Blizzcon WoW PvP Panel

Finally, the panel I’ve really been waiting for is here!

The Ring of Valor - Orgrimmar.

• Animated Platforms - Pillars that rise up at timed intervals. Trying to stay away from randomness to let it be skill based. Pillars block line of sight, you can ride up and down on pillars.
• Dynamic Fire Hazard - Strips on the ground that damages players. On a timer. If you are CC’d on the fire you will not be killed. Designed as a choice.
• Close Starting Positions - Start on platforms that rise up at the start.
• New, dynamic feel to the Arenas while keeping it skill based.
• Pillars on opposite timers as fire to force decision making
• Landmarks on pillars and around arena to give players more ways to communicate where they are during a game.

Dalaran Sewers - Under Dalaran, the Central City for WotLK

• Small, to the point
• Dynamic Water Feature - Pillar on timer that blocks LOS. If you are standing on water pillar when it turns on it knocks you back so you can’t get stuck. Terming this dynamic - “area denial”
• No mounts allowed. Travel forms will work.
• Starting areas off-limits: Start in pipes that are elevated from the ground. Jump down into the arena at start. If you stay in at start, you get knocked out by water.

Strand of the Ancients

• Attack/Defend Map - Destructible Buildings and Vehicles. Play both sides of the teams.
• Time each attack run, if the other team can’t defeat you in the same amount of time that team loses.
• Increased player limit to 15v15 from 10v10
• Doubling amount of Siege vehicles from current Beta
• Siege Combat - Series of walls that lead to capturable objective at the top. Land on beach, get into siege engines and begin moving through the walls. If you aren’t in a vehicle, you will be able to pick up and drop mines to do siege damage. 3-4 seconds where the opposite team can disarm mine. Something for everyone to do.
• Multiple angles for attack viable. All walls have unique icon and color so players can identify and communicate where they are going.

Wintergrasp - Entire Zone PvP in Northrend

• Huge Numbers of Players - hundreds, with siege vehicles and destructible buildings.
• Non-Instances PVP
• Attack/Defend Map. You have a fortress with surrounding walls. Break through walls…choose any of 30 walls to break through. Capture and then sides flip with a cooldown - currently 2.5 hours. Cooldown to allow victor to reap the benefits of winning.
• Victor gets daily quests, portal from Dalaran to Wintergrasp, opens a unique raid instance. Archivon (raid boss), with wide select of loot - one day cooldown, open for everyone on the winning faction. All bosses around wow drop a shard for the current victor as currency to buy, mounts, gear, gems, wide variety.
• Victor defends the next round.
• Ranks to earn vehicles - Ensures players are contributing. Get and HK, get rank. Currently 2 Ranks required to get in a siege vehicle. Different vehicles require different ranks.
• Vehicles still vulnerable to players. Necessity for players on the ground to defend siege weaponry.
• Spent majority of design time ensuring servers will handle the load and play smoothly.

Whats Next - Future of PVP with Chilton

• Revisit PvP itemization, including arena and BG rewards
• Support all the play styles and balance the rewards from all - BGs, Non-instanced pvp, arena
• Queue from anywhere in the Azeroth.
• Competitive battle grounds. Potential rating system to measure individual success in BGs.
• Potential for Guild Battlegrounds
• Allow players to level up in Battlegrounds.

Additional Q & A

Q: Why can’t Hunter’s shoot within melee rang
A: Different than a caster - not wearing mail armor. Don’t want Hunter’s to be able to blast away while tanking. Disengage gives a more fun mechanic than just standing there.

Q: Why Can’t Pets have resilience?
A: Tuning the benefits of a pet. Find the balance to make sure its viable strategy to kill the Hunter’s pet, but also costs enough to decide to kill the pet. Lost of new options to customize pets with talent points to increase defense.

Q: Will the old BGs and Arenas get a facelift with the new Dynamics?
A: Does tends to be PVP content burnout. Want to address it by making better effort to introduce new Battlegrounds.

Q: Future changes to help Paladins stay in Melee range? (Loud booing ensues!)
A: No intention to give Paladins Shadowstep or Intercept. Make sure the control that Paladins have are more useful. Glyph that increases HoJ range a lot.

Q: Population imbalance on Wintergrasp? Anything planned to balance with a Buff?
A: Buff called Tenacity. Scales based on imbalance of BG to make the smaller side stronger by scaling damage input and stops incoming damage as a percentage. Still tuning the balance.

Q: How will Ranks reset in Wintergrasp. Still get HKs while idling. How will it be fixed?
A: No forced grouping, so you would have to be in a group that carries you and feeds you the HKs. Rank will reset each battle for Wintergrasp

Q: Ring of Valor. With fire, will range be an immediate benefit.
A: Visual Queues for fire (gears and doors opening). Can certainly shoot through the fire as a ranged class

Q: Balance for Druid PVP. Resto overpowered, how can you lower Restos effectiveness without hurting Balance or Feral
A: Changes with WotLK going to be very different balance. Does not look like Druids will be the dominant force they are now in WotLK, especially in the lower brackets.

Q: Any plans to remove or balance racials in arenas?
A: Make sure they don’t change rules of Arena too much or it feels like it isn’t part of World of Warcraft. We have already limited consumables, to take that burden off each match. With WotLK arena is going to change a lot and we are certainly watching the role racials play. If it continues to be a problem in WotLK, they will address it in the future.

Q: As a healer, in a BG that doesn’t force grouping you just have to spam target other players on your team to see if they need healing. Is there any way to give healers a way to heal more effectively in that situation?
A: Avoiding that for the time being. Grouping system only supports 40 players ATM. And that would need to be addressed before any mechanic like that is added.