Cracks starting to show?

[Soulflame]

... that also have the same schedule as you.

[Malakili]

Why are they making people do it?  I'm a little confused, I thought these were supposed to be for the competitive community.  Granted, I've never taken PvP in WoW even a little bit seriously, so I'm not really up to date on what its all about.

[Lantyssa]

When did Blizzard begin to think Verant's "You're in OUR world now (bitch)" slogan should be stolen?

[Sparky]

Rated Battlegrounds would work better if there were solo and pre-made versions.  When they were announced I pictured it as a way for casuals to earn the best PVP loots, not some 15 man arena team abomination.

[Ashamanchill]

This change has me stunned, moreso then the changes to PvE by far. Doing arena with a few friends to get half decent loot was like the only alleviation to heroics at that point, and it's being gutted. What a total joke. Not only does this ship have a noticeable list, but it's getting pronounced at this point.

I'm just waiting for Rokal to explain how this is great idea.

[caladein]

Why are they making people do it?  I'm a little confused, I thought these were supposed to be for the competitive community.  Granted, I've never taken PvP in WoW even a little bit seriously, so I'm not really up to date on what its all about.

From a points income perspective, all they're doing is turning Arenas into Random Heroic Dungeons.  Under this analogy, currently all PvE gear is on the Valor Points vendor, you can cap your income just through Random Heroics, and as a result few people bother to raid.  Right now, I see maybe one or two Rated Battleground PUGs a week and our side's biggest PvP guilds are just Arena lobbies.

Ideally they'd have found a way to encourage the format they prefer and to reward its higher logistical requirements, but sometimes it's just better to bring down the nerfbat on the offending system instead.  They did a similar thing when they cut off the two-man bracket from some of the items completely and now alternate-color sets and Tier 2 weapons.

[Shrike]

Rated Battlegrounds would work better if there were solo and pre-made versions.  When they were announced I pictured it as a way for casuals to earn the best PVP loots, not some 15 man arena team abomination.

This. It's why a very significant fraction of the population not only doesn't give a shit about PvP, but actively dislikes it and what it brings to the PvE table.

I wouldn't mind doing rated BGs, but I'd have to have guild support and my present guild doesn't seem to have much interest in them. I can't go it alone, so fuck that shit. And I"m not doing arenas on a bet--especially with the ability to buy CP with VP. So now I can just do regular BGs when I get the urge or assrape flagged pissant horde punks when the opportunity arises. That's all I want out of PvP.

Frankly, I'd wouldn't miss PvP if it were entirely removed from the game. The game would probably be better for it overall.

[Ratman_tf]

Meanwhile...

[sinij]

Meanwhile...

"Rated Battlegrounds continue to be a big flop and nobody is doing them even after we terminated the 15 player versions. Rather than try to address this by making Rated more attractive, we're just going to slap you with a 1/3 penalty to your Conquest points if you don't do them. Fuck you, you faggots have been getting away light in the grinding department lately anyway. We designed it, and you cocksuckers are going to play it!"

Seriously, the time card is right here in my drawer and I can't be bothered typing the code in. Do these things ever expire? Can I use it years from now if they ever pull their heads out of their asses?

It was predicted well in advance that rated BGs will fail because of a) logistics b) class imbalance. You actually have to design your PvP with GvG in mind, it doesn't 'just happen' on its own. Frost Nova alone was enough to kill rBGs, and there are tons of abilities like that.

[amiable]

From personal experience they are losing a half dozen subscriptions over this, basically all the remaining RL folks i play with are quitting if the arena/BG change goes into effect.

[sinij]

You design a system that players end up avoiding. Do you a) use it as a cock-block in order to do something they like b) look into why it not used and try to address it?

[Nevermore]

"If we force them to play it the way we want them to play it, they'll eventually learn to like it" is a theme that's touched on everything in Cata.  Why would PvP be any different?

[Soulflame]

I could have sworn that Blizzard was never like this before.  At least not to this extent.

I swear, they looked at the record subscription levels of Wrath, where most of the game was open to the majority of the player base, and decided that was a huge mistake.

[Kail]

From personal experience they are losing a half dozen subscriptions over this, basically all the remaining RL folks i play with are quitting if the arena/BG change goes into effect.

