zach Yonzon 
Apr 5th 2009 at 8:00PM
All players who attack a siege vehicle should now get credit if it is destroyed.
Previously this worked similar to tapping a mob, where the player or raid that first tapped the siege vehicle would get credit. This made it harder for multiple raids or ungrouped players to complete Stop the Siege!. This change should solve that problem neatly.
Daily quests Slay Them All! (Horde) and No Mercy for the Merciless (Alliance) have had their PvP kill requirements reduced to 10 from 20. NPCs defending the fortress and south towers now count toward these dailies as well.
Enemy players have the same tapping mechanic as mobs, so even though a player can get Honor from a tapped enemy, they wouldn't count towards completion of the aforementioned quests. Similar to the vehicle problem, ungrouped players or those in smaller raids would often come up short of the requisite 20 kills during one battle. Obviously, changing the tapping mechanics for players isn't the solution, so Blizzard made the kill requirement lower and included NPCs as valid targets. The latter change is probably aimed at lower population servers or realms where Wintergrasp participation isn't too high, as well as realms where there's a distinct faction imbalance.
The number of NPCs defending fortress has been increased.
Again, this should make it easier for players to complete the daily quests as well as move up in Rank. The NPC guards don't hit hard and have very low hit points, so they're really just cannon fodder for quest and rank requirements. I'm not a big fan of too many NPCs in a PvP zone, but this change seems to have been necessary. Players on defense often hole up in the fortress, slowing down offense's rank gain. Having more NPCs lowers the effectivity of that delaying tactic.
Siege Engines now have Steam Pressure as a resource type (replaces energy) / Siege Engines now have the Steam Rush ability from Ulduar.
The change of energy resource is a cosmetic one, although I'm not too familiar with how Steam Pressure regenerates. Regardless of the change, a more interesting point is the addition of the Steam Rush ability, which is a short burst of movement forward. It also deals siege damage and knocks enemies back, which gives vehicles some measure of survivability against players as well as improved mobility across the zone. The unfortunate and unwanted side effect of this will be that more players will use siege vehicles against players, which bogs down offense.
The southern Siege Factories can be captured.
This is the best change to Wintergrasp this patch. This will make playing defense more dynamic and put the Southern towers in genuine peril. In its current implementation, defending the Southern towers is easy for an attentive team on offense because siege vehicles must travel a long way from either the Fortress or the East and West Workshops. Making the Eastspark and Westspark Workshops capturable will spread the offense, forcing players to defend instead of concentrating solely on pushing towards the Titan Relic. This also means that players bothering to go South will now actually finish their kill quests, as well as get a good deal of action and Honor.
More importantly, this gives defense a fair chance at actually winning the battle. Patch 3.0.8 changed capturing the Titan Relic an instant rather than channeled effect, essentially guaranteeing a win as soon as the Fortress Keep Door has been broken through. While this meant that the zone would change hands more often, it also disincentivized playing defense as it was almost certain to be a lost cause. This change will impact that dramatically, splitting offense into two groups with two different goals. Defense will no longer just be about buying time but also about mounting a counter-offensive. If you thought Wintegrasp was fun, wait until Patch 3.1.
The time between battles will be saved should a realm shut down. If Wintergrasp is active when a realm shuts down, the game will restart from the beginning when the realm is once again live.
This is just a fair change that prevents the side capturing Wintergrasp right before maintenance (or any realm restart) from getting shafted. This way, the Horde or Alliance will retain control for the full duration regardless of any realm interruptions.
Towers in Southern Wintergrasp now have more defensive cannons.
Not that players actually manned the Southern cannons, but the critical change to the Southern workshops should see more activity in these parts of the map. If the defending faction captures the Southern workshops, this means more vehicles at a faster rate. Some players might actually have to man the cannons to keep it from blowing up.
Bornakk talks about the changes in a pretty engaging thread over at the official forums. The general idea is to spread the action all over the map, and I think Patch 3.1 is going to deliver on that. What I'm more interested in, however, is the development of Wintergrasp as a whole. Wintergrasp is unique among all zones in the game because Blizzard needs to create a constant need to control it. While most of the zones in Northrend (or any part of Azeroth or Outlands, for that matter) are generally experienced through leveling and thereafter forgotten, demoted to farming zones or dungeon and raid locales, Wintergrasp needs to remain relevant at all times.
Players need to have a stake in controlling it. Enter the weekly loot piñata mechanic -- Archavon. His big brother Emalon will be moving into the vaults in Patch 3.1 (coincidentally, my guess on what Emalon would look like was confirmed when his model was later data-mined by MMO Champion. Yay me!), which should keep players wanting to control the zone for a shot at that delicious Season 6 gear. He is likely to be much harder than the easiest raid boss ever created, but this gives Wintergrasp continued relevance post-Naxxramas and Season 5.
