Sunwell Isle and 2.4 Preview, Honor calculations

[Boubouille]

Update : Post updated with 2.3 Battlegrounds Honor calculations and new PTR patch build, "minor" news might be added a bit later, or tomorrow.

Sunwell and 2.4 Details.
Source - acaciaizm.com

The swedish magazine Level published a special World of Warcraft magazine. In the latest issue they included an interview with Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) about the patch 2.4, and obviously the Sunwell instances.

Sunwell Isle

• Sunwell Isle will be located off the coast, north of Silvermoon, and will be patched in with patch 2.4
• Sunwell Isle will be a major questing hub with a 5-man Normal and Heroic Instance (Magister's Terrace) and a 25-man raid (Sunwell Plateau). The goal with Sunwell Isle is to close the Burning Crusade storyline before the release of the next expansion.
• There are still a few scenarios left that could be released to provide the players with more content if WotLK gets delayed for any reason.
• At the release of the patch, players will access a small expedition camp where they can start questing. However as the questing progresses, players will expand the camp and make it grow to a small town by retaking building to the enemies (running daily quests mostly). You can consider it as a AQ Gates opening event, the more daily quests that gets done, the faster the whole server will progress.
• The quests will end the Tempest Keep story arc.
• "The Shattered Sun Offensive" will be the new faction of this quest hub. It also seems that Aldor and Scryers will finally start fighting together against the new threat.
• Both 5-man and 25-man dungeons will be accessible from the start, but some bosses will have to be unlocked by running the daily quests (server-wide) and/or leveling your reputation. The 5-man instance will most likely requires Honored reputation with The Shattered Sun Offensive, the first three bosses of the 25-man instance will be accessible from the start, while the three last ones will have to be unlocked through questing.
  

Sunwell Plateau

• Kael'thas will be one of the boss of the 5-man dungeon, he's still alive and he's now got a huge green crystal etched to his chest.
• Kil'jaeden will be the final boss of the 25-man instance. The other bosses include Brutalicus, a giant Pit Lord who has lost his wings, Kalecgos, a blue dragon enslaved by Kil'jaeden, a Fel Dragon, the female Eredar Twins, and a Dark Naaru.
• The 25-man instance will be slightly harder than Black Temple, and is tuned for Tier 6 geared players.
• There will not be any "real" Tier 7 set, but some of the drops will be set pieces (not necessarily class specific). The drops quality will be above T6.
  

Daily quests

• Patch 2.4 will raise the cap of Daily quests allowed in a day from 10 to 25.
  

PvP

• Balancing actions will be taken in regard to PvP for certain classes.
• Blizzard have large plans for arena, and they will be aiming to bring it closer to e-sport acceptance.
  

You can find a few more details on http://acaciaizm.com/

But that's not the end ! If you've been looking at patches carefully, you might have seen the name of Brutalicus somewhere ... yup, he's already in the game files !

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New PTR Build
Build 7740 has been applied to PTRs, didn't see any specific changes to classes/items here, just bug fixes.

Patch from latest PTR Build (7705)
WoW-0.3.2.7720-to-0.3.2.7741-enUS-patch.exe [Download]
WoW-0.3.2.7720-to-0.3.2.7741-enGB-patch.exe [Download]
WoW-0.3.2.7720-to-0.3.2.7741-deDE-patch.exe [Download]
WoW-0.3.2.7720-to-0.3.2.7741-frFR-patch.exe [Download]
WoW-0.3.2.7720-to-0.3.2.7741-esES-patch.exe [Download]


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Alterac Valley 2.3 Calculations.
Nethaera finally the promised post about the differences on honor calculations during BG Weekends. It's fairly long and you won't have any nice Blizzard Quote layout mostly because it was bugged to death on this post for some reason.

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With the release of patch 2.3.0, players have seen many changes to the way that honor gain occurs in Battlegrounds and most noticeably in Alterac Valley. Many aspects of this battleground have been changed to promote a more strategic event and rewards players for participating in many aspects of the battleground. Despite the changes made, the overall intention of these changes is to maintain a level of honor gain that players have become accustomed to as well as maintain pacing of how long the matches may last. Prior to the changes implemented in patch 2.3.0, honor gains were less consistent in how they were calculated, there were long games, extra-long games, short games, and holiday bonus honor calculations all factored in. With the patch, we have better simplified and defined this for active participants in these matches.

