Tom Chilton talks World PvP in Mists of Pandaria

[videotape]

Promising indeed.

Just ignore the downers. They're mad about something in life, but it isn't really WoW.

[Caliph]

WoW needs More areas that make people want to play in , last real world pvp zone i remember playing in was the isle of quel'danas. The way the zone worked with factions opening npcs that people actually wanted worked brilliantly. If the firelands daily quests/npcs were faction wide working towards a goal then i would put good money on the area having a lot more natural world pvp than it has so far.

Come to think of it, the fact you couldn't fly probably did contribute to that, small compact zones that are of importance to everyone, with good gathering nodes - boom world pvp.

oh and if you're faction imbalance is 20:1 can you pvp? look at cho'gall usa and illidan usa and ask if those alliance want world pvp. this game is now about sucking every bit of money out of you so as to meet expectations for quarterly reports for actiblizzard. how can they balance servers or make world pvp equitable if they're sucking down huge profits from faction changes and race changes. surely you don't expect them to cut down on revenues and profits just so they can balance servers and make world pvp viable. i mean they already have your 15 dollars right? so why would they waste it on making pvp fun.

you'll see when you go out there to do the new isle of quel denas and you're owned by 10:1 or 15:1 odds by the opposing faction. you'll simply want to switch to a pve server or something. incidentally that's another 25 bucks or somehting.

lol world pvp, it's been long dead and it ain't coming back.

[Deleted]

For me there's only one way to fix the open world PvP issue (an PvP itself):

- best loot, equivalent to top raid loot, is gained by killing city bosses, either directly or via collecting some points.
- if a city boss is killed, all vendor prices, repair costs and auction house fees of the faction which lost the city boss are at least doubled if not tripled, on that one continent for a few hours (so there is a REASON to defend your city). Also reputation level is temporarily decreased from like exalted to revered, minus one level. If a second city boss on that continent is killed, the costs further increase. For example cost increase duration like 3 hours, boss respawn 4 hours, so they gain 1 hour where they can be happy with normal prices.

I do not want to fight on fake locations no one cares about. WTF is winterspring or battle grounds? Capital cities is the way to go. I do not want to win a battle, which has no negative impact on the opposing faction. Now it's like "hey we lost the war... lets go home and watch TV, we will try again next day, or maybe in 5 minutes". Give us a reason to attack and a reason to defend.

I know... 2000 people battles, the server can't handle it, the PCs can't handle it. Well Blizzard, FIND a solution. There are many possible ways to fix it. People are always good at pointing out flaws, though they never think of solutions. For example they could introduce an auto decrease graphics quality mechanic, depending on total number of people in the battle. Or they could buff the city guards to the point where they start AoE one shotting, when the attacker number exceeds a specified number. On the other hand, the guards would "go home", if the defenders number exceeds a specified value. Also, all main cities would be equal in what they offer, to the attacked faction and also as loot to the attackers.

Yeh... it will never happen. A meaningful PvP target, the only one --> main cities with a reward / punishment system.

[Stanton Biston]

punishment system

So your proposed change to the PvP system is to turn it into a PvE system?

Because you're having the best gear drop from the city leaders, they get farmed and the losing faction transfers to a server where they aren't the losing faction.

I mean, that's what you want, right? To have world PvP be the methodical farming of scripted faction leaders and guard spawns because the economy was ruined and no one could defend against the top tier geared attackers.

[Ben Evans]

World PvP on Moon Guard is incredibly high, in spite of being a role-playing realm. Many Roleplaying-PvP events are set up on the realm forums, which pits large raids of horde vs alliance in certain places.
Anyway, I expect any changes and contributions to world PvP and I will believe when it turns in to real one.

[natureca]

If they had like 4-7 world bosses popping up each week that had some connection to maybe honor gain or dmg done in raids for whatever faction that kills it (ie. theme of this expansion horde vs ally), or some other reward maybe a different cool looking tier that only drops from these bosses. Something that would attract both sides to getting this buff or gear, but not be totally necessary otherwise people would feel they are forced to do it to succeed. The gear would just be like a transmorph set you can change your gear to look like, not anything that would actually be better or worse then current raid gear.

To get people into world pvp, you need to make more choke points that force people off their flying mounts, but it can't be scripted places like TB or WG. Making maybe the faction leaders more attractive to kill with buffs again to something for the faction that kills it, or special transmorph sets.