This is great and all, but I really hope the zone evolves into something more. Don't get me wrong, I think there's enough incentive for players to keep playing Wintergrasp -- copious amounts of Honor, a weekly shot at free loot, Titan-themed epics, and to a lesser degree, great farming spots. But my point is that in between games, Wintergrasp is pretty dead. I mean, elemental farming is great, but the Wintergrasp fan in me wants the zone to be active all the time. Maybe that's too much to ask, but hear me out for a bit.
I want Wintergrasp to feel alive, and not just when tanks are rolling over its hills and the Fortress is being pelted with boulders. The Fortress is huge, but there's just nobody there. Patch 3.1 is going to add more NPCs to the Fortress, which should help. Currently, Wintergrasp has a few quest givers and sparse placement of guards -- it's actually pretty lonely and incongruent for one of the most important military assets a faction can control. Wintergrasp should simply have... more. Let me lay out some of my thoughts after the jump.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Faar Apr 5th 2009 8:22PM
Personally I feel it's a bit too easy to win, and conversely a bit too hard to defend. Once your fortress wall has been breached you're pretty much toast as a defending team. Cannons are also quite easily destroyed, and the whole game is typically over rather quickly. I'd love to have longer, more advanced battles where defenders can afford to sally forth into the field more, but the fragile walls just won't allow for that.
Also, horde has an inherent advantage when attacking as well as defending, due to the way the graveyards are set up. Alliance players spawn inside the keep and come down the ramp towards the east, while horde reinforcements come riding from the west. When horde defends, ally reinforcements arrive from the east, meeting hordes coming down from the keep graveyard. This should be fixed, so that there are two ramps leading in either direction from the graveyard.
Rob Apr 6th 2009 1:44AM
It's a joke on my server. It turns over literally every time.
smiley Apr 6th 2009 8:13AM
I
DrowNoble Apr 6th 2009 12:51PM
Unfortunately the map favors the Attacker. So, on my server, it usually changes hands every battle as the "attacker" almost always wins.
The map design wasn't well thought out, and the fortress itself is lacking the npcs Zach speaks of. Why are there holes in the inner walls? Why can demolishers squeeze thruough them?
Sorry Blizz but I played DAoC before WoW came out and THAT game knows how to do open world siege warfare far better.
Wintergrasp is a great idea in theory, but needs some serious reworking as it stands now.
Crimpshrine Apr 7th 2009 3:49PM
Hi Faar, you wrote "Once your fortress wall has been breached you're pretty much toast as a defending team." That's not the case on every realm! Here on Thrall when it's Horde defending, many times the Alliance breaches the walls but then gets stomped flat by our ground troops in the courtyards. Not every time, of course; sometimes it's terribly short as you say. But I've witnessed a good percentage of defenses where we lost the walls and still won the battle. On our server the Horde is lacking in tactics but true to its image, it makes up for that in pure swarming ability.
Ryael Apr 5th 2009 10:30PM
Any word on if they are fixing the demolisher exploit through the gaps in the fortress? B/c I've lost plenty of battles with all the walls still up at the inner court.
MiniBlueDragon Apr 6th 2009 12:13PM
I really do hope so! There's nothing worse than knowing you've lost because the outer wall is breached and there's a swarm of vehicles coming. :(
Thekrunch Apr 5th 2009 8:35PM
I think that the mechanic of capturing the southern workshops will create a huge issue for realms where there is a population imbalance. Currently on Horde: Proudmoore, our tenacity is often as high as 15-20, and a minimum of 5-6, we will struggle to maintain the defence on these locations without massive coordination.
Still, the changes seem positive overall.
Would like to see tenacity have more of an effect ie reducing stuns. Doesnt matter if you have 60k health when your stunned long enough for it all to dissapear.
yokumgang Apr 5th 2009 8:38PM
HOLY CRAP.
I just finished a post-WG 10man Arch before I read this.
CREEEEPY.
Debesun Apr 5th 2009 8:40PM
As one of the 3 people on average out of the 80+ on defence that actually go south to destroy the towers, these a very welcome changes. Even the Steam Rush ability is welcome if only a minor boost to speed just to get through the frontlines unseen.
Now if they could only fix the problem with both getting people to jump in siege turrets and those people that do jump in siege turrets to not spend their time shooting players for negligible damage and not structures.
Let the Catapult spamming kids that charge towards the vehicle vendor and spend the next 15 minutes chasing a 8 stack tenacity Resto Druid around the map do that and use up our vehicle cap in the process. You're job is to be a mobile turret platform firing safely from a distance. Not a pretty number generator when you fire in a mob of red text.
/EndRant
Sean Apr 5th 2009 8:47PM
On Aerie Peak US, Allies always have us Horde outnumbered. As a result, when they defend there is always a raiding party on the southern towers. When Horde defends, it is all we can do to hold the fortress for 10 minutes.
Being able to capture the vehicle workshops isn't going to change that.
thekrunch Apr 5th 2009 9:16PM
My point was, with the southern workshops being capturable, and being vastly outnumbered, holding on to them will be hard. Try getting the walls down with no vehicles.
