Wintergrasp

[WindupAtheist]

Random, but... uh... was there ever any real explanation of why is this out in the world and not a battleground? I mean being a formalized game and geographically isolated from anything else, it's not really "world PVP" except in the most technical sense.

[Lum]

It's an attempt at world pvp with a framework. No caps on how many from each side can enter (though the outnumbered side gets a buff, which both doesn't really help and is pretty awesome), and victory has server-wide benefits (Archavon raid opens up for your side, everyone in Northrend gets an XP buff and the ability to farm stones). Plus Wintergrasp is one of the best places to gather resources in general.

Also, it's right next door to Dalaran, so it's about as not out-of-the-way as you can get.

I think it's fun and do most of my pvp there (and the Archavon raid, with the lowest time-to-badge ratio in the game is a nice bonus). Your mileage, as always, may vary.

[Sheepherder]

It was clearly meant to deaden the blow from actual RvR combat appearing in another game.

[WindupAtheist]

It's fun. I'd like to do it more than once every 2.5 hours. But when I say isolated, I mean because it's a distinct thing. It's not like they dropped it into some questing zone. You form up, you win the game, you move on.

[Phred]

It's fun. I'd like to do it more than once every 2.5 hours. But when I say isolated, I mean because it's a distinct thing. It's not like they dropped it into some questing zone. You form up, you win the game, you move on.

I kind of wish they'd put it on an island or something. That damn no fly zone is a pita to navigate around. Most times I usually just grab an npc bird rather than bothering.

[Fordel]

It's fun. I'd like to do it more than once every 2.5 hours. But when I say isolated, I mean because it's a distinct thing. It's not like they dropped it into some questing zone. You form up, you win the game, you move on.

It's intent was a clear PvP zone, even on PvE servers.

Every other world PvP event on a PvE server is nothing more then a frustration in flagging shenanigans and flying mount bullshit.

With WG, you can always defend yourself properly and always see your enemy coming (well, they can still sneak up on yea, but they won't be appearing from outside draw distance 50 feet above you). When you get tired of PvPing, you can just leave and go back to your normal dingrats farming.


The Long timer between the actual keep fight is to facilitate time for people to farm the boss and to build up proper concentrations of forces. It could probably be a little bit shorter, but the delay really builds up the fight as people collect in. With out it, people just spread out and waffle and the zone doesn't work properly.


During the downtime, It's the best mining, herbing and Elemental farming zone. It also has a daily 'PvE' quest you do during the downtime, involving farming a specific elemental type, or the enemy player farming said elemental type. With that said, it could do with even more incentive for people to just stick around. Maybe some kind of constant tower taking down south.


The true failing of the zone though, is it can't handle it's own popularity. 300 people all packed into a 100 yard courtyard, fun times 

[K9]

I kind of wish they'd put it on an island or something. That damn no fly zone is a pita to navigate around. Most times I usually just grab an npc bird rather than bothering.

This is annoying.

WG is decent fun, and turns over regularly due to the significant advantage that attackers have over defenders, which I think is a good thing.

[Xeyi]

I kind of wish they'd put it on an island or something. That damn no fly zone is a pita to navigate around. Most times I usually just grab an npc bird rather than bothering.

On paper putting it directly next to Dalaran sounds like a good idea, but in my experience most people that participate there take the portal anyway, so it could be located anywhere without much of an impact.  Add to this the fact that it's directly situated between Dalaran and the Nexus group of instances (Nexus, Occulus, Malygos) then putting it more out of the way might have been a better idea.

I kind of miss being able to point my drake in the rough direction of where we're headed, and scuttling off to make a cup of coffee ;)

[Merusk]

I kind of wish they'd put it on an island or something. That damn no fly zone is a pita to navigate around. Most times I usually just grab an npc bird rather than bothering.

This is annoying.

WG is decent fun, and turns over regularly due to the significant advantage that attackers have over defenders, which I think is a good thing.

It turns over rarely on a server with a 3:1 horde:alliance ratio.  Some imbalances are too great for even the tenacity buff to overcome.   I think Horde gets WG overnight and on a rare occasion at the first battle after 8am on the weekends on my server.  Any other time, and it's almost a guarantee that Alliance has it.

I generally avoid the place other than my once-a-week run to get in on a 25 man Archivon just because I'm already tired of farming, and the world pvp zone holds less attraction to me than battlegrounds.  (Not to mention I need lots more tokens for my pvp mounts.)