Maybe even that while your flagged for pvp be it on a pve server or on a pvp server you can not mount flying mounts until your fully out of pvp combat. Kinda like how on a pve server you stay flagged for I think its 2-3 minutes if you engage in pvp. Might be a bit annoying on pvp servers, but then again your on a pvp server so thats the risk.

In the end they just need more choke points, more things for people to do outside of the cities and your bound to have people running into each other. Obviously though its a tough uphill battle because ever since BG's you just can never get the same amount of honor like you do from BGs doing world pvp. The only reason other then it being a brand new game, that people gathered at TM / SS was that it was easy access to a contested zone that had 2 close cities and that was the only way to really get lots and lots of honor back then.

[Deleted]

oh and if you're faction imbalance is 20:1 can you pvp? look at cho'gall usa and illidan usa and ask if those alliance want world pvp. this game is now about sucking every bit of money out of you so as to meet expectations for quarterly reports for actiblizzard. how can they balance servers or make world pvp equitable if they're sucking down huge profits from faction changes and race changes. surely you don't expect them to cut down on revenues and profits just so they can balance servers and make world pvp viable. i mean they already have your 15 dollars right? so why would they waste it on making pvp fun.

you'll see when you go out there to do the new isle of quel denas and you're owned by 10:1 or 15:1 odds by the opposing faction. you'll simply want to switch to a pve server or something. incidentally that's another 25 bucks or somehting.

lol world pvp, it's been long dead and it ain't coming back.

We'll see if your right in the near future, they can take my £9 a month aslong as i'm having fun, which i have been since 2005.

[Deleted]

I hope their idea of WORLD PVP does not mean "Tol'Barad" or "Wintergrasp"

They were nice tries, but they ended up being horrible/useless/not world pvp at all , with tol'barad being slightly better than WG (mainly because of the crappy siege vehicles).

What we need is to make the player "happy" or "willing" to do World-pvp.
Why would I loose my play-time (for which I pay) trying to kill enemies, who I may not even find in said place, when I can just queue for a BG ?

Tol'Barad was highly populated in the daily battles only because it awarded a "shit-fuck" of honor. When they modified it, the numbers decreased as well.

My idea?
Better rewards and arena points awarded for kills in a certain place. I say this because... Good luck finding an enemy passing by, in this huge world that WOW is...

I.E.
Dustwallow marsh.
They said Theramore's going to be destroyed/attacked.
Why don't they make the whole region a lvl 90 pvp zone, with the main ideas being :

A - Theramore's Alliance base. Alliance must defend it.
B - Horde create a Battle-Outpost and they have to defend it.

In these bases, factions will get daily quests that award you tokens/medals tradable for arena points, mounts and other estethic rewards (old pvp gear anyone?)
Killing an enemy in Dustwallow Marsh would award you :
1- Arena points (5 HK = 5-10 arena points)
2- Tokens/medals tradable for arena points and so on... I.E. 10 tokens = 50 or 100 arena points

Yeah... that's it.
If you want people to world pvp, you must reward them, and reward them well.

So you either give arena points for world pvp, or increase the honor gain for world pvp kills.
And make honor tradable for arena points, with a ratio like 3:1 or similar.

[Deleted]

Any changes they plan to implement regarding world PvP should NOT be implemented on PvE servers though.
Players on PvE servers aren't interested in PvP in any way.

[Deleted]

Allow you to be PVE-PVP flagged and there you go.

[Feranor]

I don't think World PvP will return to WoW. Why not? Well...

1) Lag. The servers cannot handle mass PvP. They're already set up so that other players are being loaded with a long delay outside of Battlegrounds. It's very noticable when two people ride past one another in Open World. They generally won't see each other until they're almost touching.

Blizzard is also incapable of fixing lag caused by certain usable objects. Wintergrasp always started lagging like hell as soon as the vehicles began to damage the walls. Stormwind is pretty much out of order since Hallow's End started, I guess it's the stink bombs causing the lag.

2) Population imbalances. A lot of servers have like thousands of Horde but only a couple hundred Alliance; or vice versa. This just doesn't work without crossrealming. They'd have to cluster the Open World zones in some way.

3) Flying mounts. These are a big, big feature of WoW, but they are absolutely lethal to World PvP for reasons already stated in this thread.

