f13.net

I have been known to make mistakes before. It's only human, of course, to make incorrect appraisals, especially given the fact that I have sometimes been noted to have been swayed by an 'inherently pessimisive' viewpoint. I myself typically try to define my pessimism as a product of pragmatic cautiousness, but this is probably an excuse mechanism. No, I suppose I have to concede the fact that I was foolish to have viewed upcoming changes with a fatalist lens; I have clouded myself to the munificent bounty that Blizzard has granted us with the introduction of the Honor system.

Now, I had gone on record as saying publicly that I believed that the Honor system was going to be a problem. I was quick to state that I believed that the Honor system, as I viewed it in developmental conceptualization, was going to be countereffective to the goals that it was ostensibly put in place to achieve.

I said that it should be plainly obvious to any developer who had an "iota of sense" that there were inherent and fundamentally terrible flaws with a system that turns players into a farmable resource in this particular manner. In my baseless ranting, I said that the very idea, understated though it was, that the Honor system was ostensibly being put in place to 'revolutionize' the PvP aspect of this game and deal with problems involving the interfering issue of quest NPC killing ... was absolute bunk.

I foretold problems. I spoke candidly, even sardonically, about the fact that Tarren Mill would become a miserable pit choked with rivers of fresh blood, and that it was foolish -- outright foolish -- to install this system knowing full well that the game had been sent to press with one faction holding an average of three quarters of all the players. I said that the system would be looked upon 'unkindly'.

Well, I'd like to apologize publicly for being such a party pooper. The Honor system is great! The game has never been this much fun and I believe that my experience in the game has been profoundly improved for virtue of the aspects of social/faction interaction that the Honor system have brought to my attention.

Take for instance the fact that quest NPC ganking has been revolutionized with a whole new paradigm of 'fresh' gameplay: The fact that Quest NPC's have become golden targets the enemy faction will utilize as often as possible in order to attract any and all opportunities to spur "defensive action" on the part of your faction. Before, people would just gank your quest NPC's for gits and shiggles, but now? Now they are slaughtered in copious, frenetic orgies of attempted farming. You see, the system has been changed so that it encourages factions to provoke flagging and goad the other faction into defensively minded action. Why, I even had a friend saying that they tragically had been trying to hand a quest in at Tarren Mill for the past four hours, but could not as the town was being systematically slaughtered by a mass of Alliance and had been occupied since shortly after the servers started up. You see? Some would call this 'lame' or 'stupid' or 'GG NO RE', but I understand it now simply to be a new creative aspect to the game: compensating for the fact that two factions have just been goaded into perpetual faction-farming simply makes Warcraft have an aspect of a puzzle game, like Zork, or Adventure! She has to figure out the secret, like logging in immediately after a server restart, or typing 'xyzzy', or something.

See, this isn't a bad thing, and certainly won't be when groups of Honor farmers attempt to get progressively more and more intrusive on Horde lands in an attempt to find out which targets provoke the appearance of the most farmable players. Soon they will find that Tarren Mill is a terrible place to farm honor, so they will form raid groups and try to attack places in ways that demand counterattack. Perhaps enterprising individuals will find that sitting a raid group in the middle of Crossroads will earn them more Honor points per hour than, say, Stonard, a place that no sane Horde member would try to defend at this point.

I also have to say that I love the system. I at first remarked that the method Blizzard used would only inspire heated 'rank races' between the most hardcore characters on either side; I further remarked that this would make raids of faction functions essential and constantly escalating as players competed for limited rank slots. But again, I wasn't looking at it in a positive light. I failed to realize the potential offered by the new and exciting challenge of turning, say, the Auction House into a war zone! Bidding has never been so much fun!

Perhaps I also hastily implied that the 'Honor' system might as well be called the 'Dishonor' system, as the actions it encourages are anything but honorable. Why, in fact, it straight up rewards skullduggery and exploitation of the game system. At first, I chafed when I witnessed that rogues were using 'flag tag' tactics to flag and assassinate suitable Horde characters for the easy 'Honor' it earned them. I errantly assumed that the act of flagging to attack opponents where convenient and where the outcome is inevetable -- aka, 'ganking' -- might be considered unbecoming of the concept of 'Honor', but then I realized that it is now the system that defines 'honor', not the silly outmoded concept *I* had. If I'm not willing to attack a character five seasons younger than me and nearly out of health, and another player is, that player will become much more honorable than me, and be promoted over me and have access to better equipment for virtue of the fact that the most unscrupulous among us now have the most tools for advancement! Ganking, I now realize, is Honor in the Warcraft World.

Last but certainly not least, I must wholly retract the concerns I had for the system of scaled battle physics and the server population disparity.

The alliance quickly utilized in their advantage any and all advantages of numbers that they could muster. With a huge excess of numbers and levels above and beyond what the Horde could possibly compete against, I said that it was 'downright unprofessional' to institute a system that would systematically benefit the capacity of an already superior force, or to use a game mechanic to encourage the act of 'zerging' as an efficient means of harvesting Honor. I selfishly called this concern 'vital' as it would 'become a severe problem' for the Horde on most servers. Again, I was being a negative poopy-face. I understand now, you see, that the Honor system was merely put in place to encourage humility in the Horde. For all this time, we've been strutting around, acting like we were a proud set of races; but Blizzard is merely .. expanding the game universe, you see, to teach us that the Horde's role in World of Warcraft is to be beaten, much as it was Lordaeron's fate to become consumed by a plague in Warcraft III. Blizzard's original concept of the two factions being 'equal powers' that engaged in assymetrical, contained disputes and occasional flare ups? It was a 'lead in' to WoW Chapter 2, where the Horde finds itself subjugated by a numerically indefatiguable Alliance.

Being that I am on a Roleplaying server, I am in a perfect position to respect and enjoy this exciting new paradigm that Blizzard has gifted us with! I have already done my part by shutting off the now useless Defense channels and preparing a new set of raggedy vendor-purchased hides to wear as I am marched off towards the new Tauren reservation. I am amazed that Blizzard has added a new dynamic to the game universe; perhaps they are trying to capture the unique aspects of playing a severely disadvantaged faction, to directly market to the idea that MMORPG's are games that some people play just to complain, such as people who joined borked servers in DAoC, or had characters rendered literally combat ineffectual by patches in SWG.

My apologies. I see now that the Honor system has a bright future in World of Warcraft, and will only be negatively received by those who remain as tragically negative as I once was.

Nicely said. I wish I could say I agree, but I think you are totally wrong. I think are some problems with the Honor system!  :-P

Honor points rewarded only when inside a Battleground instance. Fixed.

That will be $500 in consultation fees, Blizzard. Thank you.

I assume you are in a pve server from your description of events.  On my server which happens to be pvp hillsbrad foothills has become the defacto battleground, every other zone is deserted.  You'd think lower levels would take advantage of this by going to the empty zones and questing/leveling, nope no one there.  Being a rogue i detest the Tarren Mill zerg fest since NO ONE EVER CHARGES THE GOD DAMN ENEMY, they just sit barely out of spell/arrow range and run back and forth every few seconds to cast/shoot.  

The honor system blows.

I'm on a normal server where PVP is reserved almost solely for the level 60's with their farmed uber equipment, and Tarren Mill IS a river of blood, being annihilated on an almost hourly basis. I think this really, really sucks, and I'm playing Alliance.

My friends play on PvP servers, and one in particular has a level 38 Tauren Warrior who simply can NOT finish quests in contested areas now without his level 60 Rogue friend babysitting him. He has come to accept the fact that he will be killed at least a dozen times by people 15+ levels higher than him when he passes through contested areas or anywhere with high alliance traffic.

You mean like Mages and other AOEers racking up huge contrib points in a matter of hours.  To levels it would take other classes days to achieve?

Nah, working as intended. ;)

Honor System =

(http://store1.yimg.com/I/surfinasscoffee_1771_132457)

Silly players. When Blizzard said the system was one in which the goal was to "gain rankings" they really intended us to abbreviate this as "gainkings".

(http://www.seymourschools.org/our_schools/high_school/department_sites/math_/mr__moir/images/Frink.jpg)

"Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?"
"Are you kidding? This baby is off the charts!"

Bravo.

(18 Honorable kills last night.  Fun, but I'm not so stupid as not to see the problems.)

I play on a PvP server (Alliance).

I like PvP (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't play on a PvP server) but what I'm seeing isn't really PvP.  It's a somewhat interactive slideshow in TM/SS and everywhere else, it's a game that used to be soloable, but now if you are solo you might as well block of an extra 30 minutes per hour.  For example, yesterday I needed to go to BB to work on the smith quest. It was (oddly) empty, but right outside of town I was ganked 5 seperate times on my way down the road by at least 3 Horde per ambush.

While I'm glad to offer my honor points to those in need, and I have played on PvP servers exclusively so I'm used to it, this is pretty insane. 

STV is as described.
TM/SS is as described.
Plaguelands (as I hear, haven't ventured there yet) is the playground of 60 rogues who gank anyone lower and avoid anyone higher.
Tanaris/Gadgetzan is entirely unplayable since the guards are (I hear) bugged,  so it's occupied by Horde 24/7, 30 of which gank you the instant you land.
Un'Goro almost has some interesting fights, but usually it's one person who I engage with, have a slightly interesting battle, then his 4 buddies show up.

