The only real remnant of this old honor system, which involved a lot of hours of grinding honor per week, are the PvP titles like Blood Guard, Warlord, Private, Grand Marshal and others like it. If you happen to see someone with one of these titles, that means he’s been around since those days and that’s the highest rank that he attained in a system that made characters go up and down in rank each week.

When the new honor system came out, that saw the end of newer characters being able to get these titles. It’s why you don’t see any Draenei or Blood Elves with it. But that could change by as early as Cataclysm! As you know, Cataclsym is going to usher in a new feature in the Rated Battlegrounds. we still don’t know exactly how this works but it’s supposed to be a competitive environment for Battlegrounds, a lot like the Arena Tournament I guess. According to Zarhym, Blizzard plans to make the old PvP titles available by Cataclysm and that the Rated Battlegrounds is the planned means for attaining them.

The way the titles were attained back in the day involved a flawed system where more time invested rather than actual skill played a pretty big part. According to Zarhym, they want the return of these titles to involve skill represented by a good win/loss ratio and probably other factors. They’re still not certain exactly what the details are or if this information will even stick, given that the cataclysm expansion is still in early stages of its development.

It’s a pleasant surprise especially for players who never had a chance to get these titles before. Now it looks like it’s a fairer system in giving out the ranks. I just wonder how this news will be taken by players who have these titles considering the time and effort they had to put in. Well I have one character who’s a not too high and not too low Stone Guard and I don’t mind the return of these titles because I just know that anyone who even reaches my rank under the new system will probably have to be more skilled than I was back in the day and I respect that and I already take my hat of to any future high Warlords and Grand Marshals when this system takes off.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

heirloom vendor

Right now the heirlooms state that they increase the experience gained from killing monsters and from completing quests. So it’s actually not that surprising that they currently don’t increase the XP gained from doing Battlegrounds. But apparently this is unintended, according to CM Zarhym. In patch 3.2.2, heirlooms will also increase XP gained from Battlegrounds.

So it actually turns out that that this was just a mixup. It’s just a coincidence that the explanation seemed to fit which actually makes this whole thing a bit cooler. We have to remember that when the heirlooms were designed for the expansion’s release and at that time XP from Battlegrounds was still not possible. In fact it’s only in patch 3.2 that they decided to to make that possible. So while here we were getting XP from the BG’s, I guess they just forgot to change the wording and the mechanics for heirlooms.

The bottom line is that you can use the heirloom XP bonus for PvP as well when patch 3.2.2 comes out so have fun!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

silvermoon battlemasters

The entry that I saw only now is something concerning lowbies and the Battleground daily quests. I’m not a big fan of PvP and most especially at lower levels but I’m sure there are lots of you guys out there who enjoy low level PvP, especially the the twinks out there.

As you might know, the PvP daily quest is chosen randomly everyday and I think it even differs depending on which server you’re playing in. At the max level this doesn’t pose as a problem since all battlegrounds are at your disposal. This does pose a problem to the lower level characters. If today’s battleground daily quest is Eye of the Storm then a level 30 character won’t have a BG daily for that day. Well at least not until patch 3.2.2 comes out.

According to the patch 3.2.2 PTR notes, players level 11 and above will always have a PvP daily and that will depend on the Battlegrounds available to that character based on its level. For example, a level 12 player will always have Warsong Gulch as the PvP daily because it’s the only battleground available at that level. A level 23 player will have Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin as the choices for the PvP daily and so on. It isn’t an earth shattering thing but it’s definitely good that even the lowbies will get to do a BG daily everyday!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

battlegrounds battlemasters

What is Measured Battlegrounds? I’m actually not sure exactly what it is but I seem to have an idea based on the discussion going on in the forums.I guess the vagueness also comes from the fact that we don’t have a system in place to define it. This is how I understand the basic concept of what Blizzard is trying to come up with. When fighting in a Battleground, players will be measured somehow for their contributions to the success or failure of a given match. While honor does this to a certain extent, it’s limited to activities that give honor and does not show the whole picture. For example a player left to defend a flag is just as important as those capturing a base in an Arathi Basin match but honor would favor those on offense rather than those on defense.

If I’m correct this measurement system would affect the player’s rating and would move up or down based on that player’s performance. There’s talk about rating the team instead of the player but I’m not sure how that would work considering players usually come from different realms to join Battlegrounds. This sounds a lot like the old honor system in that your success in Battlegrounds determines how you rank and also a lot like the Arena Tournament for the same reason. Maybe players have an individual rating and the system would match you up with others players with roughly the same rating as you.

It seems like Blizzard wants a system where individual contributions to every important aspect of playing in a Battleground that contributes to the goal of winning is credited somehow. I’m not sure how they’ll be able to marry the concept of individual achievement with a “winning through teamwork” outlook since we’ve seen that players often overlook teamwork for a chance to have the most kills or the most killing blows and things like that.

This is the dilemma that Blizzard faces and it’s a tough one to tackle. Guess we’ll just have to see what they do to really see what kind of system they will implement.

What are your thoughts on this Measured BG System?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed