Blizzard recently released a Battlegrounds Q&A where the Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton talks about some of the things the development team has in mind for the future. The two main discussion points involve Battlegrounds and participation during the leveling process and the upcoming Battleground, Isle of Conquest.

silvermoon battlemasters

The big thing that’s coming in patch 3.2 concerning Battlegrounds is that they’re going to make experience gain in battlegrounds available. This way players can do some leveling up by doing just battlegrounds, although at a slower rate than if you were to go out and quest. Experience gain will be not be based on kills but instead actions like capturing a flag. I wonder how this will affect battleground healers though since they usually do nothing but heal. I also wonder if simply completing a game, win or lose will give you some experience along with the marks of honor.

The issue of experience gain concerns the twinks, who are a group of people who want to remain at their current level to stay in that bracket. Obviously gaining experience will mess things up so Blizzard also added a feature that will allow players to turn the experience gain on and off. Using this feature involves visitng an npc in Orgrimmar or Stormwind and costs 10 gold each time. turning off experience gain will also turn it off for PvE so if you want to go questing you’ll have to turn this feature on. Also, when entering battlegrounds, you will only be grouped with players who have the same setting so that twinks will only be matched with fellow twinks and those who don’t want to fight twinks won’t have to.

There’s also an interesting idea that they’re planning for the future where players will be able to roll on green and blue gear after a battleground match is over. If you’re a twink, this should be awesome news and even if you’re not, I’m guessing that these pieces of gear will be nice even for PvE use.

As for the Isle of Conquest, it’s much better to read the Q&A to get all the details but here’s the jist of it. the Isle of Conquest is 40 player BG like Alterac Valley with 71-79 and 80 brackets. The fight involves breaking into the opponent’s keep and killing the general much like Alterac Valley but the manner of doing so very different and looks more fun. They do this by breaking down the walls with siege weapons taken from Hangar, Docks or the Siege Workshop in the middle. With the various vehicles you can break down the walls and even catapult yourself over the enemy walls and break it down using Saronite bombs!

For all those people who love to do Battlegrounds while playing World of Warcraft, CM Zarhym has some good news to tell us all. This news concerns the latest battleground in the game (at least until patch 3.2) Strand of the Ancients. The “coin toss” at the start of every fight to determine who starts out on defense on who’s on offense will correctly be implemented in patch 3.2.

strand of the ancients

Blizzard has said that they really intended Strand of the Ancients to make sides random but what they did just caused some bugs so they fixed it at Alliance starting out on offense while Horde defends. By patch 3.2 this problem will finally be fixed. It’s about time too since it’s been more than six months already since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out. I’m not one who does battlegrounds a lot and Strand of the Ancients isn’t exactly my first choice when I do decide to do some but this news makes me feel good because I like hearing that it’s finally getting the fix it’s needed for a long time. I like hearing that something will finally work as it’s supposed to.

I just noticed that CM Eyonix posted a poll a few days ago asking players what their favorite PvP battleground is. Exactly what Blizzard will do with this feedback is still unclear. Maybe this feedback will help them in designing future battlegrounds for future content. Or maybe they’ll use this info to see if they can improve on any of the current ones. or maybe they’re just curious for the heck of it!

silvermoon battlemasters

In my case, I still haven’t tried Strand of the Ancients so I can’t comment on that. Making my judgment based on the other BG’s, I’d have to say that Alterac Valley is my favorite. Ever since Blizzard changed AV in TBC so that the matches reward fast matches, it’s been quite a blast to play. It gives you that feeling of large scale battle and it also incorporates some PvE into that PvP, which I like a lot. Eye of the Storm would probably be my next favorite since it’s like Arathi Basin with a twist of Warsong Gulch without being Warsong Gulch. the thing I hate about WSG is that it could go really fast or really slow depending on how you play. I hate that uncertainty. EoTS and Arathi Basin works on a resource gathering system and you know that once you reach a certain amount the game is over. With that, you know that the game won’t drag on to insane durations like WSG could.

What about you? What’s your favorite BG? Cast your vote in CM Eyonix’s poll. It’s going to end on April 14 so there’s still some time!

Like I said before, I’m not really a big fan of PvP. That’s one of the main reasons why I decided to roll on a PvE server and stuck with it. I’m still open to doing the occasional world PvP and battlegrounds but only when I feel like it. For WoTLK, I haven’t felt like it even until now.

pvp toggle

The past few days I’ve been wondering about a problem my mage has been having. He got flagged the other day and while I’m not totally sure how, it might have been when I dueled a friend. Anyway, for the past few days I’ve been trying to get rid of that flagged status and up to now it’s still there. I’ve tried toggling pvp on and off and the countdown to turn off pvp doesn’t start. Taking a flight path didn’t work but it’s supposed to. I tried going in an instance and while it went away inside, the second i stepped out it went right back.

This is really the strange occurrence that’s been bugging me the past few days and I’m glad I don’t really play my mage much these days. I think it’s time to put in a GM ticket but the strangeness of the situation is keeping me from doing so right now. Have any of you experienced anything strange like this while playing WoW?

update: Learn something new everyday. Thanks to a guildie, I was able to get rid of this problem. Apparently if you have a pvp daily in your quest log (which I wasn’t aware I had), you won’t unflag until you remove it from your log.

I’m not a big PvP fan and in fact, except for one or two times checking out Wintergrasp, I actually haven’t done any PvP at all since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out. Nevertheless, something PvP related caught my attention just a few minutes ago after reading one of CM Zarhym’s responses in the official forums.

Zarhym was talking about how they never really expected Arenas to become the more central focus of PvP for players and also how BG’s, unlike Arenas, aren’t really a good measure of PvP skill. He’s quite right since you can get great gear even if you suck or even afk during battles (as long as you’re not reported) which is something you can’t do in the Arena Tournament especially since some pieces of Arena gear have rating minimum requirements.

dalaran bg area

While explaining that they want to essentially make BG’s more attractive for all PvPers and just just focused on the Arena Tournament, Zarhym actually mentioned something about a new Battleground in the works for Wrath of The Lich King!

A new BG! This is quite exciting news even for me, a non-PvP fan. I wonder if this has anything at all to do with the Argent Tournament that’s going to make its debut in patch 3.1? I wonder what kind of battle it will be. How will this impact the PvP rewards that are already out? A new battleground mark should affect the rewards and even the For Great Honor/Conceited Efforts daily quest. There’s so many questions!

There’s an outburst in the druid community now because the class is getting some nerfs in patch 3.1. One of them is the change to the feral talent Heart of the Wild where at max rank, the stamina bonus it gives will be reduced from a 20% increase to just a 10% increase. According to Ghostcrawler, this is part of their effort to make all tanks’ HP pools closer together but of course a nerf is a nerf and this sucks for bear tanks.

The next change is the one to the resto spell lifebloom, the resto druid’s best friend in tank healing in groups/raids. The change goes as follows:

Mana costs of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, It now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

Of course all resto druids are pretty mad that their bread and butter tank healing spell will become less efficient especially since the practice of rolling lifeblooms negates whatever bonus was given to it blooming given that that’s what rolling lifeblooms is all about - keeping the 3 stack up at all times. Ghostcrawler’s forum post on the matter gave you a sense that they felt the spell was too efficient a heal especially if kept rolling but instead of nerfing the heal itself they decided to just increase its cost. After being assigned to raid healing a few times in 10 man Naxx a few times, I found out that I cast lifeblooms and let them bloom quite often so this might be a nice change for people who do this since the bloom will refund mana and get a healing bonus.

While this change is quite a sad one for PvE resto druids, it’s quite a buff for ones who do PvP a lot. People will think twice now before dispelling HoT’s especially in the arena tournament. This is quite a welcome change to complement the fact that the PvP resto druid’s worst enemy has been tamed because of the removal of the Death Knight’s ability to remove HoT’s through Plague Strike. These two changes just might catapult resto druids back to king status as arena healers.

In the latest PTR patch notes for patch 3.08, balance druids got the news that their talent Celestial Focus will no longer work with Starfall. As always you can see the latest PTR patch notes here.

I play a balance druid right now but only to get to 80 faster then I’ll be switching to Restoration. But I do know that that the stuns this talent brings can be pretty useful in PvP, especially with Starfall since you have so many stars amounting to potential stuns. I haven’t done any PvP on my druid and I don’t really intend to so I haven’t tried it but looking around in the forums and asking friends confirmed that it is a technique that balance druids use. I’d use it myself if I did any PvP.

But with the change coming in the next patch, not only is this technique no longer possible with Starfall but some people have even questioned Starfall’s viability as a 51 point talent. Starfall’s alleged horrible damage output and the fact that it’s on a 3 minute timer has it in the running in worst 51 talent point debates. Personally I still find it a bit useful especially when I’m trying to kill a lot of targets fast when I’m soloing.

What do you think about this change?

Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) had a word with the World of Warcraft community as he posted a few thoughts in the official forums about the future of Battlegrounds. Below are the basic points of his post. You can read the whole post here.

