f13.net

Rough guess, I'm leveling 3 times faster than I did last year.  A bit of that is because I was on a PVP server and was dicking around ganking and getting ganked part of the time, but that can only be a small factor.  Leveling feels "right" to me now.  Here's hoping that as time wears on and expansions come out and the level cap continues to increase, they only keep increasing the speed of it to keep the time from newb to endgame consistent.  Pile on the content and let me get my ding-levelup crack all the more often.

Between that, PVP rewards, the solo-friendlieness, and the precedent set with BC of making routine expansion gear really uber, they seem to be doing a damned good job of making a game that a newb can jump into years after release with a realistic expectation of eventually being competetive in the endgame against established players.  Without being a super-catass.

Anyway, yeah, faster leveling = win.  If you're like me and found even WoW's old "fast leveling" to be a grind, give it another shot.

I am now almost 49 and this is with only playing 2-3 hours a night.  I went from midway through 47 to 4 bars from 49 just questing last night in the Hinterlands.  Leveling is definitely sped up compared to what it used to be.  This is a good thing.  The only problem I have is quests go grey too quickly for me to complete them all, whereas I used to have to run to both continents several times to get quests to actually go on to the next set.

All in all, minus the gankage I experience due to playing a victim class, this is one of the best times I've had in WoW since release.

"Victim Class" - nice.


Ya, it's faster, but you still will hit a huge wall @ 60.  HUGE.

Yeah, with the leveling speed there's just no way to do all the quests without a lot of them turning gray.  But shit, that's a good thing in my book.  I don't want to do all the quests, and the fast leveling means I can pick and choose and only do the ones that interest me.

For example, I always hated Westfall, so this time around I just skipped it entirely.  I skipped Arathi Highlands and most of Wetlands too.  But I did pad my XP early on with some of the dwarf and elf zone quests.  Choice is good.  And if I ever get around to making an alt, there will be things for him to do that my main never did on the way up.

This is true, but I find the quests and activities in BC much more palatable than pre-BC.  The quests are localized better.  The rewards are more appropriate and useful.  There are challenging yet fun 5-man instances to do right away with appropriate and easy to obtain quests related to them.  There are optional world PvP areas if you feel like it.  Travel times and needs go way way down.  You spend a much higher percentage of your time doing the quests rather than riding on the back of a mount afk.

You can basically "own" each zone you hit before moving on and that was/is a pretty good feeling going through the BC content.  Yet, there is enough of the other things that keep you coming back to those zones later (heroics, higher level instances, resource collection, world PvP, etc.)

You really never run out of appropriate level quests to run either.  There always seems to be a surplus.  If you run instances, you'll notice this even more.

If you do like many have suggested and just go get some upgrade gear at 58-60 in Outlands then return to the old world to whip through the higher end quests, you can get to 62 pretty quickly and then find massive amounts of quests to do in Outworld upon your return.  That works quite well.

I have been leveling a lot of chars, just before the quest XP boost/level XP reduction, and it's indeed very quick now. I rerolled a mage a week or two ago and leveled with questing in ghost lands and quests up to 26 then started AoE grinding + quests. Very effective and quick(44 last night).

This is sound advice, especially on a pvp server.  I've found that once I near the upper range for an area/zone that I'm left alone more often than not.  Hellfire is mostly people that are 58-60 and the marsh is 61-63.  If you're a hair above those ranges, you'll do well questing as you can decided to kill players you see or simply ignore them knowing they are less likely to attack you. 

Actually thats really good advice. Stay out of the Outlands for a level or two, to hit up the boosted quests and the plaguelands are a ghost town. Honestly there's so much junk green gear on the AH for the 58-64 range its cheap to upgrade without even visiting the Outlands. I started just running instances over and over in the Outlands while doing old world quests on my rogue to get the gear. When I hit 64 started questing in the Outlands quickly doing all the quests solo.

Plus once you hit 70 that leaves a lot of outland quests worth decent $$

yeah, generally, if you can get a decent number of instance groups on your way up, you should be able to hit 70 on just Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, and some chunks of Terrokar and Nagrand (with maybe one or two of the good chain quests in SMV or Netherstorm).

I have 3 70's and each one has managed to pretty much completely ignore Blades Edge, Netherstorm, SMV and a good chunk of Nagrand, which makes for a HUGE chunk of change when you come there at 70.

Another thing i would reccomend is that you chose a side (aldor or scryer) and spend a level farming your low level marks / signets early on.  Main reason for this is you get both Aldor / Scryer rep AND Shatar rep for turning them in up to the rep cap for the low level ones.

Yes, I wish I had done this on all my alts.  I'm on my fourth and will do this.  I did the same thing for Cent rep.  Saved up all the plant parts from other alts, etc. and got to honored with those alone.  Now all the quests will get me to revered, no problem.  I'm doing the same with Spore rep.

Me too!

Hellfire Ramparts to Friendly, then quests.  Bog lords to neutral with sporregar and enough plant parts for friendly with CE.  Then all Z-marsh CE quests, with enough Sporeggar ones to get me where I wanted to be (friendly).  Cabalists in Bone Wastes to Honored with Aldor (and friendly with Sha'tar).

I'm 70 now with 95% of Nagrand and all of BEM, SMV and Netherstorm ahead of me.

Edit: also, I didn't do the 60 Azeroth quests until 62 or so. I wish I had now.  I especially like Silithus.  It's very fleshed out considering that 75% of level 60s spent a few months there before the expansion.  It's eerily empty though.  The Plaguelands seemed more populated.

Silithus is very empty on Venture Co also.  I can't really blame people for avoiding it though.  Some of the quests there are downright stupid.  Collect 4 sets of an outfit that drops in single pieces in an uncommon fashion.  God, I HATE quests that eat up my bag space.  It makes me stabby. 

Yeah, lore-wise Sithilus is nice, but everything else is just annoying.  There is a lot of travelling.  The insects are just not fun to fight even though they are now all normal instead of elite.  The insects typically drop zero loot too.  I'd at least want to get some vendor trash to sell...  The trash stuff and number of drops from EPL is much much better.  Also, if you are a miner, the veins are much easier to get to.  The ones in Sithilus are buried inside hives! (Mostly)

Plus, most of the higher quests are associated with the 20-man and 40-man instances there.  Fail.

Never even knew it existed till now and looking it up on wowwiki.  :ye_gods:

Played from 2004 and quit raiding/game just after Onyxia (picked up the game again late 2005).

Sithilus is horrible. Land of Mobs with Knockback and charge.

Yes.  Silithus can eat a dick.  My least favorite zone of all of them probably.

Sil suffers horribly from being fleshed-out at a time when people were bored and clamoring for 'something to do' other than running Scholo/ Strath/ UBRS for the 150th time. So, Blizz gave them 'something to do' that took an ass ton of time.  Unfortunatly they haven't fixed that since it was first developed.

Sithilus suffers horribly from being horrible. The End.

Those are just some of the most annoying old world mobs ever created. You could cut down the time requirements 10 fold and it would still be horrible. You can't go anywhere in that zone without some random mob charging you from 50 feet away around a giant crystal into another pack of 5 of the very same mob, so you get sling shotted back and forth for a minute straight while you try to do ANYTHING that resembles actually playing your character.

To add insult to injury, Sithilus was supposed to be the 'pvp' zone of the old world. lolsand etc  :oh_i_see:


Just say no to Sithilus!

Wow, I really kicked an anthill here!

Go Silithus!

On the horde side, I did Dustwallow Marsh/(whatever the gadget city is there) quests yesterday. Very well written, and fun. Like, actual fun.  :awesome_for_real:

Granted, it was somewhat empty, but it was more fun than I was having in STV.

Silithus always was and always will be complete bollocks. When the game was launched the mobs had no loot table. You could kill as many as you want and  never get a drop nor skin a corpse. The original concept was for there to be one legendary random zone-wide drop with a one in some fucking huge number chance of dropping. This random drop would unlock the gates to the instances and make the person who got it a server famous wunderkind. I presume that in an attempt to ensure that the legendary key didn't drop before they had coded thing, they turned off loot for the whole zone. At some point in time they changed their mind on how to open the gates - perhaps they considered what would happen if somebody got the key to the instance and tried to eBay the account or hold the server ransom - and decided to turn on some loot. For about three mobs. The rest remained barren until they essentially superimposed a brand new zone in the area. The new Silithus was based around a fucking miserable server-wide grind to open the gates along with personal grinds for reputation to enable access to loot associated with the instances. And the instances sucked too. Well, the 40 man instance completely sucked, the 20 man instance had a little amusement value for the first run or two. I was astonished that they made a raid instance more mind numbingly boring than Molten Chore and a reputation grind more painful than the Thorium Brotherhood. But they did. A low point in WoW's history.

I would say nuke it from orbit, but from the looks of the place, it's already been done.