[ahoythematey]

The pvp player in me likes Wintergrasp, because it brings back that old feeling of spontaneous world-pvp that I've missed since ye olden-tymes when Southshore and Tarren Mill waged a bitter war with one another.

The strategy/tactical-player in me hates it almost entirely, because strategy and tactics have almost no bearing on who wins: it's all about the population imbalance, and for me that means that if I want to have a shot at a vault raid I'm going to have to wait for the off-hours when the alliance kiddies won't be up after their bedtime.  I understand why attacking was made so powerful, but it feels wrong with how weak defense is comparatively.

No matter what gametype I'm in the mood for at the moment, though, it all thoroughly hates the fucking awful bugs/latency issues in that zone.  Things like vehicles just passing through the walls/player doorways is as bad as aimbots and wallhacks in my eyes.

[kildorn]

It's a decent stab at a very good high end pve zone controlled via pvp. On a pvp server it doesn't seem that cool, I'd guess. On a pve server, it's pretty keen and gets players into the idea of pvp for resource control without forcing them into WAR IS EVERYWHERE (yeah, it was totally a shot at warhammer, too.)

[Khaldun]

I think the design intention was to force the zone to alternate between factions every other battle, e.g., to make defense nearly impossible. In practice, that's not happening on servers with heavy population imbalances, where the dominant faction can pretty much have the zone every time they want it. On our server, if Horde happens to hold it (an unusual occurance), Alliance can retake it easily: they tend to drop about twenty or thirty rogue and druid paratroopers right at the start, who then whack the front cannons just as the first vehicle zerg arrives, while they send in DK infantry who death-grip off anybody trying to directly attack the vehicle zerg. When Horde are on offense, Allies just send a huge zerg south to destroy the towers and to take the east workshop, and there's no way for Horde to match that even if we have a massive tenacity buff.

One obvious solution is to buff wall strength, cannon strength, and vehicles with tenacity as well as players, but I think Blizz is afraid that this could make it too easy for the lower-pop faction to hold or take the zone.

[ahoythematey]

No matter what they do with the actual mechanics, if they center it on the idea of "fair" in 1:1 ratio, it will almost never be even close to balanced because of the faction imbalance across the various servers.

[kildorn]

With enough players in zone and lag, it becomes pretty trivial to take the zone, no matter the population issues.

The main issue keeping WG from being a massive success is the massive success it's been. <3

[bhodi]

With so many passive buffs floating around that require you to be in a party, you should absolutely get forced into the nearest raid just like AV. Raid is full? You get dumped in an adjunct raid.

[ahoythematey]

With enough players in zone and lag, it becomes pretty trivial to take the zone, no matter the population issues.

The main issue keeping WG from being a massive success is the massive success it's been. <3

The big problem I've seen is how server imbalance makes it easy for the side with far more players to not only take the keep, but then turn around and defend it easily while also having plenty of people to zerg the towers in the south.  That's where the population imbalance really shows.  I play on Hellscream, which definitely favors Alliance in numbers, and every single time WG is up it's a matter of hoping alliance doesn't have enough to both defend the keep and fuck our shit up in the south. The lag may be a massive problem at the fortress that hits both sides, but that doesn't stop those marauding assholes in the south.

[Zetor]

If it makes you feel better, alliance on Crushridge are almost always outnumbered in WG - at least at the times I play. 

They did actually have tenacity apply to vehicle damage, but it was taken out in 3.0.8 (iirc) after much complaining on the forums... now it only increases vehicle HP. And yeah, tenacity isn't going to let anyone win without some sort of CC immunity + 500% speed increase... unless the other side messes up really, really badly. Which does happen sometimes; insert anecdote of the attackers zerging the front gates and nothing else (effectively chokepointing themselves) and only holding on to the vehicle shop closer to the spawnpoint, while losing all the southern towers here.


-- Z.

[kildorn]

The main reason it's pro-attacker no matter what is the inability to repair wall damage, and the range of siege. If the siege drivers aren't stupid, you can take things down through sheer human wave tactics, even the last door. Just spam demolishers if they have too much defense to plow a siege tank through. Eventually everything should fall.

The times I've seen the attackers fail, it's been due to the attackers doing something stupid, like breaking the inner side walls without destroying that side's factory. If you do it right, you can get a clear line of fire to the keep door without allowing any defender siege into the courtyard. With a little lag, even outnumbered you can get a shot or two off at it per run, unless you're doing the alb trickle of lone siege engines with no skirmishers nearby.