Mine, too.  I'm basically just logging in once a week to grind arena points in 2v2 with my brother, and we're both getting tired of it anyway.  This announcement would be as good a time to bow out as any.

[Rokal]

I didn't say "I don't want 5-man players to have gear as good as mine"...

...As long as those subhumans don't fuck up the exquisite balance of my master race party place by getting a fair shot at the same gear, because even though I totally do this for the challenge if you gave me a path of least resistance I'd be compelled to take it.

It's like you don't truly understand why everyone else thinks you're a bit of a knob.  Me?  I know exactly why everyone thinks I'm a knob.

Yes, the reason I raid is because I think the content is fun, not because the gear is X ilvls higher than what is available from 5-mans. It seems you care more about shiny pixel armor than I do.

This change has me stunned, moreso then the changes to PvE by far. Doing arena with a few friends to get half decent loot was like the only alleviation to heroics at that point, and it's being gutted. What a total joke. Not only does this ship have a noticeable list, but it's getting pronounced at this point.

I'm just waiting for Rokal to explain how this is great idea.

I really don't give a shit about WoW pvp. I suggested a few hundred posts back that the WoW pvp system would be greatly improved if every player got the same gear, and the only upgrades you got were 100% cosmetic. IE Arena season 16 gear has the same stats as season 15 gear, but the appearance is different. That way it would be truly competitive, not a roll of the dice where you usually end up facing players with better/worse gear than you. As a pvp game it is worthless when gear has such a huge impact on your character, and balancing the classes is harder when stats on each character are variable.

Seriously, the time card is right here in my drawer and I can't be bothered typing the code in. Do these things ever expire? Can I use it years from now if they ever pull their heads out of their asses?

They don't expire and they haven't really lost their resale value unlike, say, Funcom game time cards. You could probably throw it up on ebay, email the winner the code, and be done with it.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, the reason I raid is because I think the content is fun, not because the gear is X ilvls higher than what is available from 5-mans. It seems you care more about shiny pixel armor than I do.

Yes, loot is fucking awesome.  I love loot, it makes me hard.  You still haven't answered why it is that you don't seem to think you should just forgo loot rewards for raiding and be in that sweet spot of optimum balance forever.

[Ingmar]

Yeah you can argue the PVE stuff one way or the other but the PVP stuff is pretty much indefensibly derpy. At this point they should really just probably cut it down to one tier of gear and let people just do whatever thing they like best, because I don't know that it can be 'fixed.'

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yeah you can argue the PVE stuff one way or the other but the PVP stuff is pretty much indefensibly derpy. At this point they should really just probably cut it down to one tier of gear and let people just do whatever thing they like best, because I don't know that it can be 'fixed.'

Personal ratings that let people achieve rank and gear solo...you know, like every other fucking online game.

[Paelos]

God I can't wait for the Q2 and Q3 numbers. I really can't.

I'm tempted to buy some stock just I can go to the shareholders meeting and flip my shit.

[Sjofn]

Rated Battlegrounds would work better if there were solo and pre-made versions.  When they were announced I pictured it as a way for casuals to earn the best PVP loots, not some 15 man arena team abomination.

Same. Instead I ignore it like I ignore arena. The honor gear is, for the most part, perfectly acceptable for scrub BGs, so I don't lose too much sleep over it. Kinda annoying I don't have a proper PvP weapon and shield, but them's the breaks.

[caladein]

After doing some reading about the coverage of the 2v2 changes before Season 7, it wouldn't surprise me if there was already a plan to "walk back" this change to something that still gets the job done but leaves the playerbase feeling like they have a scalp.

[amiable]

it's just such an asine idea:  Bliz wants people to do RBGs. Despite the fact no one wants to fucking do them, because it is forcing all the bad things about raiding onto the exact population that does not like to raid. You have to get 10 people on at the right time. If ONE person has to leave, your night of playing is over.  But instead of running a dungeon you get to sit in a queue for an hour plus.  This idea is just clownshoes in its purest form.

[Nevermore]

I'm still pissed they changed the Warsong Gulch map solely because of the rated BGs, thereby fucking it up for the random BGs.

[Fordel]

Blizzard has always, ALWAYS been retarded about their PVP. It's mind boggling at how they keep failing at it.


They don't understand the balance for it, the participation factors, the reward structure, anything. They can't even manage a fucking proper castle door to defend.

