Reflections From The Pond

Some days ago, an achievement announce popped up in gchat. It was a guildie who had managed to snag 25 000 Honorable kills.

For me, this is an insane amount of kills, even though you don’t have to get the killing blow yourself anymore to get credit for the kill. And although 25 000 sound like wholesale slaughter there are 2 more achievements, 50 k and 100 k kills. According to WoW-achievements about 0,7% of all players have managed to commit this kind of almost-genocide, which for me is a surprisingly large number.

I was born and raised on a pvp server and although I hate world pvp (mostly because I suck at it I guess) I managed to level 6 chars to 70 there before I saw the light and moved to a normal server. Between those chars, I have about 8 000 Honorable kills, about 5 of which are from world pvp when I actually managed to kill the Horde who attacked me, and the rest are from battle grounds.

I was there when the old bg system was in place, where the honor you gathered decayed so you had to keep playing more and more every week to keep your rank. There were 14 ranks if I recall correctly and I actually managed to get my rogue Tessye to Sergeant Major (rank 5) before that title/rank system was scrapped. (I met a Grand Marshal, the top rank, in Dragonblight some weeks ago, and complimented him on his title and he replied he could to this day still not understand how he managed to put himself through that ordeal of basically playing 24/7.)

My playing in bg’s was mostly for the rewards, the Electrified Dagger for Tessye, a whole truckload of stuff for my druid Joaquime, especially when the Gladiator stuff that were so perfect for a feral druid became available through honor points, the Mooncloth robes for Jools the priest and a long long WSG grind for Paynne the warlock’s Vindicator’s cuffs.

While I have enjoyed this bg’ing, especially when playing with friends, I’ve very rarely felt an urge to go bg’ing just for the fun of it. If there has been no reward that I want, I usually have found other things to do in-game.

However, bg’ing is useful in that it prompts you to use all of your talents more dynamically than when you quest or do dungeons or raids. Well, it is for me at least. Even the dreaded sudden attack from Horde back on my old pvp server made me rethink my action bars and spell placements, so although I hated it I got some use from the unprovoked attackings.

It was pvp who made me put Vanish on a hotkey, and to have Faerie Fire and Entangling Roots within reach in any forms, for example.

And then there’s the really fun parts. Hibernating a Horde bear is hilarious, so is MC’ing someone off a cliff or down under water til they drown (not sure if this works anymore though with the looong breath bar you’ve got nowadays). A tip though: if you have put Psychic Scream on your usual Fade-key bind, do remember to switch back when going dungeoing.

So, I am not totally averse to pvp and battle grounds, I just have not had the time and/or skills for them very much. As I keep saying, I am a type 11-pvp’er.

 But now I read the latest test realm patch notes, and I got rather excited!

Battlegrounds

Battleground experience has arrived!

Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included).

Yay, this means I can bring my levelling characters to the different battlegrounds and still feel like I’m progressing level-wise. It will hopefully also bring about that the bg’s will be slightly more dynamic, since clamping down on one node and sitting there for the duration won’t give you much xp. It may also mean that more players will seek out the bg’s to see what it is like and that the long queues will probably be shorter.

Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the Battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold. Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game. Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off. Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would’ve been accumulated if experience gains were not turned off cannot be recovered.

The dedicated twinks are sure to disable their experience gains to not level out of their bracket, and the bg’s will be more segregated. For good, I think. Let the levelling players keep to their experience-giving bg’s and the twinks keep to their more hardcore pvp-oriented ones.

Of course the bg split between people who actually know what they are doing (twinks, usually) and people who took a wrong turn and ambled in not knowing what a zerg is or why fishing in AB is bad will probably also mean that the frustration in xp-bg’s may reach astronomical levels. But hopefully the fabled Horde coordination and communication will go the way of the twinks and leave us xp-bg’ers to fumble our way through the bg with an equal amount of confusion on both sides.

Battlemasters in major cities affiliated with specific Battlegrounds have been replaced with a Battlemaster for each faction that will allow players to queue for any Battleground. Battlemasters for specific Battlegrounds will still be seen around the cities during corresponding Battleground holiday weekends.

Don’t really see the need for this unless it is plain old down-sizing or house cleaning, and I hope the poor Battlemaster won’t be swamped with queueing players.

When standing at a capture point that you control, you will gain a buff called Honorable Defender. This buff grants +50% honor gained from kills. This currently affects Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Isle of Conquest.

While this in a way counteracts the offensive incitement from the xp gains, it will perhaps also persuade some other, more honor-seeking people to actually stay and defend.

And then there are some interesting changes in the battlegrounds themselves.

Arathi Basin

The time it requires to capture a base has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.

Eye of the Storm

The time it requires to capture the center flag has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds

The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.

Strand of the Ancients

The faction starting on attack/defense will now be randomized at the start of each match.

Warsong Gulch

There is a now a 20 minute timer on this battleground. After that time, the team with the most flag captures wins. If this would result in a tie, the team that captured the first flag wins. If neither side has captured a flag, then the game ends in a tie.

These changes are obviously implemented to shorten the game sessions, which I think is a good idea. The tense, heart-beating eon-long seconds as you wait for that node to flip from neutral to blue will probably still feel as long though, but the general pace of the game should be quicker, more explosive, hopefully more intent on winning and not just sitting out a game to get a mark.

The WSG change is also a very welcome one. The long pug battles that sweep from one end of the field to the other, noone really pushing enough to capture a flag, noone really trying to follow some sort of plan, is just pure pain. The hiding of the flag carrier so the other team can’t capture it, the turtle-makings and all those things that just prolong the frustration will at least not be endless now.

While I am not playing this game for the pvp, I think these changes will make me and others much more inclined to go do bg’s. I think the experince gains and the shorter games will make more people come knocking on the doors and maybe discover a new dimension to the game.

And who knows, maybe I will get myself a shiny new achievement soon!

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