Well, it is a bug hunt.  :oh_i_see:

Talking about all the past issues that WoW has gone through, I do have to compliment Blizzard on learning from their mistakes.  They do seem to come out with better plans at each major release.  The ironic thing about it is that is it really just seems like they gave up on the old MMO mantra of making the game painfully hard to keep subscriptions and just worked on the things people were asking for in the first place.  I think they made this turn around the time of the Q20/Q40 debacle. (See Righ's good description.)  They still had some notion of the cockblock for Naxx, but I didn't say they were fast learners!  It almost fully clicked for TBC, but didn't come to full maturity until they dropped all the crazy rep/heroic/etc. requirements to even enter certain places/content.  With their latest change for probably the quickest lvl'ing in the industry to get people to where everyone knows they want to be is yet another example of finally understanding the customer.

I'm still amazed so many other MMO's continue to water down their games to keep the mud nice and thick so players can't move very fast.  They do this right in the face of the majority of their own customers telling them not to do that.

There are lots of examples of this, but recently one came back into popular view/debate.  Shadowbane is hitting the reset button, but there has still been no word as to whether they will do what their customers have been asking since forever.  Eliminate the PvE game.  It stinks and just gets afk-powerleveled through.  Why even have it?  Give your customers what they want and have full on PvP from day one.  WoW has shown that if you listen and adapt, your customers WILL reward you.  All the rest have shown that if you ignore your customers and continue to hold to "The Vision," your customers will abandon you.

Well-said. 

AQ40 would have been fine without the incessant trash that was harder than the first 4 bosses. C'Thun is still the most well designed encounter (once they tuned it right) as far as interesting and fun I have done in the game. But spending 45 minutes from entrance to killing the twin emps, then having to spend an hour to get from the Twin Emps to Ouro/C'thun killing what is, without a doubt, the worst trash in history. The anubisaths post Huhuran were bad enough given that they were harder than all the previous bosses combined, but at least there were only 5 of them. 12 packs of suck, followed by 3 sets of anubisaths on PCP was anti-fun.

The biggest reason I think most times silithus is a wasteland now is not that the quests aren't good, or that the mobs knockback (which they changed in the first CC rep patch to a stun, no more getting shot across the zone while on your mount). It is the reason I never will enter silithus on my shaman. We all spent WAY too much time there. I spent the better part of 6 months in silithus grinding rep/doing AQ, and I know a lot of people felt the same way. When 60 was the level cap, everyone did silithus because the quests were all 6-10g a pop after they did the XP-Gold conversion.

With the levelling speed change, I did not have to do a single quest in Silithus or Plaguelands and still had quests leftover in Winterspring when I hit 60 and headed to Hellfire.

The one thing about the leveling speed change I feared was the huge jump at 60 in terms of how much it takes to level, but then I started doing quests and realized how much LESS grindy outlands as a whole feels. Zangarmarsh is bad, but it is still better than grinding bugs in silithus.

OMG OUTLAND.  Jesus, people haven't been kidding about the INSANE loot.  Kill ten foozles, have an item ten times better than anything else you could have been using at this point.  I love it.

Also enjoy your ding-grats every 15 minutes going away, but being replaced by the just shitloads of content. You will not see that shit you saw in old world where you'd run completely out of quests or have to hopscotch around looking for pockets of tolerable quests to get that last ding or two to move onto a more interesting zone. Also enjoy the properly itemized loot that's actually useful, instead of the shit greens with randomly applied stats.

Be sure to do Ramparts/BF, they're rather fun IMO.

To give you an idea of how generous those Outland reward items seemed on release, they are equivalent to uber raid loot in the original WoW. People spent up to two years of dedicated raiding getting equipped like that, then it was mostly superseded by solo levelling rewards for levels 61-70. There are differing opinions on the merits of Blizzard doing that.

Once again: If you're raiding just for the lewtz, you're retarded.    :grin:

I second doing to the Rampart and Blood Furnace instances while you are there.  I just did Ramparts for my Druid and actually tanked it.  That was all kinds of fun.

I've recently figured out that I just can't stand 25 person + instances.  I have to agree that if you don't like that kind of thing, but go just for a shot at getting some of the lewtz, you are crazy.  I just can't stand standing around waiting for everyone to get together.  Then stand around waiting for everyone to pass out potions.  Then stand around waiting for the buffs to get done.  Then stand around listening to how we are going to kill a boss encounter.  Then have somebody drop connection or say they have to go to bed and then get a replacement.  Then repeat through the buffing and potions again once somebody is summoned.  Then you wipe.  Then you wipe.  Then you wipe.  Finally you go to sleep without getting a single drop and a 20+ gold repair bill.

That is not anywhere even close to fun for me.  Nothing about it is.

10 person raids is really perfect for me.  Sure you have some of the above, but only about 5% of it.  It keeps a game being a game.  PLUS PLUS, you get badges whether a lewt dropped for you or not.

The 10 mans, even ZA, I love to death.  Somehow, even learning the new encounters on those isn't that bad.  But slogging through 25 mans is decidedly Not As Fun at all.  And my guild's probably about to stop the regular ZA runs to add another night of Serpentshrine. 

I agree.  It's a wee bit of a shame though, since I'd quite like to see the content and some of my characters are ready for it, but there's just no way I'm doing the raiding thing again.  Not over 10 man.

I just want to comment (based on the topic of this thread) that I had forgotten how painful level 66 is.  I finished everything I could solo in Terrokar and am doing the safari grinds in Nagrand.  Kill 30 of three different mobs.  Kill 30 of three different mobs of tier 2.  Kill 30 of 3 different mobs of tier 3.  Kill 3 mob bosses.  Hello Grindfest!

Er, you're doing it wrong.

Get your ass to Bladesedge.

Seriously, there's 66 quests all over the shop.  Don't be stuck in this 'Got to Catch Em All' mindset.

I really hated Bladesedge the two times I did it as an alliance.  Is it really that much better as Hoarde?

I think there is only two tiers of mobs before the bosses. The third tier of mobs aren't in that quest line, though you do have to get a drop each from the birds & clefthooves on the Auchindoun quest line.

Unless you're a hunter who also skins, those quests of Annihilation blow chunks.

Horde has a lot of stuff in Bladesedge.  Can't comment if it's 'better' than alliance...

I do skin which has made the kill 30 somewhat bearable.  I'll head over to Bladesedge when I get tired of the animal/elemental grind in Nagrand.  For some reason, I always preferred the layout of Nagrand better.  I think that's what helps me cope with the grindy nature of the quest loops better.

The Mag'har, Murkblood and Altruis quests are fun though (apart from the miserable 'kill 40 ogres' one) particularly because of the lore involved. And doing them all does open up the awesome Thrall line. Blade's Edge has some decent quests, but also some very annoying ones. It also has more early 'get a PUG son' cockblocks.

I'm in love with Nagrand.  In my opinion the zone is the most beautiful in the game.  Kill 30 foozles does sort of suck though.  Hemet has picked up a grind complex in his old age.

So, due to some grinding and instances, I hit 70 with all of BEM, Netherstorm and SMV untouched.  I just did the Ogri'la unlock questline, and now all the ogres in the ravine are neutral to me! (Apparently, I'm the new king).  Does that mean that I can't do any of the quests that require me to kill ogres?

Incidentally, the Ogri'la and Skyguard quests are a hell of a lot of fun.  The bombing runs are actually sort of difficult, a new concept for WoW.  I almost feel safe going prot and just doing the bombing runs and nether ray wrangling for my dailies.

Nope, you can still kill them.  I've even heard some of them say something along the lines of "It honor to die at hand of king" when you kill them.  :grin:

It makes doing the Gruul's Lair/ Baron Sablemane quests MUCH easier if you can hold-off until after you've gotten the Ogri'la stuff done. Not having to worry about an elite add is  :heart: :heart:

I swear that you guys are speaking a foreign language.  I'm going to do as much in terrokar and Nagrand as I can.  The netherworld was never a favorite of mine.

I only do the bombing runs for my dailies.  It is fun, quick, and pays enough to keep up with any amount of other stuff I need.  Of course, having an elite flying mount make it oh so much easier.  I'm just starting the Netherwing quests and so far, they seem more like a grind than the others.  I lost interest several days ago and have not gone back there yet.

netherwing is a bit grindy if you do those stupid Poison Peon quests, and they TERRIBLE Kill X Flayers / Ravagers quest in the mines (at friendly i believe).  Whoever decided that you should kill 15 flayers and 5 ravagers, yet put 200x more flayers then ravagers in the mines deserves to be shot.

However, The booterang is still the single most awesome daily i have yet done.

Which part of "there are different opinions on the merits of Blizzard doing this" failed to cover your different opinion? You just couldn't help yourself.

I played to equip my guild, so my guild can go further in the game, which is fun. Portraying that as selfishness is bizarre.

seeing "Work is Da Poop!" on your screen right as you whallop a peon with the booterang still makes me chuckle.

and using this simple macro:

/tar Disobedient
/use Booterang

as you fly around rocks, you don't have to stop moving and it will whack people before you can see them on your screen.