I suppose I like that there is a point to PvP now, but competing with a million kiddies who all want to be Grand Marshal and aren't afraid to camp the griffin point to do it isn't my idea of a point.

Okay guys I am a bit drunk - and oddly some of you sound more profound than ever :P

Sam - liked your post - but for posts of that length - please use subheadings to outline your logic.

I agree that that the numeric imbalance favours the alliance.  But only faggots play alliance.  When BG comes out - Horde will have the day - since we can pick and choose our fights in a sea of qued alliance folks waiting to fight us.

I don't want to post a new thread on this - and it sounds consistent with your topic, so:

Kill one guy 5 levels above you, lose 10 fights to a guys 5 levels above you.  I am scratching my head, in "honor" is it worth it going after tough foes?

Miss thing I wish this was the case. We'd be having one big old disco party in Ironforge with bulging dwarves in assless chaps and invite Martha to redecorate the drabby Stormwind. It would also make it so much easier to find a date. As it is right now, every time I whisper "cute butt!" to some Night Elf hottie, I just get the cold purple shoulder. Must be he's just afraid to show how he realy feels. However, I have heard rumors that trolls have *5%43$#' as long as their ears! May have to switch sides...just to confirm the rumors and report back, of course.

That was beautiful.

I also wish jpark would post more often when he's tipsy.

If I had some sort of irrational love for the color yellow I might play horde.

WoW's PvP has been borked since launch, so this is pretty laughable.

It's a deal!

And yeah, it is more than just #1. Honor system sucks

For more, we go to Kalgan's responses to Honor system concerns (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2761331&p=1&tmp=1#post2761331).


Ha.



Ha.


Ha!



Strike one.

I personally am enjoying the fuck out of the honor system. But I have a few things going for me.

1) I play on a PVP server. Dont have to worry about quest NPCs getting ganked for flagging.
2) Im a rogue, I can pick and choose my battles (some times. Less now)
3) I am in a large guild (I founded it actually) and we all love PVP.

Yeah, TM is a total zerg fest right now. Its insane. On my server at almost any time of the day you can find around 50 on 50. It will start to sway in alliance numbers around primetime. To more like 100v50, but its still fun. Basically I feel really sorry for people around lvl 50, casue they are like a free drink to a alcoholic. But if you go to any of the zones where people under 50 level (except Hillsbrad and Gadgetzan) I cant find any alliance. I think leveling for lowbies on my server just got easier.

I did a little test run on kills vs contribution points. Mage AEing does not net you the insane amount of cont points you are claiming. On thursday evening, a group of 4 (2 rogues, mage, warlock) went roaming around, killing all the 60 alliance we could find in plaguelands and gadgetzan, and winterspring. I had around 300 kills, and got 5500 contribution points.  The next day, I spent all day fighting in TM with those same people, and a few more. Ended up with 1100 kills for 6700 cont points. So imo, once more info gets around how this works, you will see a lot more groups of 5 roaming around, fighting eachother. And that is even more fun.

Seems to me, the majority of your gripes come from bad implementation on a PVE server, and misinformation about what gives the best cont points.

I'm on the same server, Alliance.  While leveling for Horde lowbies may have gotten easier, I think it's a lot worse for Alliance lowbies than it was before.

I used to solo.  Now that's almost out the window because most of the time I find myself ganked by at LEAST 5 if not 10 or more lvl 60 Horde anywhere I go ... Tanaris, Maraudon, especially Plaguelands.

I and my friends are in that level 50 bad place.  If you're not a rogue, it's 10x worse.  My warlock friend got ganked around 10 times trying to get from the Plaguelands to Kalimdor last night.  The MO was the same - rogue stunlock and kills him... guards start to aggro, rogue vanishes, no repercussions.  Rinse repeat.

I don't know what you mean about Gadgetzan.  I can't fly into it anymore because I get zoinked before I can move by at least 20 or so Horde.

I hope they are right about battlegrounds, because if not, I don't see us playing much longer.  We are used to PvP and PvP servers but there is simply no game before level 60.

It's like a car moving at 5 MPH towards a cliff 10 miles away. "Um...you might want to, you know, stop or turn on something..."

Nope.

Sigh. Christ. What are these "game designers" being paid for exactly when they miss what 9/10 reasonably intelligent people can pick up on?

If I had one rule for MMORPG game designers, it would be to always ask "how are players going to abuse this?" At some point, SOME DESIGNER somewhere is going to realize that that's probably the most important question to ask yourself about any feature.

One of the main issues with the honor system that noone seems to notice is that it measures honourable kills, who mean jack squat actually, BUT NOT CONTRIBUTION POINTS, which were it is actually all about.

As a result :

1) AoEing as a mage doesn't net you more contribution points
2) Moving in a zerg is the fastest road to not getting anywhere on the ranking list (due to CP dilution)
3) Ganking greens (lower 50s) is wasting your time because you can actually get a lot more from lvl 60s, even if you win only half of the fights


However because everyone is looking at their HK count they go farm greens in a zerg and envy mages because "W0000T EASY HKs!!!1!!"

The system is actually not badly designed and playing "on an even field" will get you higher on the ranking then typical ganking, but because of a discrepancy in feedback that will take most quite a while to figure out.

I lost interest when they addressed his post "lead designer Kalgan". I suspect Blizzard, with its single player mentality and slow pace, didn't really need a great depth of talent in their designers. Nor is there any sign they're using the buckets of money they are making to improve that situation. "Enoyls" appeared to have a clue, but seems to have moved on to another project. "Kalgan" has managed to infuriate with his simplistic and one-sided analysis. He's also pro-PvP so no surprise that for him Battlefields are the most important things in WoW.

As for the current situation, what a mess. Overlaying PvP onto an environment designed almost entirely for PvE is just not a good idea. Making it open and unlimited was obviously going to highlight the inevitable numeric imbalance. And having points being scored primarily on the basis of kill count, with no cost for death and no objective, is an invitation to zerg. Admittedly people will realise that raid zerg doesn't net good points. A MMORPG community is insanely good at micro-optimisation. But instead what you'll see will be small, but very high DPS, gank squads. People will want as few characters as they need to make the fights trivial, but actual fair fights where you stand a chance of losing aren't efficient.

I'd expect in a couple of days people will be posting about 5 mage AoE squads and 5 rogue assassination squads earning sick points. Perhaps 5 man hunter sniper squads too, a syncronized aimed shot is insta-death for a target. They'll still love raids as cover though.

I'll also mention that this has made it even harder to find PvE groups. Not only are the meeting stones useless, and instance entrances camped on PvP servers, but the pool of people is now critically low. On my server (admittedly at aus times) there was *one* dire maul group over the entire faction. The newest instance is entertaining 5 people, all from the same guild? That's not healthy for a game.

Not sure mate.  EQ2 did a great job of removing exploits found in EQ...

Kalgan is the lead designer of the Honor system -- he's not the lead designer of the game overall. That's why he's pro-PvP, that's his baby, so to speak.

Edit: Stripped out PvP/Battlegrounds from his "title" since he may not be the lead designer for those. He is definitely the lead designer on the Honor system (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2309447&p=1&tmp=1#post2309447).

So I guess I'll see all you WoW people who want good PvP in Guild Wars soon?

I've never had as much fun in WoW, I think its awesome.  But I just roam the land looking for 1v1 encounters.  I laughed long and hard when I read the board and saw things like "I have 150 honorable kills for a total of 2500 contribution points)  when I had 40 kills and 1800 honor points (I am lvl 56 and kill a lot of 60s in winterspring).  Soon, the slow witted gankers will figure out that starting RAID GROUPS to kill people ain't exactly efficient.  The paradigm will shift toward lone/duo gankers roaming the wilderness, which I absolutely love as my Arc/fire template can destroy anyone (save good shadow priests) 95% of the time. 

As with most things min/max related in MMORPGs the optimum strategy will be the one that maximizes honor points per unit time spent -- the number of kills involved is only a secondary concern. E.g. your strategy may give more HPs per kill but it might not per unit time given that the Hillsbrad zergfest is a "target rich" area so even though you may be getting less HPs per kill in a zergfest you may also be getting more kills per unit time. What Kageru said is what I would imagine the optimum strategy will evolve into -- a very focused 5 man group with maximum "alpha strike" capabilties fighting in the areas with the maximum number of appropriate level PvP targets.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Triforcer just say he loves his uber-templated toon?

Tell me I'm wrong.

Of course people are going to move away from the raids.

Remember: The maximum amount of slots for the highest ranks is incredibly limited, and the ranks are retallied each week.

Any week you fall behind in honor points will drop you into a lower rank, and any iterms you bought that require a certain rank will be automatically unequipped and put into inventory, and you cannot utilize them again until a week comes along after you have again earned enough honor points to own a top slot.

Seeing as continually escalating wars for honor points are necessitated by this continual jockeying for limited slots set by total rank population factors, people attempting to get/keep the totaly uber top slots will soon migrate away from any situation that is less than optimal for earning honor points.

