Blizzard previews new rated battlegrounds PVP mounts
by Mathew McCurley 
Jun 20th 2011 at 3:00PM
The really interesting and cool part about these mounts are that they are awarded for 75, 150, and 300 rated battleground wins. That's right -- each time you reach one of those milestones, you are given another account-bound mount for use on one of your alts, with three mounts available total. That is an awesome change that potentially signals the beginning of more account-bound achievement items being earned and shared across players' accounts, as opposed to having to complete each achievement on each character. This is the first step in something bigger, I'm sure of it.
Rated battlegrounds have been a touchy subject with Blizzard, since depending on who you ask they are either wildly successful or not being used enough. Gathering 10 people for coordinated PVP is sometimes just as much of a pain as doing it for raiding, and the time commitment can be just as large. With these new mounts, Blizzard hopes to get more people into the rated battleground system and start fighting it out for some cool new mounts.
Patch 4.2: New PvP Mounts for Rated Battlegrounds
In order to best accommodate players under the unique play style of Rated Battlegrounds, we'll be offering all-new PvP ground mounts -- the Vicious War Wolf (Horde) or Vicious War Steed (Alliance) -- in a unique way. If you want to sit your knickers on these sweet new rides come patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands, you must earn achievements for winning either 75, 150, or 300 Rated Battlegrounds. One account-bound mount will be awarded for each of these achievements earned, so if you win 300 Rated Battlegrounds with a character, you'll be afforded the opportunity to give that character and two of your alts each a wolf or steed. Since these mounts are tied to each achievement and not to your placement on the competitive ladder, they will be awarded instantly rather than at the end of each season as with Arena mounts. Your Rated Battleground wins tracked for these achievements are cumulative and are not reset with each season, so you can work toward the reward at your own pace.
For those of you storming the front lines, protecting vital tactical positions, and keeping your teammates alive in Rated Battlegrounds, we wish you the best of luck in obtaining awards that befit your show of valor!
For those of you storming the front lines, protecting vital tactical positions, and keeping your teammates alive in Rated Battlegrounds, we wish you the best of luck in obtaining awards that befit your show of valor!
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!Filed under: PvP, Cataclysm, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
techvoodooguy Jun 20th 2011 3:23PM
I dunno about you, but I have had a great time running RBGs with my guild. We lose *every single match* but we have a great time doing so.
This is just another reason to work towards actually winning our games.
DonNochay Jun 20th 2011 7:18PM
@techvoodooguy
Which probably will never happen, considering it sounds like your guild isn't composed of twitchy, lifeless pvp'ers who spend hours discussing the ins-and-outs of LOS'ing.
dkhar Jun 20th 2011 3:13PM
It's a neat reward, and the mounts looks great, but this just screams to me that they are trying whatever they can to get more people into rated BG's. It was hard enough to get 5 people together to do 5v5 arena, and this is just a bigger version of that, the time commitment is more than a raid of equal size. Rated BG's were just poorly implemented from the start, they weren't what people were thinking they were going to be, until they make changes to let the casual get into rated BG's, I don't think they will get the numbers they were hoping for. But at least they are trying something!
TonyKP Jun 20th 2011 3:41PM
I still find it odd that while the Rated BG system was being worked up no one on the development staff stopped to think "Hey, y'know what? I bet most folks will expect this to be based on individual performance rather than being bigger Arena-style team matches. We might ought to warn them before hopes get all sky-high".
Cataclysm really isn't a terrible expansion, it just hasn't lived up to the hype. A little better communication and expectation management and more willingness to see things from the average player's perspective rather than that of a developer would have paid off for Blizzard in spades.
sporkwind Jun 20th 2011 3:45PM
performance would be nice or even just a gear check "You need X resilience to enter" to keep out the less geared pvpers much like heroics.
dkhar Jun 20th 2011 3:56PM
Completely agree. That was what everyone was thinking before, and what it should have been. The only real debate at the time was "is it going to be performance, or gear". Then they dropped the bomb on everyone that it was nothing more than a raided arena team. I honestly cannot understand who there thought this was a good idea. And they wonder why people ask if they ever play the game /shrug
Budokan Jun 20th 2011 4:08PM
Wishing I could up-rate this comment and all the replies multiple times, and then stuff them all in an envelope and mail them to Blizzard. I can't begin to describe how utterly crushed I and the couple of friends I play with were when we found out that rated BGs were NOT going to be what you have all described. We thought the same thing.
Skarn Jun 20th 2011 5:35PM
To play devil's advocate a little, I often see complaints about being unable to solo-queue for rated BGs, but rarely anyone addressing the problems that causes. If no other changes are made than just allowing solo-queues...what's the difference between a Rated BG and a normal one? Nothing. It also comes with the same problems of AFKers, honor farmers and whatever else. (At least RBG doesn't force you to have the exact same team every time...though that's small consolation.)