The mine cart quest is 19g and you don't really have to kill anything which is good for non speed farming classes.

Wasn't a shot at you, stop being so paranoid.  The folks complaining loudest about the soft reset are the ones who want to be uber 4-evr.  Does that fit you, because I sure didn't think it did.  Your position also seems to presume I don't raid, when I'm one of the few here besides yourself whose seen beyond Kara.  :-P  I do it for the encounters, not the lewtz. Thus, my above quote. 


Shhh.  You'd be surprised how many folks haven't figured that out... I see them hovering over peons as I whizz by and I feel somewhat guilty, knowing they're trying to find their booterang/ target the peon.

No one here plays on my realm, so I am spreading the wealth as it does not impinge on my booterangin' :)

Can I just say something?



WoW is pretty sweet.  I played when it first came out, quit for a super long time, and now I'm back.  All I do is Battlegrounds and Arenas.  If you like PvP and MMO's, I say it's the best game out there.  You can strictly PvP and get gear good enough to compete with anyone in the game (at PvP).  My 2v2 rating is getting pretty solid. 

If you had said PvE, I'd agree.  The PvP game is pretty badly broken with regard to cc, class balance, etc.  It's tolerable, but there are better options.

Like what? 

For PvP I still believe that both Planetside and DAoC are better games.  PotBS may also be worth a shot.  Of course, that's my opinion.

I think WoW has some pretty fucking deep PvP.  I'm pretty into it though, and you need to have really good PvP gear to compete.  My ratings aren't amazing, but they're respectable, above 1700.  I'm not sure why people don't think WoW PvP isn't good.  I have a feeling (I'm not specifically leveling this criticism at you) that a lot of people who say that are extremely casual who arena and BG in the finest of rgeens and just get tossed.  When your gear is that inferior, even if you're using the "right" strategy, it'll seem very, very wrong.  Although to be fair, I haven't played DAoC in awhile.  So maybe I'm missing out.  But I have a feeling, that at least for me, WoW is the sweet spot.

My arena teams are also in the 1700-1800 range [3v3 as spriest-warlock-rshaman, not really cookiecutter either :P] and I personally enjoyed COV's pvp more than WOW.

Too many hard counters / cookie cutters / balance issues, gear IS a huge divide between "pwns and pwn-nots" (in case of SR gear, you need to be a BT raider or you're SOL, ditto with holy pallies), the arena system is currently broken in at least four different ways (win traders, SR, personal rating tankers, point sellers with full s3 gear in the 1600s). BGs and world pvp are broken in more than four ways (racials, unfair maps, gear matching STILL not working, WSGs that never end), etcetera.

WOW pvp was added as an afterthought and it shows. It's a fun diversion (especially BGs to let off some steam), but I have more fun PVEing with friends, honestly. (even though my full s2/s3 geared warrior can 2-shot most of the green-geared people in BGs... yeah, that's fun for them. I think.) World pvp? Sounds fun in theory, but it's always some asshat 70 NE / undead rogue (depending on faction) ganking in a lowbie city, then running away once a level 70 shows up. The actual 'world pvp objectives' are just used for their pve benefits, if that.


-- Z.

Because we play on a PvP server where the only "strategy" is someone 10+ levels above you running by you and one-shotting you or multiple 70's escorting a high 60's character around deciding to blow you away and camp your corpse so their buddy can get all of his quests done in relative safety in the zone.  You can't fight back against that except to run away.

I play on a PvP server and the number of times that has happened to my character from 1-63 I can count on both hands.  On the other hand, there's been a TON of times I've had little skirmishes here and there with characters close to my level.

As for the 60+ game, if you're on a PvP server, just group up.. seriously, people who complain that a group of people on a PvP server killed them baffle me. 

I lack the experience that you have, but I can see all of these issues clearly after my 5+ years in a game built for PvP.  

QFT

Just group up?  You do realize that this isn't always possible for adults with busy lives and random play schedules, right?

I'm personally becoming less annoyed by the gankers and more annoyed by the mechanics that Z has posted above.  PvP in this game is all about what class you are and what gear you have.  The only time skill plays a role is when the first two are equal, which is almost never.   I do take some solace in the fact that I'm able to beat some people that should be destroying me, but those opportunities for 1v1 are rare rare rare.

You do realize that ANY system that allows world-based PvP is going to have a power differential between people who group and people who don't, right?  It's just MATH.  If you don't like the idea that you might need to group in order to quest in a PvP enabled area, then perhaps PvP just isn't for you? 

Complaining that 6 people can kill a single opponent in PvP is just bizarre.  Of COURSE they can.  It's like when people would complain about "zergs" in DAOC, as if military strategists don't consider overwhelming numbers to be a tactical ace in the hole in most situations.

What class you are matters because some classes are CLEARLY intended to be played in a group.  If you have a character that does limited DPS, has low survivability and heals others a lot, then perhaps soloing this character in a PvP environment would be unwise? 

What gear you have matters because any time you have a game element that improves your character, you're going to have disparity between the haves and have-nots.  What solution would you propose?  Either you're going to have everyone at an even power level from day 1 to the day they quit (which, while it may be refreshing in the short term, wouldn't please a lot of people) or you're going to have power level issues.



Let me ask you this, would you prefer if every item/spell/ability didn't affect the damage you did or took?   Because that's what it would take to eliminate the issues you are talking about.

Val,

I wasn't commenting on anything but your solution.  So preach to another choir.

Were WoW to be more PvP focused, you'd see a shallower curve in terms of both power gains and ability to acquire gear.  You'd also see better assignment of things like stealth, cc, etc.  Some classes have an abundance of PvP goodies while some have almost none.  This isn't well thought out for a PvP environment. 

Bunch of straw men in your post, but let me jump on this point, because its wrong and its important.

Items can add to a character's power and abilities without creating a situation where gear is grossly out of control such as in WoW. If 90% of your character's powers and attributes comes from design choices you make and 10% comes from equipment, you'll have a better balanced game than if 30% comes from your level, 10% comes from talents and the rest comes from equipment, which is more akin to the balance WoW has. You don't need to make every item or ability decorative, but reducing the gap between haves and have-nots will go a long way towards making for more competitive PvP.

MMORPGs always provide an uneven PvP game. However, the fact that WoW is one of the most extremely unbalanced loot-oriented MMORPGs makes its PvP similarly unbalanced.

I'm addressing the very complaints you are making.  This isn't preaching, it's a discussion.

While having a shallow power curve and ability to acquire gear might SOUND good, what you are asking is for people to spend more time for smaller incremental improvements to their character.  If the power differential between a starting character and a "fully developed" one is small enough, then you're going to frustrate a LOT of people.

Suppose the starting character's power is represented by 1.  An ending character can be 20, 5, or even 1.2, but if the power difference is as small as 1 to 1.2, then the entire span of the game from beginning to end is going to either be REALLY short (as in, the starting character can go ahead and fight stuff that would challenge the end player and quickly step up to 1.2 power himself) or you'll have to put artificial time limits on when a character can engage such opponents.  

As for grouping, it doesn't matter how weak or powerful you make each character, a group will ALWAYS have a stark power advantage over a solo player, so that doesn't solve the "I can't find a group" problem.  To solve that, you'd need to have some sort of hard coded system that not only prevented multiple characters from attaking a single player, but would also have to eliminate any effect they could grant to either player in any way.

Dude. Nebu said he couldn't always group up. He didn't add "so fix the PvP so that people can't gang up on me", so arguing against that imaginary position repeatedly is really fucking stupid.

Please DO point out a straw man in my post, because every point I made was written to address the argument in question.  


All this is saying is that if you make a game where power level doesn't increase with time (or increases so slowly as to be virtually unnoticeable) that the game will be more even with regards to PvP.  No kidding, I never claimed it wouldn't (speaking of straw men!).  

I am addressing the vast majority of games where you have persistent attributes (and gear counts as an attribute) that increases your character's power level and take time/effort to acquire.  If the game is long enough, and each one of those attributes increases the power level of your character, then you're going to have a disparity.  That you can eliminate all that is all fine and good, but then you eliminate a lot of what makes people play the game in the first place.


Can you name another PvP MMORPG where loot and level has a lesser effect than in WoW?

Man, I'm the resident carebear and even I didn't find my WoW PVP server too unbearable.  So you get ganked.  It's not like you lose anything.  Just roll with it, and get your shots in where you can.

EDIT:

Old-timey UO, the kind that annoyed me and earned the eternal lunatic love of some others around here.  Any remotely developed character had the same HP and armor as any other.

I said that's the only way you could make a game such that a soloer has a chance against a group of people in PvP.  I didn't say that he WANTED that, I said that's the only way he would ever GET that.  He can't group up, I understand that, but that's the breaks when it comes to a PvP environment, and complaing that a group of 70's kill you and camp your body so that their friend can level in peace IS suggesting that such a situation is somehow unfair.  It's not.  

That wasn't MY experience with UO, where every character I made was dead meat without a significant amount of time spent macroing and acquiring gear.