That said, tenacity doesn't actually do much for the siege, it just makes you great at skirmishing with idiots away from TEH ZERG. In an actual mixed fight, you're likely to get focus fired or CC'd down no matter how many HP you have.

[Xanthippe]

I haven't been in a WG battle yet that it didn't change sides.

AV has become a ghost town practically, but WG is always busy, whenever it's up.

And laggy.  Really laggy.

[Azaroth]

I had pretty much ignored Wintergrasp except for the boss pinata to this point.

Being ever so incredibly bored with Wow, I gave it a shot a a week ago.

It was fun having a 200% damage buff or whatever. Especially, I assume, on a Ret Paladin. Mainly because two shotting every person in a group of seven or eight horde without having to actually outskill them is fun no matter how you slice it. Mostly in the "hurrr hurrrrrr, this will be great for five minutes" sense.

Haven't seen lag like that in an MMO since Oct '97 UO stepsteplaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag fests, though. I did, in fact, log the fuck out after five minutes. How anyone puts up with that lag and takes the zone seriously, I have no idea.

[WindupAtheist]

There are probably some guys running around picking herbs in Wintergrasp on my server, and a handful of other guys trying to gank them, but basically everyone waits for the gate to appear in Dalaran like they're sitting in the starting tunnel of AV waiting for the game to begin. Then they run around participating in the formalized victory/defeat system. Then they either run into the ending raid to PVE, or hearth out.

It's like... great. You've finally managed to encourage world PVP. By building a battleground in the middle of the world.

[Sheepherder]

How anyone puts up with that lag and takes the zone seriously, I have no idea.

Graphic options to minimum.

[Vash]

How anyone puts up with that lag and takes the zone seriously, I have no idea.

I'm not sure how serious the general WoW population really takes it, but it is an efficient means to an end so they will at least participate.  I'm not sure that counts as a rousing "success".

Graphic options to minimum.

A major problem is that the spell effects slider in the graphics options barely does anything noticeable to the spell effects/auras/particle effects which is the major source of client side lag when you have lots of characters on screen.  At bare minimum settings spell effects can still produce nasty client side lag.  This used to really annoy me when I used to occasionally play on an old laptop and it's still a problem on newer desktops with WG size numbers.

Of course, all the graphics options in the world don't help when the server is crapping its pants.   

[Musashi]

I always thought they had world PvP right with Halaa.  But there just weren't enough incentives.  WG is okay.  As Tigole said, the vehicles are shoehorned in.  I like the little one though.  What with the burning people and all.

[kildorn]

Halaa didn't control anything, so nobody cared. It was fun, mind you, but pointless.

WG is popular because it controls an instance that shits epics, and the richest resource farming in the expansion. And since the portal is buggy as shit, you're rarely pvping for the resources.

[Simond]

There are probably some guys running around picking herbs in Wintergrasp on my server, and a handful of other guys trying to gank them, but basically everyone waits for the gate to appear in Dalaran like they're sitting in the starting tunnel of AV waiting for the game to begin. Then they run around participating in the formalized victory/defeat system. Then they either run into the ending raid to PVE, or hearth out.

It's like... great. You've finally managed to encourage world PVP. By building a battleground in the middle of the world.

If nothing else, it shuts up the "But what about world peeveepee baaaaaaaaw" crowd. 

[Fordel]

There are probably some guys running around picking herbs in Wintergrasp on my server, and a handful of other guys trying to gank them, but basically everyone waits for the gate to appear in Dalaran like they're sitting in the starting tunnel of AV waiting for the game to begin. Then they run around participating in the formalized victory/defeat system. Then they either run into the ending raid to PVE, or hearth out.

It's like... great. You've finally managed to encourage world PVP. By building a battleground in the middle of the world.

Well considering that's what the 'world pvp' crowd wanted, an AV that was persistent and inclusive. Like I said before, they could do with a mini tower/keep capture in the zone for the down time, for the people who just never leave and have herb bags already full.

You can only gank the people farming fire elementals so many times a day really.

[WindupAtheist]

Now that I've gotten enough stonekeeper shards for what I wanted, actually, I think I'm done with it. Defense isn't even worth playing, which basically means it's 5 hours between worthwhile games, and I somehow rack up a bunch of HKs and go up in rank while my "kill 20 horde" quest sits at 0/20.