[Sjofn]

Which is why it's best to generally ignore the fact it exists unless you're willing to get over all the stupidity.

[Samprimary]

Fucking nobody on my entire server wants to do Rated Battlegrounds and conquest point weekly cap is a freebie in 2v2 arenas. Both are problems. Both are the result of stupid design. Both accelerate the dysfunction with the other. Conquest points mean literally nothing because you can cap out in an hour with a drooling retard (which is what I do). Not only should you not be allowed to do this (even if it's wonderfully nice), but the solution is also terrible because

nobody

wants

to

do

rated

bg

[Paelos]

After doing some reading about the coverage of the 2v2 changes before Season 7, it wouldn't surprise me if there was already a plan to "walk back" this change to something that still gets the job done but leaves the playerbase feeling like they have a scalp.

Actually, you're probably right. They won't hold this. It's a thing that will obviously piss off the playerbase, but has just enough oomph behind it to feel real. They will reverse step within a couple weeks.

[Miasma]

All the universally hated changes to PvP came just as I had begun trying it out to see if I would enjoy it instead of PvE, I have bad timing.

[Setanta]

Bring back the original AV - if you're going to make us grind, at least make it epic 4 day battles again 

[Minvaren]

PvP is working as intended.   

[Paelos]

There's no way they actually go through with this. It's too stupid to be true.

[Xanthippe]

When did Blizzard begin to think Verant's "You're in OUR world now (bitch)" slogan should be stolen?

When they launched Cataclysm.

Zarhym makes Ghostcrawler look like a diplomat.  What a dick.

[Xanthippe]

To be fair, Rift is far worse than WOW at the 'static quest experience on rails' thing (I'm not sure if that was this thread or the cataclysm one, it all melts together for me  ). There is exactly one path to get to 50, and quest hubs are gated just like in newWOW (maybe a bit closer to WOTLK than Cata, but definitely have to do them in order within a zone) When you're levelling a second chara in the same faction, you'll be hitting up exactly the same quests in almost the same order. WOW has sooo many freaking zones (especially sub-80) that you can mix it up and have at least 2-3 very different levelling paths. I have two 50s in rift and three 85s in WOW, and even 80->85 (which is admittedly kind of thin) on my 3 characters was a different experience: one was instancing all the way, one was doing vashjir -> deepholm -> twilight, one was doing hyjal -> start of deepholm -> uldum. In rift it was just the same quests all the way through, even though I pvp'd enough on my second char to have 120k favor by the time I hit 50.. all that did was allow me to skip a few zones.

NB: rifts of course mix things up a bit, but can get repetitive if you try to level exclusively through rifting... I didn't include pvp because pvp-while-leveling works in both games.

Yes, this is true, at least until you get to mid 30s, when you can go to Moonshade or go to Droughtlands, or do some of both, and after those, you can go to Stillmoor or go to Shimmersand.  You don't have to do all of them, at least.  It would have been nice to have alt routes the entire trip.

My second character is 45 now, and has mostly been leveled through warfronts - some questing along the way (no instances), a bit of rifts, and plenty of rested, so I haven't done most quests.  I did them all (completist that I can be) on my main, which meant doing a lot of quests that were green or grey at 50.

There are several isolated quest mini-hubs, which is something I missed from vanilla WoW.  I actually enjoy stumbling upon some npc with a problem without being breadcrumbed to find it - it adds to that whole world-y thing for me.

Remembering games from before quests were added to the whole handholding experience of today, I think I liked it a little better before.  Could be nostalgia or rose-colored glasses, but the rails are too confining now.

This may be a reason why I tend to like rp servers better than regular servers - other players are more likely to add to my playing enjoyment through what they bring.

I'm bitter that mmos have been around as long as they have and have not innovated more - remembering the sort of shit muds were doing more than a decade ago raised my expectations too high, I suppose.

[Simond]

Fun thing to note about the 4.2 PTR - the 7 year anniversary reward is in it, imp[lying that 4.3 won't go live until the end of the year. Hope you like running the troll heroics because they're the only new 5-man content you're going to get until the winter.

Prediction: 4.3 will go live the week before SWTOR launches, "faster patching" be damned.

[Merusk]

Yep, you're right.  In which case I really hope SWTOR is delayed, causing much wringing of hands about delaying their own content or coming up with a quick patch for SWTOR's launch.