Already on my server, roaming gangs of 60s have gotten very creative in trying to annoy the fck out of us enough to provoke flagging. They indeed have taken to continually waltzing into the middle of crossroads and setting off as many alarms as possible, then sitting in the middle of town and farting on people until people are forced to flag them out. Occasionally, these groups get brazen enough to start poking around in Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff just because it provokes the reaction they want: Defense.

As a result of this quick uptake, there is not an hour going by where rogues are not poking around Crossroads and Orgrimmar. For the last seven hours, there has been a duo of rogues who purposefully get themselves killed so that they can spawn gank people for points as many times as possible. And they never leave, either. A hillside next to the Zep tower in Durotar has been the permanent roost of hunters who have been working in a team of three with one runner to bait people to flag near them.

The fact that raids don't earn you optimum point actually makes shit worse on PvE servers. Way, way worse. Otherwise, the Uber-kids would just thankfully limit themselves to the universally accepted 'You Go Here To Pvp' grounds, TM/SS, etc. Now, they are devoted, nay, encouraged, to go out of their way to be as annoying and exploitative as possible. Also the problem on PvP servers that duo rogue teams go around just feasting on tender, succulent mid-50's flesh in places like the Plaguelands or entries to instances.

While this is true, a 5 man group has to kill 5x as many people as a solo would have to do.  As a rogue, I can do 1/2 a bar of health worth of damage in just over 2s to an enemy that is retreating from the 'zerg'.  This means that the 15 people chasing this one guy get to split 1/2 the damage while I get the other 1/2.  There's no threat to me since I have 15 horde chasing behind me.  I can dump my damage, let the zerg finish him off, and target another.

See, I've already optimized.

I agree though, anyone below 56 is suffering in their solo play since all the areas where they might level (short of Un'Goro/Silithus) are going to be perma-camped.  You are food.

I would like to see the PvE server problem addressed in some way.  But I can't think of anything that woulnd't have more whining produced (Battlegrounds might go a long way towards this as you can earn Cont. points through completing objectives).

Not sure what you mean by a problem on PvP servers.  I think (and others agree with me) that the system works great there.

Couple of points

One, as some of you probably know, I and a few friends had a pretty large horde guild up on Spinebreaker (PvP Server with hardware issues).  My Troll warrior was just over 50th when we all sat down over lunch and decided a move to a non-pvp server and alliance till they fixed spinebreaker.  Well, I am now a 33rd level human rogue.  The alliance has the 1-30 gauntlet has been exceedingly easy and now with Gnomergan, I can see the 30-40 being a breeze.  So far the Alliance have all the shiney for leveling, just way to damn easy compared to the horde.  I had heard it discussed, but actually hopping over and trying the run is just amazing.  No matter how much I prefer the horde, running my human rogue up the ladder has been way too fun.

Yep, this would pretty much make everyone happy.

I thought the honor system was a great idea ... until it actually came out.

- Rewarding players for ruining the fun of others beneath them on the totem pole. Players will naturally take the path of least resistance and minimize risk to themselves, so jumping players lower level than themselves, jumping in on a player mid-mob, or using numerical superiority by roaming in packs to defeat easy prey is now the norm, and it's rewarded.

- The above just leads to frustration for players simply trying to quest. It is now considerably harder to reach 60, so the more hardcore players already there are clearly rewarded by this system. Players playing the PvE game to advance themselves and try to reach some parity with the 60s are now harassed at every step of the way.

- Sure, PvP is expected on a PvP server - all manner of ganking occurred before, but now it's an epidemic. There is no longer any unpredictability to combat. Before, it was entirely possible to wave at an enemy, and the both of you continue to quest in peace. Now that you're worth special XP, you're just another mob to farm. The majority of level 60's aren't farming gear anymore, safely tucked away in instances - they're hunting YOU for their new shinys. Players 48 and up are in the worst position as they are an all-you-can-eat buffet for bored 60s.

- When people actually meet in force and aren't picking on solo questers, chances are that lag turns the whole zone into an unplayable mess.

So far it seems the Honor system doesn't reward any kind of honor or fairness, it just rewards the kind of cheap tactics players will naturally use to be at an advantage, and as a result just frustrates the whole playerbase beneath them.

Do we know this?  Has anyone compared the honour obtained from killing a foe 3 levels above you vs. one 3 levels below you?

Quantitively there could be enormous nuance here.  The curve may not even by symmetric:  killing those below you may give diminishing honour in a linear manner while killing those above you could give exponential reward. 

I just have no idea yet on what the "balance" looks like.

I think there should be a 30 sec timer between when you declare for pvp and when you actually become pvp. It should also activate a message or emote or something. I think people being able to just charge a person who's pvp declared from anywhere is dumb. It would at least cut down on people killing while others are fighting mobs. I also think it's royally stupid that pvp doesn't reset when you die immediately. That's just asking for ganking and corpse camping.

Kalgan, take me away!

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/tarrenmassacre.jpg)

While TM and XR are pits of suck, I did have a great running battle in Arathi Highlands, around 12v12. The pally who finally killed me (he owed me two) turned up in the Undercity by the bank last night, flagged. I was on my rogue, but my hunter was bound to undercity, I got my main. He had to be pissed that it was me.

While I've found a couple good experiences, overall I'd say the system is summed up by the picture of donkey balls (is that monkey balls in japan?). I'll even leave out the dead horse rant about level-based pvp being retarded or anything about unbalanced classes. The whole rewards thing is for hardcore only, given not just the relative nature of the rankings, but also the maintenance needed to keep that ranking.

I'm not even a rank yet.

AOEing the opposing side's Zerg as a Mage/ Priest duo (for the shielded Blink/Nuke strat I've seen Hordies on my side use so very effectively. Add-in the engineering invisi cloak on the priest for a fear after the mage nukes for a very nice combo.) vs the raid/ group structure WILL net you more points.  Provided you do it in the manner Mr. Hat described doing with his rogue.  You're doing 1/4-1/2 of the damage to a target and dividing it among 2 players instead of 25+.  Point-win you.

On the WoW boards I think I remember a dev reply with approximate CPs.

You kill a lvl 60 at lvl 60, rank 1 : 166 points
You kill a lvl 48 at lvl 60, rank 1 : 20 points

Killing higher Honor Ranks also net more CPs, so in reality the disparancy between those two will be even bigger. As a conclusion (as I posted earlier) specifically going after low greens is simply counterproductive.

EDIT : of course I can't find the thread anymore where those numbers come from, so I hope my memory serves me right.

No one is. They haven't calculated ranks yet. It's expected the first set of rankings will come out after the downtime tomorrow.

Although I've had a ton of fun over the last week, I'm quite worried about the long term effect the PvP rewards system is having on population imbalances. Life has become very difficult on the outnumbered side of PvP servers and history has shown that such problems are anything but self-correcting. Blizzard must do something to address it, and telling us  that "your figures are wrong there's no significant imbalance on PvP servers" i.e. it's all in your head, is not that something.

Couldn't the argument be made that the honor system will correct the population imbalance?  If you are on a 3:1 ratio Alliance server, you don't have a very target rich environment when hunting Horde....I'd think it'd be a lot harder to get many kills.

Thinking of shadowbane - the problem did not really self correct - there was a great tendency for the dominating force just to get bigger.

Because builds were sooo flexible in SB - it was possible to come up with an undiscovered uber strategy and annihilate a larger force through the use of a unique build.  But builds in WoW are nowhere near that flexible or deep - good system - but it is for flavor only (e.g. talents).

I suppose the whole thing could be fixed by simply changing the name to 'dishonor system'.  From what I've heard, about 3K or so quit within a few days, citing the honor system as their reason.  It really does seem to be quite a mess.  They're implementing the Battlegrounds two months early in an attempt to placate people. This is a total hearsay using the finest SirBruce type sources.  I wonder how broken that patch will be?  If, by some stroke of previously unheard of luck in this business, the battlegrounds go well, it'll probably have the desired effect.  I suppose it is damage control by avoiding the damage.  Or something.

Being the smart cookie I am, I have avoided the frustration by rolling a new character who will level very slowly.  Hopefully slowly enough so I can avoid dealing with it until they come up with something that doesn't cause huge masses of players to become honourably challenged.  My newest character is a Tauren druid named Shoushemo.  (yes, yes, I realise it's three words stuffed into one)  I may take engineering and enchanting as my trade skills to insure the slowest path possible.  That and the fact that I only play a few hours per week. 

Damn, I'm clever!

I'm glad that I'm at a point where I can just ignore it all.  Guildies send me invites to go pvp and I just tell them I'm not going to engage in that horse crap.  Still trying to get my rogue to 60 has been occupying my time and the places where I quest or grind (if I run out of quests) is sufficiently far away from all of the cacophonus people farming.

There's been a slew of quittings on our server.  None within our guild as we're still very primarily PvE oriented and we've just cleared a bunch of major hurdles (none of which I was involved with!).  Lucifron was taken down (fff, I had the time to go and was too wiped after car shopping for hours in HELL (Molten Core)) and Onyxia was taken to 49% on our first major attempt with less than 30 people (hooray for migraines, god, 5 minutes before we walk in I feel like I'm going to hurl while my head tries to kill itself).

