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We're continuing to refine the badge/emblem and PvP point systems in Cataclysm and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we're changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we've used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds. There will be a total of four types of points you can earn in Cataclysm (two for PvE and two for PvP), and these will remain the same even as we introduce new content.

Here's the breakdown:

PvE

    * Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
    * Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)


PvP

    * Honor Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.
    * Conquest Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)


When a new tier of raiding gear is released or a new PvP season begins, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points, and similarly if a new PvP season begins your Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Of course that means with these new releases you'll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

As noted for Conquest points, the Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons. We might offer a few items to the absolute best players based on personal rating, largely as cosmetic or 'bragging rights' type items. And you'll have the option of purchasing the previous season’s gear with the more readily available Honor points.

We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Hero points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

On the PVP side, I like the removal of personal rating requirements (although I note that they did not say TEAM rating requirements). After the relative pain in the ass it's been to get endgame weapons on my melee characters, I say bring on the welfare epics. The lolesport crowd gets thrown a bone in the form of cosmetic rewards, and PVP is made accessible again.

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

I didn't read that as a daily cap, just an absolute cap.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available.

Seems like it is a weekly cap, and only on the "higher tiers" (maybe that would be the equivalent of what frost badges are currently, but triumph badges would still flow like water?

I am not sure I care for the cap.  I like to gear up alts very quickly and if I am limited in how many hours per day I can play them and make it worthwhile gear-wise, that has the potential to be annoying.

Per-character caps on progression favours alts, not the other way around.

Well, I see your point, but it doesn't address his point, which is that right now you can gear up an fresh 80 in a week if you play enough.  With the restriction it'll take longer (how much longer depends on the cost of gear, what the limit is, etc)

Well, I see your point, but it doesn't address his point, which is that right now you can gear up an fresh 80 in a week if you play enough.  With the restriction it'll take longer (how much longer depends on the cost of gear, what the limit is, etc)

Here are some clarifications to some common concerns we're seeing:


Our basic model throughout Wrath of the Lich King has been that you can get the shiny hotness now, or wait until it “goes on sale” next tier. In this example the set one would be after would be the old set and everyone else would be pursuing the new set.


They will, just not at the 4.0 stage. All we’re really doing with the badges is removing the need to keep adding new types every tier, which proved confusing.


We haven’t made that determination yet. It will be something in line with how Honor works today; that is you can save up for expensive things but can’t have so many points that you can just rush out and get everything all at once and be done.


We haven’t made that determination yet. We want to pick a number such that you don’t feel compelled to complete all of the content every week just for points if you choose not to.


Probably almost simultaneously. The points will be converted before new loot appears on the vendors.


The current system has a touch of the rich-get-richer syndrome where players who lack the ratings can’t get the most competitive gear and feel like they have no hope of competing. Better players will still gear up much more quickly because they will have more points to spend. Rating requirements on, for example, weapons was pretty unpopular in the community.


PvP equipment spends a chunk of its budget on resilience so it’s always going to be sub-optimal for PvE compared to equivalent raiding gear. We don’t mind players using PvP gear in PvE (or vice versa) as long as it’s a stepping stone towards getting more appropriate gear.


We are still tweaking item levels, but the basic concept is that there is the current season and there is the previous season. In this first season there is no previous season, so we also have to provide the “Honor gear.” That is supposed to be roughly equivalent to the pre-raiding tier that you’ll want for PvE before you begin raiding.


Our goal through Wrath of the Lich King was that players could choose 10 or 25 as a personal preference. We think we missed that mark though. Because 25s still provided more powerful rewards, it felt like that was the “real” raiding, and 10s were what you did on off-nights, or if you just couldn’t stomach the logistics of recruiting or pugging 10 more players. We know there are a lot of players out there who just prefer to raid 10s but felt like we didn’t deliver on our promise to let them just raid 10s. The Cataclysm model is to let players raid 10s or 25s as they see fit. There are advantages and disadvantages to both raid sizes. The larger raids can feel more epic, yet the smaller ones tend to have less loot drama because there is less competition per item that drops. The smaller raids in some sense are more hardcore, because there are fewer opportunities to include novice raiders or folks who just aren’t carrying their weight.

We understand that changes like this can cause social upheaval and we didn’t make the decision lightly. The community was similarly concerned when we removed 40-player raids (and we literally did remove those; today we’re just offering an alternative to the larger raids). We think there is a non-trivial audience of players who prefer the 25-player raids and we’re going to continue to support them. We tried many different raiding models in Wrath of the Lich King with regard to Heroic modes and lockouts, and rest assured that if we don’t like how the 4.0 raiding game evolves that we will revisit it for 4.1.


This is a legitimate concern and something we struggled with. On the other hand, one of the problems we kept running into with the current badges was granularity -- you can’t offer half a badge the way you can offer 1, 3 or 5 points. Depending on your perspective, you can argue that your character “earning”; valor for defeating an enemy makes more sense in the game world than the dragon having all of these badges on its corpse.

... but right now I'm not sure how it can get better. 

Make the points account wide.

Crap, don't do that.  I'll never stop playing this damn game then.  (Whiskey to an alcoholic. This to an altaholic.  Same thing.)

I don't know what I'd do if I decided that I wanted to dps again. Probably sit through three queues and then unsubscribe.

That's why among my 6 80's I have 3 healers, 2 tanks, and only 1 DPS (which is the "main" that has been gearing up since WotLK launched and thus doesn't need to chain-run heroics).  Once my rogue and 'lock are 80, I doubt I'll ever seriously consider raiding or heroic'ing with them since I dislike queues.

Blizzard should at some point create a bunch of instances that just require five DPS.

They are working on it. Codename: Diablo 3.

That's why among my 6 80's I have 3 healers, 2 tanks, and only 1 DPS (which is the "main" that has been gearing up since WotLK launched and thus doesn't need to chain-run heroics).  Once my rogue and 'lock are 80, I doubt I'll ever seriously consider raiding or heroic'ing with them since I dislike queues.

...but right now I'm not sure how it can get better.

What?  There will be raid rating?  I'm guessing it's based off a gearscore or something like it?

I'd say that I would be upset about the cap per week mechanic.  There shouldn't be any cap that is less than the total amount of content I can choose to do.  It doesn't matter if it's likely I never will choose to do ALL available content in a single week, any further artificial cap beyond 'there's nothing more to do' upsets me.

I'd say that I would be upset about the cap per week mechanic.  There shouldn't be any cap that is less than the total amount of content I can choose to do.  It doesn't matter if it's likely I never will choose to do ALL available content in a single week, any further artificial cap beyond 'there's nothing more to do' upsets me.

Newest announcement says that base level PVP Weapons have no rating requirement, but that the higher ilvl ones will. The comparison they made was that the Raid-level weapons would have no requirement, while the Hardmode-level ones would.

Whups! And there goes my interest in coming back to WoW!

 :oh_i_see:

The change makes the low level ones accessible (to the point where raiders will probably still grind for them because getting weapons is hard), while still giving people something to work for.

Yea same here; my arena 2s team is like...1300? It's awful. I ended up rolling on a second Heartpierce for my Rogue; the one I use for raiding has Berserking on it and that's less than ideal for PVP.