f13.net

Right now I am in a very unique position. As some of you know, I have a few friends at Blizzard, and the Dev Team is asking them for feedback on the honor system. If a few of you would like to write up some thing not to long, and very concise, and maybe combine all your gripes and concerns into one nice post, I will have it passed along to some one, who can get it read by the dev team.

It has to probably be done by tonight or so.

It caters to the hardcore. It's another gap between the hardcore and casuals. It's another system that precludes casual enjoyment.

Not only the relative nature of ranks, meaning the harder the top end catasses, the harder I have to catass in order to gain ranks; it's also the maintenance nature of the system, meaning to use the gear I grind to get, I have to continue grinding every week, or lose my shineys.

Stop rewarding the lunatic fringe achievers.

1) There shouldn't be the ability for non-PvP enabled to rush up and attack /pvp people without declaring themselves first. It just gives them the upper hand in every battle. I'd like to see a 5 second delay between enabling and being able to attack someone.

2) Civilians should not aggro ever. Even if they are caught in a blast or something. You are pretty much forced to kill them at that point even if you don't want to.

3) All fp masters should be lvl 60 elites.

4) There should be a system of pvp duels that count for honor where nobody outside can affect the outcome, ie no heals or attacks. You can challenge another undeclared person to a 1v1 faction duel for honor.

5) A high lvl arena like Grubashi near SS and Tarren Mill. Restrict it to 50+ lvls. Horde enter one side, Alliance the other. Everybody is non-pvp until a battle starts on a timer, say, 15 minutes. This timer is not displayed. Once the timer ends, everyone becomes pvp at once, and the arena doors shut. The fight lasts until one faction is left standing, and then the timer starts again, and everybody is back to non-pvp.

One idea to benefit the non-hardcore might be to add bonus contribution points in the same manner as the rested XP bonus.

Though really, implementing Battlegrounds now and either eliminating or reducing the honor reward outside of them would the best first step.  Refine the methods of gaining honor later.

Not taking away honor for ganky type kills is bad, mmmkay? Also, what is honor without dishonor?

1)  Once there is a system in place for civilians not to aggro, there needs to be harsh punishment for killing them.  Right now, it's too easy to effectively grief another side's lowbies by taking over a town and keeping it a barren wasteland.  Lowbies can't really retaliate and they're stuck in the middle of a conflict they aren't participating in.  It's just tremendously annoying when you can't turn in quests.

2)  Putting this in without battlegrounds was an epic mistake.  Again, I'll go back to the example of lowbies.  Why should their zones get lagged to hell and their quest NPCs slaughtered just because there's no viable alternative for those people looking to farm honor kills?  The current system is negatively impacting the playability of the game for people that aren't even participating in it.

3)  There needs to be a way to lock in rank for a while in order to keep your rewards and still use them.  Getting up to the very top, getting a cool sword or mount and then having an off week or going on vacation and then not being able to use that equipment would be horrible.  Say for every week you earn enough points for that rank, you have a free week at that rank if you fail to earn in the subsequent week.   There should also be plenty of permanent or temporary items available that aren't restricted to rank.  I don't think rank restricted items that become unavailable once you drop lower is a terribly good idea but I can see the reasoning behind it and wouldn't be overly dismayed to see it in the system.

3a) Other idea for item retention might be having each item have a one month life to it but no rank restriction once it's purchased at the proper rank.

4) Perhaps instead of a week by week system, there should also be a cumulative secondary system in for the more casual.  Maybe a system tied into abilities or hero classes instead of gear.  Yes, this sounds like I'm advocating realm ranks from Dark Age (well, I am kinda) but there should be a system in place that helps the more casual pvper or the one that's heavily involved in a pve raid guid to have some lasting success. 

5) Like Paelos said, flight masters should probably be higher level.  I wouldn't mind them being unkillable either on PVE servers.


Edit: spelling. 

Add to that you should also flag as soon you come within a certain range of a town.  Right now with stealth you can enter a town with complete imputiny.

I completely agree with everything Rasix posted.  Covering the exact points I wanted to cover.

The reasons everyone fights in Hillsbrad:
-easy to get to
-alliance and horde towns -- but most especially graveyards -- not very far apart
-no troublesome geography or mobs that matter to level 50+ characters between those graveyards

Make those 3 conditions true in a few other zones as well, and you won't have the lagtastic shitfest that is Hillsbrad all night, every night.  A lot of what makes things suck is the overload.  If you have 30-on-20 fights in 3 different places, it is much less disruptive than having a 90-on-60 fight in one place.

For example: Arathi would be a better place to fight if the Horde has a graveyard right outside Hammerfall, like the Alliance do in Refuge Point.

Not as a response, but as a suggestion to those giving suggestions from someone who deals with them regularly, it's better just to delineate the problems clearly then to try to dictate the solutions to Blizzard.  If you come up with 'X is a problem', it's probably easy for Blizzard to agree, and they can brainstorm about how to fix it.  If you come up with 'You should X', 98% of the time the response will be 'No we shouldn't'.

WoW is a casual friendly game and one of the main reasons people play is the ability to solo, and with that the ability to make progress on your character in rather small play sessions of 1 - 2 hours.

The Honor system is contrary to this spirit of the game in that it rewards the hardcore players who have already reached 60. Now it is going to be much harder for everyone else to get there. It is going to be much harder to solo quest, you'll find your time constantly wasted by higher level players farming honor, farming you. It rewards players for ruining the fun of those beneath them on the totem pole - sure you will get more honor from an equal opponent, but players will naturally take the path of least resistance by farming players 5-12 levels beneath them, whom they can kill at a faster pace with much less risk to themselves. Taking advantage of other players by jumping them mid-mob or in groups is now rewarded, and thus is happening at an epidemic rate, producing frustration in anyone under level 60. Questing on a PvP server has always been a bit more challenging, but there was an element of unpredictability to your encounters with the opposite faction where you didn't know if someone would wave or fart on you and laugh - now every encounter is reduced to a fight or flight.