4) No competition. There's simply currently no MMO that has good PvP; with the exception of DAoC, but it's old and most of its player base is burned out. Maybe GW2 will change this.

However, the main reason; and the most crippling one (as it cannot be fixed by technical changes immediately) is

5) Player mentality. Good PvP requires players willing to engage in it. But there are almost none left, as I outlined more verbosely here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ational-sadism . Most players don't care about fair and challenging fights, they just want to boost their ego. Most players are also bad. Thus, if you throw them into a situation where skill is the deciding factor, they'll start whining, calling for nerfs, generally just throwing tantrums. And Blizz will listen. In addition, most players on PvP servers do nothing but PvE. If you "force" them out of their safe instances and into the ganking zone of your dreams, guess what they'll be complaining about.

Blizzard has raised an entire generation of MMO players but they're the MMO equivalent of parents who don't allow their children to go and play outside and who only feed them junk food. The result is as expected.

[Bllets]

Yeah i can see this being a problem but i think realm balancing has been long overdue from Blizzard if i'm honest. We've gone two expansions where Wintergrasp and Tol'Barad will be next to unplayable due to realm balancing, some incentive to roll on the underpopulated side or free faction changes to the underpopulated faction could work.

@Obelodalix Totally agree with that, i refrained myself from replying to such posts because they simply aren't worth responding too but you summed up my thoughts entirely.

But what is Blizzard supposed to do except to offer free character migration to/from those specific servers?

I play on a server were the majority is Horde, so generelly that alliance that actually attack you in the open only do it when you're low on HP or there is a safe zone near by.

[Thallidomaniac]

But what is Blizzard supposed to do except to offer free character migration to/from those specific servers?

I play on a server were the majority is Horde, so generelly that alliance that actually attack you in the open only do it when you're low on HP or there is a safe zone near by.

Given how badly imbalanced some of those realms are, and that the free character transfers haven't done much to rectify that situation, they'd have to give the outnumbered side bonuses such as permanent Tenacity in non-instanced areas, more Valor/Conquest points earned from Arena/RBGs/Raiding/LFD, and they have to implement a ban on switching to the more-numbered side if you receive those bonuses until the population is more balanced.

Or they can just give in and let the remaining 1% faction transfer off, leaving a realm with 100% of one faction.

[Deleted]

You all bring up valid reasons, what if there we're hourly PvP zones in MoP, by that i mean an Hour on and then an hour off. Where Blizzard would set a Zone or a Town as a heavy PvP area for the time being where Max level characters would gain a large amount of Honour or Arena points by killing the opposite faction, flying mounts were disabled in this zone for the hourly period and you could mix it up with Town attacking/defence. They could calculate how many max level characters from each faction is in that zone and balance Tenacity accordingly. I don't know, it's a rough idea but with Blizzard behind it i'm sure they could do something.

In response to Comma, they aren't planning on building a Tol Barad or WG like zone in this expansion for reasons you expressed, they we're BG's out in the world. Tom Chilton and the Lead quest designer both said they have some plans for MoP to get people out into the world, Tom chilton said potentially they could get you to occupy the crossroads for some reason for example whereas the Lead quest designer said that they have a few plans to reward and make open world PvP compelling gameplay. So who knows what is on the cards, this is sheer speculation at this point but i'm excited to see what they come up with.

[Canca]

oh and if you're faction imbalance is 20:1 can you pvp? look at cho'gall usa and illidan usa and ask if those alliance want world pvp. this game is now about sucking every bit of money out of you so as to meet expectations for quarterly reports for actiblizzard. how can they balance servers or make world pvp equitable if they're sucking down huge profits from faction changes and race changes. surely you don't expect them to cut down on revenues and profits just so they can balance servers and make world pvp viable. i mean they already have your 15 dollars right? so why would they waste it on making pvp fun.

you'll see when you go out there to do the new isle of quel denas and you're owned by 10:1 or 15:1 odds by the opposing faction. you'll simply want to switch to a pve server or something. incidentally that's another 25 bucks or somehting.

lol world pvp, it's been long dead and it ain't coming back.

Speaking solely to the faction imbalance issue, I might have missed something but when did Blizz force anyone to play on a PVP server? Your two specific examples are Cho'gall and Illidan two Horde dominated servers that have been that way for god only knows how long, anyone on the smaller faction of those two servers either leveled up on them knowing that the balance was horrible or has spent years there dealing with it. Also if the fact is the later and they have been stuck there because they dont have enough money to transfer and dont want to lose their main character, account wide achieves are coming making it less of an issue to roll a new character on a PVE server and still have your achieves without having to pay anything extra to Blizzard.

