Posts with tag Wow,Warcraft,Pvp

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Of all the PvP events I've participated in over the years, the battle for Halaa in Nagrand always sticks out in my mind as one of the best-executed examples of world PvP that the World of Warcraft has ever produced. The battle for Halaa brought together several areas of warfare in perfect harmony.

• The element of surprise The battle for Halaa took place at any time. Whenever the opposite faction felt like taking control of the city, they could form a raid and start bombing. It left the controlling faction scrambling to assemble a defense when the words "Halaa is under attack!" popped up on their screens.
• Aerial assault Players had to activate one of four wyvern stations and fly over the city of Halaa to drop bombs, causing massive amounts of damage. Until the defenses were weakened, players could not successfully enter the city.
• Sabotage While enemy players were taking to the skies, one of the keys to success was to destroy the activated wyvern stations to prevent those enemy players from immediately taking off for another bombing run.
• Siege warfare Once the city's defenses were eliminated, the conquering force moved into the city center and held the city captive. Either the defending faction would break the siege and regain control of the city or it would be lost to the conquering heroes.
• Spoils of war Defeating your enemy within the boundaries of Halaa yielded you a Halaa Battle Token. Once you controlled Halaa, those tokens could be spent on various rewards, including the coveted Dark War Talbuk.

With new expansions come new territories to explore and conquer. Sadly, Nagrand and the war-torn city of Halaa fell to the wayside in favor of Wintergrasp once Wrath of the Lich King was released. So what does a player who is hungry for world PvP do now? If you have some friends and are will to do a little organizing and promoting, here are three new ideas to spring on your server.

Drysc has just announced that Season 3 has been delayed until November 27th.

Originally set for the 20th, Blizzard feels that the proximity to the US holiday of Thanksgiving would have been a problem for supporting the event. Therefore, they have delayed the start of the season until they will have more resources available.

Salthem also announced that the European launch of Arena Season 3 is delayed until November 28th for the same reasons.

It's unfortunate that Blizzard didn't think of the holiday ahead of time, but I think that this is the right decision.

What do you think? Did they do the right thing by delaying Season 3?

Level 70 Elite Tauren guards (not to be confused with L70ETC) have been stationed outside Zul'Aman on the test server. I agree with Elizabeth that the race choice makes no sense, but according to CM Nethaera, the guards (in some form) are there to stay.

This is, of course, in response to the overwhelming complaints from Alliance players that have to go to Horde territory in order to try out the new instance.

Nethaera also says that they will be implementing a Contested Area around Zul'Aman to further alleviate the unbridled ganking currently occuring there. She says that in the past, they could only flag entire zones as contested, but now they have the ability to change the PvP status of just an area within a zone. This change will be implemented on the PTR first before coming to live servers.

They are also going to be surrounding other instances with contested areas, such as the Scarlet Monastery. Unfortunately for the Alliance players currently trying to farm the Headless Horseman, this change will come a bit late. But maybe it will be implemented in time for next year's event.

Players have been voicing concerns about changing the areas in lowbie zones to contested. How will it affect the level 10s trying to quest around these new contested areas?

Blue poster Vaneck announced on the European Forums that Alterac Valley would be undergoing some major gameplay changes in Patch 2.3.

In order to emphasize strategy more in AV, they are introducing the concept of "reinforcement count". Both teams will begin with a starting number of reinforcements which can be reduced in various amounts according to what is lost. A team loses when its reinforcement count is reduced to zero.

The death of Drek'Thar or Vanndar will still end the game, as all reinforcements will automatically be eliminated. Losing towers and Galvangar or Belinda will cause significant amounts of reinforcements to be lost. And staying alive will now be very important as player deaths will reduce the reinforcement count by one.

To quote Vaneck:

Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.

More on the AV changes after the jump...

Each week, Robin Torres contributes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW.

Omigawd! I sound like such a twinkie on our WoW Insider Podcast. I'd like to blame playing dozens of levels as a female Night Elf with all that bouncing or blame my move to The Valley this year, but a good friend assures me I have always sounded like a twinkie, even though I'm not one, so it's ok. Regardless of my twinkie status, I had a great time with Mike and Turpster and we got to discuss all sorts of interesting stuff. And, when it comes right down to it, it's all about fun.

That's the reason why we play video games in general and WoW specifically: fun. Otherwise, why spend so much time immersing ourselves in Azeroth and Outland, if we aren't enjoying ourselves? I get the idea from the comments, forums, general chat, guild chat, etc. that there are a lot of people playing the game who are currently not having fun, however. I'm not talking about the restlessness most of us are feeling in the extra long gap between content patches. There are many vocal people who seem to be very unhappy, even with all of these fun changes coming up in the next few weeks -- or because of some of the changes. So, if you aren't having fun, why are you still playing WoW?

Lagerosi asked on the general forums if The Frozen Throne was in fact the end of the war between the Alliance and the Horde. Jheric clarified our current faction status well:

What exists now is essentially a cold war, with the two factions fighting in proxy areas such as Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, much like the way the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would send weapons and 'advisers' to small countries in Africa and Asia.

With the transition from active warfare has come shifting allegiances, such as the Blood Elves joining the Horde after falling out with the Alliance (pretty much all the fault of one Alliance general), and Dalaran electing for neutrality.