With these changes has also come some confusion in regard to where honor bonus comes from during holiday weekends as well as how best for players to optimize gaining bonus honor within the battlegrounds. To help clear up this confusion, we have taken the time to put together more information.

Diminishing Returns

It’s important for players to understand the nature of gaining honor and what role diminishing returns plays with this. Diminishing returns on honor occurs over time as you kill the same opponent. For each kill you make past the initial kill, the honor gained for it is reduced by 10%. After ten kills of the same opponent, that player is no longer worth any honor.

Estimated Honor

Estimated Honor will show an amount of honor that does not factor in diminishing returns. This number can be less depending on whether or not you had a lot of kills where diminishing returns were applied. Honor is shared among players in a Raid when they are within range of a kill. When fractions of a kill or decimal amounts of honor are gained by a kill, the User Interface will round the estimated honor up to show one Honor point gained. Given enough time what shows as ten Honor points, could actually only be five Honor points gained.

Daily honor calculations can also cause estimated honor to appear larger than what it actually is. If a player plays prior to the honor calculations being run, and then during or shortly after, the estimated honor may appear as a part of the previous day’s totals. In actuality, this honor applies to the next day and will be correctly calculated the next night when the next batch of honor calculations are run.

Regular Honor vs. Holiday Honor

Some weekends are considered Holiday weekends for a particular battleground. Envoys for the holiday battleground will be located within the major cities. Holiday weekends grant bonus honor for meeting particular goals within the battleground.

The chart below shows the amount of regular honor and holiday bonus honor for each of the battlegrounds as well as the reputation gains.

It is important to note the following: one kill= 20.9 honor at level 70.

*Map Complete refers to the bonus honor awarded on holiday weekends for both the winning and losing teams when the match has concluded.

Alterac Valley
Bonus HonorNormal Holiday
Tower Destruction3 Kill(s)3 Kill(s)
Enemy NPC Kill0 Kill(s)0 Kill(s)
Captain Kill3 Kill(s)3 Kill(s)
General Kill4 Kill(s)4 Kill(s)
Map Complete0 Kill(s)4 Kill(s)
Per owned Graveyard0 Kill(s)0 Kill(s)
Live Captain2 Kill(s)2 Kill(s)
Per Undestroyed Tower 2 Kill(s)2 Kill(s)
Per Owned Mine0 Kill(s)0 Kill(s)

ReputationNormal Holiday
Tower Destruction1218
Enemy NPC Kill55
Captain Kill125185
General Kill350525
Map Complete00
Per owned Graveyard1218
Live Captain125175
Per Undestroyed Tower 1218
Per Owned Mine2436


Warsong Gulch
HonorNormal Holiday
Flag Capture2 Kill(s)2 Kill(s)
Win1 Kill(s)3 Kill(s)
Map Complete 2 Kill(s)4 Kill(s)

ReputationNormal Holiday
Flag Capture 3545
Win----


Arathi Basin
HonorNormal Holiday
Honor per resource 1 Kill(s) per 330 resources 1 Kill(s) per 200 resources
Win1 Kill(s)1 Kill(s)
Map Complete1 Kill(s)1 Kill(s)

ReputationNormal Holiday
Reputation per resource 10 per 200 resources 10 per 150 resources
Win00


Eye of the Storm
HonorNormal Holiday
Honor per resource1 Kill(s) per 330 resources1 Kill(s) per 200 resources
Win1 Kill(s)1 Kill(s)
Map Complete1 Kill(s)1 Kill(s)

ReputationNormal Holiday
Reputation per resource NO REP available NO REP available

[Azain]

very cool.

[Lurr]

A little info on the blue dragon:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalecgos

And a little reminder on eredar and naaru
both archimonde and kil'jaeden where/is Eredar. Drainei also decent from this race
Naaru is the light-enegy beeings found in sattrath.

[SOaD!]

Nothing about a legendary bow ? (I can't access acaciaizm.com atm)

[Boubouille]

Nop.