I understand that Blizzard thinks Battlegrounds will minimize this effect, that the frenzy will die down .... I hope so but I'm not convinced yet.

Good point, sid.  I guess my issues boil down to (in no particular order):

1)  Civiling killing is negatively impacting lower level players from finishing quests and carrying out other pve related activities.

2)  Large masses of people fighting in lower level areas is negatively impacting people not participating through generation of extra lag (both video and network).

3)  The killing of flight masters negatively impacts players not participating in the conflict and is tantamount to griefing.

4)  PVP reward items not being usuable once a rank is lost, compounded by how rank is determined, may be overly harsh in regards to fluctuations in rank and lapse in player participation.   This may be extremely unforgiving and punitive in the higher ranks. 

5)  Honor system caters to the hard core.  More casual participation does not outwardly appear to result in any real progress toward greater rewards.   

6)  The honor system does not have any sort of cumulative reward that is not based off other's performance in the system.

Some adjustments were made based on some misperceptions by myself.   It does help to re-read the system doc every once in a while.

Just saw Sidereal's suggestion. Thank him, he just cut down my reply by 60%+.

a. Having optimal fighting locations also be where lowbies fight and can't realistically defend themselves is not good.

b. Having civilians attack aggressors, while expecting a real dishonor penalty to kick in is not good.

c. Civilians that don't run away from danger, is not good in the context of a dishonor penalty.

d. Especially for ranks that you're calling non-commissioned officers, setting them up to be painful to scale for people who only want to PVP a few times a week is not good , especially if you want people to experience your vaunted battlegrounds, and yet feel like they got something out of it.

e. The goal of total elimination of town raids is unrealistic. It happened before the honor system, and in its best form, it can spur on spontaeneous, fun PvP competition where you can feel to some degree like you're "defending your land". At the same time, especially on a PVP server, feeling like you're 1940s Britian is not good either.

PS: What is what people are thinking when they say "Dishonor penalty"?  I've been thinking about it casually while I've been reading this thread.  I don't think merely saying "cut in honor points, bad boy" is going to do jack. If getting and staying on the ladder is as hard as people are claiming, won't that give incentive for those that have nothing to lose (that is, casual players, and players who are mired in the lower tiers) to hit up towns, knowing that they're going to have an easy path with little to no lasting penalty that will hurt them in the long run?

Why don't you just send the Blizzard dev to read all the shit we have on the honor system and the rest of the game. We have what? Over 5,000 posts about it? And a seperate 2 page thread on it?

Well either way, Sky had it right at the beginning:

Spreading the gap between the hardcore and the casual is dumb as shit. Period.

Forgot: give the Horde a mangina race, it's the only way to get anything close to numeric balance.

I would play on Horde if I could play as a Ninja Turtle. That's about the only thing I can see that would fix the problem.

I want to be Donatello. He was the coolest.

The futility of this thread makes me laugh.

The solution can be summarized in one line:

- Reward from goals and not for the single kills.

(conquer towers, graveyards and other PvP-centered spots. Build matchmaking PvP missions like escort of caravans and so on)

Better Solution:

Play Guild Wars.

Best Solution:

Run the fuck away from any MMORPG based on levels.

Final Solution:

Give me an MMO to run to that doesn't use "levels." Then, TEH WINNAR IS U!!1!

Until then, competitive and balenced ganking it is for me.

There.  Fixed.

Schild, why are you even posting in this thread?

I rather enjoy the Honor system.  I feel like we can't complain about the thing until we see it in action for another month.

Apparently, the biggest problem with it is all the lag and interference it causes for the casual players that just want to quest in Hillsbrad.  On a pvp server, this isn't a problem at all.  Players will find another place to go level, grit their teeth and fight through it, or join the combat (lots of stuff a lowbie can do if they stay with the mob).  The PvE problem I agree has to be fixed though -- flagging problems, lowbie npc's being killed, and all that fun stuff that's already been mentioned.

Edit: Morph, have they fixed the problem with BG's being too laggy at 60 people yet?

- I do not like how my rank is appended to my name. I'd prefer my char to be known simply as "Berra", not "Sergeant Berra".



Also guys, everyone I know kills far less grays than before, including myself. I used to have a KOS policy, now I just cbf'd killing grays because they give no honor.

The honor system sucks and is not fun for the Horde. Trim the following submission as you see fit:

On my server right now we've had whole herds of Alliance at the base of Thunder Bluff trying to milk killls, and this is because the Horde stopped bothering to show up at Tarren Mill.

Plus, Crossroads is being combed by rogues 24/7, who hunt slavishly for honor. They have the luxury of being able to sneak in and gank who they want, because they don't care about dying; they only care about scoring kills.

Plus, the tower north of Crossroads has become permanently inhabited by teams of casters and hunters and stuff, who attempt to be belligerent enough to provoke people to attack them.

Plus, the hill by the Zep tower in Orgrimmar is being roosted by people who kill any flagged that go by.

Plus, groups routinely charge into and take over Splintertree Post and only leave when the Horde stops fighting back, then they move to Crossroads to sit in the middle of town and provoke counterattack.

It has gotten worse now that ranks are out. I have shut off WorldDefense as it needlessly scrolls text. It has exascerbated the disadvantage of playing a faction that is numerically outnumbered by orders of magnitude, and the problem exascerbates itself, as when the Horde becomes less fun to play as a result of it, more people leave the Horde. I'll say that again: The Honor system is a real bummer for the disadvantaged faction. Don't pretend that it isn't.