Who did that?


Who asked for a solution? Nebu simply said that it wasn't always practical to implement your kind advice to 'just group up'.

Can't be arsed to follow your SirBrucing, but as for an MMORPG where equipment has less of an effect - pick any one, because WoW is just about the pinnacle of loot-oriented disparity. Example: Lineage. Notice that I didn't mention levels, that's a twist of the argument of your own making.

Numerous people on message boards.  Not him specifically, otherwise I would have said "You complaining that 6 people can kill a single opponeny in PvP".  It's a COMMON complaint in world PvP, just look at all the complaints about zergs in DAOC (they took up most of the message boards I frequented when I played it).


That's asking if he HAS a solution, not saying he DOES.  That's hardly a straw man when he was complaining about WoW's world PvP. 


Levels and loot are equivalent.  Both are obtainable by time investment and both improve the power level of your character.  The only distinction between the two is cosmetic.

As for Sir Brucing (which is as stupid a complaint as I have EVER heard on this board) if you'd rather I simply make my points without referring to the original post for reference, so be it.  It just makes it more difficult to follow.


The sooner people learn to deal with the fact that any game with acquisition of power through time invested coupled with PvP will have the same power level disparity problems, the better.


EDIT:

I must apologize here, because I confused Nebu and Selby's post.  Yes, Nebu was only talking about the ability to group, so please ignore the other comments which SHOULD have been directed to Selby and not Nebu.

It's not about being cosmically fair, it's about being fun and others having fun at your expense. A duel of the type Nebu is mentioning is to 90% (by class/gear/talents) determined already before it starts in WoW. As such you can be sure to always win and never take a risk. It's like starting a game of Quake with the rocket launcher.

It's just a simple question of sportsmanship and that is something that will never, ever work on the Internet unless you got set rules to constrain unsportsmanlike behaviour.

They are not. Levels are finite. With gear, sky is the limit. They would be equivalent if they added another five levels every content patch, but they don't.

Planetside is the "canonical" example of this.  It's not all that persistent is the downside.  However I have often thought that they could increase the persistence without touching anything combat-related.

Gear is as finite as levels are.  Yes, you are right in that the only difference is how often each is added into the game.  However, that's a fairly meaningless distinction since all it means is that you need to devote time to getting gear more often than you need to devote time to getting levels, and the PvP reward items are by all accounts sufficient to compete in PvP.  

Edit:
And I agree that many PvP matches start with the victor already known.  I just don't think that WoW is unique or even notably guilty in this regard.  DAOC is often heralded as a superior PvP alternative, but I can remember the exact same issues there.

Yep.  The only way Planetside has managed to dodge that trap is by removing it and placing diversity in the role of power differential. 

However, isn't Planetside PvP only?  There's no improving your character doing quests, if I'm not mistaken..

The quest mechanic isn't there (as far as I know, been a long time) but you can improve your character.  As you gain "ranks" or levels, you can do more stuff at the same time.  You start off as a grunt, but then later you can be a grunt or drive tanks, then later you can be a grunt, drive tanks, and drive an ATV.  Later, you can gain leadership levels, where you can see more of the battlefield and communicate more widely.

That allows there to be advancement without really growing in power.  I don't think it would fit the WoW diku model very well, but I'm just answering your request to provide an example of an MMOG that doesn't have the power differential problem.

Yeah, although I already pointed out that you can solve all these problems by entirely removing the systems that make these MMO's compelling PvE experiences.  That's what Planetside does, as far as I can tell.

Your HP was equal to your strength, and anyone could max out their strength in a couple weeks of playing.  Or fifteen minutes if they knew the see-saw trick.  And everyone ran around in non-magical crafted gear 99% of the time.  The magic items that were  around weren't even THAT powerful.

The power curve was incredibly shallow in old UO compared to any diku, much less WoW, and to try and argue otherwise just makes you a motherfucking obvious liar.

While UO did have a fairly shallow curve, it took macro'ing to get to a competent level fast.  The standard, play the game "right" method, took a very very long time.  I should know.  I did it the "right" way and didn't get my magery to 100 until they actually increased the caps. (I think it was 3-4 years?)

Yes, your attributes (str, int, dex) all got capped quickly, but those things didn't make you a killer/survivor at all.  A miner with 100 HPs would last exactly 1.2 seconds against a fully decked miner-pk.  Attributes in early UO didn't make your character, they were just icing on the cake.

Yes, the weapons and armor back in the day were all crafted GM and easily obtained.  However, it was a full looting system.  Meaning, when you died, you ressed with absolutely nothing in your pack.  NOTHING.  You had to go to your bank or home to get re-equipped with every single death.  Ok, you got lucky once in awhile and the killer/s didn't have time to loot your body.  That was very very rare.  Hell even the NPC Mobs in PvE in that game looted your body!  "DAMN!  I had a bag of 80 of each reagents and it is GONE!"

A mage without reagents wasn't a mage.  A warrior without armor or weapon wasn't a warrior.  Upon resurrection in old school UO, you were dead meat.  It had the ultimate in rez camping and truly coined the phrase.

In these newer games, your equipment is your character.  It is just another extension of who you are because they can never be lost.  You are just as dangerous going into death as you are coming back from it.  We can rail against item-centric systems, but, in my opinion, if there is no body looting or degradation of items, items are just another metric of advancement much like skill or levels.  You can bury advancement of your character in any of those three places, but it really all ends up the same.

There will always be the haves and the have-nots regardless of how you design your system in a game with persistence.  If you want a game that doesn't, there are FPS games as mentioned.

1) Gear plays a larger role in pvp outcome in WoW than any other MMO I've ever played.  Since the classic servers have arrived, I could go into RvR with crafted gear and 1 or 2 drops on about any class in DAoC and be comeptitive (not to mention I could do the above in less than 24h played).  Did I always win, no.  I could compete.  Being two-shot by someone of my level ENTIRELY due to their gear/class/spec seems like a pvp design flaw.  Especially in a game with so few classes to choose from. 

2) Too many classes with stun.  Stun does not belong in a PvP game PERIOD.  Why?  Do you enjoy being pounded on while unable to act?  I hated this about DAoC, I hate it here.  I'd expect Blizzard to learn from the past.

3) Levels and numbers define PvP in MMO's.  I have no real issue with that.  What I do have issue with is the fact that Blizzard HAD NO FORETHOUGHT in allowing level 70 characters to roam PvP servers ganking any gray they see without mercy nor hesitation.  There are MANY mechanisms that they could have used to discourage this practice yet they did nothing. 

4) The game suffers from an overabundance of CC and too few ways to remove it.  DAoC compensated for this with cure mez, cure nearsight, etc. as well as shorter purge timers.  WoW needs to give players a larger variety of means to break CC.  Also, see the whole stun thing. 

Z also brought up many other pvp flaws which I think fill the gaps that I have missed. 

3... I've never understood why people people on PvP servers complain about getting ganked by higher levels. If that sort of thing bothers you then why play on one?

This doesn't really require an answer, does it?  I think you're smart enough to figure it out.

I can only speak from my experience, oh.. and "Corp Por! Corp Por!".  So if you didn't have the right KIND of character, you were dead meat as well.  Same cookie cutter complaint there as well. 

Was the power curve different?  Probably, though it certainly didn't seem to make much difference to the characters I played, who were killed seconds into any PvP battle regardless of how much strength or what training I did.  Why?  Because I didn't get the "RIGHT" build.  So.. same as it ever was.

The real question is: Why is Righ being such a fucking asshole in this thread?  Rage on bro, rage on.

Pardon? What's your problem douchematic?

Righ called me out (and rightly so) for assuming that nebu was complaining about being ganked by a group, when in actuality it was implied by someone else.

I hope that I cleared up my opinions a bit.  I'm partly to blame as well. 

You think I was honestly complaining about 6 people being able to kill 1 and that being unfair?  Hardly.  I was merely pointing out the way PvP works.  You either are higher level than those you attack or you have greater numbers than those you attack.  For those of us who have a class that can't compete in PvP, we just get to lay down and die and roll with it.  Hell, if getting ganked made me so angry I wouldn't have made it almost to 60 on a PvP server. 

Every class can compete in PvP, with the right spec and gear.  Although, as was pointed out above (Val? Can't remember) there are a lot of hard counters, such as warrior vs. rogue.

I don't know about that.  I have been killed by every class, with ease, on all my characters.  Some of them were geared.

My suckiness proves that WoW PvP isn't all gear!

lol

My god I forgot how grindy Nagrand is.

And it reminds me why I never could level alts.

But at least it is good XP, and since I know where all the quest mobs are now, I can do laps around the zone just killing foozles for quests and handing in when I get to that point of said lap.

Shaman is halfway through 67 and I still haven't finished the second tier of Nesingwary hell, so I should be easily into 68 before heading to BEM, and my goal of total lvl 70 fast flying mount domination of SMV/Netherstorm quests will be fulfilled.

