Patch 3.08

[Paelos]

It's about egos, lying to customers, and listening to the average person who actually plays the game. Solve those problems, and you win.

[Ironwood]

Can't disagree with any of that.  'Rockstar' developers should be nailed to the wall BEFORE your project starts.

[Azazel]

"I agree" post on the "Rockstar" thing.

Also, I think they're seeing a drop off on arenas from a general casual viewing. Also the fact that they dropped the new, huge rating requirements by 100 points. The adding of these bullshit ratings was the start of my lack of interest in arenas since I only participated in them for the "welfare epics" so I could have some kind of vague parity in BGs and ability to actually do things in PVE since I'm a casual player.

[Fordel]

The whole ratings for Arena thing is starting to truly reach stooge level of hilarity.


You have team ratings and personal ratings AND super secret hidden ratings... 

[caladein]

Discounting personal ratings, this is not all too different from what Blizzard did for Warcraft 3 if I recall.  You had your ranking (Arena Rating) and a hidden score for match-making purposes.

[Rendakor]

Discounting personal ratings, this is not all too different from what Blizzard did for Warcraft 3 if I recall.  You had your ranking (Arena Rating) and a hidden score for match-making purposes.

But you didnt need a certain ranking to build higher tier units. It's one thing to have rankings for match making. Its another to make ranking a gear cockblock.

[dd0029]

The arena thing really annoys me as well.  I suppose I am one of those beat head on wall people because I am participating, but my team will probably not get a high enough rating to get the "good" gear, much less the top of the line gear.  Some of why I am still playing is that the death match thing is kind of nice and the ratings do sometimes provide some entertaining games against equally unskilled people where if we win we are left wondering what went right.  I don't know how long that sort of thing will last though with no other real incentive.

[Gobbeldygook]

Also, I think they're seeing a drop off on arenas from a general casual viewing.

It didn't.  Only the top 0.5% get Gladiator.  Thus, by looking at how many people get gladiator it's possible to figure out how many people participate in the arenasl.  Unfortunately, the hall of fame is no longer viewable, but arenajunkie's estimates (WARNING: They do not screen their advertisers very well and have in the past served up trojans in their banner ads; do not click without NoScript installed) of how many people would get gladiator in previous seasons allows for us to just see how fast the arena population has been growing.  Their estimate is always conservative, but generally in the right ball park.  By their estimations, season 4 was by -FAR- the most popular season ever.

My guess is that there will be a drop-off from season 4 because

1. The current PVP gear is pretty terrible for PVE; unlike season 4, pvping to pveing is not the optimal thing to do with fresh 80s.  Assuming they stick to the pattern they did in TBC, pvping to get gear for pve will become optimal again in later seasons.

2. People haven't had time to level up all their 70 alts.  Some of my guildies are working on their third and fourth 80's, but Casual Carl probably hasn't done so yet, so the sheer number of teams participating will be down.

3. The arena ratings on gear were too high.  I don't know what blizzard was thinking, but on most BGs 1600 was pretty safe for season 4 challenger and that was at the peak of participation.  You need over 1600 to get any arena gear in season 5.  Locking out literally 65% of your players from all arena gear is pretty 

[Paelos]

You left out another reason (and what I consider to be the most key reason) that Season 4 was so popular. Season 4 was in the latter stages right before an expansion. People had done most of everything and were bored as hell with raiding content at that point. They knew the reset button was coming, so they wanted to try something else for fun, and it they got decent dps gear from pvping, they could level faster in WotLK.

Arenas only work if people are bored with everything else.

[Hawkbit]

There was a stupid Yo Dawg meme attached to this pic, so I edited it up.  It's pretty awesome how cool arenas are.  Even when you win, you lose.   

[Fordel]

I'd rather have it WITH the meme. 

[Soulflame]

Is that screenshot for real?  That is totally awesome if so.

[Vash]

Yes, it's real, it was posted on Arena Junkies with the Yo Dawg meme and has even been linked to in a few places, which is how I came upon it.

I got a good chuckle out of it and if anything it definitely helps validate my decision to stay away from pvp when not raiding and level a fun alt instead.  That's a pretty sad statement for the current pvp situation considering I was pretty heavy into pvp and had a good time back when I last played during the S2 - S3 era.

[Fordel]

WinterGrasp is fine, when it isn't imploding onto itself creating a Time/Space paradox in the server reality.

[Lakov_Sanite]

WinterGrasp is fine, when it isn't imploding onto itself creating a Time/Space paradox in the server reality.

One major problem with wintergrasp that I imagine blizzard figured out is that you can only have one. Don't get me wrong I'd love for a variety of outdoor pvp zones but at least on my server there's never hundreds of players at any given battle, a few dozen on each side at most. if that were to be spread out through several diff open pvp areas the combat would be very dull as you try to defend against the massive army of 5.

I think in a way this was one of warhammers biggest flaws, they decided to have world pvp everywhere and it was hard to find (for me at least) until players got funneled into the endgame.

[Fordel]

On Doomhammer, as long as it isn't 6 am or whatever, it's pretty much packed. Like, "The first 3 raid groups are full, form a 4th" packed. If everyone wasn't moving at 3 FPS and crashing every other minute, it would be 

Except we are moving at 3 FPS and the entire zone can crash half a dozen times per battle round, so its currently 

[Lantyssa]

Blizzard just sent me a 10-day trial.  I get to play my Draenei again.  Whee!

[WindupAtheist]

I don't do Wintergrasp because it runs on a three-hour cycle and I can never be arsed to be there, I don't know what comes from there that I would want, and because it just sounds like a huge overcomplicated pain in the dick.  Blizzard's vehicle system is basically just lame, and I don't really want to fight just to pug some raid boss or farm widgets.

