World of Warcraft Battlegrounds in Testing

The much anticipated Battlegrounds content is live on the test servers for World of Warcraft. The patch notes for the upcoming game update include class changes and world modifications. From the notes: "The Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley battlegrounds are now available. The Warsong Gulch entrances may be found in the northern Barrens near the Mor'Shan Rampart (Horde) and south of Silverwing Outpost in Ashenvale (Alliance). The Alterac Valley entrances may be found east of Sofera's Naze in Alterac (Horde), and in the Headlands of Alterac (Alliance)."

Comments

Wait a day

[The Kow]

I recommend waiting a day to transfer your character over. It's totally logjammed at the moment.

Re:battlegrounds, no thanks

[Incoherent07]

Next you're going to tell me that all online deathmatch-type games (RTS also works here) are pointless because the same person wins every time.

Or, to pre-empt the Guild Wars crowd, the same applies there... once you've beaten the other team once, there's no point in ever doing it again, is there?

Or should I make the sarcasm heavier for you?

Re:Well, this is what I've been waiting for

[tapo]

You can only play Battlegrounds now if you've been a subscriber before May 2nd, or something like that.

You can play it next week, though, when it opens up to all other players, or three weeks, when it should go public.

I thought they already had this?

[Seumas]

I thought this was already implemented some time ago.

I quit playing months ago, because as fun as the game was, there was no reason to do anything. You didn't gain or lose a damn thing for killing someone or being killed. And there was no really massive battle engagement, unless you count the occasional raid on a town.

After about six months, they FINALLY implemented some sort of "honor" system. But I'm not sure if it's the same honor system that was advertised (which is why many of us bought the game in the first place, but it was removed before the game went live). Hopefully, it has some sort of value in combat now to make killing a low level character less enticing and killing a higher level character more enticing. The game really loses a lot of momentum when you're a 10th level guy being mobbed by two dozen 60+ guys who are taking over an area.

I was looking forward to battlegrounds, but I'm not sure it's enough to pull me back into the game. I got pretty bored by the time I dropped my subscription about four months ago.

Re:battlegrounds, no thanks

[hab136]

You'd love to play with your friends across the hall, but you can't because they aren't on the same server.

Guild Wars doesn't have that fatal flaw because all characters play on the same "server" so to speak. Not so with World of Warcraft.

True, you can only play with people on the same server. You call it a fatal flaw - I happen to think that it's much nicer to compete against a smaller set of people. I actually have a chance of being in the top 10 on my server, whereas if it was all servers combined, there's be no way.

To use your roommate analogy - You have a good chance of being better than your neighbor. Even a decent chance of being better than your neighborhood. But you've got almost no chance of being better than everyone in the city.

Pros and cons to both approaches.

Re:battlegrounds, no thanks

[patio11]

True enough, but even on our fairly low-population server (hovers Low/Medium in the WoW rankings), we have several hundred people on the Alliance who are more active than me at PVP, and I'd like to think I'd be somewhere on the middle-low end of commitment to PVPing (one or two weeknights and most of Saturday on the typical week). Several hundred teammates and an equal number of opponents, taken 40v40 at a time, is enough variety for anyone. Heck, I played CS for 3 years on a server which had two dozen regulars with perhaps 5 drop-ins every night, and that was still fun. Plus, you get the nice cozy people with people you've hit a few times.

Tourach, by the way, next time you try backstabbing me you'll be eating grass! I have a new Polymorph macro with your name on it -- literally! :)

Re:battlegrounds, no thanks

[JasdonLe]

Yeah, I've really never understood the nature of any competitve sport. Why bother playing anything when the same person/team who wins the first match, wins ever consecutive match. I know that this goes without saying, but I simply have to: The parent's use of logic is one of the strangest I have *ever* seen.

Patch mirror

[chrispyman]

You can get the patch right here if you'd rather not use that horrible Blizzard updater (no idea how long I'll keep that mirror up though). Then go on and copy your character over to the test realm.

Leeroy!

[Dr. Donald Ferrone]

The ONLY worthwhile "World of Warcraft" content, right here:

http://flame.tiefighter.org/WoW/1115793473.wmv

Re:battlegrounds, no thanks

[llevity]

What you're not taking into account is luck, and the experience the losing team will build by losing. Here's a quick example. I was jumped on a PvP server in the wilds by two players, both of whom were slightly higher in level than me. I used my poly spell to take one guy out of the picture for a small time, used a variety of skills to kill the other person, and then focused on and killed the second guy. It was relatively easy for me, despite being surprised, outnumbered, and overmatched in level. Things would been very different if the other people had done just a few things differently. Both players had abilities to interrupt my spells, but did not use them. One of the players had the ability to get out of the spell I used to pin him down, but didn't use it. Etc. Just a little bit of learning, and they would have beaten me soundly. Sure, there's a learning curve to using your skills in this game, but it plateaus. If it takes a month to learn how to use your skills effectively, there's not a lot gained by having played the game 6 months, in terms of skill. Granted, the 6 month player will know some more nuances, but it's like 99% best skill use vs 95%, rather than 99% vs 30%.

Re:Now if the devs can just get off their asses...

[llevity]

On one hand, I agree that paladins are a little more passive in their combat abilities. But this isn't a bad thing, I think it's a great design. Certain classes are by their very nature less active in combat. Whereas you have rogues who are a more twitch based class, paladins and warriors are less twitch based. It's there so if you don't like a certain playstyle, you have others to choose from. I do think Blizzard should have been explicit in explaining these differences exist, and what the "twitch rating" is for each class so people can make a more informed decision, but still, you get most of your spells by level 20, so it should be obvious fairly early.

A View On The Paladin Class

[EngineeringMarvel]

I agree with llevity, the paladin is more passive based class. Most paladins complain because before the first real patch (1.1), there was a bug in one of the Paladins skills (it made them increase in attack rate & damage, instead of increasing attack rate and decreasing damage). This change took away the biggest part of the Paladins aggressive abilities. So the people who liked paladins at first liked them because they were so aggressive (due to this bug), when the patch fixed it, the class then went back to its correct, passive design.

I'd also like to note that this bug made the paladin an extremely affective dueler. Lots of people rushed to build up a paladin, thinking that class was going to be a PvP machine due to the classes high success rate in dueling. Now Paladins are finding out this is not the best class for PvP, especially after the bug fix. It's typical to see lots of players start a character in a bugged class so they get the most advantages possible. Finally, people are starting to realise what the class is suppose to be about, and not a class better than all others.

Too little, too late

[Frodo Crockett]

I quit playing WoW a month ago. Since then I've gone back to playing Diablo 2, which is faster-paced, more fun, less buggy, and free to play online. Blizzard had better work hard on Diablo 3 if they want more of my money.