1. More battlegrounds content over time

If this means more BG’s, it means more fun and more variety. If I’m a guy just farming honor and not much the marks, I can have that choice of doing the one I enjoy doing rather than be stuck with something I don’t really enjoy. But adding more BG’s also gives rise to another issue. More BG’s means more marks of honor to account for and farm. This also means that each additional BG will have its own holiday weekend, stretching the time when you’ll be able to see that holiday weekend again. If Lake Wintergrasp is a success, maybe more similar locations would be better than adding additional BG’s.

2. PvP shifting to being more BG centric

The arena tournament has changed the landscape of PvP since its arrival. It’s probably accurate to say that the introduction of the first daily quests was in response to the problem that arose from players respeccing back and forth between the PvP-arena specs and their PvE raid specs. But it isn’t for everyone since not everyone has the gear and the skill to excel in arena and not everyone enjoys it either. I hate the arena tournament since it’s a zero sum game, either you win or you lose and get rewarded or punished accordingly though your ratings. At least battlegrounds give you some honor and a mark even if you lose. I also hate arena since it’s something I can’t do on my own unlike BG’s where I just queue up and find a group just like that.

Tigole mentioned that PvP will be more about Horde vs Alliance, the core of what the game is about and that means more BG content.

3. Being able to queue up anywhere in the world

Being able to queue up from anywhere would definitely make things easier for hardcore and casual PvPer alike. Looking at how this matter evolved over time, first only being able to queue up at the BG’s actual location and then not at the battlemasters and then the plan to queue up from anywhere - that’s really a huge improvement. If you consider that Warhammer Online allows you exactly that (I was told by my brother that you can join their versions of battlegrounds with just a click of a button from anywhere), then WoW shouldn’t allow itself to get left behind.

4. Experience from Battlegrounds

This really isn’t a new concept. In fact we sort of were able to do it back in the days of the old honor system. Back in the day, the purpose of marks of honor were not for purchasing gear but for turning in for honor and if you weren’t 60 yet (the level cap at the time) also experience. I had friends who used to be able to level up just from doing battlegrounds and turning in these marks of honor back in the day. The new honor system doesn’t allow for the gaining of experience points but with nice plan to implement the idea, this could work out once again.

Now Tigole cautions that the community shouldn’t take the post as a promise but I really hope that at least some of these ideas will be implemented sometime.

If you’ve noticed an increase in the number of players doing Battlegrounds, it just might be because of the latest news about Honor. As you know, an honor reset to be implemented when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out was announced just a few days ago. Well according to CM Bornakk, the latest word about this matter is that the honor reset will not push through.

We had hoped that the introduction of some new Honor rewards in the upcoming patch would give players a great opportunity to spend any of their remaining Honor. However, many players would still be surprised by an Honor and token reset as it isn’t something we’ve done in the past. As such, we’ve decided to not reset Honor or tokens upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Players who save their Honor will be able to spend it on level 80 rewards, although those rewards will be significantly more expensive than their level 70 counterparts. source

This is definitely good news for those who do a lot of PvPing in the Battlegrounds. Since the honor reset will not be happening, players can do some PvP just for fun and start stacking some honor for the expansion rewards as early as now. But since honor points and marks of honor will no longer be reset, I wonder if the “special items” that players were supposed to be able to spend their honor and marks on before the honor wipe will still be released. If they still will be released, they will definitely still be great for those who want to take them to fill gaps in their gear but it would obviously be wiser to save the honor and spend them on level 80 rewards.

As I just mentioned yesterday, honor points will be reset will the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. This is to maintain a level playing field come expansion time with a new battleground and a new class coming into the picture. But to avoid all those honor points going to waste, some “special items” are going to be released come patch 3.0 the content patch going to be released before the expansion comes out.

You might be thinking the same thing I was thinking. We’re all going to get better gear come expansion time just like when all our pre-TBC blues and epics got replaced really quick the moment we set foot in Hellfire Peninsula back when TBC came out. Why bother with these new items? Well I can see a few reasons why after looking at the pieces coming out. Basically for those people who currently have mediocre gear, these items could be a great way to enter the expansion with nice gear to make the leveling in the first zones of Northrend easier. We all know what being fresh meat is like in Hellfire Peninsula and we’ll surely experience the same thing in the two starting zones of Northrend. These items are also a great way to start WoTLK pvping on the right foot, especially for those with not so good gear, since we know having great PvP gear means better PvP performance.

WoW EU Blizzard Poster Vaneras unveiled these special items in the forums. He also mentioned that all Gems acquired through honor will no longer be BoP and unique-equipped when Patch 3.02 comes out. See the special items after the break. Read more