Snakeman Apr 5th 2009 9:17PM
The number of participants in WG has no correlation WHATSOEVER with how successful it is or isn't. The ONLY reason so many people suffer through the god-awful invention that blizzard calls world-pvp is because you can get a large amount of honor and some daily quest gold fairly quickly.
The technical issues that continue to plague WG - nearly 5 months after WOTLK release - are ridiculous. The whole concept of tenacity is a joke. But the fact that the lag almost always favors the assaulting team seems a little too convenient. I for one think the lag has nothing to do with technical limitations, but is actually engineered by Blizzard when they found that tenacity wasn't good enough to give the losing team a free win - so they just basically hand it to them on a platter.
The only solution in my opinion is to get rid of the world zone aspect - make WG an instance with very large player limit - say 100 per side. Then treat it just like any other battleground. It would be more fair, the games would be more competition, and then perhaps they might start thinking about using the word "success" when talking about WG.
my2cents Apr 5th 2009 10:06PM
I respect your opinion, but I think you're in the minority here. Everyone I know loves Wintergasp. I play on a PvE server in a large guild. Most of my guildies have no interest whatsoever in bgs or arena. But whenever Wintergrasp is in conflict, practically everyone on the guild roster is listed as being in Wintergrasp. These are people who, for the most part, have no concept or aspirations of "pvp progression" and don't care about collecting honor points or pvp gear. They just play Wintergrasp because they find it to be fun.
If that's not a strong enough endorsment, how about this: The emo kids on the server who hate and complain about EVERYTHING never have any complaints about Wintergrasp (aside from the occassional "tenacity lols no fairs")
Fletch Apr 6th 2009 3:59AM
Personally, I would agree with the above poster. I generally avoid PvP like the plague, but even I quite enjoy Wintergrasp. Even if I got no honour, shards or gold I probably would still go into WG in its current form. The freeform nature and ability to go in alone and avoid the lolboys, dickwads and egomaniancs is what makes it attractive to me.
Snakeman Apr 6th 2009 8:41AM
To clarify, I think the concept of Wintergrasp is great. I love the vehicles, and the turrets and the siege-like aspects of it. I just think the implementation is terrible. I think it's great that people swarm into WG when it's happening - but if the hardware that Blizzard uses can't handle that kind of client load, and causes the whole thing to come to a laggy halt, it loses it's appeal. I think the technical end of it should have been the #1 priority, and Blizzard has seemed to just accept it as it stands - which is something they do a lot of.
If WG had normal lag and they got rid of tenacity - then I think it would be a gem. Right now, it's a pile of poop.
Stag Apr 5th 2009 9:19PM
I have to say I'm baffled by the fact that everyone keeps saying WG is a success. If you measure this solely by the number of people who participate, then yeah I guess it's succesfull. But if you measure it by how enjoyable it is, then I have to say I think it's terrible.
There's not much in the way of pvp going in there due to the lag. All it involves is a vehicle zerg and most of the time it's little more than a procedural handing over of the Vault instance from one side to the other.
All I find myself doing when I zone in is staying close to the action so that I can get my kills for the No Mercy quest. I don't bother trying to do anything else as the lag makes it pointless.
Saying it's a success purely because lots of people do it is lazy logic in my opinion. It ignores the fact that this is to do with the easy rewards as opposed to any sense of enjoyment.
Aaron A. Apr 5th 2009 9:53PM
I, for one, enjoy being able to participate in PvP as something other than cannon fodder. Battlegrounds and Arena suffer from a very high barrier to entry, namely, that you need massive amounts of Resilience in order to have any chance against more experienced players, yet almost all of the Resilience gear requires thousands of marks of Honor.
The catch here is that new PvP'ers are completely helpless for their first several weeks, dragging their teams down until they can afford PvP gear. Vehicular combat, such as that found in Wintergrasp, counters this by giving new or part-time PvP'ers a foot in the door, so they can actually participate rather than simply taking up space. Having alternative sources, like VoA and the better-than-nothing crafted gear, is a nice touch as well.
That said, I agree that combat in its current form is really just a procedure for handing control to the attackers; controlling the orb should once again require a channeled cast, or at least there should be some sort of defenses immediately around the orb. Also, I'm glad to see some way for the defenders to seize the attackers' resources and potentially shut down the attack.
Spearhawk Apr 5th 2009 10:04PM
Ohh, nice changes in the plans however I got a better idea. Instead of addings things to the place why not make it work without the insane lag issues thats not only affecting that area but every area thats around it and sometimes even the entire northrend.
Yeah, the idea should be to fix whats wrong before adding things to it and not add things to keep players distracted.
Fix the cursed lag alreaday!!!
Balius Apr 6th 2009 3:23AM
Spreading things out is meant to fix the lag. By giving people incentives to capture other objectives and defend, there isn't a massive pileup at the fortress itself.
When player characters are close together, the additional lag from each player isn't additive, it's multiplicative. Spreading things out, even within the same zone, should noticeably reduce the problems.