Putting this system out without battlegrounds in place is one of the worst MMORPG decisions since someone gave the green light to the Anarchy Online 12.6 patch.  It in no way or shape can concievably hold people over until a next major content push without pissing a ton of people off to the point of cancelling.   Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to be dipped in honey and thrown on an ant pile.

hehe, top this:

'Test of Honor' Contest - Play to Win an nVidia® 6800 Graphics Card! - Ordinn on 4/25/05
To celebrate the launch of the Honor System, Blizzard is giving away top-of-line nVidia 6800 series graphics cards and other prizes to lucky participants in player-versus-player combat. Here are the details:

HOW IT WORKS:

      Everyone that participates in player-versus-player combat from the time it is patched into the game until the contest ends on May 24th will have a chance to win prizes ranging from nVidia graphics cards to free WoW gametime. The higher your ranking in the Honor System on May 24th, the better your chances of winning - but anyone that participates has an opportunity to win something. For every rank you advance in the Honor System during the contest, you will receive 100 'virtual tickets' that are each a chance to win.

THE PRIZES:

    * 100 First Prizes: 6800 series hi-end nVidia Graphics card and a Kingston 256k Datastick
    * 300 Second Prizes: One free month of World of Warcraft gametime

Also, the top player for each faction (Horde and Alliance) on each server according to the honor system rankings on May 24th will receive a custom in-game Tabard proclaiming their prowess. Click here for full details!

Dear Sweet Jeebus. Between this crap and Smedley's SOEbay announcement, I weep for the non-catass. Again.

You have to factor in a couple things. How long does it take (including recovery time) to kill a level 60 vs. a level 48? What are the chances of dying to a level 60 vs. a level 48? How long does it take to find level 48 targets vs. level 60 targets? etc. It may not be counter-productive at all.

About EQ2 and figuring out what players will abuse: I didn't state it by I meant more PvP, although the "how will people abuse it?" question is applicable to everything. Does EQ2 even have PvP? I know very little about EQ2.

Single worst aspect of current implementation, IMHO -- no immunity upon zoning/log in.

Best aspect -- it's actually possible to take down someone of a higher level.

Overall though I strongly agree that they should not have bothered with honor system until the Battlegrounds were ready. I don't agree that Battlegrounds are the only place HK/CP should be awarded, but the reward in Battlegrounds should be significantly higher so that they become the place that draws in people for PvP.

Guild Wars already operates this way -- limiting PvP to specific arenas.

There was an error on the front page (which they've now fixed) -- the number of tickets you get varies as you climb the ranks:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/05-04-19-honorsystem/

No pvp in EQ2 currently - but I gather from the board it is planned.  

That should be quite funny - I think most of would agree that Blizzard is good at balancing - to the extent anyone can be - and if you ever pvped (dueled) in EQ - the class disparities were quite dramatic.  SOE has no experience in this area really.  

It was nigh impossible to duel as a rogue last time I was playing (2 years ago? Around the time of GoD).

The abilities in EQ-type games are geared to be used against mobs with 20,000 or so HP, not a 6k hp rogue.

All the bugs associated with how rogue stealth worked didn't help me much either.

You mean there are masses of players who aren't honor-challenged?
I'll agree with that when I get my racial invisibility.

Don't really care either way.  I mostly PvE and /duel.  It's nice to know that there are a couple places I can go PvP when I feel like it, and have been a fun diversion for me.  The big battles are lagalicious, but it doesn't bother me.  It will also probably calm down after a couple weeks.  It's fun to go defend some out of the way village that is under attack, or go beat up guards in some podunk alliance town until a couple alliance come to fight me off.  If I was a PvP-acheiver type who wanted rank for loot, I would probably not like it at all though.  I am more looking forward to battlefields.

And I will also agree when you can no longer be feared, etc. 100% of the time by someone 15+ levels lower than you.

Exactly.

SC Zerg Rushes. WoW Uber Templates. WCIII's Swordsinger orc dude who can raid at the beginning of any skirmish in warcraft III. Diablo II is still broken and they're still issuing patches that address balance somewhere in them.

I think most would agree that Blizzard has a terrible fucking history of imbalances and sucks at it more than just about any other company.

UO Tank mages. 
AC drain mages, Og mages and extreme templates.
SWG combat medics and riflemen.
Age of Kings longbows.
DAOC minstrels (early)
DOAC Rangers (early)
(etc)

The problem is endemic to the genre.  Not only don't I agree, I think Blizzard has a much better track record than nearly any company out there.  The fact that there is no OMG UBAR EVERYONE HAS ONE template in WoW proves it.

I wasn't talking about other companies. But on that note, most of the other ones you talked about have made a limited number of games compared to Blizzards 10+ year history of making games. Games that are plagued with imbalance.

Give WoW time. The only reason it seems balanced is because it's new. I trust Cryptic and Arena.net to do a better job with balance than Blizzard. But that's neither here nor there.

WoW was not designed from the ground up as a PvP game.  Anyone expecting PvP, especially one on one or zerg PvP, to be well balanced should be sterilized to prevent the stupid from reaching the next generation.

I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

At the high end, WoW is one of the most balanced games I've ever played.

I don't know where you get that from. WoW is about the most balanced MMORPG I ever played and I played most of them (bar SW:G/EQ).
Most "WoW uber templates" you speak of are actually hotly contested and percieved overpowered classes differ from person to person, which actually indicates things are pretty balanced  :-P ...

My daily honor system whine story:

I land in Gadgetzan.  Yeah, I know, dumb idea but I'm tired of running the entire length of Thousand Needles after landing at Thalanaar.  It takes less time, even if I get ganked.

Well, I land.  No one around.  I mount.  I start to move, and freeze.  This of course means it's loading lots of textures.

By the time I unfreeze, I'm about 5 yards away.  I'm surrounded by Horde.  I have lost 2000 hp already.  I die.

Looking back in the logs, I can't find where the same person hit me twice.  Each person did around 50-100 damage.  For the math-challenged, that's somewhere between 20-40 people smacking me.  Now THAT'S exciting PvP!!

The good thing is that I died far enough out that I could res at my farthest range and get away on only my second try.

The thing that surprises me the most about Blizzard regarding the honor system is that they have failed to learn from others' mistakes.  They are squandering much good will by ignoring the players' complaints.

I've quit playing my 48 hunter for now(pvp server).  Being ganked continuously is not fun.  I feel like I'm back on Mordred in DAOC.

The honor system is regressive and rewards, nay, it _encourages_ ganking.  Ganking is not good fun pvp.

Guild Wars has my interest again.

Another fun twist to the imbalance issues: organized guilds.

Now...I'm no pvp newb, and I know the power of an organized force (and assume teamspeak for at least a portion of them, if not all). The Keepers of the Keg were in force, maybe 30 or so, in the Ruins of Lorderaen (sp). The horde could simply not muster an organized force in the hour or so I was playing my alt. Luckily, they didn't do much to impact my gameplay as a lowbie, but dipshits kept flagging and instantly dying, letting the guild sit and rack up HKs.

Great system. So far I've had exactly one enjoyable session (in arathi, and discounting the long graveyard run, even then) and several crappy sessions due to the new system. Balance swings in favor of crappy in my personal experience.

Also, spending 5 hours in pvp over the last week and not getting any rank at all, despite several solo kills of lvl 60 paladins? Yeah, no reason for me to continue with pvp in wow, it's for hardcore only. And soon for hardcore guilds only. Good luck with that. SO GLAD I didn't pick a pvp server. I'd already have cancelled. Luckily I can, for the most part, ignore this 'exciting new gameplay addition' completely.

BTW I ran some of the numbers on the chances of people winning one of those 100 video cards Blizzard is giving away. I figured if roughly half the subscriber population tries to participate (750,000 gamers), and they achieve an weighted average of 139.8 entries per person, here are the results per rank:

Rank 1 ~ 1/104,850
Rank 2 ~ 1/24,400
Rank 3 ~ 1/9,700
Rank 4 ~ 1/4,900
Rank 5 ~ 1/3,250
Rank 6 ~ 1/2,400
Rank 7 ~ 1/1,950
Rank 8 ~ 1/1,625
Rank 9 ~ 1/1,400
Rank 10 ~ 1/1,200
Rank 11 ~ 1/1,100
Rank 12 ~ 1/975
Rank 13 ~ 1/800
Rank 14 ~ 1/750

And since you can rack up points on 5 characters. The Uberest of Catasses who would max lvl 14 on all 5 would have ~ 1/150 shot at one of those cards. Granted it's a lot of fuzzy math, but if you don't plan on making officer, you might as well be buying lottery tickets.

Personally I feel that this system works wonderfully on my PvP server.  I don't think it was such an awesome idea on a RP server.  I might be accustomed to being assassinated in Hillsbrad, but that's the sort of thing you expect when you pick a PvP server.  I would not expect such ganking on a RP server, even if NPC murder was expected.  At any rate, I am excluded from complaining about PvP since I play on a PvP server.

That's a noble way of looking at it, but looked at another way, 30 on 1 being the norm isn't exactly my idea of PvP.  I don't mind being ganked (happened about 10 times in Un'Goro last night, but I'm not complaining for the following reason) so long as there is a prayer of actually doing damage to someone or even *gasp* winning.

