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World of Warcraft Battlegrounds, Chinese Launch
World of Warcraft continues its roll across the globe, with a successful Chinese launch of the MMORPG. More than 500,000 players participated in the beta test, and the launch statistics are expected to be impressive. Meanwhile, those of us who've been playing for a while have much to look forward to as the Battlegrounds of Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch move into production. From the press release: "World of Warcraft's Battlegrounds are PvP-enabled zones where players compete against each other to achieve victory, Honor points, and valuable in-game rewards. Each Battleground has different goals and gameplay styles, providing an addictively engaging experience for participants. The two initial Battlegrounds now available to the public are Alterac Valley, a high-end zone designed for large groups of experienced players, and Warsong Gulch, a more casual zone designed for all players level 21 and up."
FYI, my next update on my web site will have WoW at 2 million subscribers according to inside sources.
Bruce
http://www.mmogchart.com/
will all gold collected be evenly distributed among
the players for the greater glory of Chinese WoW players?
I'm pretty sure the "dishonor" part of the honor system now only applies to NPCs. If you're 60, and you kill a level 10 player, you still don't get dishonor.
Having played on the test server for a bit, I can tell you that the battlegrounds are a BLAST.
The 10v10 CTF are a blast (especially as a rogue) and the 40vs40 maps are seriously epic, with quests that can turn the tides of battle.
They allow you to upgrade the levels of npc defenders, summon epic mobs (around MC trash difficulty) etc. Reminds me of the ToB, DoTA maps I loved on battle.net. Good stuff!
Interestingly, most players up through now have been playing the Alliance side - Humans and Night Elves being the most popular with Dwarfs and Gnomes coming in later. On my server, the ratio is at least 3:1 Alliance versus Horde. This is going to be a problem on the WoW Battlegrounds. For every Horde player who wants to get on the battleground, there will be three Alliance players waiting to play. Since these areas are balanced (you only enter when both sides have equal numbers), Alliance players are going to find it harder to get into the battlegrounds - there just won't be enough horde players to fight against them.
I expect that you're going to see many players re-rolling Horde alts so they can PvP.
"Hey, Bill, check this out. The last six gold farmers we've banned have all been logged in from the same IP address at the same time."
"Is anybody else logging in from that IP?"
"No."
"...Then your mission is clear."
Pwned.
Hey, Ausgamers are great for stuff like this. Get it here
>Dishonor is worthless if it doesnt apply to PCs.
And your proposed system works how? SPecifically so that there is no easy ways to abuse such a system. For example, low level players just standing/running arround together with high level ones (not initiating or even making any attacks to prevent systems were such a thing removes the dishonorable part). Should area effect spells not be usable there? Should you have to carefully look so your cursor is not on that level 20 player who just jumped out amogn the level 50 you was fighting? Should using low level chars as shields be the way to do it then?
That is only true on PvE servers; on PvP you are always vulnerable to being attacked by a level 60 who doesn't like the look on your level 30 face ;-)