Posted by iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 - 34 Comments
Tags: arena, battlegrounds, blizzcon, blizzcon 2009, ghostcrawler, PvP
Look Kids, It's Greg Street!
I love Ghostcrawler (again). Not only does he have one of the coolest jobs around (one which likely made him grow a thick skin and an endless supply of ponies) at one of my favorite developers, but he gets to help design, create and then announce some of the craziest stuff to grace World of Warcraft.
It isn’t one of those crazy, eye-popping, jaw-dropping announcements that has me firmly cheering for him, but a declaration of renewed support for the Battlegrounds. Sir Pinch-a-lot had this to say about the neglected instanced PvP scenarios:
“I will agree that we need to focus more on BGs. And to be fair we are in this very next patch, and there will be more announcements at Blizzcon.”
Of course we know that the second statement is true, thanks to the Isle of Conquest. The second clause of the second statement only makes me more excited for BlizzCon 2009. That being said, I don’t think I’ll be sitting through a whole PvP panel just to (hopefully) see an upcoming BG or just hear a quip about the possibility of one “soon.” The real interesting part to me is the first sentence, the admission that BGs have fallen by the wayside. It’s plainly obvious that Arenas have been the focus of PvP since their inception as part of TBC, due largely to the drive for a WoW eSport (my words not GC’s).
Senor Cangrejo points out later in the post that Arenas receive extra attention due to class balancing issues. According to GC the 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 battles are far more useful in class balancing than BGs thanks to the very nature of BGs. Meaning in BGs your goal, to capture the often spread out objectives, isn’t very good at providing useful information. After all, killing is a common occurrence, but not actually required. On the other hand the whole point to an Arena is to dominate the other team. The fast, localized and furious battles end up giving Blizzard more information on class issues than any other PvP mechanic, and that’s why Arenas receive additional attention.
I’m a much bigger fan of BGs than I am of Arenas, so I am glad that the developer will attempt to rebalance their attention in my favor. If only we could get a Tarren Mill vs Southshore style world PvP experience back into the game.
Are you ready for a new BG, or are you more of an Arena fan?
Related Posts: Season Four Is Coming, Gearin’ For PvP in Season 4, Soloing: Achievementology 12, Twink, Patch 3.2 Will Change the Way We Twink,
By Kevin on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I would really like to see a new BG. I’m not a big pvper but when i do I prefer to fight in BGs due to the fact that I do not necessarily have to have pvp gear equipped.
First
By DRAMATIC CHIPMUNK on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 11:18 am
BG’S!!
By Pauldy on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Yea BGs has been totally ignored but what’s really going on is they are no longer focused on WoW instead letting the interns make decissions about game mechanics and play while the experienced devs work on their next gen MMO.
By Raknor on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Why cant things just work differently in Arenas, so that they dont have to keep messing with the classes to balance them for it. They will have something working great for PvE and then Nerf it, cuz it dominates in arenas, thats stupid just make the spell/ability function differently.
By Gene on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I’m glad that Blizzard is reminding us that they want to make a firm commitment to bringing back PvP focus to the BGs. If anything they learned from Lake Wintergrasp that BGs are the way to go.
The other point that was made is that more information will be made at Blizzcon specifically. Which makes me believe that if they’re going to put this BG news on such a stage as Blizzcon, then it must be good news.
By batmunkh on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
i’m a big fan of both BG’s and arena. Really they both provide a different PVP experience for the player. And while i have been loving the attention arena has been getting- I’m glad to hear that BG’s are gonna be getting some more lovin’. So whether blizz is working on Arena or BG’s (or even both) i’m a happy ganker ^_^
By dennis on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
id like to see a new kind of instance/ PvP 5 alliance and 5 horde enter through an emense dungeon or forest with multiple bosses, This way people can get loot but also give sneak attacks at an enemy. I would really like to see this since i think it will bring the “raiders” and “PVPers” together
By Ozzel's Cousin Fred on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
a main reason for BGs failing by the wayside is the interconnection of BGs and Arena rating. Honor gear is more or less worthless to grind unless you ALSO grind arena as well. With that interconnection, BGs fall by the wayside becoming only useful to those who predominantly arena. This gives people who arena all the time a massive survivability advantage over those who might otherwise PVP and that’s essentially killed BGs because it’s “not fun” because either you get owned by overgeared raiders, or you get owned by overgeared arena players - for 0 tangible rewards with all the frustrations of class issues.
It’s not a suprise BGs are in the shape they’re in given these circumstances. Hopefully these improvements will address this problem
By Hatell on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I like your Tarren Mill v. Southshore idea. I’d like something like that as a BG. Makes it feel more real world.
By l33tadin on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
ya…..wtevr happened to getting gear with honor points and marks of honor? the only good pvp gear now r the arena sets….which besides a few exceptions(VOA) u need to brave countless arena battles to recieve…..ppl dont do BG’s anymore because there is no reward(besides the mounts) to solve this….blizz needs to make pvp gear u can get w/ honor and marks…just like in vanilla WoW
By thedpsking on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
@L33tadin:
You can get full Deadly gear with just honor, although its not top of the line, if your somewhat competent in PvP it should work. The problem is it takes literally DAYS just to farm the honor for ONE piece.
By Alex on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
@thedpsking
more like months because the biggest problem with BG’s is there’s to many AFKing going on with no way to stop it. you report it and right as the BG gets ready to end they attack or attempt to take a flag to drop their debuff so they get their free mark and all the bonus honor for the time they were in it.
Blizz needs to make a BG leader and the assistant capable of booting non partisipants. or make it to where honor is based upon total actual player vs player damage / healing was done and if they’re reported by a player for being AFK ( and i mean only 1 player not 5 players like it takes now) they imediatly get the debuff and the player has 1 minute to partisapate before the bg boots them and gets us a player who will partisapate when i mean debuff i don’t mean the count down 1 before the 1 that stops honor collection i mean the inactive bebuff that immediatly stops honor collection and if the battle ends with it you get no marks. i also would like to see it that unless you WIN you get 0 marks
and on the point of class nerfs based on arena i agree somewhat but instead of reducing 1 class that’s OP to balance it buff the other classes to balance them out or actually go back and test all classes as level 1’s with no gear and balance them that way. that way you make it to where player skill and gear determines how good the toon you’re playing really is.
we all know that if 2 or 3 different people played the same toon in the same gear and same race an class there would be 1 who would win all the time because of his skill of playing.
how strong a player is is based on his gear (including the geming and chanting) and his skill as a player. but if we have a third party in the mix playing with the abilities of the spells that each class has then the tables are stacked against or for certain classes / races.
i agree with an above comment throw a buff or debuff in arenas to compensate for some currently OP spells or make them unusable like they did with trinks and pots
well enough ranting we all know bg’s are broken and arenas are broken (but have started to get better) and there’s alot of work to do to make it better. but nurfing isn’t going to fix it because all that’s going to do is break the PVE side of the game and cause casual raiders to stop and hardcore raiders to abandon hard content because it’ll become imposible to do because the class and spell nurfs will make what was once doable become imposible
By Illithian on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’d welcome a new BG, but I’m more arena myself.
By Zafhir on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
The only question i have is when the patch is going to be out¿?¿
By cocopuff on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
blizzard should really make the tarren mil vs southshore happen every time some horde smart asses try to make trouble in shouth shore and me an some times some buddys push them them back i imagine what would follow oafter taht sotuh gets their guards ready and unleashes a full out assult on terren mill killing every thing and everyone one burns it to the ground then south shore alex at level your just a noobie you only have the standard attack your racial ability and some starter ability with garrpy cloth, leather, mail, plate what ever you wear modifing those abilitys wil lget you no whear what blizzard should do is is take 2 diffrent classes at level 80 with all of their abiloitys no spec and no absolutly no armor have them duel each other try some how to improve teh losers ability then daul again improve teh losers ability rinse and repeat untill untill they are some what egual in OPnes.
BGs ahve gotten no love only spite and brutal murder BG used to be fun to do it made teh chore of farming honnor all though more easier even though alliance rairly won the long epic battles and finnaly coming out victorius in capturing a flag or a base or destroying a tower or killing a general made it worth the whiile i should knwow i farmed the marshal set for 2 months and when i finnaly got that polearn got taht cross bow got those boots i had a hard time saying good bye when dinging 70 i attempted to do farm the merciless gladeator set but it wasnt the same that magic was gone the battles were 10-20 minets tops most of the time i went into the battle the alliance were steam rolled and some times even camped at teh GY not to give taht much credit to the horde the alliance were running llike chickens with their heads cut of even in AV whear allaince usualy ruled horde reinforcements rairly went below 300 i got the helm gloves boots and teh crossbow and every tieme i thinnk about going that path once those thoughts and actauly going ito the BGs stoped me blizz bring back the good old days
By warzhinksy on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I am a fun of the arena!
i think i arena all day along and then i do a little raid at night, seeing as i have a very strong PvE guild.
By Atlas on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 6:16 am
need arena class items in bg.
By Keltoroq on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 7:03 am
For sure BG are way more fun. Arena is just for basically 3 classes (Mage, Priest, Rogue) all others are ignored. It´s absolutely ridiculuous.
Have you ever seen a team Hunter, Shaman, Warrior? Ye, i guess yes but they were not very good were they?
And i don´t agree with that PVP equipment.
When i get hit by somebody i can barely move because i don´t have pvp gear. How unfair is that?