The picture looks WAAAY different from a level 51 perspective.  I got 1-50 at a rate of about a level every two days on average.  I have spent the whole time since this patch went in trying to finish half of 51.

It seems there have been enough complaints that Blizz is considering allowing people on PvP servers to move to normal servers.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2842212&p=1&tmp=1#post2842212

That's stubbornness on a grand scale. Rather than admit the "Honor" system sucks, they allow their pvp servers to bleed players. Shtoopit.

Wasn't it inevitable that the PVP servers start bleeding people eventually? Even with the restrictions, as soon as you start to give folks incentive and reward for participating/winning in PVP, more will happen. Which means more folks will get ganked and decide they really don't like that form of PVP and move on to regular servers.

Why don't they just tighten the level range restriction for honorable kills at the top end on the PvP servers.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

That might mean catass uber wannabes like Furor and Tigole can't farm weak as kitten NPC's for honor points. We cannot have that.

I'm really just quoting Blizzard's policy when I say that, but it is true to an extent.  You are, however, correct regarding the population imbalance.  I think the honor system has an inaccurate name, and I also assume that it was meant to cause faction conflict.  I would have called it The PvP Ladder System or some other descriptive name, but then I would not have inflicted this environment on a non-PvP server.

The bothersome conditions are merely exacerbated on my server, no new ones are created as it seems is happening on PvE and RP servers.  This just means that we PvPers cannot moan about dishonorable ganking and get any attention from Blizz.  I already risked life and productive effort by simply flying into TM or HF.  I have been killed inside or one step outside the inn in both TM and HF in the pre-honor-system era.  In Hammerfall there are places where Alliance can sit unmolested by the non-elite level 50 guards and shoot anyone setting foot outside the inn.  It is also possible to shoot through the Hammerfall walls.  Ganking in Hillsbrad has always been the national sport of the Alliance.  We (Horde) were already outnumbered 3:1, no matter what the devs say (re-read the post and you will note the conflicting statements regarding faction balance).  Being shot dead on landing at Gadgetzan was about a 25% chance; I figure now it must be no more than 75% but that depends on your hours.  Any trip to Booty Bay was likely suicide, especially if you were trying to use the boat, and it's no exaggeration to say that BB could not have possibly gotten more dangerous during primetime.  On top of all this, my main is an undead warrior.  It took a special kind of patience to play like that, and now this system has turned up the heat quite a bit.  I think implementing this outside Battlegrounds on non-PvP servers was a complete mistake.  Implementing it before Battlegrounds on PvP servers makes no sense to me.

This will not make me unfarmable.  If I am farmable, I will be farmed.  I'm sure that's in some catass handbook somewhere.  To make myself unfarmable requires a Hordely entourage of some sort, which has to outnumber or outlevel the Alliance farmers.  No more dancing to escape murder.  Also, there is a chance that ganking a grey will summon some greens or yellows, so everyone dies regardless of how many points are going to spout from my pinata-ass.

FYI you don't get get honor points from NPC's.

Mostly true, with the exception of city bosses.

There are all sorts of weirdo imbalances between Horde and Alliance.  The big boss at Stormwind is very difficult to get to whereas the one in Orgimmar has a back door path almost leading to his door.  There seems to be several more stealthy ways, such as the sewers in Undercity that mostly takes you past the guards.  There also seems to be a lot more elite high level guards around Alliance cities (especially Stormwind) than around Horde cities. 

The strangest thing is the Children's Week orphan thingy.  It seems that the Alliance orphans are unkillable but the Horde orphans are between levels 1 and 3 and can be killed.  I knew from the start that the Alliance areas were much better fleshed out than Horde, but I simply thought that they would continue to develop the Horde side until there was better balance.  Now I'm beginning to think that Pat Robertson is a major Blizzard investor and WoW is some sort of Christian Ender's Game.

I was talking this over with a few friends who play, and we were kicking around some ideas that may alleviate the camping nature of honor points on the lower levels, especially on a PVP server perspective.  Realistically, this plan won't work, because of its restrictive nature, plus the fact that it flies in the face of some of the basic Blizzard tenants. My backgrouns is totally based on the Normal (PvE) servers, so I'm theorycrafting its effect on PvP gameplay.

I approached it from the perspective that for the most part, people are still trying to gain honor points even when the mechanics are working against you.  For instance, there's anecdotal evidence which suggests that if you're trying to accrue contribution points before the mid 50s, there's some sort of calculation based on character level that diminishes your effective, real points by some factor. In addition, it tries to account for some sort of dishonor penalty, although I'll point out its main failing towards the end.

1. Only allow the honor system to be in play when you're level 55 or higher. Anyone below that level will not gain HKs if they kill, or give an HK upon death normally. This accomplishes two things.  On PVP systems, this means there's no merit for a bunch of 50s to snipe 40s. On PvE systems, this puts in firm concrete terms that you really shouldn't be trying to farm for points, something that the calculations seem to suggest anyways. Also, it cements the fact that low level chars give no bonus whatsoever, don't bother trying to kill them unless you enjoy doing so, etc etc.

2. Implement this for a dishonor system: Upon a certain threshold of dishonor points, you are flagged for some period of time as HK-farmable, and no dishonor penalty is given if you are killed. Extend dishonor to mean the killing of players a certain level below you, as well as the killing of NPCs. On a PvP system, this would mean that if you're a level 40 killing 20s, you move up from being an annoyance to free points. On a PvE system, this gives 60s an even bigger incentive to flush out Civillian Killers. If you're especially harsh, one friend suggest to just dock a HK(or some amount of contribution points) for every Dishonorable Kill you incur on top of this. This system in combo would penalize people trying to advance up the honor system (by losing contribution points), and to some degree penalize outright griefers (by putting a bonus on your head, garnering the attention of contribution point farmers).

The biggest hole with this theory is the class example of the level 10-20 griefing 60s on a PVP server by just standing there, hoping to get hit with an AoE and triggering the dishonor flag. Short of convoluted mechanics to determine initiation of combat, admittedly this is a exploitable flaw.

3. Mark for the people who are HK-able with a different color.  Instead of Red, use Purple, Blue, Red outined in Gold, some other relatively identifyable color (not taking into account color-blindness, sorry). This hopefully will do a better job of showing people in HK-gathering mode what targets are good, and what targets are not worth it. In addition, if the character's death will result in a dishonorable kill point, mark that character in a different color. Perhaps even convert the color from Dishonorable Kill color to just a standard red color if the enemy tries to fight back. This would give the PC every chance to avoid combat and get out of the way when the fight is getting heavy, while not penalizing the high level char with an dishonorable kill point just because the PC is choosing to stay and fight. Following that, configure the NPC civilians to run to some set location when the fighting gets too close to them, as opposed to trying to fight.

The largest problem I see with this system is that all it appears the Blizzard is bent on having people of all levels access and utilize the honor system, even though it appears mathematically only the higher levels have any real method of advancement, short of extreme grinding for HKs. If that is their intention, this proposed plan runs in violation of that.

Okay, but why still today we cannot think to PvP as something else than just a pointless genocide? Why the PvP cannot have a goal that is different than trasforming the players in bags of points?

VIKLAS!

You know good and damn well the answer to that question.

Apparently they are losing so many players that they just opened two new servers (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2871207&p=1&tmp=1#post2871207).  Week 2 and im still having fun, of course being 60 a rogue and alliance (although my server is suposed to be one of the few with a very slight horde advantage) i guess im the one everyone hates.  I was the 16th ranked player on the server last week and surprisingly that didn't get me laid, oh well maybe if i hit the top 10 ill get some.

I don't know how to address that. I can't even imagine playing on a PvP server, PRE-"Honor". Opening a new one? Yeesh. The influx of players would be from tertiary guilds on PvP servers looking to be king dog, I'd imagine.
Yes, I believe so. Whether people just got tired of always being vulnerable or were mmo newbs who didn't know any better.

But when a single patch has this amount of negative impact, almost across the board?

Be a Statesman and step up and admit you fucked up. Put 'er back in the oven and let 'er finish.

My stance on dishonor penalties: meet the new grief tool.

Period. Just like every other attempt to curb player behaviour via coded systems. But hey, MAYBE IT'LL WORK THIS TIME! Right.

Fun? Clearly you are ignorant of what I dub the HaemishM Principle. The HaemishM Principle states that no MMORPG can be fun if any player is allowed to have a larger E-Penis than HaemishM. If, somehow, you manage to have fun in such a MMORPG or otherwise question the HaemishM Principle, then obviously you are a no-life "catass" wallowing in feline urine and fated to die a virgin. The HaemishM Principle speaks for the "casual" player. HaemishM himself is so casual in regards to MMORPGs that he has found over 4500 ways of restating this exact same point on these boards in the year or so since it opened.

We really have to find some way to remove that sand from your vagina.

I don't see how dishonor points for killing pcs wouldnt end up in a shit load more griefing than high levels killing lowbies brings.  Giving people that kind of power would result in endless griefing lowbies content in the knowledge that anyone trying to punish them will take a penalty for doing so.

