WotLK PvP Changes and Blue Posts

There’s been loads of changes in the past few days for WotLK, specifically related to PvP. Take a look at a few of the most recent blue posts and updates regarding pvp in the last 48 hours.

WotLK PvP Recap from Zug Gaming

• Berserker Rage Change
• Season 4 End Date
• Arena Match Making System Change
• Build 9014 Class Changes
• Honor Points will NOT Reset for WOTLK
• New Honor Items for Patch 3.0.2

PvP Developer Q & A

Why is it so hard to measure skill in a battleground and have rated BGs ?
I wish it were that simple. However, for a rating system to reasonably zero in on the skill of a single player in a game with teammates it takes a number of games approximately equal to ten times the number of players participating on that player’s team.

So for example, for a rating system to have all the information it needs to know to figure out how “good” of a battleground player you are in Alterac Valley, it needs to take about 400 games to do it (10 times the number of players on your team). Unfortunately, that’s without the additional complexities of being able to queue solo versus queueing as a group, etc.

It would be kind of annoying to have to play about 400 games of AV before the system could decide what items you’re eligible for. So, there are some complexities in creating a system to work around that problem (among others).

Archavon changes (Lake Wintergrasp Boss)
We don’t plan to change Archavon, as he needs to have compelling loot that isn’t something you can’t possibly get another way. However, I think it’s important to note that Archavon does not drop the helm or shoulder slots (or weapons), which are the hardest to obtain both in pve and pvp.

Why is PvP gear available for purchase for PvE tokens with no rating requirement ?
To put it simply, you can’t endlessly wipe on raid bosses and get these tokens. At some point, you have to succeed. Even then, the pvp gear you get from these tokens is 1 tier behind their pve value (ie: the ilevel 213 pve tokens from Nax 25 only get you “Hateful Gladiator” gear which is ilevel 200). It’s not possible to get the “best” pvp set items through pve.

Are there any plans of allowing us to attain PvE gear through honor/arena points?
For the most part (lack of tanking gear aside), if you have the highest-end pvp gear, you can do fairly well in a “tier behind” raid (ie: 10-man nax). So, for the most part that dynamic already exists.

WotLK Battlegrounds Changes

No Honor Points Increases for WotLK

Battlegrounds wins/losses and honorable kills will not award experience after the next patch, nor upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. It could always happen somewhere down the road as we work to improve PvP progression, but there are no plans for changing this in the immediate future.

Battlegrounds Discussion with Tigole

Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).

But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we’re definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it’s very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it’s important for the community to know that it’s on our minds.

Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we’d like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We’re also exploring the concept of a complimentary “competitive” bg system as well. Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance — the core of our game.

We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.

Please don’t take this post as a promise. This won’t be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it’s important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.

WotLK Northrend Daily Quests & Profession Token System

As many of you may have expected there are going to be a host of new daily quests in Northrend once wrath of the lich king releases. Just like with the burning crusade’s daily quests these will have a variety of awards, including:

• Reputation
• Gold
• Items
• Patterns
• New Token System

Daily Quests Token System for Professions

Now before we get into all these new daily quests let’s talk about the new token system. In order to really do anything with your professions up to this point you had to.

1. Grind reputation to buy patterns
2. Farm / purchase very rare patterns
3. Join a raiding guild and be fortunate enough to be given rare patterns

These were really the only ways you could get any long duration use out of your profession, but blizzard is chaging this random success factor quite a bit. In the expansion many professions will have daily quests associated with them, these daily quests will award you a specific token for that professions. These tokens may then be turned in for various patterns, formulas, schematics, etc.

Profession Daily Quests

A few of these new profession daily quests have already been revealed.

Cooking Daily Quests

Once you train grand master cooking you’ll get a set of base line cooking recipes, these recipes use a variety of fish and meat that you’ll get in Northrend. In addition to these baseline recipes you also have the option of acquiring the upgraded versions of these recipes.

You can get these improved cooking recipes by completing the cooking daily quest, which will award you 1 Dalaran Cooking Award. You can turn in 3 of these to get 1 new recipe.

Jewelcrafting Daily Quests

After completling the daily jewelcrafting quest you will be awarded 1 dalaran jewelcrafter’s trophy. These tokens may be turned in for various gems and designs.

• 1 Token = Uncut Jewelcrafter’s BoP Gem
• 2 Tokens = Low Level Designs
• 5 Tokens = High Level Designs
• 8 Tokens = Meta Designs

I really think this is a great change, it will create a very interesting dynamic as far as supply and demand are concerned with designs amongst jewelcrafters. I’m very interested to see how this system is adapted for the remainder of the professions, but overall I feel it’s a great and welcome change.

Other Daily Quests

Quite honestly, none of the other daily quests were really all that exciting. So far only a handful of the new Northren dailies have been implemented. Most of which are designed around the time honored formula of collecting X of some item or killing X of what ever mob, you know the drill. That said, the group of daily quests located around Venture Bay in the Grizzly Hills does look pretty awesome.

There are 4 total daily quests here, of which include objectives such as…

• Slaying Goblins
• Killing player’s the opposing faction
• Taking down the opposing faction’s captain

Ideally this area will become the location of some really good world PvP. Genreally when there’s gold + pvp glory in the same area it’s going to be good times for all. On top of the 15g you get for every quest here you also receive 10 venture coins for every quest. These coins be turned in for various PvP’ish items, check out the full list of venture coin item rewards here.