Today in WoW: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011
by Adam Holisky 
Aug 30th 2011 at 9:35PM
Don't forget to check out The Daily Quest and our Weekly Podcast Roundup to find out what else is going on in the WoW community. And if you have a news tip, feel free to drop us a line and let us know.
Blue posts
PvP and player feedback
Quote:
Because after this weekend in AV, I think you need to take a look at them- very closely.
Because after this weekend in AV, I think you need to take a look at them- very closely.
Player feedback is an essential part of our development process, but this kind of thread helps illustrate the value and the pitfalls of anecdotal feedback.
What makes it useful? It's personal and emotional. It tells us about what it feels like to play World of Warcraft from an individual's perspective, where the big picture might seem pretty remote and unimportant.
The pitfall? It's personal and emotional, which is good, but very subjective. It's a tiny (though important) sample when compared against the whole of every battleground game happening everywhere. We have a duty to objectively look at the big picture. For example, our stats tell us that the ratios for various battlegrounds are pretty close to 50% win/loss for each faction, though that might not matter much to you when you're in the heat of the action.
So, when we're looking at what a quest feels like anecdotally, if it's too frustrating, then we can probably adjust that. When it comes to a system like the Battlegrounds, where the dynamic is almost exclusively player driven, but is working really well, it's not a good idea to mess with it because the big picture looks great.
Speaking personally, I've found that my mindset plays a huge role in how much fun I'm having. In the midst of a losing streak, I try to remember my winning streaks and landslide wins, or I adopt a philosophical approach and do what I can, where I can. If I get too frustrated, I do a different, more relaxing in-game activity for awhile or step away entirely. My bottom line is that how I think and feel about what I'm doing in-game can mean the difference between having a great time (even if I'm on a losing team), and table-flipping frustration.
Quote:
Blizzard needs to redesign the Horde side, make it so that the Alliance cannot simply bypass all the Horde defenses.
Blizzard needs to redesign the Horde side, make it so that the Alliance cannot simply bypass all the Horde defenses.
As we've said elsewhere, battlegrounds require a ton of effort to create, and modifying them even slightly is extremely labor intensive. It will probably be more worthwhile to create new and better battlegrounds in the future, than go back to continually tweak and modify the old ones.
TCG Gallery Update
We've updated our Trading Card Game art gallery to feature ten new pieces. Each image is taken directly from the official World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. Be sure to give a shout-out to your favorite pieces in the comments.
WoW news from other sites
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- Lichborne: Patch 4.2 raid gear for the DPS death knight
- Reader UI of the Week: Building a better PVP UI
- MMO Roundup: PAX, SWTOR beta, and more
- WoW Archivist: Scepter of the Shifting Sands
- WoW Moviewatch: Ties That Bind
- The Queue: What do GMs do ...
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- The WoW Insider Show Episode 208: Recorded in front of an audience
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Filed under: Today in WoW
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
WaterRouge Aug 30th 2011 9:49PM
I really do wish they would make a new Alterac Valley that is more balanced map-wise. That bridge on the Alliance side is just...terrible to traverse. They could at least get rid of that gate in the Frostwolf fortress that lets Allies avoid archer fire. In fact they could fix the horde towers for that reason too!
Amaxe Aug 31st 2011 1:11AM
From an Alliance perspective, I always thought the Horde turtling just inside the gates made for a miserable time to actually get to the building with Drek'Thar (haven't played in awhile... is he still there or is someone else the boss to kill?)
Harvoc Aug 30th 2011 9:56PM
... /sigh /facepalm
RetPallyJil Aug 30th 2011 10:11PM
First loser, ya mean.
Bellajtok Aug 30th 2011 10:52PM
@RPJ Don't we all wish. Imagine if he were the first person ever to do that.
teejmorrison Aug 30th 2011 11:06PM
Can anyone tell me what quest/event the screenshot is from? I'd like to see it in-game.