Of course, except that there are classes where every spec is good in all sorts of pvp (warlock, rogue), there are classes where pve specs are disadvantaged in some aspects ie. arena, but you can still pwn people (fire mage, BM hunter, enh shaman, feral druid, fury warrior) and there are classes where you're completely boned if you spec for pve (prot warrior, pve holy priest, prot paladin -- duels against melee classes outside IF/org don't count, sorry :p). That's not good design. In general, some classes are very good for ganking / not getting ganked while leveling (rogues, warlocks, hunters, druids, spriests), others get victimized (pallies of all specs, warriors, enh shaman [from range], anything that's a healer...), some are inbetween. And that's without even touching racials (wotf, warstomp, escape artist, arcane torrent, stoneform are the 'turn a loss into a win' ones in roughly this order)

There shouldn't be "a right spec" for half of the classes while some others can choose whatever they want and pwn. Stuff like MS should be baseline, priest trees should be holydps/shadowdps/healing with baseline pain suppression, not "pvp tree lol"/shadowdps/healing, etc. (everyone getting iceblock is a step in the right direction, but obviously frost mages are still going to be dominant)

Classes aren't equally gear-dependent either. Warriors obviously need lots of gear (epics+) to be competitive, while shadowpriests and frostmages can be effective in greens. Of course everyone needs resil in arena, but I'm talking about general pvp here. Also, getting the gear is an unnecessary grind (getting ~200k honor points on alliance side for a full s1 set + accessories? ow.). I don't think anyone is calling for all the participants to be tricked out in full s3 the moment they hit 70, but what'd be so wrong about giving people the option to play in full s1 / BG gear in battlegrounds and arenas if they want to [they could use superior pieces of gear in any of the slots at their discretion]?

Anyway, WOW is a PVE game. PVP was added as a diversion / afterthought, and it shows.

(I also like how you completely ignored my post on the previous page about the flaws of WOW's "perfect" pvp system, especially arenas which are supposed to be the pinnacle of WOW pvp.  :awesome_for_real:)



-- Z.

Yeah, and WoW has ten million subscribers, mainly due to the strength of their PvE game, whereas DAoC couldn't even do better than Verant-era EQ and is now rapidly closing on Vanguard-level subs. Do you think the two are connected, perhaps?

There is a grand total of one class - the rogue - that has the combination of stuns & DPS that can stunlock someone down to death, and that class has virtually no ranged attack ability and otherwise poor CC (ranged snare that needs thrown weapon (i.e. can miss) and a combo point, longest duration stun cannot be used in combat, etc). All it takes is for an opponent to resist one stun (or trinket out, or whatever), and the rogue loses the fight either through the opponent escaping, or even via the rogue getting killed.

Comparing that to Stungard is hyperbole...at best.

Please list some of these mechanisms that don't have worse drawbacks than making the gankee have a ten second corpse run.

Earlier on you were complaining about getting two-shot, and now you want to remove CC. Anyone else see the logical disconnect here?

My belief is that Blizzard took the approach of placing advancement into the items, not the characters.  That way, they can control balance and advancement without affecting the core systems wrapped up in class development.  I tend to like that system better due to the flexibility.  A player can choose to just get to level 70 and do crafting, dailies, material collection/selling, etc. and never step foot into an instance.  Or they can choose to drive towards having the best equipment they can get.  Or they can choose to be somewhere in between. 

Then, once the next expansion comes out and raises the cap to 80, everyone has a new goal to reach and mess around with.  The ultra casual players can continue to casually climb that lvl ladder.  The ultra hardcore can look forward to bigger and better items to be lvl 80+++. 

While it has a lot of downfalls, for a game that is appealing to the masses, it seems to work.


Completely completely agree!  I've written my own complaints on this.  I do believe they should limit this a ton more than it is today.  I don't mind having some stuns in the game but they should be:

1. short (3 seconds or less)
2. long cooldown (30 seconds or more)
3. unable to be done in long strings (a character can't be stunned for 10 second after being stunned.)


No comment.  I do not play PvP servers for this very reason.  I like to choose when I PvP.  Persistent PvP is exciting and thrilling, but I got enough of that in UO and SB.  I love PvP, but not 24/7.


Agreed.  See also my comments on item 2.

No, I don't. Explain to me why you think that having a greater disparity between geared and ungeared people in PvP is the primary reason for WoW's sales, because that's what you just implied. Honestly, that was just a grotesque fanboy answer worthy of the official forums.

Don't like something about WoW? Well fuck you, it sells more than any other MMORPG, so you must be wrong.  :awesome_for_real:

Apparently Simond thinks that WoW pvp is perfect.  He has a right to his opinion, but I'd hope he could at least be a little bit more objective in his analysis.  Simply telling someone they are wrong in a rude and mocking way does little to make his point convincingly.  I also mentioned nothing of "stungard".  Think about the mechanics in DAoC.  Stungard ceased to exist about 4-5 years ago. 

The key point you're missing Simond is that most PvP enthusiasts believe that PvP should be skill driven rather than gear driven.  I don't really care how many people have WoW subscriptions.  I still believe that the fun in PvP comes from beating a competitor with skill rather than because I have better gear.  The opportunities for skill to be the determining factor are quite limited to cases where the gear difference is small.  I'd say that this only happens among the game's elite players in very restricted conditions (arenas).  I'd like the opportunity for skill to matter over a wider array of conditions.  Perhaps you can convince me of why my beliefs are wrong with something other than "WoW has 10 millions subscribers"?

Second, stun has no place in PvP.  Druids, rogues, warriors, and paladins have stun.  Many of which can get me to near half health BEFORE I'M ABLE TO DO ANYTHING.  I'm glad that you enjoy this.  I don't.  All cc needs to break on damage in a PvP world. 

I'd further comment on how stealth is poorly implemented in every pvp game and really should have no use beyond reconaissance, but that may be too much to bring up in one post.  Initiative is one of the most difficult things to balance in a game.  Stealth grants initiative.

Well, that's kinda the way the universe works with regard to competition.  If you have superior numbers and/or superior equipment, you tend to win most of the time.  That is, if you consider winning "killing the opponent".

I thought the point of gaming was to escape the confines of reality as a distraction?  Especially in a world of orcs, elves, and magic. 

When you beat an opponent, would you rather know that it was because you had superior gear or superior skill?  It takes almost no skill to acquire gear, so I personally tend toward the latter.  Of course, it seems obvious that my opinion is quite different from the norm here.

You can't escape the realities of math, my friend.  If you have a power differential, the one with the higher power is more likely to win.  That power differential can come from either superior numbers, superior equipment, or superior tactics.  But there is no tactician in the world that wouldn't take superior numbers/equipment if given the chance.


No, I agree that it is more satisfying to compete on an even playing field.  I just think that such a thing is not ever going to happen in a game with persistent attributes that improve your avatar. 

The only way to get away from the cold, hard realities about math and the world is to change the world in such a way that it often breaks suspension of disbelief.  These games already do that to some degree (20+ hits with a sword to disable someone?) but at some level, you have to make a brief nod towards realism. 

There are 3 main ways of providing advancement in PvP that are being used or have been used in the past for MMOs.

1.  WoW style:  Reward PvP activity with items.  Said items improve ability to PvP.  More and better PvP advances you up in your effectiveness in PvP all through items.  There is some ranking involved in the Arenas, but it is still really tied right back to your equipment too.  Better equipment typically means you better be getting better personal scores too. (or you suck.)

2.  Ladders:  The players are left to their own devices to get the advantages they need to succeed.  Those aren't provided by the PvP system itself.  The PvP system only records your progress and success and displays it for bragging rights.

3.  Fluff:  Success in PvP  is rewarded with items, status, etc. unrelated to the ability to PvP better.  These are typically just for bragging rights and could be combined with a ladder system.

What history has told us is that players, in general, approve of style number 1. the most.  It wraps up several things that appeal to the masses into one system:

- Lewt whoriness.  It's all about the shiny.
- Status.  By default the lewtz gives you immediate and recognizable status.
- Fluff. Some items are fluff like the tabards or flying mounts.  
- Casual appeal.  Anyone can go in and dabble with BG's or even Arenas and get some points to build up.  If they dabble long enough they get some shinies.  Hell, I've been doing this and have improved my gear significantly with a few weeks "dabbling" in the BGs.

I understand the whole appeal and desire for REAL PvP.  The type with challenge and based on the ability to twitch response the right buttons at the right times.  Everyone would be at the same level for an even playing ground, etc.

However, that doesn't have mass appeal so a compromise has to be reached to be successful.  In my opinion, WoW has done "ok" at this.  There are a ton of improvements that need to be made and they seem to be slowly doing that.  Are the changes fast enough for my liking?  Nope.  Will I continue to play?  Yep.

Thank you.  I think this is the most rational and objective statement I've found on the matter. 