[Uzm]

Just wondering why will be there no "real" T7? Consider Blizzard changing their minds about that one, since they should continue with "every 25-man leads to a gear-tier". ???

[Fersas]

Just think about aq40

[Psyclops]

Will there be new gear from badges, honor and rep. Just wondering.

[Grekil]

Will there be new gear from badges, honor and rep. Just wondering.

You bet. Otherwise the QQ from all people that won't ever raid Sunwell will be too much to bare for Blizz.

Oh, and ofc there will be season 4, featuring loot of much higher quality than Sunwell, since getting a good arena rating with some 4 other people is that much harder than coordinated raids with 24 ppl 6 days a week ;D

[Nero Duskwind]

So Kalecgos will be the new Vaelastrasz? Damn, I grew to like the character too from the Sunwell Trilogy.

[eternity]

There are still a few scenarios left that could be released to provide the players with more content if WotLK gets delayed for any reason.

Doesn't this mean Wotlk is far far away ?

[PaiRho]

Just what the heck does " * e-sport acceptance." mean?

[Boubouille]

@eternity : end of 2008.
@PaiRho : Probably some kind of online tournaments, or a ladder, or something like that.

[Dion04]

You bet. Otherwise the QQ from all people that won't ever raid Sunwell will be too much to bare for Blizz.

I bet thats why kael is reintroduced as a 5man encounter in im sure a weaker state or some other tom foolery.

[Kozikk]

Will there be new gear from badges, honor and rep. Just wondering.

There has been no mention of new badge rewards. Honestly, most guilds who are not heavy in the 25 man content, have not progressed far into ZA yet. The new 5 man, and raising the daily quest cap to 25 (little TOO high imo), will give people more than enough to wrap their heads around until WotLK.

As for the release of WotLK, it does not mean that it is too far away. Yes, blizzard has said they have learned from Naxx, and want to allow a decent amount of players to experience the new content. This does not mean, however, that they are going to sit on sunwell forever. Many of the real hardcore guilds have lost raiders after clearing BT, just from boredom. Also remember that 2.4 (release of Sunwell), is the last major patch before WotLK. This is the timeline I can imagine in my head:

PTR 2.4: Probably a month
Release 2.4
Fix 2.4: probably in 2 minor patches. probably 3 weeks to 1 month to get all that done.
Beta test WotLK. This will be the longest wait. Probably 3 to 4 months.
Release WotLK.
With all this taken into account, this means the next expansion could come out as soon as July (6 months after the release of 2.4 on the ptr). With this said, I would put my money on August. Blizzard had made a statement just after the release of BC, that they intended to add a new expansion every year. An August release date would make that true.

[Kozikk]

On another note. I hope sunwell doesn't turn out to be too "dark". We already have Black Temple, which is pretty morbid. From the looks of this so far, I am thinking it's ganna be another dismall place. From the looks Mag's ugly brother, a Fel Dragon (no idea about his looks), and all the Eredar sisters, this is ganna be a pretty nasty looking place.

[Tjaffe]

On another note. I hope sunwell doesn't turn out to be too "dark". We already have Black Temple, which is pretty morbid. From the looks of this so far, I am thinking it's ganna be another dismall place. From the looks Mag's ugly brother, a Fel Dragon (no idea about his looks), and all the Eredar sisters, this is ganna be a pretty nasty looking place.

I Agree, Black temple was Dark and creepy! Though I hope they wont make sunwell too "Jolly" sort of speak ;>
aka. no flower power colours plx

[overneathe]

The Sunewell was quite High Elvish when is existed but was completely destroyed. So now we can expect:
1) A very cool looking high-up-in-the-towers temple with beautiful terraces and such
2) A morbid dead spooky ruined temple with tons of ghosts
Depends on how far they have actually rebuild that. And bad folks don't always go for the looks if you know what I mean.

[attackfrog]

What's "Map Complete"? ???

And no wonder I never seem to get much more honor on AV weekend : /

[Thretau]

they will be aiming to bring it closer to e-sport acceptance.

That would mean a complete overhaul of the pvp mechanisms and all classes to go towards skillfull gaming that e-sport requires. WoW PvP is so unbalanced as it is now, that it's very little to do with skill.