You've made a mistake, and you need to be more admissive of this fact. You have done something which has had negative reception, and has lost you players and reduced interest and appeal in the game for many people. The only reasonable solution to the present problems that I can see working is to make Honor a battlegrounds only thing, but I don't believe that Blizzard presently wants to have to make this sort of 'retreat'. Maybe it's a higher management thing. But on the forums, we have the Honor system developer outright lying to us and insultingly downplaying the seriousness of the faction imbalance, etc.

Today, I watched people fruitlessly fighting hordes of Alliance at the base of TB, people were shouting to 'Deflag and stop fighting them or they'll never go away'. I sat in Splintertree and watched indefatiguable zergs of alliance constantly wipe out the city only to leave the second we stopped struggling. I sat in Crossroads and watched a duo of rogues purposefully die so that they could spawn-gank the people who would guard their corpses, the two groups communally farming honor points from each other in a retarded dance of game mechanic exploitation. The serverwide channels are full of people talking about how the concept of any sort of faction spirit is ridiculous. People I know on my server have been quitting now that PvP has become an experiment in frustration and exploitation, or, they are switching to Alliance alts.

Three of my friends were in the low 50's on PvP servers, and the honor system turned them into dogmeat. After being unable to run quests or solo for five days, they quit. More quit even on PvE servers just because they think the honor system sucks and the game lost its jay nay seis something because of it. One of my friends is an Alliance rogue on a PvP server and thinks it is (surprise!) a total hoot. Favored tactic is ganking people right off the rider in Gadgetzan. A couple others were on a RP server and actually loved the RP server dynamic between the Alliance and the Horde and how things were actually fitting the not-quite-warfare thing - with intermittant periods of clashing and respect - now turned into masses of alliance who are attempting to be as provocative and annoying as possible in order to farm players for Phat Lewt. Case in point: I log in today and damned if there isn't a group of 5 Alliance sitting smack dab in the middle of Crossroads, farting and making rude gestures at everyone, patiently waiting for We Fools to flag.

A conversation next to me starts with some players thinking that we should make a defense group to fight off the humans. Some others sitting there point out the guild names, and state these important facts:

1. If nobody flags, they will go away.
2. If you flag, they will stay here to kill flagged people.
3. The longer you flag, the longer they stay.
4. If you form a big enough defense group and actually start fights, word will travel to the Alliance and more will come here.
5. When more come here, we cannot fight them and they will depart only when they've had their fill.
6. Yesterday and the day before that, the scenario in #4-5 happened and Crossroads was occupied for 4+ hours.
7. Therefore, if you encourage people to flag, we will hate you with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

The honor system sucks and is not fun.  :-(

Because this thread is redundant.

I'm just leaving it here because I caught it a day too late to do anything.

Here's the original thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=3004.0).

Edit: And don't go thinking I'm ragging on Morphiend. I like his avatar too much to do that. Many of the people in the other thread already wrote drawn out responses with all of their "concerns" about the honor system in it. ^_^

Same here, though I haven't acheived any rank yet that just makes me want to partake in PvP even less. There needs to be some switch to turn off that title ... I dunno, maybe there already is.

I think rank should be coupled with names when /pvp enabled. When i'm hunting mobs, I'm not a rank.

The only reasion I posted this thread, is because my friend asked for some well written replys quickly if I wanted the Blizzard devs to read them. I didnt want to go wading through all the other threads, and I wanted to give you guys the chance to get heard by the dev team. Thanks for the short consice lists guys. I have passed along a bunch these.

There is, I think its in interface options.

Here's some feedback.  Releasing the honor system a week before Guild Wars' release was awesome business planning.  AWESOME!  I pre-ordered.

EB called me last night; my preorder is in.  I don't think I'll be picking it up.. ever. 

WoW's honor system sucking doesn't diminish the "meh" that is my ever declining enthusiam for GW.   The shiny on that one lasted 2 beta weekends.

See, that was your mistake.  I didn't do any of the Beta Weekends, so the shiny is fresh!

Selective editing? Doesn't matter too much, everything that has been said here has been said here before and said by many many of their customers on their own forums.

Last night the game on Earthen Ring was entirely worthless. The PvP has been a clusterfuck since the patch, but last night the honor farming by the Alliance, who outnumber Horde 3.4:1 on Earthen Ring broke everything. The server ground to a halt, dropped everybody on the Eastern Continent, rolled back, and came up choking. For the rest of the night, instances were unplayable, people got disconnected, locked out, mobs teleported, things froze, and came back with all the timers having expired such that mobs cast half a dozen spells in one instant. There is only one solution that doesn't require a huge development effort and that is to dump this useless 'honor' shit and roll back to 1.3.1.

I enjoyed the consensual PvP on ER before this patch. I can't even enjoy the PvE game any more. If they cannot get battlegrounds to perform with 60 people, how do they expect TM and UC to survive zergs of over 100 people followed by defense teams of similar numbers? They can say they are a victim of their own success as much as they wish, but the fact of the matter is that these honor farming zergs are still a minority of the server population, particularly now that ER has been boosted up to 13th place in the population league by the influx of disenfranchised PvP server players who choose names such as "Taurendruid".

WRT rank display, you can turn off your ability to display rank. Sergeant Barra will then not be bothered by others' ranks, but others will still be able to both see his rank, and inspect his honor tab.

1. Ranking system based on number of kills (or xp points or contributions points) needs to take into account varying abilities of each class to obtain those points. Classes with the ability to cause large amounts of damage to multiple opponents (i.e. AOE high dmg abilities) will always dominate classes that have no such abilities and that are limited to damage only 1 opponent at a time. Furthermore, support classes usually have the steepest curve since they can usually only be effective earning these points or kills when grouped, and assuming the high damage dealing groupmates are effective.

2. Allowing players to be attacked/killed while still zoning out of an instance allows for griefing.

3. Having an honor system with no dishonor makes the current environment a free-for-all and makes the word 'honor' meaningless in the current game context. (Perhaps that what Blizzard wanted in the initial rollout, to flush out the exploits and griefing tactics.)

4. As mentioned in other posts, look at the areas where large battles have naturally formed (e.g. hillsbrad) and replicate similar conditions (i.e. graveyard proximity, horde/alliance town placement, mosters ignorable to high level characters, etc.) elsewhere.

5. Get the Battelgrounds in the game.

There would be no reason to do this.  Spend just 30 levels on a PvP server and you will learn an encyclopedia of griefing tactics.  Making level 30 as an undead would be ideal, since you would get to quest through Hillsbrad and then experience Tarren Mill's annoying little brother, Hammerfall.

I joined a PvP server so that I could experience Warcraft... that is, not being perfectly secure that my fate lay entirely in my own hands. I wanted the danger of being ambushed by a rogue or charged by a warrior while I soloed. But with the Honor system, I can't solo with my level 41 Hunter at all. I haven't even played him for a week. I'm thinking of canceling until they figure this madness out - I don't want to have to group for every quest until I hit level 60.

Or you'd be playing EQ2.

Yes... and it was turned off the second we got our titles, but I could never see "Sergeant Berra" in the first place as I cannot see my own name. I dislike others seeing me as "Sergeant Berra".

I also have no other concern about the honor system apart from the fact that it doesn't provide me with enough purpose to join the hillsbrad shuffle, and it's hard to find solo kills these days. So... bring on the battlegrounds is all I can say to that.

Also, my 44 druid has no problems leveling... in Feralas/Tenaris no less. This may just be my server however.

Horde or alliance?

Wait until you hit 50.

Horde, but my server is arguably the most balanced server in all of WoW.

No.

But they asked for short and well written, so I just tried to condence as much as I could, since no one here wanted to do it.

 All I see is Quake..  It's not fun.  I have taken to avoiding the TM at all costs whereas before this patch it was where I ended my nightlyplay session with some good pvp.  That is not good pvp nor is it even pvp.
It's a mess.  I'm a mage so it's not like I can't go take advantage of my AoE to score HK's but the point is I have no interest in doing so.  As far as i'm concerned that Honor System was put in to shutup the masses of bored lvl 60's and is just a huge load test for Battlegrounds. 
Plus the mage items sorta suck but then all the mage loot sucks.
I enjoy mass killing as much as the next toon but this is just plain silly.
 Alliance on my server think they are playing a single player game.
No I in team.   I would hate to see how the Horde are doing on some of the more unbalanced servers i've been reading about on the forums.  Sounds like some just wanna give up fighting back when it's always 10vs5.

I got fed up with WoW, resubbed to Planetside friday night.

Planetside ran a full-server event all weekend long.

Winnar es my!!!

Planetside pwns, btw. Love the game, even if I'm pretty sucky and there is a completely unecessary and annoying level treadmill. It's got my Thumper of Love, and dernit, that's all I need (maybe a medic, too).
That was pretty much Earthen Ring, only it was more like 40 or 50 coordinated (often the same guild) alliance destroying horde outposts with a few decent level hordies getting slaughtered while halfassedly attempting to mount a resistance.

If you can find me reliable 2:1 odds against me, I'm up for it. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that a slightly unbalanced fight involving a few Horde and a few more Alliance degenerates into a blue rush of Alliance who come running in a frenzy when they hear some honor points are on the cards. There are only around 800 Horde players on Earthern Ring at prime time, only a small subset of them PvP'd with any regularity, and many of those have given up in disgust now. The 30 or less Horde PvPing on ER on any given evening are now subject to multiple raid groups of Jolt-fuelled lunatics eager to obtain fancy titles and nVidia graphics cards within minutes of engaging in any combat. There are more Human Paladin level 60s than Horde level 60s at any given time.

If you want to PvP, the bulk of WoW servers are the last place you should think of doing it. The game has never really lent itself to diverse and skillful PvP, and in its current incarnation, it is basically worthless. Last night the Horde managed to muster 120 people - three raid groups - to take the fight to the Alliance. Why they chose Ironforge, I don't know. They got to the gates, around 300 Alliance came zerging out, and most everybody froze up for several minutes. Meanwhile, in Blackrock Spire, I froze repeatedly, and was dropped by the server twice.

I'm losing my patience. I've already watched seven level 60 players from the Horde on my server leave in disgust. That's around 5% of the regular Horde 60s if anybody's counting, which Blizzard patently isn't. No faction imbalance, those sites are incorrect. Working as intended. Doesn't mean what you think it does. Read the quest description. Player harrassment is best dealt with using the faction system. Don't post in caps.

Hi!

That bit about the IF "raid" sounds about right in my experience. From the imbalance to the bad horde leadership.
I'm only lvl 58, I don't count! (according to the idiots on the official boards, anyway, heh)

The account is still open, but I haven't even logged in at all in a week. I'll probably end up cancelling if I don't play for another week (and I really have little urge to).

Did I mention Planetside ran events all weekend? And that they rocked? I only got to play around for a while on Friday night, but it was great. They had reset all the ownerships and placed a monolith to fight over (and hold) to gain a tactical advantage for your empire, which then invaded a predetermined enemy continent. I spent a lot of time in the (poorly designed) Core, since they had made it a bottleneck, the NC and VS only had access to the one cavern, the fighting was intense.

That's how you do pvp in a game.

I played a horde rogue on a pve server to 53 and got bored.  Being able to opt in and out of pvp at will hardly seems like a real battle, and I missed the little bit of excitement upon seeing an enemy player.

So I switched to an alliance hunter on a pvp server, loved playing, got to 48, honor system went in.

Haven't played much since.

It's one thing to hunt and be hunted by players ~= the same level or within 5 levels, but another completely to be farmed - camped at instance entrances and exits, quest mobs, and so on.  This isn't a war, it's mindless ganking.  It's not fun-for-me pvp.  And it's not just 60s.  The 50s go farm in the 40s zones, the 40s in the 30s zones.

It's not that the system _allows_ this, it's that the system _rewards_ this. 

The biggest problem I see on the pvp server is that alliance is overpopulated, and became even more so after the realm transfers.  There just aren't very many little horde levelling up.  Alliance 60s are already bitching about the dearth of good pvp battles (where the horde is not outnumbered 5x1, which eventually makes them just go away and not play).

The original pvp stuff I read before launch made me want to play this game.  Especially the part about player reputation, that players who had a sufficient amount of dishonor would be attacked by their own faction's npcs, and some even attackable by other players of the same faction.  Now that is cool stuff - player justice.

The honor system patch was a complete stinker as implemented, and Blizzard needs to get its collective excrement compiled in order to fix this.

Meanwhile, in other news,  - lets see, how did Schild say it? Oh yeah - GW 4tw!

Ironically, there is some speculation that WoW rolled out the honor system just in time for GW's launch so that they could retain those PvP hungry level 60 types.

Too bad they are making it look like an attractive option to those NOT at 60 yet!  Once again we have a sheep and wolf problem.  We will see if Blizzard handles it better than EA/Origin did.

That might not have backfired if WoW's PvP was any good.  It is nothing at all like GW.  You would never see a 30 vs 10 fight in GW, neither would you ever be forced into nonconsensual PvP.  While it seems obvious that the honor system was pushed out early, it seems uncharacteristically bone-headed that it was applied globally.  The PvP in GW is not global!  You won't be completing a quest solo or in a team in GW, only to receive a surprise elf up the ass or a drawn-out beatdown from a platewearing cocksniffer.  You will not be ganked immediately upon login to GW.  Other players won't be killing your quest NPCs in GW.  Nevermind WoW combat is simply not as good as in GW.  If Blizz was actually trying to compete with Arena.Net, they probably should have played the fucking game they wanted to compete with.  It's not just comparing apples and oranges, it's more like comparing apples and tigers: only one was built for killing.

If Blizz would just connect a certain amount of DKs per week, say 10 or something, with losses to your reps with your own faction, that would probably serve to get a lot of the stupid out. If you were a big enough douche, you could theoretically go KOS by both factions and the only towns you could repair in would be goblin. No AH, no FPs, they'd be SOL.

Define a Dishonerable kill.  If it's lowbie's say 11 or more levels below you, we're gonna see them running around in the masses of lvl 60's waiting to be AoE'd.  We've got a similar problem with lvl 20's running around purging lvl 60's in battles.

I think the Honor system should just be applied to the Battlegrounds instance whenever the hell that gets put in.  Either that or remove any quests that need completion in Southshore andmake it an official open battleground.   Make the towns able to be taken over for a period of time or whatever.
 I'd also like to see different levels for instances in Battlegrounds. Be different to fight with level 30-39  newbs without horses in 50vs50 battles.

So last night I decide i'm gonna go head to SS to fight a little and see if my buddies PC handles the massive amounts of lag better then my poor laptop.  It was actualy just as bad, surprisingly. 
 My first death consisted of me running into the middle of a horde pack, while lagged. Just kept on running.  Woulda been a nice kamakazi attack had I had a power shield on and been able to cast.  But I no longer was in control of my toon.   It's like they called me out for Red Rover.  Out comes Amp for his beating.
I ran around there with my rogue buddy for abit.  Died some killed some.  Logged out dead.

I dunno, the fighting is just pretty stupid.  Move forward abit.  Try to drag a couple stupid toons out of the pack.  Die. Rinse repeat.

I'd rather just instance if i'm gonna continue to play.

You are right.  If you accept the fact that the honor system is out there, anyone should be able to see that a lack of discentive for being an asshole coupled with rewards for being an asshole will just ruin things.  Or make it better, if you like assholes.  I don't like assholes, despite playing on a PvP server.  The gaming on a PvP server was sometimes harrowing but always doable in a reasonable sense; the lack of incentive to gank kept things at a low level most of the time.  Now my undead-warrior-ass might as well be a PC-controlled mob thanks to the rewards for killing me.  At this point, however, I don't think I'd start playing my RP toon until this is fixed.

No, I don't know what the "fix" is.  I don't know how to define a dishonorable kill.  I would confine the rewards to Battlegrounds, I think.

Roll back to 1.3.1. Clear all PvP rewards from the item databases. Easy enough to do with WoW's monster downtimes. The 'honor' code should only have any bearing to battlegrounds.

This would be a good fix.

A perfect fix would be to install dishonor with regard to player killing as originally set forth.  I don't buy the arguments that it would be too easy for low levels to grief high levels. It could be made so that it's impossible for people to hit each other unless they are within some level limit.

I don't care much anymore.  The less I play WoW, the less I miss it.

The easiest fix is taking it to the battlegrounds only. And seeing as how MMO developers flow the path of least resistance, I fully expect this to be the case. You can still gank up a storm elsewhere, but you'll get no honor.

Heeeeeeeeeeee's ... right.

You people think you want battlegrounds, but you really don't.  In any battle bigger than 4v4 or maybe 5v5, your death or surviving is almost completely luck.  Do three people decide to focus on you at the beginning, or don't they?  I hate 50v50 zergs because functionally it almost no different than rolling dice in orgrimmar where 1-50 means I get an honor kill and 51-100 means I fall over dead.

Give me 1v1 PvP or 1v2 PvP anyday.  I'm not ranked high because I don't do the TM grind, but when you go 1v2 against a druid and rogue that ambush you and beat them both in a random encounter in Winterspring there is no better feeling.

I want battlegrounds to come and become the most efficient place to farm honor.

Then the honor farmers can thrive on that, and I can turn on WorldDefense again and not have it scroll.

Triforcer, really, this is just getting into a territory you can't implement in any MMOG to date. You're essentially requesting Mortal Kombat Online with a grind. You know for a fact that battlegrounds won't be 50 on 50. First, there are NPC guards. Second, guards are upgraded by quests. Third, you have graveyard takeovers. Fourth, you have outside quests for airstrikes. I mean if you think this is going to be lining up on each side and having at each other, well, you're simply misunderstanding the design. Perhaps the battle is a dice roll sometimes, but organization means you are rolling a 10 sided die to your opponents 6.

I'll state this again: roll back to 1.3.1. Clear all PvP rewards from the item databases.

Your easy fix presupposes that battlegrounds are ready, which they are not. I stated that the honor system should only have bearing on battlegrounds, however it is not the easy fix that you think it is. That is 1.3.1.

What he said

Jeff

Why can't it be implemented? Why not have 1v1 and 2v2 battlegrounds? I've said this before, I think that is a GREAT idea for an "end-game." Have tournaments. You can have 1v1 tournaments, partner tournaments, group tournaments, mage only tournaments, tournaments for people level 30 and below, etc etc etc. It seems like it would be a lot of fun and I don't think it would be hard to implement.

Because MMOGs are about pitting many people in a simulated war, not a B.net ladder game of WC3. It runs counter-intuitive to the massive aspect of the genre. Unless you think that the B.net servers are really an MMOG in disguise. I personally do not. The other reason is that simply dueling each other constantly is freaking boring real fast. In the grinder format we have, loot would trump all. That's not the case when you take it on a larger scale. Tactical options and strategies emerge that were not possible with 1v1 or 2v2.

*cough* OMG go read about GuildWars */endcough*

And you'd be wrong.

Hoax - Screw GW, I'm playing Planetside again.

Here's another easy fix. Only give honor rewards for specific zones and specific level ranges for zones.

For example:

Crossroads is a mostly level 10-25ish zone for Horde. Alliance players can gain honor points in that zone ONLY if they are indeed level 10-25ish. If Hillsbrad is 25ish-40, only those level players can gain honor there. Anyone out of that level range who engages in a PVP kill that they initiate get dishonor points. Dishonor takes away from your current honor totals, and if you get too much dishonor, you will be KOS to your faction. Punish people for being cockmunchers.

Notice that if the level 1 player initiates the combat, he gets dishonor. You want to reverse-grief a level 60 someone by making them attack you? You better have some good taunting skillz, y0.

Of course, I also don't think you should get honor points for attacking someone who really has no ability to kill you. If that level range is 5 levels or 10 levels or whatever it needs to be, you don't get honor for killing a level 40 if you are a level 60. I don't know the formula.

And yes, I was having monstrously good PVP in Guild Wars this weekend, and I wasn't paying a subscription fee for it either.

They've stated that they don't track who initiates fights.  I personally agree it's a good idea not to go down that road: you get involved in a lot of edge cases and exploits.  Think noto PKs from UO.  All a lowbie has to do to dishonor a higher level is walk into his magma totem, arcane explosion, whirlwind, etc.

Once more for the hard of thinking: roll back to 1.3.1. Clear all PvP rewards from the item databases.

In what bizzarro world does the EASIEST FIX involve writing and testing NEW CODE?

I loved Planetside, but seriously the character development is so shallow you might as well just join a Cstrike league.  Also in Pside your guild needs to be huge, every forum I read actively has an actual guild that can participate for GW because you only need 8 people online at a time.

But yeah I could go for Sony making PlanetsideII with more vehicles, player-built bases, a bigger less warp-pointy map, and more character evolution.

Uh in the same world where you don't have a GIANT SHITSTORM from your players over a rollback. Honestly, don't be retarded. What game is going to basically just pull back everything they put out there? I haven't ever seen that done. So yeah, if the easiest thing would be unprecendented action to your customer base, then sure, giddy up.

It has been done in the past,  but usually only when there were facestabbingly giant bugs involved.

Yeah I recognize the need there. Rolling back because the game stops functioning is one thing. Rolling back because your system ruffles some skirts is another. Personally, I have almost no problems with the way the honor system works, I just have problems with what they left out.

You're living on Planet Ignorance if you think there isn't already a GIANT SHITSTORM from the players regarding the current state of the game. I know you don't want a version rollback, but it is the easiest fix. To deny it with circuitous arguments about potential reactions does not help your case.

Unless your definition of easy is different than mine, it involves the reprecussions of an action. I'm not living under a rock, and I do realize that people are pissed about the current state. What's funny though is they don't have to do anything but continue their process of getting battlegrounds into the game, which was going on anyway (a point you seem to miss), and wait out the roar. I call that easy. I don't think it's easier explaining why the good stuff that people enjoyed from Patch 1.4 disappeared. The patch fixed numerous issues with loot, classes, instances, and bugs. Rolling back isn't an option unless your patch makes your game non-functional. Period.

That explains it.

LoL

And whatnot.

How different is it from tracking who initiates a fight against a mob (which is definitely tracked).

Not very, I'm sure.

Did any of you people play UO?

Nothing can be done short of making a PvE mirror to stop the behaviour that's occurred since the "Honor" patch, save removing the patch. Those who don't learn the lessons of the past and whatnot.

But hey, knock yerselves out, it'll be fun to munch popcorn with.

Rolling back might be the easy fix, but Sky is right.  It's all done. It's unlikely it will get undone.  Since it is not coded that the honour system applies only to BGs, it would not be an easy task to make it so.  Sure, they'd lose lots of subs with a rollback but they seem to be losing lots of subs now, anyway. Blizz isn't in Kansas anymore.   Both scenarios are just dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind, the wind.

Umm... err... bugger. 

And whatnot.

I don't know about that losing lots of subs thing, no one i know has quit and they opened 2 new servers last week and another one a couple days ago (2 out of the 3 are pvp).  If i hadn't found Mount and Blade (http://www.taleworlds.com) i'd still be pvping in tarren mill non stop.  Made it to rank 5, been completely addicted to m&b since then though so we will find out how much you lose from a week of inactivity next time they calculate the rankings.

Might have fixed numerous class bugs, while breaking Frost nova.  Things now warp all over the place instead of freezing in place where they are suppose to which in instances can be lots of fun!  Add that to a list of mage bugs i'll not post.

As for explaining why the good stuff that people were enjoying disappeared, I can just add my own input
You have a large group that enjoyed what 6 or so months of fun on a PvP server, pvp being defined as it was in the game for 6 mtns, giving us the chance to decide if being ganked was your thing and wasting time to level to 60 (or for the people with less time i'd say lvl 40 or multiple 20's) , knowing that yea you are open to being killed at any time, yet, I found that I wouldn't kill randomly.  Neither would alot of the Horde I met.  Hell I took pictures of a bunch of Alliance and Horde Druids and a Shaman all in animal form sitting side by side in Gadz.   They all sat still for like 15 mins while we took different poses.  I couldn't even communicate with the horde minus emotes  but they sat there obedient  and it was pretty humerous.
Hell i've helped a horde kill a boss for some quest after they helped me all with understanding by emote.  Now the only emote I see from Horde is /laugh /hug /spit.  They aren't laughing with me, i'm sure that Taruren is squeezing the shit out of me and well, /spit speaks for itself.


I love to fight trust me.  But they fucked a good game.

Explain yourself.

I read a bit about it, and am curious.

I didn't say it had to be ONLY 1v1 and 2v2. It could be 4v4, 8v8, 100 v 100. Let people choose how to have fun! If fun for me is a duel, let me do that. If fun for me is me and 99 of my guild teammates fighting another huge organized guild, let me do that too. What's the problem with that?

As far as the honor system goes, a good first step would be to stop calling it the "honor system" since it has NOTHING to do with honor at all. Just call it the kill point system, cause that's what it is.

Think Sid Meirs Pirates! meets Braveheart with the best fucking combat system in any game, evah.

Schild.  Go buy it with yer expense account.

wtf?

Corp has a thread about Mount and Blade- sounds like fun. If/when I ever get time away from poker, WoW, and now GW, I will check it out. Look for my review in Q1 2017.

Err... that's 5 years after the end of the world!  Only good thing about 2012 is that we can avoid the great Unix meltdown of 2038. 

Armegeddon ftw!

I like how everyone was bitching that Blizz wasn't patching fast enough, a few months back.

Eat that, suckas! Be careful what you wish for.

So, now they're not patching fast enough AND they suck at patching?

I love this industry. I wonder when game development gets a reality show.

Edit: Btw, I know they suck at patching, they use bittorrent. I meant their changes. They suck.

The Bittorrent system they use is godawful.  Really, really, really bad.

I'll be back later to tell you some more things that you already know...

/TYAK!

World of Warcraft is heavily-influenced by the EQ/DikuMud style of gameplay.

/TYAK!

Why not play GW?  Same concept but better design.  No monthly fee, either.

You're assuming any of your microsecond attention spans will be still playing that game in a month.  The shiny wears off fast, but hey, enjoy. 

Heh. That's the exact same thing I've been thinking since people have been going on about GW. :P

I can dance with my own intestines?  OMG, sign me up!

Thats what I've been thinking since I quit WoW.  Lets do a quick run-down why GW even if it is just "the shiny" that makes it worth playing makes more sense then playing WoW:
-skilled pvp
-no ganking (I miss it really but the majority here seem to hate pkays)
-faster grind
-no fee

I'm not going to go on any limbs, those are all just the truth.  How can it not be ok to buy GW and play it (for $50) while people play WoW ($15/mo), and bitch about all the moronic changes they are making but continue to play because the BG's will fix it all for us...  :roll:

P.S.  Please dont tell me to just get the fuck off the WoW sub-forum, I usually just add my input into PvP topics I'm just mocking WoW because this whole honor patch makes it too easy.

*shudder* ugly quotes...

Because GW is not a MMORPG and therefore people who like MMORPGs will not be satisfied with it?

Nested!

I agree with you.

One thing that I've found that I really enjoy is the ability to try different characters in a pvp setting (end game) whenever I'd like.  I'm not stuck with 3 months of leveling and 3 months of farming in order to play a different character.  For instance, tonight I enjoyed playing a healer for the first time ever.  I never make healer characters because it bores the hell out of me to watch the bar move up and down, but it was exciting in GW.  Then I stopped, and remade a necro/mes to try out a bit, it took all of 2 mins.  I had some stuff unlocked from my 1 high level char going through for almost all my chars (itemswise).  But the real key is not feeling like you have to play because you're paying a fee.

Well, if you like MMORPGs and the PvP is just a part of it for you I would say playing WoW makes some sense. But clearly GW has a lot more going for it in the PvP department.

GW has a lot more going for it in the "scaling difficulty as you progress" area as well. Oh and the crafting/loot system. Hell, it's just WoW++. I *would* pay for Guild Wars on a monthly basis if they asked me to. Of course, I wouldn't buy what will no doubt be expansions that are 5-10% of the current game every 3-4 months either.

Edit: If you haven't played this, let me just say - the amount of skills is stupid. Every class has 75 (which means about 157-160 (there are a few classless skills) for each character, unless you don't dual class). Considering there's only 20 levels, it's nuts. Stat increases don't exist. Skill increases for your skills are immediately noticeable across entire skillsets. When you put x points into say, "Blood" under the necromancer tree, every blood skill goes up a solid and immediately gratifying amount. It's pretty clever. Also, with the capture system (combined with the 8-skill deck), we're definately getting closer to the Magic: The Gathering scheme in terms of power distribution. You buy your common skills, quest for your uncommon skills and have to hunt down somewhat random boss mobs hoping they use a certain skill against you - and you have to have a capture signet in your deck - and use it right after they use the skill on you (to get the rare "elite" skills). Brilliant.

Ok. Terrific.  A game designed ground up for PVP has a better PVP system, OMG REZ WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST.  And if you're going to bring up the PVE or crafting as a ++ over WoW, you're eating paint chips and sniffing glue.   (Unless the beta I played wasn't the real game, and like there was some hidden AO SUPER BUILD I didn't play)

Someone should really put up a sub-board for that Guild Wars game.  Looks hot.

Again with the ugly quotes...

Agreed, GW is in no way a MMORPG, but lets face it WoW isn't either in the PvP department, I have always kept an eye on these boards while I was playing and now that I'm not.  Most people posting here seem to fall into these stereotypes:

-Random groups suck, big guilds suck, catass sucks, raids suck, I hate ub3r loot
-PvP servers are lame, ganking is lame, unfair pvp is lame, stop killing my quest npc's  :|

Those two generalizations alone make me wonder why I still sense GW hate.  I mean if your not playing WoW for the EQ-endgame (raids, super lewt, more raids, general catassery) then you are playing it for the PvP which we've already established sucks esp with the honor patch unless you are a PvP catass.  It seems to me the only excuse to still be playing WoW after making these assumptions is that the person believes BG's will magically unfuck everything and the world will sing of their glory. 

Anyways, who cares as long as everybody is having fun right?  Here's hoping GW forces the next Blizz mmog (est release date 2027) to be less EQ and more kickass.

PvE in Guild Wars feels near the exact same as WoW other than the skill limitations - which even out the battlefield. The missions are flat-out the best in an MMOG, followed quite a long ways by some of the epics in CoH.

Also, please hammer don't be ridiculous. I'm no GW fanboi, but to say that WoW wasn't designed from the ground up KNOWING that PvP was INEVITABLE (whatwith Alliance vs. Horde and all), you'd think they'd have spent more time on that bullshit "honor" system. Not to mention rewarding the biggest catasses and playerkillers with graphics cards. Just sayin.'

And it's not paintchips and glue. It's playdoh and sharpies, thxuvrymch.

On a side note I've been doing a little MC and Onxyia. Frankly it's much much better than it was in EQ, less asshattery with instance raids to start with. Also there isn't much of it... I know the uber catasses hate it but I love the fact that you only need to spend a few hours a week to do everything you can.

Ohh jumping jesus, I'll attribute what you just said to another game popping your fanboi cherry (and your persistent WoW hate), but goddamn.   WoW shipped with NO pvp system other than flagging on PVE servers and random fucking chaos on PVP.   When the PVE game was done, they shipped it. 

Does that sound like a game what was designed ground up to be a PVP game?  A game that felt comfortable shipping with no "honor" system, no battleground, no way to counteract population imbalances, and otherwise no real incentive to go out and kill people? They want a healthy pvp game, but they seem quite content with having a heavy PVE emphasis.  No, this was another layering of PVP on a PVE core.  This was not PVP centric design in the slightest.

Knowing PVP is inevitable (what is PVP, the fucking Borg?) and designing a game from the ground up grab the PVP niche are quite different.  Infact, I'm not even sure what in the blue hell you're trying to argue.

Even in CoH for fucks sake the raids were bigger and took longer then in WoW !!!! Very little in WoW requires more then 2-3 hours and an easely assembled 10-man group. Molten Core and Onyxia are the only thing that approach EQ-style catassing, but by far not reaching it btw, and actually that is not required to get a really good set of stuff.

Yes it involves a lot of super lewt, but never has super lewt been so ordinary frankly. Most bonuses on purple items are only just enough bigger to be noticed but it's hardly DAoC artifact stuff.

Good vs. Evil and at the beginning of the game and you choose between Alliance and Horde. You can't trade with people in the other faction and can't have a character in the other faction on your server? And it's not a PvP centric Design? The heavy PvE emphasis was just laziness on their part. You have to realize - I'm not knocking WoW because of how bad their PvP is. It's really not that bad. It's that they did so LITTLE with $30,000,000.

Drop the Good vs. Evil bit - the Horde do not consider themselves to be evil. E.g. the Good Tauren are fighting the Evil Dwarves who damage the spirit of the land with their mining. And the Undead are fighting the zealots of the Red Crusade as well as their former master.

I don't care what the horde consider themselves. Good vs. Evil sums that shit up. Of course either side thinks their doing good. Of course the Taliban think their the good guys. Of course Kim thinks his army in North Korea is Doing the Right Thing Don't be stupid. It's fucking Good vs. Evil, served up on a platter.

Silly Schild.  Politics are for kids!@

Apparently schild eBay'd his account here. This guy is doing a fine job of spouting venom about WoW however, almost had me fooled.

I make what? One typo out of every 400 posts? I'll tell you who is posting for me when I sleep. This nasty boil on the side of my neck.

Something like that. There's an asston more content in the release than the beta, and the leveling curve is much shallower than any other MMOG out there AFAICT. The world actually feels a lot bigger than WoW's.