I'm not a big fan of PvP videos as I'm not a big fan of PvP. But this video really sucked me in. Shazra, a Mage on the European servers wanted to put together a piece showcasing what a Fire-based mage could do. She impressed me in many ways with this piece.

First, she opened with a 90 second story. Yes, boys and girls, you heard me right: a narrative based open to a PvP video! Next, her use of music is excellent. And finally, the quick close ups of her cooldowns finishing let the viewer know what was going to happen next. Great use of anticipation for a budding filmmaker.

For more information about the video, Shazra posted the backstory to the narrative open on the European forums. Also, in the credits of the video she lists her spec, her addons/UI and what video tools she used. And don't forget to watch the bonus clip after the credits. Crazy good stuff. Give us more, Shaz!

Previously on Moviewatch...

The forum is ablaze over at WoW's official European site. And it all has to do with the upcoming Arena Season 2. The patch just hit the test server this week and the dps on the new weapon rewards is...eye popping.

One player wonders why should she be raiding 5 hours a night, 7 days a week for months to get a weapon that can be earned quicker in PvP? Her guild is only on Serpentshire Cavern, but she worries about her motivation to continue the grind towards Black Temple when she can acquire the same weapon much quicker by PvPing.

Is Blizzard making a mistake making high end PvP gear more accessible than PvE raid gear? Do they expect players to both PvP and PvE to mix and match the best gear? Shouldn't non-raiding PvPers get their game best gear also? Tell us what you think.

Thanks to our friends at MMO-Champion, we have an early look at the armor sets, weapons and possibly new mount rewards coming in the next content patch. Notes of interest:

• Weapons have the same graphic (so far) of Season 1 rewards
• Season 1 armor rewards have been reduced in cost
• New armored mounts are in the art files, but not listed as rewards yet

Right now the PTR is going up and down, but you can find stats on the new rewards as well as screenshots of the armors at MMO-Champion. Keep in mind this is the first time these items are showing up on the test realms, so any and all aspects are subject to change before they go to the live servers.

Welcome to Shifting Perspectives! This is a new feature here on WoW Insider, which will bring you various perspectives on shifting forms as a druid, from David Bowers one week, and Dan O'Halloran the next.

I'm here kick off our little druid feature for this week with a simple pair of questions to answer: "Is playing a druid fun?" and "should I play a druid?" I reply to both with a resounding yes, of course. "But why?" you ask. "What has the Druid class got to offer me that other, so-called 'superior classes' haven't got?" The answer is, naturally, everything! Well mostly everything.

You see, more than any other class, druids have such a variety of abilities and can specialize in these abilities to such a degree that there are many very different play styles available to each druid player. The Druid is the ultimate class for the player who wants to tank sometimes, stealth and kill sometimes, heal sometimes, and then sit back and nuke things from a distance for a few months in order to get a change of pace. A druid can alternately be very good at healing, tanking, dealing up-close melee damage, or dealing far-away nuking damage, filling the roles of a priest, warrior, rogue or mage -- all in one class!

This story comes from the somewhat unusual source of Amped eSports. They have an interview up from Blizzard's Paul Della Bitta, whose title is Senior Community Manager. He says he "oversee[s] our community teams for all franchises as well as the eSports team," so that's who he is in case, like me, you hadn't heard of him before.

The interview mostly talks about "how did WoW become an eSport" (with the introduction of the Arena system in BC) and "how do you feel about the tournaments this year" (very excited). If you're interested in WoW as a sporting event, you should definitely give the article a read. However, there is at least one juicy item of interest in there for all WoW players:

We know that pro players need to practice for hours a day; they can't practice and grind out levels and farm for items It is something we're aware of and we're going to hope to address in the future.

Is this a sign that there will in the future be a meaningful way to participate in PvP without leveling a character to 70? How would you feel about that? Personally, I think I'd welcome it, as it would give further distance between the PvE game and the PvP game, which BC already does pretty well and which I think is very needed. I see the argument for rewarding players who put in the effort to level (as does Paul Della Bitta: "we wanted to reward the players who had taken their characters from 1 to 70"), but on the other hand I don't see why it should take hundreds of hours spent in PvE in order to compete in PvP. Your thoughts?

This isn't in the patch notes, but I'm still surprised I didn't hear about it sooner. Ming writes that the Rogue talent Sword Specialization, which has been broken for a very, very long time, is fixed in patch 2.1. What do I mean by "broken?" Well, here's the talent's tooltip:

Gives you a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your Sword.

Sounds like it should work out to basically 5% more white damage plus a little more due to it proccing off special attacks, right? Well, that's not how it's been working. What it's been doing is resetting your main hand swing timer whenever it procs, causing your main hand to swing at that time. If it procs off a regular main hand swing, you're getting your money's worth. However, say you've got a 2.0 speed mainhand, and it swung 1.8 seconds ago. You cast Sinister Strike, which happens to proc Sword Spec. This causes your main hand to swing and resets its timer to 2 seconds -- but it was about to swing anyway, so you've gained very little from the talent. Off-hand procs share a similar fate, since they also cause main hand swings.