Rating solo performance in a battleground is extremely difficult. How do you rate the contribution of the guy who's guarding the Mine? It's a valuable service to the team, but doesn't show up on the scoreboard. How about the guy who tracks down the flag carrier in WSG, takes out his guards, but someone else shows up to get the KB and cap on the flag. According to the scoreboard, this second guy is more valuable than the first when he's actually not. But then again, what if that was the plan of the two people all along? One distracts, the other accomplishes. There are tons of other examples, but it all boils down to this:
If you want solo queues for Rated Battlegrounds, how do you possibly "rate" that? Do you really want to make damage whoring and ignoring objectives any worse?
dkhar Jun 20th 2011 6:51PM
Rating solo performance in a BG is not hard at all, other games have done it with complete success(and I wasn't just talking about solo to begin with, just casual, it's a completely different thing). As long as you are doing something they can make it to where you get points(or however they wanted to implement it) towards your rating. Winning BG's, doing damage, doing healing, CC, getting damage done to you, CC'd etc... it can all be added in and it wouldn't be difficult for a programmer to figure out how to do it once they decided how to do it. Blizz never did it because it wasn't a part of their original vision for rated BG's is all. Once they get a vision on how or what they want to do, they are not going to deviate from it and make it they way they wanted. More power to them, it's their game after all. But in doing so they show the disconnect that they have with their playerbase.
Having the argument about defending certain objectives doesn't really fly however as well, I have seen numerous people 'defending' a mine, or an obstacle in AB, or a flag in AV to the point where they weren't defending anything. They just sit there, do nothing, only to let the opposing faction to take the objective anyway, and when no one is around(if then) then the re-cap. It is just a new strategy for them to go AFK without staying in the starting area and getting reported.
It would not be as hard as you might think to implement such things, some companies may have someone come out and tell you that, but it isn't true. The truth is that they just won't go away from their original plan, and they really can't in that respect otherwise it would take forever to come out with anything if they had to start doing something else mid phase of the plan. The people protecting flag room in WSG won't have to worry(unless they do nothing) because there will always be someone going for the flag, Protecting the leader in AV, no problem there either again, as long as you are doing something.
DonNochay Jun 20th 2011 7:30PM
This. Rated bgs are an example of something that Blizzard should have taken into consideration, and then wisely scrapped in favor of numerous other community based ideas that they seem to often ignore/punt towards the waste basket in the drawing room.
Heatray Jun 21st 2011 4:23AM
If there's one thing I couldn't care less about in this expansion (even if it looks this good) then it's mounts. Please spend your time on something else Blizz. :(
Skarn Jun 21st 2011 11:19PM
"As long as you are doing something they can make it to where you get points"
That's the problem. What if you are NOT doing something that can be tracked? There's a variety of options, usually defending ones. Defending a node in Arathi Basin that isn't being attacked. The flag carrier in WSG at moments when he's left alone. Moments when you are doing what it takes to win, to be a team player, but aren't doing something trackable.
How are the points awarded anyway? I assume you're not thinking of some sort of constant ticker that awards points throughout the BG. So then it's a total point award at the end of the BG as it is now. Or separate awards through the BG for achieving certain objectives (like capping a flag). Again, how do you "rate" each player? If one player does one million damage and another only does one thousand, do they get the same points? You see the problem if they don't, right? If the person who does more damage gets more points, then the only "right" way to play the BG becomes to ignore defense, fight at the front lines and snipe HKs.
I guess what I'm asking is this: How would you award points differently in Rated BGs than in normal BGs? How do you rate an individual's contribution so that each player is properly awarded in accordance with their contribution? I clearly didn't understand your idea well enough.
Also, what is your ideal "casual RBG" playstyle? Since you say it's completely different from solo BGs. Your only queue options are 5-man or 10-man. Anything else requires solo-queue option.
Skarn Jun 21st 2011 11:23PM
Just to note:
I very rarely PvP. How all of the BG, Arena and related achievements/rewards works out is honestly irrelevant to me. I'm just pointing out the difficulties with Rated BGs. I'm not trying to say "this is the way it should be" just "these are the problems I see, what are the solutions?"
Krz Jun 20th 2011 3:16PM
Oooo... Those mounts look soooo good...
Oakraven Jun 20th 2011 3:19PM
Basiclay they are adding the Existig PvP grind rewards from places like Tol Barad to Battlegrounds.
I think it may be slowly sinking in at Blizzard that the current PvP season mechanic is causeing them problems, currently it feels like you have to jump in from day 1 and keep going to day whatever only to find that while you may have made the top 6% you did not make the top 5%
Bapo Jun 20th 2011 3:23PM
I *think* these are all new mounts (unless they're from this arena season) because the ones from TB are the spectral horse / wolf, so kinda?
Saeadame Jun 20th 2011 3:28PM
Pretty sure these are totally different models from the previous ones. Even the TB wolf is just the Org wolf reskinned - this one actually has different armor and general body shape.
Bapo Jun 20th 2011 3:20PM
So, I'm assuming that by account bound, they still mean server bound? (Unless you server xfer, of course).
This may actually entice some of my guild to try out Rbg's, myself included. The unfortunate thing being that most of my guild doesn't pvp : /
Batleth Jun 20th 2011 3:23PM
I was asking the same thing...
I have an Alliance achievement whore and a Horde achievement whore, on different servers. If I get one of these mounts on one of them, can I get the equivalent horse/wolf for the other automatically?
I'll be glad when they tidy up the whole "bind on account" issue...
8-)
Still though, they look amazing...
Oakraven Jun 20th 2011 3:24PM
that and once you GET a team together. . . you have to wait for some other team to do the same thing so the battleground launches.
Basicaly I suspect that bliz is finding that they may end up handing out rewards to people who stoped playing the Rated Battlegrounds a month ago.