After a week in the system,  I can't see a reason for implementing any sort of dishonor system for PC kills.  This is on a PVE server, however, so the lower people getting plowed were doing so through their own volition.  However, you could argue this is also the case on PVP servers.  Really, you sign on for a pvp server and you deserve all you get.  Sorry, the tradeoff on a PVE server is you can't kill the retarded paladin dancing 50 feet from xroads.   

But isn't this a moot point since they've stated there will never be dishonor for killing PCs?  So the topic on conversation would shift to NPC killing and I'm not quite sure how restricting dishonorable NPCs kills is any sort of big deal or huge grief tactic.  I'm just not seeing the huge injustice or reason for crying...

As for lobbing one at Sky, well, I have to toss one at him every once in a while.   

How is saying that most people aren't hardcore catasses who like raid instances that take 10 hours and a military clockwork organization in any way equate to no player is allowed to have a bigger E-Peen than myself? Yes, some people find that fun. Most people do not have the stomach for it.

And I wouldn't have to keep restating it if someone would listen. WoW is an MMOG that had a lot of the casual player in mind when it was designed. However, the two things (besides the bugs) that have caused the most wailing from the WoW populace have been targeted directly for the hardcore catass, the PVE endgame and the honor system. It ain't about E-Peen, it's about designing systems that are fair to the majority of your players.

Shouldn't it be about...

STOP PLAYING EQ CLONE of Shiney +1 if you dont want to be in a game that only caters to power guilds?

Then again, perhaps its time that people realized that there will always be content for those who are better at a game.  If you design a game where levels/equipment > player skill (which we can change to time spent playing > player skill) then there will be parts of the game that are restricted to those who play more.  Afterall you can't partake in top competition team fps, or even play on certain top-tier servers if you aren't very good at the given game. 

The problem here is, you might be a better/smarter player then Avg Joe Catass but he plays more and in the shitty generation of mmog's we've been dealing with since EQ's launch /played is all that matters.

I think we'll need to see how this all plays out in the battlegrounds before jumping to the "uberguilds will pwn all" conclusion.  I do think the more dedicated power player and perhaps more dedicated  gank squads will excell.  It will, in my view, take a lot of dedication to owning up the battlegrounds to succeed.  I'm not sure some guilds will make a more dedicated effort to dominate the battlegrounds (once the initial shiny wears off) because many are still caught up in the pve equipment hunt.  Not every guild is to the point where they're clearing to Ragnaros and farming Onyxia weekly, but more are starting to get there.  Some still have a lot of open goals in front of them that won't be realized in any short time frame. 

However, as more blow through the end game content (Ragnaros was just beaten), there will be more bored upper tier guilds looking to try out their uber equipment.  How this inherent and somewhat large equipment rift is going to fuck with things, who knows?  I assume at some point it will get problematic and you might have the same people owning the upper level pve as well as pvp (I know some people that are in the top 10 horde side that still make every pve raid, it's sick).   Then it simply comes back to time and not guild status; although a lot those two go hand in hand in a lot of cases.

I don't think the system will reward those that only play for maybe a less than an hour a day.  They will never be higher than the lower levels of the system no matter how good they are.  Thus they won't get any real access to any of the cool rewards. The only thing they'll have is their skill and the hope that the system put in is fun.  At least until Blizzard gets a real chance to look at the system once the initial short comings are exposed.  Then they may shift it over to a more casual friendly system with a more even playing ground, but who knows.  Dark Age never learned this, and if we know anything, it's that these companies excel at making the same mistakes as their predecessors.   

As a somewhat aside, the only real major catasserific activity in the end game is Molten Core.  Just about any other instance can be cleared in under 3 hours and many times under 2 (Baron runs, UBRS, DM).  Molten Core is really the only activity that reminds me sickeningly of Everquest.  You really have to eat your meals at your monitor and neglect the stench that's wafting off your body.  Even the Onyxia Key, pain in the ass that it is, can be handled in digestable chunks.   

And... my under 10 days played character experiment is almost complete.  Rogue is about 1/3 to 1/2 through 58 and I think I've got 20 hours to spare. 

This would be a fair point if it were not for mudflation and the rapid trivialization of raid content. Two months ago doing say the first 8 bosses in MC would indeed have taken 40 people with a lot of free time, 10 hours and a great deal of organization. Today that same content can be done in 5 hours with 30 people by organized raiding guild, and 40 person pick-up groups are managing to hack their way through MC or kill Onyxia. In 2-3 more months Onyxia and most of MC will be a joke, little harder than UBRS is now and it will just keep getting easier. The same thing happened in EQ of course, but in WoW it is happening much faster. You will be able to experience the content, all of it, albeit at a somewhat different pace. So what is the problem then, but a question of comparing E-Peens?


I've heard every bit as much wailing that the PvE endgame is insultingly easy and lacks depth. Regardless, with all content rapidly moving towards trivialization, which side should a designer err on? Make content too easy, and the players run through it way too fast for you to keep up with new content. Make content too hard, and the problem solves itself in a couple of months.

Then there's that word you used, "fair". Is there something to "fair" other than a question who to award those Uber Flaming Swords of Destruction to, and how is that not basically a measuring of E-Peens?

I say let the catasserific guilds burn themselves out and leave the game.  Out of WoW's 6 septillion subscribers, how many do you think are those people?  Less than a thousand across all servers I'll bet.

WoW will get on quite well without them and in actuality, better.  Let them go play Lineage 2 or something really painful to prove their e-peen size.

I think some of the h8 here is a bit misdirected.  So I will follow with some rambling, mostly off topic h8 of my own.  There is, what, one instance in the entire game that takes more than 10 people and more than 2 or 3 hours?  Hardly poopsock territory.  Even most of that one instance (MC) has, I understand, been nerfed to borderline triviality, rebalanced so a group of b.net retards with minimal strategy or organization can win.  Yay?  And you can do it in fairly small chunks of time if you want for the most part.

People cry that these games are too mindless.  Then they cry when anything in these game require any degree of organization beyond monkeys hitting random keys and getting YOU WIN YOU WIN YOU WIN!!!!! messages. 

Really, do people sit up late at night trying to cry themselves to sleep because they will never have their tier two armor set?  Do they get ready to fuck their wives and suddenly fall limp because they don't think they'll ever get that quest sword from Onyxia?  I doubt I will get those things any year soon and you know what?  I don't really give a flying fuck.  Somewhere, out there, there's a dude with bigger numbers than I will ever have.  And...?  I've just never understood the "casual board warrior" drive to furiously masturbate over Furor's magelo profile and convince themselves that their own play experience is meaningless unless they get one just like it RIGHT NOW OR I QUIT.

Same with this PvP shit.  First, if you don't want to get ganked when levelling, don't play on a PvP server.  Not complicated.  If you thought going into the game that one guy hitting whatever the fuck keys he feels like because its fun would be able to beat a team of well organized PvPers, you should shoot yourself in the head.  If you thought PvP in this game would not benefit organized people over disorganized ones, you should shoot yourself in the head.  If you thought PvP servers in this game would not be largely populated by assmonkeys, you should shoot yourself in the head.  But it looks like Blizzard will give you an option short of shooting yourself in the head: moving to a PvE server.

My little minotaur dude is rank:grunt.  I thought it was cool to get a little Horde tabard and a nifty trinket.  I PvP maybe one or two evenings a week.  I suck at it.  I lose more than I win.  It's fun to chop up gnomes with my giant skull shaped axe once in a while, though.  I will never get the GRAND UBER GENERALLISIMO OF THE HORDE title.  I will never get the GRAND UBER GENERERALLISIMO OF THE HORDE sword.  I will never get the GRAND UBER GENERALLISIMO OF THE HORDE mount, either.  Some guy who plays a lot more than I do, and plays with a tight group of other people who know each other and know PvP strategy in this game much better than I ever will, will get those things.  And I don't care.  At all.

Right now, there's enough stuff for me to do in WoW. there's accessable ways to make my little virtual minotaur dude's numbers go up, sparkly pointy things to get, and there are still some things I haven't seen but can get to.  EQ was not like that.  I reached a point in that game where I could not do shit unless I had 70 other people with me for hours and hours at a time almost every single night.  If WoW becomes like that, I'll quit.  Now, I do think that Blizzard has been inexcusably SLOW AS FUCK to get new shit out, and need to get on the ball.  We need more 1-2 group dungeons, more challenging quests, etc.  And we need that shit regularly.  They have upwards of 2 million people sending 15 bucks a month, they should be faster with the content.  Much faster.

I understand that some people here (Sky) are dedicated soloers, and thus have legitimate reasons to be unhappy about the endgame.  It is not a game you can solo all the time in and expect to advance once you have 12-15 or so days /played, unless you are really into alts.  For me, as long as it stays a game where I can keep advancing and doing different things playing solo once in a while, mostly playing with a group of 2-10, and occasionally doing things in a larger raid, it sounds like about as good as I could have possibly expected from this genre.

Well, I am in Bat Country, now. That's progress, right? ;)

So let's do a raid this weekend!

Catass.

I wondered what that smell was.

I don't even have a cat!

Wait, who's Furor?

Please tell me WoW isn't already to the point where there are "Legendary" players known across all the servers. Christ.