(Maybe I need to do more damage to them before they die? Hey you other 60 guys crammed into this courtyard, stop attacking MY horde!)

Honestly if they took out the keep-destroying game, added more diverse reasons to be there, more "go kill doods" quests, and made it possible to get there other than by infrequently-available teleporter or awkward "fly over and get dismounted" mechanics, then it might feel like a world PVP zone. I'd like to see small groups skirmishing for hours, not "400 people in a laggy clusterfuck for 20 minutes, then tumbleweed".

[Fordel]

Now that I've gotten enough stonekeeper shards for what I wanted, actually, I think I'm done with it. Defense isn't even worth playing, which basically means it's 5 hours between worthwhile games, and I somehow rack up a bunch of HKs and go up in rank while my "kill 20 horde" quest sits at 0/20.

Defense seems to be totally based on how good/crappy your servers population is. Both the literal population balance and how together your side is willing to be.

Where I play, the Alliance has a significant, if not overwhelming population advantage (the horde averages a 2-4 stack of tenacity during prime), but both sides are willing to more or less work as a team on a overall strategy. Alliance defenses are usually down to the last couple minutes of the game, with us actually winning a fair portion of defenses. The major issue is usually horrifying server lag that just all but ensures offensive victory no matter what we do. (Instant cast spells taking 10 seconds to fire  )

The Horde defense is just as spirited, but they can't do much about the numbers in the end. They can't afford anyone to tower split in the south, and once we get siege up, it's pretty much a formality that the game is over. The keep itself is one of the hordes biggest enemies on a defense. There are only so many holes from which to poke your head out over the walls, and we can plug those up with so much AE spam that even going near them is suicide for the horde. (Less of a issue for us, since we'll have enough people to tower split AND throw aimlessly at the horde outside the walls)


Of course in the end, the real measure of success seems to be which side can keep Johnny Retard from taking up valuable siege slots.

"hay guyz, how u werk ctapult!!!"

[WindupAtheist]

I'm on an RP server. The Alliance here has a huge numeric advantage but is horribly retarded. I don't claim to be a particularly great PVPer, but these guys are fucking nimrods.

[Gobbeldygook]

The benefit to playing on O is that you win and get victory tokens and the instance.  The benefit to playing on D is that you get to sit on a turret and fuck people up en masse for honor.

[Kail]

I'm on an RP server. The Alliance here has a huge numeric advantage but is horribly retarded.

Speaking of horrible retards, I've got a bit of a question... You can't get into the keep without siege, yes?  And you can't get siege without getting kills, yes?  So what's to stop the defenders from just standing around inside the inner courtyard or something where they can't be killed and waiting out the clock?

[ahoythematey]

Assuming everybody stays inside the keep, which never ever EVER happens because Joe Fucktard is out trying to lone-wolf that shit, Offense will get vehicles no matter what after a certain amount of time has passed, and in the meantime they'll have probably been taking out all your turrets.

I'm in the same boat as WUA, in that after getting my 200 shards for the 10% less awful heirloom shoulders that my alts use to level, I barely have reason to go to Wintergrasp.  I think it would be better to have numerous "small-scale conflict spots" worked into some daily quests or whatnot instead of trying to balance the "BIG ENCHILADA" style assault on the keep.

[Phred]

A major problem is that the spell effects slider in the graphics options barely does anything noticeable to the spell effects/auras/particle effects which is the major source of client side lag when you have lots of characters on screen.  At bare minimum settings spell effects can still produce nasty client side lag.  This used to really annoy me when I used to occasionally play on an old laptop and it's still a problem on newer desktops with WG size numbers.

Of course, all the graphics options in the world don't help when the server is crapping its pants.   

Too True. Though it does quite a fine job of hiding things like poison rings on Gluth and other stuff we'd kind of like to see. I never had spell effects turned on in EQ and it did manage to help a lot with lag on far larger raids than WoW has ever seen but for some reason WoW programmers can't duplicate that system.

Hint. Puberity jokes seem to shut our kid up mostly.

[Fordel]

I'm on an RP server. The Alliance here has a huge numeric advantage but is horribly retarded.

Speaking of horrible retards, I've got a bit of a question... You can't get into the keep without siege, yes?  And you can't get siege without getting kills, yes?  So what's to stop the defenders from just standing around inside the inner courtyard or something where they can't be killed and waiting out the clock?

The Guards outside the keep count as kills for ranking up. It'll take a bit longer, but the offense will get siege.

Plus Joe Retard etc...