Resilience=Bullshit. Take that mechanic and make it fair for all
Best regards
By cocopuff on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 7:36 am
i think tthat gear should be easier to get
By coltsfan on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 8:41 am
@ cocopuff
grammar ftw.
I have always liked BG’s better then arena based on the simple fact of that if you mess up in BG’s it isn’t as big a deal as if you did in an arena.
By ARogue on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:06 am
@Keltoroq
Oooook. First of all no one ever said you HAVE to do 3v3.
Second of all I just got full hateful from grinding BG’s and started my first arena team. I’m rolling Hunter,Rogue. Not the best Combo but We still win a decent amount of games. Now, will agree with who said this, ome moves are just crap in arena. Thank god LoA can’t be used but the immune bubble? And Rightous fury can 3 shot me and can only be dispelled by Mass Dispell due to the fact that things like Tranq Shot Normally Remove Kings. And RMP isnt that good. I’ve seen other good combos.
By ARogue on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:08 am
Oh yay forgot, the 1# arena team in the world is Warrior,Shaman,Druid
By cocopuff on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 11:54 am
i dont know much about about arenas i think te best 2v2 team would be druid and paladin one of the most OP classes in the game teamed one of teh best healers in the game
By alex on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 2:10 pm
well i may not no it all @cocopuff but i do know this, PvP in general is broken. And going into a BG is like grains of sand in an hourglass. You may be the first through the little hole to the other side and partisapating in the battle or you could be 1 stuck at the outside of the tube still waiting to get in. but if you have a battlegroup full of non partisapants cloging up the system #1 it’s unfair to those of us that do like to partisapate and are there to get as much honor and marks as posible in the R/L restrictive time schedule most of us live by. #2 by winning a battle you recieve 75% more bonus honor and 66% more marks which makes the grind for gear go 70% faster. But if the system is full of non partisapants it makes winning near imposible an getting into a battle in a timely fashion nearly imposible as well.
as far as class nurfing and how to make balancing them out. first of all you need 2 equally skilled players that know how to play each race and class in the game. second they’d have to fight eachother (nakid) no talent points used that way there would be no gear or talented beneficial ways to win this’ll allow testing of base skills thus producing the most acurate results upon which classes are the most powerfull or the weakest. and by using these results they could tweek the coding of each class to balance them out. once the testing is done and tweeking of the code is done to balance the classes on the base level and it’s confirmed by retesting. the only way a specific class would ever be OP’d would be #1 players skill #2 gear worn #3 talent points used #4 glyphs and any other gear enchantments.
3.2 is going to help BG’s a little by giving the twinkies their own little class to go BG in. But IMO it’s going to hurt those of us who casually do BG’s.
but enough ranting we’ll just all have to wait and see what blizz does we’re like little puppets and bliz holds our strings, they call the shots, but you’d think 11 million people worldwide playing the game would have a little more influence on how the game is made better.
By 3pallyroller on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I only have one comment after all this time reading these comments…Not one about the 1st or 2nd issue. Cocopuff, Can you not spell?? The Comment box has spell check built into, and nobody can decipher half of the comments you write. Simple words we learned in 2nd grade, you cant spell. Slow down and take 5 seconds to spell check. Please, it might make people actually read your comment.
By Shnoo on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
@coco
1: the TM vs SS thing comes from a pre Honor/Marks system, as well as pre BGs. The battles weren’t stemmed from Horde.. (which btw only 20 60’s would usually show, whereas the alliance could fill almost two raid groups) they just happened because that was what had to happen for pvp…
Also.. Marks and honor weren’t the original source of gear.. you had to pvp non stop every week to move up throgh the ranking system (only got to stone guard, the lowest horde Officer rank) and from that you would buy items with gold…
By RancidPandemic on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I love how everyone here assumes they have the solution to everything. Like balancing classes based on naked level 1 characters of each class. You realised that, at level 1, you have about 2-3 abilities as opposed to the hundred or so you have at level 80. Not only that, but i’d like to see you try and balance a fresh DK with every other class, seeing as they start at 55. Secondly, how wold you go about balancing naked classes at any level? Some - in fact - MOST melee abilities require weapons. And in some cases it is the gear that balances out classes. Distributing stats based on what is needed for the certain class that wears it.
Oh, and idk about you, but I would never pvp without resilience. You know what wold happen there? The average lifespan would be about as long as 3GCDs. Without resillience, the top raid dps would be the ones killing everyone in pvp. Resilience gear is designed to give more survivabiity - something that is desperately needed by anyone attempting to pvp.
PS - Sorry for any spelling errors. Im on a laptop without firefox or any spell check
By Andonur on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
BGs.