Furor is head cockholster for Fires of Heaven, or was at one time. Unless I am confused again, which is entirely too possible.

Only from videos.

Okay, I guess it's EQ stuff. Never have played EQ, so I didn't know.

If I might, I'd like to point out the problem from a PvP-server perspective.  "Documents" exist detailing at least one murder of a level 60 by a herd of level 5 players, pre-honor system to boot.  Granted, the level 60 was being stupid, however the potential of reverse-griefing, as it were, should not be ignored.  Within two hours of implementation of dishonor for killing lowbie PCs, a swarm of baby night elves will descend on Crushridge's Orgrimmar, the likes of which not even God has seen.


Exactly!  As I mentioned, I can't complain about PvP on a PvP server.  I made my coffin, I will lie in it, and it really is quite comfy if you are into that sort of thing.  What I see is basically Blizz playing whack-a-mole with the griefing issue: you plug one hole and the bastards erupt out of some other, larger hole.

I don't play on a PvE server, but I will tell you that I would have absolutely no problem ignoring a player being stupid when I know perfectly well that I would get killed if I engage.  In fact, Crossroads is not contested on a PvP server, so any lowbie getting ganked in the Barrens has only themselves to blame.  You muster your guild first... but that would require organization, sorry.  >_<  I do agree with some penalty for killing quest NPCs in non-contested areas, since that is in line with the nature of the area.  Penalizing people for erasing the population of Splintertree, however, just sucks all the fun out of the game.

Oh, I guess I forgot to put that fix in there. As soon as a lowbie pc initiates combat against a character radically higher than itself, the PC flags himself (using the flag methodology that I described earlier) as not an Dishonor kill, but just a general Red. Admittedly, there are a few counter points in this fix that would have to be addressed:

1. Is this even technically viable?  I have no clue.  However, since I'm proposing a system of color coded flags in the first place without even wondering about the viability of THAT, I imagine I'm way too ensconsed in the world of theorycraft to worry about that detail.

2. You're still going to have the no-nothing gamer who's going to complain about not knowing that if you bum rushed a 60 at level 30, and the 60 didn't incur a penalty, that's not fair in the context of the game world, making a fair society for poor 30s to defend their lands, etc etc etc. I can't say I have a ton of sympathy for that defense.

3. You could also argue that this gives lower level characters a hidden edge, to "get the drop" on high level characters. I come from a PvE server perpective, where this has always been the case, so I'm pretty blase about this being such a horrible thing, compared to the current scenario.

I think you're coming from the view that I myself still struggle with, which is the notion of the dishonor penalty being required in the first place.  This was cooked up over time, talking with a bunch of people playing on different servers, with different perspectives. One player was an undead mage, playing on a horde dominated PVP server.  Another player was a human Paladin, playing on an alliance dominated PvE server.  I myself play on a heavily alliance dominated PvE server, as a human warrior.

As such, we contributed different viewpoints as we've discussed and debated over the honor system. While I can respect that you're willing to accept that the honor system is what you should of expected as a PVP player, I'd point out that many people were playing the PVP server because they were expecting that on top of an honor system, there was documenation and discussion about also running a dishonor system to penalize grief play.  It's not the strongest defense in the world, but it's certainly one to take into consideration, especially in the context of there being so many MMO Newbies in this game.  I know we have to break their heart eventually....

Rasix, my main concern right now is a pack of 60s being tools in town and just slaughtering Civilians to induce the lowbies to get the 60s to defend, which is what high level chars are really looking for at this point. I'm noticing currently on the server most Horde are pretty sick and tired of being served up to the Alliance to die. However, if a group of 60s continually demolish the quest givers that lower level chars need to continue, won't the crying from the Horde spur 60s to go out and defend? It's really easy to say "stop taking quests in Hillsbrad and level elsewhere", but this could easily be replicated in other towns, like Crossroads, etc, where the alternatives are fewer/more difficult to follow through on. I do think that until battlegrounds rolls out, and we have a few weeks for the public to decide where the more optimal contribution point accumulation is coming from, rolling out a dishonor penalty is probably not the best idea.  It's possible that Kalgan is right, and the BGs will eliminate most of the problems, taking us back to a somewhat more ruthless pre-honor patch state. Can't say I'll hold my breath on that one though.

My problem is that organization is not a skill I'm interested in. Maybe because I'm anti-social, or because I don't play games that often.

If you look at a game like a fighting game, there are going to be people that are better than you, and have spent more time playing than you. And those two are certainly related. But, you can point out the concrete ways they are better. They know the matchups better, they execute moves better. It's not JUST that they spent more time, or that they know 50 other people who are also good.

I don't like games where making friends is required to be good at the game.

There are ways to structure games where you can play as groups but still rely on individual skill. Baseball is a lot like that. Being coordinated with your teammates doesn't really make that much difference in baseball. The problem with a lot of endgame content and games like Guild Wars is WHO you know is really the most important aspect.

If I am going to be bad at a game, I want it to be because my adversary is just more skilled. I don't consider playing a lot a skill, not do I consider joining a guild a skill.

As has been said, Furor was head cockmaster for EQ's highest profile cockmaster guild, Fires of Heaven.  They were one of the most accomplished in terms of killing shit early and often, but they got famous for the whole 'We are more important than everyone else, fuck out of our way' attitude which they very loudly publicised.

In addition, Furor would vent loudly and obscenely whenever EQ released an expansion which had buggy or incomplete raid content in it (which, to be fair, was pretty much every expansion - so someone had to rant about it).

Furor also would rant loud and long about any attempt to make high level content become too 'easy' (where easy meant you didnt need 30 of your close friends to raid with you for 6 hours a night, 5 days a week).

Ironically, Furor now works for Blizzard, designing their high level raid content.

EDIT - Merusk pointed out I'd exaggerated the number of close friends Furor wanted to have.

Furor was also one of the first guys to call bullshit on Content Cockblocks (ssra temple and Vex Thal Keys)  and needing 72+ people to raid. He wasn't a fan of either and they were his first "i quit" temper-tantrum. FoH did their thing with only about 32 people which is why they became irrelevant when PoP came out and you needed to have those 72 man raids for things like the Rathe council.

 The man's a dick, and I can't stand him for the arrogance and holier than thou attitude.  However, he wasn't the one pushing for ever-more-zerged encounters, SOE was with their "the DM must win" mindset.

Furor is nothing. Tigole is nothing.

I just found out that who's behind this "awsome" PvP system is "Evocare", UO Lead Designer of the two best expansions: Lord British Return and Age of Shadow.

I still cannot fathom that people like Furor have now gotten "desirable" jobs, basically by being a deadbeat loser and bitching about a game.

It's not even like he had more skill than other players, he just had smoe of the most time to burn, and similar people around him.

8hrs of raiding, 7 days a week? Go Fuck Yourself.

Go look at some job postings for MMORPG games. They are a joke. A typical one will have things like "List your character levels in the different MMORPGs you've played." There isn't any room for someone to say "I understand MMORPGS quite well, but I haven't played that many for that long, because most of them aren't worth it."

It selects people who are already drinking the Kool-Aid. I've always found that absurd, that companies who are about to make X type of game need X-game enthusiasts. Yes, you want someone who KNOWS something about that type of game, but you don't need someone who loves all instances of that type of game.

There are guys who are great at an FPS game (for example) and would be lousy at making them. They are just two entirely different skills. Anyone remember the old PC Gamer articles by Thresh of Quake fame? Clearly an example of a guy who should stick to playing the games.

Some of the chucklebutts who goose-stepped their way through Molten Core pre-nerf will spew shit like that, and I suppose a bunch more people are destined to smear that shit around the walls. Post-nerf MC is not trivial, and still takes a competant raid group that knows what it is doing and can commit a large amount of time to the endeavor. Some of the bosses have been balanced rather than nerfed, so there isn't only one holy strategy relying on specific combinations of classes. The 'trash mobs' prior to the bosses are now much easier, so it doesn't take hours between each boss encounter. I fail to see why this is a bad thing, since the dogs, giants, elementals, etc were not particularly challenging, just tedious repetition that drove people away from doing repeated runs. However, why should I be surprised that people act like selfish cunts in a game based on loot acquisition?

Just a bit of grapevine info: While I detested Furor and FoH's attitude during my entire stint at playing EQ, you have to admit here that they did a good job at Blizzard: little known fact/rumor, but what they did for WoW was design the quests---just about all of 'em. From at least this forum and other stories, the quests are one of the best parts about WoW (I don't know--I don't play it).

Food for thought as people bash Furor/Tigole...

Certain quests lines are done exceptionally well.  The writing is good, there's self deprecating humor (ie one quest says, "and you know this, because you are psychic" due to the random nature of the requirement for completing it), there's plenty of pop culture references and there's a decent variety.    While not a 100% success (there's still too much random kill x mob for y drops or flat out kill 100 of mob z), it's the best I've played in that regards.  EQ2's quests were pretty good too, but the evil stuff in Freeport was too much "KICK THE PUPPY, KICK HARD, GRRRRR EVIL ANGST!!!!".

I thought Tigole/Furor were assmonkeys in EQ especially Tigole since I had to share a server with him.  Being in a guild a tier below his meant that we were SHAT upon weekly at his whim.  His guild at one time announced that they wouldn't show any courtesy to other raiding guilds and would simply ninja engage any raid target even if someone was prepping for it (being miles better they could half ass most stuff we had trouble with).   But they've done stuff I respect in WoW, so, old hate dies rather easily.   (I'm not sure exactly what has Furor's grubby handprints on it, but I think it's quest design).

It's not that WoW has great quests, it's that the quests in so many games are uncreative and suck ass.

I think it's better to bring in someone who isn't pontificating over the proper motivational tools to drive players into the style you wish.

Not knowing anything about Furor/Tigole or EQ (other than my 4 hours of playing it and deciding it was not the game for me), I agree.  One of WoW's strengths is its quest system.  Very fun.

The other fun thing for me is the craft/gathering system.  For some reason I enjoy that, and the auction house buying/selling game.

Well said.

I wasted much of my life on The Nameless, and I don't particularly hold any grudges at this point.  EQ is entirely about catassing, and Tigole played the game well.  I got tired and left.  One man's garbage....

But see, here's the thing. ALL that content, including the squishy raid content is too easy. It doesn't take any real skill to take it down, OTHER THAN PATIENCE. Vox, Nagafen, Plane of Fear, Plane of Hate, Sky, Kunark Dragons, etc. etc. etc. weren't challenging, other than in having the patience and the time to find the gimmick and execute it, OR to get the right number of people leveled and itemed up to defeat it with sheer brute force. They don't take skill. They take organization and time, but they don't take skill at the point of execution.

If I honestly believed that anything other than those two things were required in order to beat the highest level raid stuff in any EQ Clone game, I'd change my tune. I do not. Fighting an AI script, especially one with as little leeway as MMOG's allow in processing power, is just not challenging. It's not dynamic.

Blame the internet then.

All games that I can remember short of popcap were just about getting to the boss, finding his gimmick (restarted or w/e) and then defeating him.  With the internet, we can just do a google: how to beat haemish.  Then execute it.

I would imagine that these raids and bosses are challenging the first couple time through.

I despise games with end bosses that have a gimmick you need to learn to beat them.

I blame consoles.

;)

Well, certainly I agree that the question of raid content requiring brute force as opposed to player skill has always been an issue (rather ironically an issue raised most often and most forcefully by the Furors and Thotts of the world), but to claim that all raid content in every MMORPG ever was simply a matter of numbers and time is simply not true.

The key word you used there is "execution", or in other words, carrying out a raid strat after you have it figured out. When raid content is designed well, executing a raid strat should require a high level of individual player skill from as many of the participants as possible. Indeed, I would regard your examples of pre-Kunark Fear and Sky to be good examples of raid zones that depended very heavily on organization and individual player skill, that is to say on execution; and very little on brute force, gear, and numbers. Yes, everyone could get it down eventually, but not everyone got it down sooner, with fewer people, shittier gear and no strats to read on the web, as opposed to later when it was pretty much trivial and you could screw up and still not wipe.  I had the chance to experience both situations, and if you think the difference between the two was just a matter of time spent, then I'm afraid you are very far off base.

Top EQ guilds in those days were quite small with a reason, too many people simply increased the chances of some retard fucking up and screwing everything. Even during Velious you regularly had groups of 40 doing what 80 person zergs could not, even when both knew just as well exactly what they were supposed to do to win. I also remember during that period wiping countless times to mobs that we had already taken down before, and of each say Dain or Cazic fight being different. Inevitably ,with enough time and mudinflation they eventually all become trivial, but for an extended period a number of raid zones managed to stay both dynamic and exciting. Somehow, with Luclin, all this pretty much went out the window.

IMHO good raid content should be chaotic, where different situations arise unavoidably and individual players have to respond quickly to those situations to be successful. To date WoW seems to have a pretty good grasp of this, I'll single out the Majordomo, Baron Geddon and Onyxia fights as being well designed. If you don't think player skill is (or was) involved in any of those, I really don't know what to say.

I'm saying that through multiple failures, any idiot can figure out the sequence of events needed to take down all of the raid content I've ever seen, provided it isn't bugged. That's called patience. And that's not a skill, that's a character trait. It can't be taught, and it can't be gained through practice. I've run large and small raid groups, I know exactly what organization is required. Hell, the more people you add onto a raid, the more it becomes like herding cats. I know exactly why Furor wanted less people in raids, because there were less chances of fuckups, it took a lot less time to organize and you had a better chance of vetting your raiders as trustworthy. Organization is an individual skill, but it's a meta-game skill. About the only in-game challenging part of it is getting around the rotten tools for communication most of the game's give us. I ran multi-guild EQ raids without the benefit of speech software like TeamSpeak, before there were raid channels, when the best there was for raid communication was all caps in OOC or SHOUT.

Had I had all my raiders in TS, I could have done what Furor did too.

Execution in MMOG's is really not a player skill. It's just real-time macroing. Maybe you consider that a player skill, I don't. It really doesn't require a lot of effort other than paying attention to the screen and dinging your magic pill button when the proper Pavlovian commands are given. There are very few things that change that up for the raid participants. That's why I don't consider raid content very good, or a very good basis for your "endgame" because it's a Mr. Ed situation. All you need is to put the peanut butter on your horses' lips, and they'll mouth the right words for you. And in the end, 3 or 4 of you will get rewarded with shinies that will make the raid more trivial next time.

Figuring out those strategies needed takes time and a willingness to lose now in order to win later. I don't consider that much of a skill.

My Search came up "Rubber Hose"

That can't be right, surely ?

I don't know, but I bet Poptart does.

Maybe she'll come answer after she's done shopping for new pairs of pants.

Back to the topic, now that the system has had a chance to get out of the OMGNEWSTUFF stage, it's not so bad.

The addition of "honorless target" status on login and griffin landing has helped those problems.  I haven't been to TM/SS area since, so I don't know how things are going there, but maybe that's for the best.

My leveling has been more PvP heavy, and soloing will never be the same, but I have found that duoing, while you'd think it would give you twice the survivability, actually ends up giving you more that twice the benefit.  Then there's always instances.  At 52 I probably get a quarter level of XP and an item or two everytime I hit the Sunken Temple, so I don't mind doing it multiple times.

Playing on a PvP server in WoW is starting to seem more like playing on a PvP server in other games.  That's probably a good thing, though it was an adjustment.

Uber-guilds are usually too busy clearing MC/Onyxia/outdoor bosses to be farming honor and the people dominating the honor ranks are seemingly random people who love zerging it up in TM/SS.

Yes, it is.  Still the same nightly bloodbath with the Horde faring very badly indeed.  Just TRY and cash in a quest there.  Ever.

Raid encounters are different now than they were back in the Luclin and earlier days (your last raids were Kunark, no?).  Much more random, much more chaotic.  Much, much more reliant on everyone in the raid knowing what the fuck they are doing.  Lots more adds, lot more damage spikes, lots more people dying at unexpected times and lots more one guy makes a mistake and everyone dies.  We still have a long way to go, but we have come a long way from the "log back in 25 minutes to preserve your buffs and then mindlessly zerg and hope we win" of original eq-kunark and the "tank corners the mob, all dd behind it, 6 second CH rotation now hit autoattack and go watch TV for 30 minutes" of velious-luclin.

I also disagree that discipline and patience cannot be learned.

There's more to skill than DOWN DOWN BACK BACK LOWPUNCH FOR TEH FATALITY !!11!!  If you only think twitch is skill, you are never going to be happy in this genre because (a) lag, like, exists and stuff and (b) a lot of the types of people these games attract think twitch is kind of boring and very, very tired.

Twitch is not the only type of player skill. Hell, I'd be happy if MMOG combat was SLOWED some to be a bit more thinking involved. Twitch is just one type of player skill. Building successful templates in a level-based game is another, though not one I hold a lot of respect for.

There's more player skill involved in a 2-minute battle of Medieval: Total War than there is in two years of playing a raid heavy game like EQ.

Something turn-based like ToEE would be sweet. Maybe make PvE real time, and go to turn-based for PvP? Probably too much of a headache.

The problem you'll run into in any MMOG with varying fight "timing" is what was wrong w/ MxO.  You are in bullet time executing cool looking moves but everybody else is just spamming gunfire at a fast pace.  It just doesn't work too well.

MxO should have just done bullet time backwards - durring Bullet Time, all your skills are recharged and executed much more quickly. If you picture yourself as an onlooker, it still makes perfect sense.

There, I just solved the problem, Pay Me Bitch!  :evil:

It's not so much "bullet time" (MxO uses it for crits) that is the problem as the imbalance between Interlock and ranged combat.

Basically, if two+ mobs are fighting you and one of them goes mano-a-mano with you, the other mob can happily pump you full of "bullet code" with you incapable of even targeting them unless you manage to break out of Interlock. Luckily, there is a cheap skill that lets you avoid 3+ attempts at dragging you into melee, which should buy you some time. Also nice when running through mob-infested areas whwn you don't want to get into a fight.

Now, if they could only fix the bugged quests my characters are attempting...

I now return you to your regular discussions of that "yet more elves and dwarves" game. I am sure you never get enough.