Thanks
Joseph Smith Aug 30th 2011 11:22PM
That's from the quest http://www.wowhead.com/quest=10212 Hero of the Mag'har. It is no longer in game anymore, as part of the chain was to go to Orgrimmar and talk to Thrall.
Basically, it's where Thrall snaps Garrosh out of his funk by showing him how Grom was redeemed by sacrificing himself to defeat Mannoroth
Joseph Smith Aug 30th 2011 11:34PM
Here is the closest you can find to seeing it in-game now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVjnXQ6Db1Q
Joseph Smith Aug 30th 2011 11:15PM
Wait...you mean he wasn't? But it was such an original thought. I can't believe that it didn't come out of luke's own head...
teejmorrison Aug 31st 2011 12:53AM
Ah ok thanks very much, I knew the storyline but didn't know about this scene in WoW.
Amaxe Aug 31st 2011 1:17AM
"As we've said elsewhere, battlegrounds require a ton of effort to create, and modifying them even slightly is extremely labor intensive. It will probably be more worthwhile to create new and better battlegrounds in the future, than go back to continually tweak and modify the old ones."
So in short, the Blue is saying "suck it up?" ;-)
Interesting seeing how the Horde complains about it being unbalanced in favor of the Alliance. This is the same Alliance satired by Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth (The Horde went AFK and the Alliance won 3-2).
I guess neither side is as good as the other side thinks or as bad as their own side thinks.
Nathanyel Aug 31st 2011 3:48AM
I thought that was meant to state "The Alliance is dumb" not "The Horde has an advantage from the AV map" :P
Diatenium Aug 31st 2011 1:23AM
I don't believe the notion that they'd provide better BG's rather than revamping old ones holds weight, you don't need to revamp an old raid or dungeon because--leveling aside--you'll never be exposed to it in a progressional sense, and EVEN THEN they've revamped old raids (Naxx) and old dungeons (Practically every vanilla dungeon, some of which you experience at max level in its "Heroic" version).
I mean, I barely even PVP and this seems pretty obvious to me.
RavenJet Aug 31st 2011 4:58AM
But dungeons are not player driven. The reality in fact is that the battlegrounds are not all perfectly balanced but close enough to be more team determined than anything else. On my server alliance outnumber horde by quite a bit - yet horde gets the vast majority of battleground victories (I play a lot of battlegrounds) simply because their side has developed a culture of cooperation. In warsong gulch you will always find them playing in a very close-knit, well coordinated team, and aliance wins only about one in three -when you're lucky enough to get team members willing to work together. I also suspect horde side has a lot more prevalence for guild battlegrounds - so you face a lot more pre-made groups that are used to working together, and probably talking on vent.
In fact alliance has come to see most battelgrounds there from a "don't even botther trying to win, just go in the middle and farm honor" perspective. Sometimes you get lucky and the majority of your team members want to win - then you can work out a strategy and often possibly win.
Yet there is one battleground we win 9/10 times - Eye of the Storm. Alliance on my server at least has found a tactic that Horde seems to have very little defense against, and horde hasn't responded well. Ally teams ALL know it, and we all do it - when we're in we shout it out in case any new players are in there - and we hardly ever lose.
In Tol Barad we win about 60/50 - everywhere else, Horde wins 8/10 matches. If you're like me a devoted alliance player - you accept the fact that battlegrounds will be very, very hard on this server and you won't win a lot - when you do win, it is all the sweeter.
Ultimately player culture has a much bigger impact on battlegrounds than the game mechanics themselves. Such mechanics can give one side a partial advantage- guess what, in any real war there are environmental factors that can be used as an advantage by one side, the question is will you execute the maneuvres to do so ? Will you make use of the advantages you have as well ? In battlegrounds you furthermore get an advantage generals don't have- you have fought that battle before, you know what advantages there are for your opponents.
This means you can predict their actions. A horde side that knows what weak points the alliance will attempt to exploit can use that prediction to come up with a counter-strategy.
That is battlegrounds at their best - when you're team is thinking tactically, working together cohesively and owning - and no amount of game mechanic can change that.
That said, there is one major bug in battlegrounds I wish they would fix, it's been around for 7 years now. Bug report: every time I qeue for a random battleground there are at least 8 people in my team with an IQ lower than their prepubescent age.
Chance Aug 31st 2011 5:11AM
Damn Raven... Wish I waited a minute for you to finish posting before I wasted time typing up my reply. Well said.
Teaspoon Aug 31st 2011 6:03AM
It's interesting to see an Alliance player saying that it seems from their perspective that the Horde cooperates better in BGs. Know what? In my experience it's not just BGs. Back at launch, I spent my first couple of months on a dwarf pally on Blackrock (but the group I'd been levelling with all left me behind when I went on holiday and I lost interest in the game), then came back a couple of months later when a different group of RL friends were starting up on Proudmoore and I played a human pally and a human warrior and, again, when my RL friends weren't around I wasn't seeing much point to playing. Roll forward another four months to when I rolled a tauren warrior on Frostmane with yet another cluster of RL friends, and suddenly people who were questing in the same area would actually say hi and show interest in grouping, people in general chat were polite and interested in chatting and helping people find things for quests, and a general good vibe of unity and cooperation. Even after those RL friends all went their separate ways I stayed on because I was finding new people to play with all the time anyway. Maybe Frostmane was just a friendlier server, but the thing that SEEMED different when I was playing was that I was Horde.
Don't get me wrong, not EVERYBODY in the Horde is perfect and awesome and cooperative. Especially since they let the Blood Elves and Goblins in! ;-)
On most of my servers it's felt like the Horde got the top 20% and bottom 10% of players while the Alliance got the 70% in the middle. Those numbers may vary from server to server, but they paint the picture I've got in my head well enough anyway. On all four servers, regardless of which side I played, I felt like Alliance significantly outnumbered Horde (at least 2:1, and I remember hearing that Aman'thul was over 85% Alliance for a while), and while I've been playing Horde I've always felt like about one in three Horde players suck.
Chance Aug 31st 2011 5:07AM
The AV map isn't as unbalanced as people claim. It's just sometimes there's better teamwork on one side than the other. I've done AV countless times on each faction and had remarkable wins on both sides. The bottleneck that the alliance have may seem like a good defense point for them, however, when it gets to that point it is purely which side can rank up more kills while holding the mines to get the other sides resources down first. From a Horde perspective its frustrating, you just need to get a few more feet and then you can cap those last 2 towers, however from an alliance standpoint you're stuck at your base, can't get through the strong offense for enough people to do anything about the 1 group of stragglers that keep killing the rogue and druid that snuck by the huge group and recapping the towers that took 5 minutes to get to.
Similarly the Horde can pull off almost the exact same strategy with their encampment in front of their base. I've heard people complain about how unfair it is that the Horde have a base within a base and how capping FWGY before RH making it an almost guaranteed loss is terrible.
Basically what I'm saying is that the map isn't as one-sided as some people may see it being. Both sides have times when groups are composed of sub-optimal players while the other side has a well coordinated team. It's entirely up to the players how it is going to turn out and if your team isn't good then you are going to lose. People just need to be prepared to go up against the better players during the call to arms because that's where most of them go. I've seen countless WSG matches have one side camping the other at the graveyard, I've seen 4 minute long AV's. Similarly I've seen AV matches go on for what felt like hours, and WSG matches end in 0 - 0 ties because of both sides having teams entirely composed of well coordinated defensive and offensive players. Though I do know how much it sucks to be on the losing end, I also know how great it is to be on the winning end and anybody else who was in that thread that also knows how it is to be on the winning end has in turn put other people in the same shitty situation that they were in when they were getting pummeled.
In a pvp match there will always be a winner and a loser, and the loser is never going to be happy about being on that side of the fence.