By cocopuff on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
ok i type in a hurry thats why i make so many mistakes shnoo@ what does have to do with anything i was saying we pull the strings without us players blizz has nothing except a really great game which no one plays or only a 100k people play it with all the other MMORPG games blizzard would be smart to listen thier players and maybe they will get some new once and extand WOW liefe by a few years
By Nebyula on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I dunno about you, but I usually get one PvP piece (the one that doesn’t need arena) every 5-7 hours. Days for one piece? Uhh… Though I can understand having massive trouble if your side is always loosing, thats when you start turning in marks, instead.
I love every form of PvP, world, arena, BGs, dueling, it’s fun and lot more unpredictable than PvE (which I enjoy also). Any change that’s good is welcome. Bring it on, Bliz!
By Nebyula on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:07 pm
And Cocopuff,
I understand mistakes because you’re in a hurry. Like, “liefe” instead of “life”. Apply that excuse with “once” instead of “ones”, please.
We will read and understand your points must faster and easier if you take half a second to add punctuation and make sure your points are readable.
By cocopuff on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:56 pm
ok nebyula first of al lwho the hell 7 hours who can pvp for 7 hours and second of all do i have to spell it out for you I D-O-N-T H-A-V-E S-P-E-L-L C-H-E-C-K which means i dont see any red lines when i misspell a word
By Nebyula on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 1:23 am
I didn’t say I pvp for 7 hours straight. I eat and sleep just like other humans. I’m just saying, you can go about it 2 ways, doing AV for massive honor farm, or turning in marks, or if you have enough marks, both. If you have a decent stash of marks, you should be able to get 1 piece a day, or at least close, assuming you have a few hours of time to invest. If you only PvP for 1-2 hours, then yes it’d probably take a lot longer. I just don’t agree with the “days” sentiment someone mentioned earlier.
Also, if you aren’t already 80, you can BG a lot before you hit 80, and get a lot of your gear before you even hit the cap. You’ll hit the cap MUCH slower this way, but if you PvP at 79 for several days you can be well on your way to having resil gear at the cap where it’s necessary to have. That way you don’t start out having as much trouble.
If you are already 80, then I suggest hiding in crowds and sticking by a healer =P
@ Cocopuff;
Then type a little bit slower, or proofread with your own two eyeballs? I can’t imagine you are in a crazy hurry everytime you post a comment? If so, my bad then.
By alex on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
@rancidpandemic
I don’t think I have a solution for everything.
And as for your comment that gear is Bliz’s way to balance the classes. News flash it’s not. Stats on the gear you wear is designed to give you the stats you need to survive a fight based on how you play determines the stats you desire on the gear you wear. Yes I agree without resilliance in PvP survivablity would be non-existant, but if you didn’t have the rest of the stats on the gear you wear you couldn’t survive long either because without them you couldn’t sustain a long intensive fight.
As far as nakid fighting as a way to test the classes to determine what is needed to balance the classes. #1 it’s the best way. i say this because everyone is equal when nakid or they are supposed to be. this is because they have no stats increasing benefits from gear to interfer with testing. and besides rogues who else has some spells that require a weapon to perform certain abilities beside hunter ranged weps. and in these cases these weps can be used (if the weps you test with have no additional stats applied to them). As for the rest of the classes all dmg done is based on the spells you use and how fast you can use them. Here I’ll give you a scenario think of the toons as lets say the video game Tekkan 1, 2, or 3 doesn’t matter. every charactor has certain abilities they can do based on button pushes. take like the chatactor Paul and put him against himself you’d think they would both perform equally. well as designed they would, but as stated before everyone plays differently and it all boils down to who can push buttons faster to determin who wins. then skill comes into play now skill is determined upon who know the best moves to win faster. same can be said for the game we all play now (WoW) if the toons we play now are not designed to be equal at no matter what level you are on the base level then you stand no chance at winning against a more powerfull toon designed to have better stats at the base level. Gear, Glyphs, and Enchantments are designed to enhance the base stats to give you a better chance of winning. but if 2 toons go at each other equipt with the same gear glyphs and enchantments you’d think they both have the same chance of winning but as the toons are all designed differently 1 toon has the designed advantage at the moment. which is called having an unfair advantage. that’s what stems all the QQing of all the forums. and causing blizz to do nurfs of classes or content in game because the people all complain. if the classes were all equal at the base level blizz could say hey we have tested and retested the classes and the classes are balanced at a base level. you asa player now have 1of 2 choices since we know the classes are equal, get better gear enchantments and glyphs, or live with losing. with this being said the only determining factors, if all classes were equal atthe base level, to determine who was better then who would be gear and player skill( who can push buttons the fastest)
Well enough on my rant i think the point has been made.
p.s. we wouldn’t have all the content nurfs if people would stop complaining about class OPness. and we wouldn’t have class OPness if blzz would balance the classes out and stop listening to all the complaints about it.