I don't do Arenas because frankly I'm not that good, I don't care enough to get good, and I'm not going to help fill out the lower ranks if I can never ever get the better gear. Small-scale deathmatches sound boring as fuck anyway.

I do the occasional Battleground just because. Since all the good gear requires Arena rankings and even the lame shit costs 4x as much honor if you don't have Arena points, there really isn't much reason to bother.

WOTLK basically murdered PVP for me. I just want to do Battlegrounds and buy decent loot with my points. Fuck all this other noise.

[Ratman_tf]

Amen. Blizzard's advantage is project management, not wizard programmers and designers.

Yep. It's not cool and sexy, but it gets games made.

[Signe]

Blizzard just sent me a 10-day trial.  I get to play my Draenei again.  Whee!

Is it the expansion free trial?  There's one right on the website, too.  I thought I'd wait until I could actually make a DK to give it a go.  My highest level is only 40.  Also, I TRY to play Alliance but I just can't seem to do it.  I can't get past level 15 before I lost interest and go back to my whorish hordish ways. 

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I helped someone with a quest!  Yay me!  I did warn him, however, how dreadfully awful I am at this game but he didn't mind and let me save his pasty white mage ass anyway.

[Fordel]

I don't do Wintergrasp because it runs on a three-hour cycle and I can never be arsed to be there, I don't know what comes from there that I would want, and because it just sounds like a huge overcomplicated pain in the dick.  Blizzard's vehicle system is basically just lame, and I don't really want to fight just to pug some raid boss or farm widgets.

I'm not sure what you find complicated about it? Have you done the Strand of the Ancients battleground? It's that, but scaled up to a 100+.


The Main benefits outside of the Loot Pinata inside and the Zone Ore/Herb/Elementals outside, are the WG 'Buff', WG Tokens and the large amount of honor the zone vomits out.

The WG Buff (which you'll get anywhere in Northrend if your side owns WG) lets bosses in 5 mans drops Stone Keeper shards. Each boss drops 3-4. You use these shards to buy stuff: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43228#currency-for:0+2+1 . It's mostly PvP oriented stuff, some Twink Gear via the Bound to Account stuff, and a ridiculous mammoth. The buff itself also gives a 5% XP bonus while in Northrend.

The WG Tokens, are just like other BG tokens, but for WG obviously. They let you buy: http://www.wowhead.com/?search=titanforged and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44914 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44912 AND http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44115 (wowhead is behind a bit, the last item is 9 WG Tokens, not Shards)

The Zone itself just spews out honor while the battle is going on. For a 30 minute play session, it's something like 2-4k honor, depending on how successful your side is. This is on top of the honor gained from doing the daily pvp quests in the zone. (Kill 20 Enemies, Kill 3 Siege engines, Destroy 3 towers, Some variation of a pve farming one no one ever does, Just win the round etc...) They are all Raid quests, so they pretty much auto complete once the action starts.

Easily 5-10k Honor per session.



My only issue with WG currently is the fact it's a victim of its own success. The Server/Zone just starts shitting bricks once 300 people open up onto each other. They are working on it, and it's getting better, but as with all things Blizzard, it's on the Soon(TM) time table.

[Lantyssa]

Blizzard just sent me a 10-day trial.  I get to play my Draenei again.  Whee!

Is it the expansion free trial?  There's one right on the website, too.  I thought I'd wait until I could actually make a DK to give it a go.  My highest level is only 40.  Also, I TRY to play Alliance but I just can't seem to do it.  I can't get past level 15 before I lost interest and go back to my whorish hordish ways. 

Yep, it's the Wrath trial.

Annoyingly, the patcher isn't smart enough to go from Burning Crusade to Wrath even if it's activated on your account.  I spent my first day downloading two gigs of installer even though I was almost fully patched from the trial last fall that I got to play one day of. 

I prefered the Horde, but I got dragged over to Alliance by someone who now hates the game and Draenei tickle several character fetishes at once.  I ignore the populace anyways, so it doesn't matter much.

[Morfiend]

I love Wintergrasp, on my server, even at 1:00am on a weekday its packed, probably between 80 - 150 per side. But ever since 3.08 its been laggy as hell, and I think this really benefits the attackers, as its really hard to coordinate killing the vehicles. I guess its better than benefitting the defenders, as both factions get the buff on and off all the time.

[K9]

-- wrong thread

[AngryGumball]

The world of Blizzard not caring about AQ War Efforts anymore when they bug out or when Blizzard outwardly just breaks their own rules in favor of more money, in order of my comments Hello Grizzly Hills and then hello Drakkari. Good Luck on Borean Tundra we'll find out in March if Blizzard still has broken brand new world server events from 2006. Level 49 Alliance shaman on Borean Tundra now.

[Triforcer]

 

[Ironwood]

The world of Blizzard not caring about AQ War Efforts anymore when they bug out or when Blizzard outwardly just breaks their own rules in favor of more money, in order of my comments Hello Grizzly Hills and then hello Drakkari. Good Luck on Borean Tundra we'll find out in March if Blizzard still has broken brand new world server events from 2006. Level 49 Alliance shaman on Borean Tundra now.

What the hell are you talking about ?  Cut back on the Mescaline.

[Merusk]

Apparently he's really concerned about the AQ opening event working on new servers. (Where it doesn't come automagically opened, you have to do the whole stupid event.)

Must have a stake in getting the useless bug mount or the poopsocker title.

[Fordel]

But it does automatically complete itself, eventually.

[Morfiend]