Val: It's easy to make the effects of gear and time shallower from a math sense (log scales vs linear scales for example).  I appreciate what you're trying to say, but also think that you're thinking inside the standard MMO box, if you will.  I believe that it's possible to have fun and rewarding pvp with progression.  Offering gear and skills that offer variety rather than power is an alternative few have attempted.  Someone with green gear should have a chance against someone with top tier gear.  Granted this chance would be significantly less than a 50:50 chance, but they should always be able to compete.  My approach would be that a skilled player should be able to make up a significant portion of the gear gap through gameplay.  Currently, this is difficulty/impossible to achieve due to the huge discrepancy in gear quality. 

The truth is that the standard MMO player prefers to embrace the time = power paradigm because it gives everyone to potential to be powerful given enough of a time investment.  Making skill the default results in a small percentage of players being the most competitive regardless of time. 

Hang on. I was going to agree with that until I thought about it. While its true that it theoretically gives everybody the potential with enough time invested, the reality is that only a tiny subset of players have enough time to hit the 'top tier' which results in the gross PvP disparity that we see. Those players with a lot of time could in most cases invest that time in studying the mechanics and developing their coordination such that they were more skilled in a game that rewarded skill. All you are doing then is punishing the already gifted.

The reason for wide discrepancies between gear and long time investments to obtain the next rung on the ladder comes down to one thing only - monthly subscriptions. Its not about providing a better play experience. Pellet please.

(http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/462/vlcsnap31243rt7.png)

Righ: I think I see what you mean and you're right to a point.  Having been an athlete at a very competitive level I can tell you that there becomes a point where your skill caps and all the time in the world won't help beyond that.  i.e. no matter how much I play FPS, I'll never be able to beat Schild and his roommates.  With the endless gear loop you can always increase gear with an associated time investment making the disparity between skill cap and gear cap recognizeable.  

Does that make sense?  

Or, you know you could apply a modicum of thought. Try to follow along:
1) WoW has a lot of subscribers.
2) Therefore, a lot of people continue to enjoy the game style WoW provides which is, primarily, Achiever-orientated
3) DAoC is more Killer-orientated because, as you yourself said, it's trivial to get a set of gear to put you alongside the top tier of PVPers.
4) This means the Achievers are not as attracted to DAoC as they are to WoW.
5) Given the respective subs rates of WoW & DAoC, significantly more people in the "MMOG player dataset" are in the Achiever mold than the Killer mold (and even the Killers in WoW are probably going to be Killer-Achiever-something or Achiever-Killer-something).
6) Therefore discouraging the Achievers (by nerfing all gear to the same level) to attempt to balance WoW PvP fractionally better would be a Very Bad Thing.

Make sense now?

Best possible stunlock chain for rogues:
Cheap shot (2 seconds, from stealth only, add two combo points)
Probably Sinister strike while stunned for damage + combo point.
Cheap shot is wearing off now, so Kidney Shot for three seconds and try to get another SS or two in and maybe follow up with another KS.

That's 5 seconds of guarenteed stun (from stealth only), and maybe another second after that. Past that, you're relying on long cooldown abilities (vanish->cheap shot), adrenaline rush, thistle tea, mace spec procs (if a combat maces rogue), gouging (where gouge is a fragile stun and has a ten second cooldown), blind (likewise fragile & long cooldown) engineered bombs/grenades, or what have you. To be honest, if you're getting killed by chain-stunning solo rogues they'll probably be able to kill you through pure DPS anyway.

And that's the class with the best stuns.

No CC = either warriors (lots of hp, lots of melee damage) or hunters (instant cast ranged damage) can kill other classes on a whim, while everyone else is fodder. That's not exactly something anyone sane should be wishing for.

I agree with Nebu on this.  Yes, much of what they design strings you along for longer subs, but many games have gone the route of making success depend truly on your personal skill at playing a game.  Those games have not had the mass appeal that diku type games have had (talking MMO's here.)  There are far more people that have no skill or do not want to work at having the skill than those that can just jump into a game and wtfpwnzzor people.

Plus, twitch games where everyone is on the same playing field all the time, no matter what you do have no longevity.  They are fun to play in short little bursts of interests, but play it month to month everyday?  I don't think so.

FPS's have what you are describing yet nobody builds up a business model to supply huge servers with a monthly fee basically because they know it won't work.  Planetside has this, yes.  Do they make money?  Yes.  Are they niche?  Yes.  I have not played it for one reason only, too little depth.  I'm not going to pay a subsciption for a game I KNOW I'm not going to play for more than a month.

Hell, CoH/CoX attempts a middle ground and failed in my opinion.  I so want that game to be good to suck me back in, but the lack of depth and the seemingly lack of advancement versus time played kills it for me.  I have limited time to play games.  I want to feel that the time I spent got me someplace.  This can be player skill along with everything else, but player skill has a cap (as Nebu said,)  you get to a level of expertise that improves very slightly with hours played.  Without anything else feeling like advancement, my experience is faded.

I don't think I'm alone.  In an atmosphere of limited game play, time is king.  If you're time is not treated well by the game, subscriptions will fall.  If the disadvantage to this is the lack of rewards to skilled gameplay, it is acceptable.  TIME is king and non-negotiable.

P.S. Before somebody brings up Old-School UO again.  Back then it WAS about player skill, but even moreso was player's connection speed to the internet.  Again, something I couldn't control and no matter how much time I spent perfectling my character or player skill, I couldn't compete against an enemy blinking around my screen and putting 3 X "Corp Por" in the air at once.

Yes, but why would that matter? People who are skilled beyond the ability of the average punter to train to are a rare breed. Whether they have to get as much gear as you do or not, they'll still beat you - provided that they learn the game mechanics sufficiently. Reducing the number of them that are prepared to compete by putting the gear mountain in place does little to make it "anybody's game". As an old fart with slower reactions than in my youth, I beat people who should be physically more advantaged all the time - because I understand the game mechanics better. That's part of the 'skill' too, and probably a more important part than the physical condition of the player - after all, this is an RPG with cool downs and simplistic controls, not Project Gotham Racing.

I've already pointed out several times that if you remove a steady power progression that you end up with problems in the PvE game.  The only thing keeping level 1 characters from going out and killing onyxia is the power difference.  If you make it sufficiently shallow, then all game content is available from the very beginning.  While I am sure many would love this, it's pretty much been assumed that gating your content is somehow necessary.

I have also said that if you remove the systems that people find compelling in the PvE experience, it is fairly easy to have a "fair" PvP system.

Simond, you're still failing to accept a very simple concept: It's not fun to be in a state of taking damage while being unable to react.  It's a game.  The only person enjoying that exchange is the one dealing the damage.  How am I failing to make this clear?

Second, you're correct on the achiever being popular thing.  I'm not disagreeing.  What I am saying is that achievement and PvP are difficult bedfellows.  I'm not sure how it is that you keep missing this.  As to your points 5) & 6) I agree that it would be a bad thing FINANCIALLY.  It would, however, be a good thing in terms of pure skill-based PvP gameplay, which was the point I was trying to make.  It will never happen, but it would improve the quality of play for those that really enjoy skill based pvp (the minority).

Noone has to convince me why WoW is successful.  More people like ding gratz and slot machine style advancement than they do skill-oriented play.  I get that one loud and clear.  It's why I have so little hope for my gaming enjoyment in future titles.  Kids today want to "Pwn with impunity" rather than enjoy the challenge of facing a competitive situation.  We all are clear on this point.   Since they will alwasy have more free time than I will, I'll just have to accept the fact that my status in any future MMO will be as a second class citizen.  

Simond, my suggestion for limiting stunlocks wasn't for 1v1 battles.  In fact, none of my discussion is based on 1v1.

Also, limiting CC in the game would have to have other adjustments made to the game.  I would think that would be obvious.

Any ability to CC should always allow a character to do something to continue to be viable in a fight.  To provide abilities that completely lock you down from participating in the fight at all is just not fun and gets abused.  It is just that ability that makes some classes and builds true PvP while others are just cannon fodder.

I think we agree then.  WoW is designed based on PvE.  For that it has done a masterful job.  PvP, not so much.

Two people with identical working knowledge of the game mechanics meet.  They are the same class, with the same spec.  The one with the better gear will win 90% of the time.  This is the crux of my point. 

I think it was Nebu that invoked the spectre of twitch. I wasn't really trying to bring FPS and whatnot into this when I mentioned skill. Knowledge of the game mechanics is a learned skill. Think chess, not track and field.

As Valmorian says above, its about gating the content - and its for the purpose of monthly income for the game company, not for our benefit. You can allow people to play on a more even PvP playing field by reducing the gear advantages and/or by limiting the engagements. It is possible to design a non-twitch MMORPG that has gated content and significant character development that allows relative newcomers to compete against long time players and still provide compelling content for those players. WoW just hasn't done spectacularly well in this regard. Other games have done better, but because they don't have 10 million subs, they're shite.  :grin:

I don't want to create the illusion that twitch = skill here.  Righ is correct in stating that there are MANY types of skill that aren't = twitch.  Strategy, knowledge, etc are all skills.