That being said, if there is a real push to make world pvp and the factions more of a focus in this expansion there is something that I would really like to see them do. Many of the servers are imbalanced and if they wanted to make a serious move to fix this it looks like they might finally have the tools to do so. Free character transfers in the past dont seem to have been all that successful, but with the new guild transfers what if they offered free guild moves to different realms? I know most of the people that I have played with cared far more about their guild than they did the server and if they opened up guild transfers I think they would possibly see a higher rate of success.

[Deleted]

Speaking solely to the faction imbalance issue, I might have missed something but when did Blizz force anyone to play on a PVP server? Your two specific examples are Cho'gall and Illidan two Horde dominated servers that have been that way for god only knows how long, anyone on the smaller faction of those two servers either leveled up on them knowing that the balance was horrible or has spent years there dealing with it. Also if the fact is the later and they have been stuck there because they dont have enough money to transfer and dont want to lose their main character, account wide achieves are coming making it less of an issue to roll a new character on a PVE server and still have your achieves without having to pay anything extra to Blizzard.

That being said, if there is a real push to make world pvp and the factions more of a focus in this expansion there is something that I would really like to see them do. Many of the servers are imbalanced and if they wanted to make a serious move to fix this it looks like they might finally have the tools to do so. Free character transfers in the past dont seem to have been all that successful, but with the new guild transfers what if they offered free guild moves to different realms? I know most of the people that I have played with cared far more about their guild than they did the server and if they opened up guild transfers I think they would possibly see a higher rate of success.

I think we simply need free Faction changes to the under-populated realms with a month cool down. We've seen rift do such a thing, i can see it coming. This would only be available if the realm was anymore out than 60:40 for instance.

[Thallidomaniac]

Speaking solely to the faction imbalance issue, I might have missed something but when did Blizz force anyone to play on a PVP server? Your two specific examples are Cho'gall and Illidan two Horde dominated servers that have been that way for god only knows how long, anyone on the smaller faction of those two servers either leveled up on them knowing that the balance was horrible or has spent years there dealing with it. Also if the fact is the later and they have been stuck there because they dont have enough money to transfer and dont want to lose their main character, account wide achieves are coming making it less of an issue to roll a new character on a PVE server and still have your achieves without having to pay anything extra to Blizzard.

That being said, if there is a real push to make world pvp and the factions more of a focus in this expansion there is something that I would really like to see them do. Many of the servers are imbalanced and if they wanted to make a serious move to fix this it looks like they might finally have the tools to do so. Free character transfers in the past dont seem to have been all that successful, but with the new guild transfers what if they offered free guild moves to different realms? I know most of the people that I have played with cared far more about their guild than they did the server and if they opened up guild transfers I think they would possibly see a higher rate of success.

The problem was that those realms like that weren't always horribly imbalanced. It was the introduction of the Faction Change service that accelerated the imbalance to those levels.

Another example of how a realm became imbalanced was Al'Akir-EU. Back around when TotC was content, they had a free realm transfer off the realm because of the lag and queues there, which most of the Alliance there took, making that realm close to one of those 99% Horde realms that exist today. So would it be fair to blame the Alliance that play on Al'Akir for the imbalance being their fault for not dealing with it even when they played back before the free realm transfer occured?

[buxiangxiao]

If the firelands daily quests/npcs were faction wide working towards a goal then i would put good money on the area having a lot more natural world pvp than it has so far.

[Deleted]

If the firelands daily quests/npcs were faction wide working towards a goal then i would put good money on the area having a lot more natural world pvp than it has so far.

That is a good point, personally i think they could do good things on Pandaria.

[TheShinyOne]

We don't want another lame battleground with over an hour queue time (Wintergrasp, Tol Barad). They weren't in "the world", there would have been no difference if they were instanced. Give us a reason to kill eachother out in the world and reward us for it, and we will do it. Get people out into the world, give us marks or extra honour depending on where we fight and how much PvP gear the victim wore, perhaps even put some valour into it, and make both factions want to be in the same place for some reason. Hell, work out some sort of rating system for WPvP, it can't be that hard.