Doesn't that mean that "being able to get better gear" = "skill" as well, though?  :grin:

I understand. What I'm not understanding is why that is more meritorious than the more coordinated, younger, alert one winning 90% of the time. I appreciate that its harder to sell your game to stoners at this point, but frankly the working knowledge part comes into play more often than the sharper reflexes one once you reduce the impact of gear.

In a sense, yes.  I'd suggest that it takes significantly less skill, but it does take a small amount of skill.  The primary component to obtaining gear is really time.  This is why you see fewer players with top tier gear.  There are fewer people with that amount of available time rather than there being a skill requirement as the gatekeeper.

I agree with you 100% here Righ.  I want the person with the most knowledge and the best strategy to win rather than the one with the fastest reflexes.  My point is that even a solid understanding of game mechanics and tactics isn't enough to close the gap in gear given to someone with infinite time to acquire gear. 



Edit: I don't know why I'm even arguing about all of this.  WoW is a good game.  They do many things well.  I guess it's just the frustration of seeing it come so close to what would be an ideal for me and then fall short.  So please don't take any of my ramblings personally. 

Heh.  I actually think that if DAOC was as polished as WoW, I'd still be playing it. 

One thing I do find interesting with regards to PvP in WoW vs. DAOC.. All my experiences soloing in the frontier in DAOC ended in a quick and painful death at the hands of groups every time PvP came around.  In WoW, I've been ganked now and then, but I've also had a TON of world PvP battles where I was competative with the opponents..

Well, that's already favored by the type of game - MMORPGs are complex by nature of having extensive rules and mechanics but have controls that are relatively simple and which often place limitations that don't favor 'twitch' reflexes - such as timers on abilities. Once you remove gear/level overheads, you're left with a PvP game that strongly favors those who invest time and energy in understanding the complex tactics and character development over those who can move rapidly and click quickly. Of course the people who can master both will beat you. Fortunately they're rare because they're kicking ass in shooters or actually enjoying the fresh air. :)

However, just as you can create a game where a level 100 player cannot attack a level 1 player, so can gear or any other incremental improvement be added to a player's rating for purposes of same PvP comparison.

We are talking in too many extremes here.  Yes if two equal players fought at each end of the spectrum of gear, the better geared would win 90% of the time.  However, that is a pretty rare case.  Players don't walk in BG's or Arenas naked.  They have gear.  They probably have pretty good gear.

That same statement isn't true for two players, one with Season 1 gear and one with Season 3 gear.  Sure Season 3 has advantages, but it doesn't preclude a win.  The ability to get Season 1 gear is pretty easy guys.  I have two pieces of Season 1 now and have invested very little time.  I would have to say that the same amount of time it has taken me to learn the ropes and get more knowledge, strategy, twitch skill, I've also improved my gear to further improve my odds.  It all goes hand in hand.

Plus, you know, Blizzard are adding blue PvP armour to the Outland rep vendors in 2.4 so you'll be able to buy an adequate (at least) PvP suit for gold - no more drudging through umpteen BGs in PvE greens.

Wait, what?  Crap, I keep hearing all this stuff about 2.4 that sounds like some pretty significant changes, but I haven't looked up the 'coming soon' info and can't while at work.  Damn this is a biggie.

PvP happens outside BGs & Arenas. I know it is highly unpopular in WoW, but I'm more interested in world PvP than BGs. And I'm really not interested in Arenas at all. My best times in WoW have been fighting for control of Halaa. Sadly the few rewards are not even up to the standards of mid 60s PvE instances.

At some point people walk into BGs with pretty bad gear and get beaten like a red headed stepchild. Because its the only way they are going to get the gear with PvP stats that are overwhelmingly better than those found on PvE gear.

I'm going to look up those 2.4 items, thanks Simon. That sounds like a GOOD THING.

Yeah, world PvP in WoW is definately an afterthought.  They haven't supported it very well at all.  I agree, when done right it is very fun.

It sounds like Blizzard understands world PvP is hurting.  That vendor change is huge.

Except that the vendor loot is, unless i miss my guess, going to be useless on the grand scale of things.

Superior quality pvp loot = BLUE loot.  Ie, crappy blue PvP gear like the stuff at Haala that is pretty much USELESS since you can now get a full set of season 1 from regular old Battleground PvP.

They're moving the blue PVP stuff that's bought for honor now onto rep vendors, as season 4 arena gear hits and season 2 arena gear goes to honor vendors. I assume they will continue moving each rank of gear down as arena seasons continue to start. It's not amazing but I think it's a logical step that is pretty nice.

Agreed.  Plus, do people with Season 3 gear really do a lot of the world PvP objectives?  I would think not.

It seems like Blizzard put the World PvP objectives in as a precursor to full on PvP in BG's and Arenas.  Yes, you'll get some fully decked out people ruining other people's fun, but it can't be the majority, right?  Right?

They put in world PvP because a tiny minority of people keep banging on about how awesome world pvp was, back in previous_mmog.

So you're saying that its only there to satisfy idiots who don't understand the real thing. I see.  :uhrr:

PEOPLE THAT DON'T LIKE WHAT I LIKE ARE WRONG!  :ye_gods:

Hum hum. I made up my PvP alt (level 34 working on 39) because getting into PvP with my 63 main (all greens with a few outland blues) was just fucking frustrating.

After twinking out my alt, it's much better. I don't feel like I'm losing because some other dude gotz shinier boots than me. Cause my boots are damn shiny now.

I'm hoping to take this character all the way up to 70 to PvP with, and avoid all that ganked in greens bullshit, since I'm collecting the blue PvP rewards on my way up...

/SIGNED

I appreciate the whole "I want understanding of game mechanics and strategy to prevail," but that ultimately leads to a TBS game, and I think WoW is a fair compromise.

So it'll be...

Season 1 = rep vendors
Season 2 = honor vendors
Season 3+ = arena only

?

That will happen in season 4.

What the patch is doing is....imho....letting people just pay gold for the blue L70 PVP gear. I doubt anyone buys the stuff with honor points anymore since it makes far more sense to just save up your honor points and buy season 1 gear instead.

If you're a fresh 70 with no resilience the blues aren't bad.

And I still don't think WOW's pvp is anything special, it's just glorified rock-paper scissors even if you ignore the 'gear' argument [which is still valid -- access to BT gear is huge, and some classes use pve gear in arenas] and focus on arenas, which are supposed to be the "high point" of the entire system.

I just got on a brand new 5v5 today on my warlock [original main, I hardly ever touched it in a year, have like 120 resilience] and we proceeded to win most of the games [peaking at 1820 rating; none of us has amazing gear, nothing beyond kara and s1/s2 stuff, we beat plenty of teams with s3 weapons though] with me mostly pressing the same 5 buttons in the same sequence every single game, same with my teammates.

Yeah, I know that 4-dps makeups aren't really skill intensive, but that's exactly my point -- you have cookie cutters that do the same exact thing every game (with mild deviations depending on the enemies we're facing) and win or lose depending on random factors. In our case, if we got a blackout proc on the enemy's warrior at the start or a lucky lightning overload proc from our shaman, we'd just blow him up before their healers could say "pain suppression", and that was that. Sometimes I, the low-resilience 9k hp warlock'd (wisely) get focus fired and die without being able to do anything if their warrior got multiple mace stuns on me and their dispeller got past our paladin's 20% dispel resistance talent on blessing of protection. Not much 'skill' involved there, eh?

WOW's design is fine for pve, but not for pvp. A game with good pvp shouldn't involve a x% chance of someone instantly dying or living due to a random number generator, or a matchup that one side has almost zero chance of winning. "Hard counters" are not just 1v1 btw (those are the most obvious, warrior vs rogue, warlock vs everything :p, frostmage vs warrior, etc), but also 2v2 (shadowpriest+warlock vs warrior+healer, rogue+healer vs shadowpriest+warlock...), 3v3 (3dps team vs 2-healer team vs drain team) and 5v5 (2345 vs 4dps vs drain).

I'm not an expert at Guild Wars pvp, but it looks a lot deeper and strategic than WOW, to me.


-- Z.

Fair enough, but it's a bit harder than all of that.  I play shadowpriest/rogue 2v2 and our team hovers around 1750-1800.  Yet, I see a few shadowpriest/rogue teams above 2200.  What are they doing differently than us?  We're just not as good as them.  I understand what you're saying, you bring forth valid criticisms.  But I definitely feel as if there is skill involved in what I'm doing when I PvP. 

http://www.mmo-champion.com/ has most of the changes rounded up so far.


I am going to grab off spec PvP blues if they are cheap, just so I can have matching suits.  :-)

Still no reports on the badge gear though.

WoW loot is so boring.  I swear there's like five different item properties in the entire game.

What's your resilience?

Whenever they've had quirky loot that did interesting things, it would end up feeling the hard end of the nerf bat.  Creativity only works until a lot of morons start whining.

Or it sucked so royally/didn't work at all. Which lead to a lot of other morons whining.


Basically, anything interesting gets nerfed or now, (in the case of that legendary bow) is actually a sidegrade at best to the vanilla stuff already in the game to pre-empt the moron whining.

407

Maybe your rogue sucks?

I'm pretty sure he's saying they suck as a team, yes.  I took it as saying once the items are even on both sides, it comes down to player skill and knowledge.  I tend to agree. Not that they suck.  I can't talk with my best score being 1500.  You know, when you start a team?

Yes, there's a "skill differential" even when both sides are evenly geared. Positioning, timing, coordination, that sort of thing; and I don't deny that high-end arena players have better reflexes, class knowledge (both of theirs and others'), UI setups, macros, gear, synergy, whatever. However, it's a very small difference compared to class, gear and even racial differences.
Undead warlock + undead shadowpriest vs gnome warlock + human shadowpriest is an easier win for the first team due to multiple fear immunities; gnome mage + gnome rogue vs troll mage + troll rogue is an easier win for the first team due to multiple root breaks, denying shatter combos, etc. Pit a 2100-rated rogue+rogue team against a 1850-rated warrior+druid team, is your money on the rogues?

A very big factor in WOW pvp is latency. I personally play from Europe with a 500 [sometimes spikes of 600-700] ping, and it's definitely holding me back and resulting in very very annoying situations (ie. when I interrupt a spell and it still goes through), not to mention that my global cooldown is 2 seconds to begin with. There is no ability queuing, so there's no way around this.

In complete mirror matches (including race/faction and access to high level raid gear) it usually comes down to little things and just pure random luck; in a SLwarlock/paladin 2v2 it'd be the warlock switching in spell-penetration gear to get past the enemy warlock's resistances [+shadow resistance aura], synchronizing crowd control with back to back fears/hammer of justice on the paladin when going in for the kill, being able to drink and regain mana (like, say, getting the enemy felhunter banished for a while) while the other paladin is forced to stay in combat, using LOS better, using a pet survivability trinket vs. a damage one, etc.
 
The combination of these things would be "outplaying" our "out-skilling" the enemy team, but really, it's such a small part of the overall picture that I still don't think WOW's pvp is anything special, not while "counter-comps" and "random numbers" [did I crit that shadowbolt? zomg we win! Did he resist my deathcoil? zomg we lose! ;(] rule the scene.

BTW, I say this as an "ok" pvper, I definitely don't think I would be as good with my warlock as the various gladiator-ranked locks, even if I had their gear, teammates and latency. I'm just saying that the "skill difference" is overshadowed by other factors.


-- Z.

Latency has always been a deciding factor.  We had a rogue bounce around our screens the other night.  All I could say, was it is either some new speedhack or his connection was just a lot better than ours and he had running speed maxed with items and chants.

I think there's a movement exploit some people use.  I've seen it in the battlegrounds on certain players.  I have no idea what it is, but you can't target them.

They are probably slowing certain packets using a proxy server that warden cannot detect. I've read that WoW sends updates to the clients with the slowest response time first in order to 'balance' PvP. I have seen people who cannot be targeted bouncing around - typically DoT classes, presumably because they don't need to remain engaged in combat after the DoTs are unleashed.

No doubt.  It's almost impossible for us to beat a well played druid/warrior team for instance.  I wouldn't say someone above a 1700 rating "sucks" but I guess I couldn't argue with such an assertion if it came from someone who was 2k+.  I do think that elements of chance make for a better game.  This is why games such as Mario Kart are fun.  Skill comes into play but someone of competence will be able to beat an expert player from time to time.  But where I disagree is this quote: 


"In complete mirror matches (including race/faction and access to high level raid gear) it usually comes down to little things and just pure random luck; in a SLwarlock/paladin 2v2 it'd be the warlock switching in spell-penetration gear to get past the enemy warlock's resistances [+shadow resistance aura], synchronizing crowd control with back to back fears/hammer of justice on the paladin when going in for the kill, being able to drink and regain mana (like, say, getting the enemy felhunter banished for a while) while the other paladin is forced to stay in combat, using LOS better, using a pet survivability trinket vs. a damage one, etc."


I think that stuff is skill.  A lot of that stuff is hard to do, especially with people trying to kill you as you communicate to your team just how you plan on preventing that from happening. 

Double post

Resto druid + just about any dps class = a nearly unbeatable 2v2 comp simply because of all of the tricks a druid has in their arsenal: Several short cast or instant heals/HoTs, 2 forms of CC usable in arenas, the ability to just change forms instantly to break CC, and poison/curse removal. Oh and I think Rebirth is usable now since it has a 20m cooldown, no?

No, the max CD allowable in arenas in 15 minutes. 

The bitching would increase a thousand fold if Druids could rez in the Arena. Like, flood the forums and crash all the servers with thousands of pink haired gnomes kind of bitching.

Read the bolded paragraph. :P I agree, it's just that these things just don't matter in most of the arena matchups.

Yeah, a top-rated rogue/rogue 2v2 will beat 1700-1800 rated warrior/pally teams all day long (watch Tosan's Renataki video for lulz) due to gear/skill advantage and maybe even get wins against higher rated teams, but that needs the warrior combo to make some SEVERE mistakes during the course of play (which would be 'lack of skill' on the warrior team's side or 'skill' at misdirection on the rogues' side).

On the random note: randomness makes a game fun, but excessive randomness (relying on procs, % chance talents, etc) doesn't make for competitive pvp, and I never believed in the "randomness gives us unpredictable situations, so player skill comes into play on how to react to those situations" angle -- everyone has backup plans, but what randomness usually does is make a team win or lose. Random crit streaks in TF2 are part of the game's pacing, but they never decide a game by themselves. GW pvp has barely any randomness, which is how it should be I think...

Anecdote: yesterday my 3v3 'just-for-fun' [resto shaman, ele shaman, shadow priest; as you can see, it's not competitive at all, it's mostly just to get us points] alt team in the 1700s geared in a mix of s1-s2-s3 and kara gear fought a team of these three guys (some of them are in pve sets / specs, they were using full season3 including weapons/shoulders and the warrior was MS with s3 mace):
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Syth
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Bigmick
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Odelay
Should be an auto-loss right? That combo should beat ours hands down and they WAY overgeared us (full season3 + BT gear), not to mention they were good (the warrior kept both our casters locked down and spell reflected most of the big nukes, the healers were dodging every mana burn even with earthbind down). The warrior whittled down our sp while the two healers kept pillar dancing and I (resto shaman) was almost out of mana..... then suddenly our sp got a blackout proc on him, catching him in zerker stance and burst him to 60%ish, our shaman popped every cooldown he had, got a lightning overload on his EM chain lightning... and the warrior dropped. We got 28 points for that team, btw. Did we deserve it? I don't think so. :p


-- Z.

Nice win.  Things like that can happen.

I've found that 3v3 is really where the fun is at.  It's not too hard to focus (omg 5 dudesz) and it's not imba 2v2 (2v2 is akin to dueling, it's almost 90% set up).  3v3 is fun because you can really do some neat stuff and pull out some fun wins.

I think I agree with this too (I'm early to PvP so I'm still on the fence.)  I think this shows up in BG's as well.  Typically, you have (3-4)v(3-4) matches all over the place in WSG, AB, and EOTS.  Those seem to be the matches that really make or break a capped node/flag.  Yes, a Zerg happens here and there, but for a well balanced and succesful campaign, it's the small successful groups that are the heroes.  Those encounters are typically the most fun whether you win or lose too.

The 5v5 matches are so chaotic and one little slip-up means a complete wipe most the time.  I've only just started 5v5, so the jury is still out for me.  It seems like if your initial plan going into a 5v5 goes wrong at all, there isn't enough time to react and come up with a different plan.  Then it all comes down to instinct, etc.  That's probably the weakness.  Getting 2 or 3 people together that mesh and have good instincts is a LOT easier than getting 5.

I don't mind 2v2.  I especially like that it is easy to get your matches in for the week. (Queue times suck though)

You have to wait for all the crazy Asians to get on at 3 AM.  Queue times are under  a minute in the dead of night. 

It gets better as you get higher in level. There's a few new properties that Blizzard is throwing into the mix now to make items less samey and to make similar level items different. Spell Haste, Melee Haste, Ignore Armor, etc.

They used to have a lot of weapons/armor with oddball process effects (like poisons, extra hits, etc) but half the time they're useless and the other half are broken to the point where they get nerfed later.

i wish they would add loot that would give you a bonus point to 1 talent or something (like 1 point in a tier 1 talent)  Just to mix things up a bit.

Going back to the original topic - dinged 70 on my rogue last night (after a mini-burnout at about L65 where I didn't seriously play for a month or so) with 1.1K gold* and just over halfway through BEM. I started in HFP after just dinging 62. If I'd actually done some instance runs, I'd probably have got to 70 before leaving Nagrand.

*I now have ~400 gold and a AH-bought flying machine. :drill: