[WoRBot]

3.2 Wintergrasp Changes

The 3.2 PTR patch notes were updated this morning with some very interesting Wintergrasp Changes. I'll leave it to you guys to form your own opinions on them!

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

• Wintergrasp
  • To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.
    • Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
      
    • Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
      
    • The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
      
    • Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
      
    • Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
      
    • The queue will accept up to 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 200 players at a time.

StarCraft II Battle Report 3

The third battle report is available on Kotaku for viewing. I know a lot of you are looking forward to beta (me too) so I wanted to share this with you. This particular battle report is Protoss vs Zerg.

Elitist Jerks Opera Browser

Elitist Jerks have teamed up with Opera to help create a unique experience for Opera users who play World of Warcraft. The browser comes pre-configured with many resources for the WoW player, such as useful news feeds, bookmarks, and more. It's pretty cool to see a WoW community get recognition like this for their contributions.

Gaming is a popular activity for a lot of people. Some gamers raise the bar how good you can get and in "World of Warcaft", these players make up "Elitist Jerks", probably the best theorycrafting Web site in the world.

“Opera knows that the vehicle for online gaming is the browser, so why not make the browser a part of the game?” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Gaming is something we have always taken very seriously, and by creating a custom browser for gamers, we hope to make their online adventures even better.”

The browser for the Elitist Jerks community is filled with numerous customized features, including a pre-set Speed Dial complete with important theorycrafting sites, selected RSS feeds and an array of helpful, built-in bookmarks. Elitist Jerks members or fans will feel right at home, as the skin and layout are designed to match the look and feel of their Online community Web site.

“It’s a thrill to finally have our own Elitist Jerks browser. Our community members have worked hard to build our site into the success it is today, and it is great to get the recognition from Opera who provided us a custom-made browser to enhance the overall experience,” said Andrew Hunn aka Boethius from the Elitist Jerks community.

Download Opera's Elitist Jerks Browser:

• Windows Version
  
• Mac Version

[/list]

[Zuelu]

Yes! I can FINALLY turn up my settings in WG!

Also DL'd the WoW Fitted Opera, I like it personally, might make it my regular browser at home.

[Gloo]

Bah... they cant fix the lagg issues from WG, so they get a limit on how many players it can hold... bleh, bad job.


And... why are the Elitist Jerks still in business?
I visited their site exactaly 3 times, from 2 of those times i read stuff that not even a friking 10 years old gold farmer would consider good information.
My wild guess is, they simply make stuff up.


(that other time i stayed in the site for 10 seconds... )

[Kody]

Gloo said:

Bah... they cant fix the lagg issues from WG, so they get a limit on how many players it can hold... bleh, bad job.


And... why are the Elitist Jerks still in business?
I visited their site exactaly 3 times, from 2 of those times i read stuff that not even a friking 10 years old gold farmer would consider good information.
My wild guess is, they simply make stuff up.


(that other time i stayed in the site for 10 seconds... )

I used to frequent the EJ forums quite a bit when TBC was in early beta.

[GregLoire]

It's starting to sound like Blizzard is regretting making Wintergrasp a world pvp zone rather than just another battleground. Pretty much every attempt at world pvp up until Wintergrasp has been a failure -- spirit towers, Zangarmarsh, EPL towers, Silithus sand, etc. (Halaa seemed mildly successful, at least early on in BC.)

The biggest reason that Wintergrasp has so many people is because Blizzard finally figured out that they need to offer substantial rewards to level capped players in order to keep them interested. At the release of Wrath, Wintergrasp simply awarded far too much honor. Changing the daily quests to weekly quests was a great move, in my opinion, as it addressed the crowding issue without changing the actual gameplay of the zone.

If Blizzard would've waited for Isle of Conquest to be released (it sounds like a lot more fun than Wintergrasp), and continued tweaking the awards in Wintergrasp, the problem likely would've gone away without having to completely destroy the element of Wintergrasp that makes it a true world pvp event -- the fact that you can just drop in and start fighting in a persistent zone with unpredictable numbers.

At this point they might as well just make Wintergrasp a battleground. There's no purpose anymore to it having a persistent physical spot on the world map, other than the fishing daily and farming eternals. And joining the battle sounds like it's going to be a bit of a hassle now.

[Inirit]

Yet another bandage fix for WG. The entire concept of an open-world PvP zone has been ruined by this change. They should just throw in the towel and mark it a failed experiment.

[koenigsegg]

lol, the end to "world pvp". It's just like a huge BG now.

[Matija]

Gloo said:

My wild guess is, they simply make stuff up.

You didn't bother to read Think tank or any other good theorycrafting part on their forum, right?

[Nerph]

Nice browser but I'll stick to Google Chrome

[Deployed]

I know most of you see this player limit in WG as a bandage, but I really do see it as "about damn time, what the hell were they thinking before now".

I would like to say "why didn't they learn from other large scale PvP based games" on this matter, but then you just have to remember the issue Blizz had with opening AQ and wonder why they didn't learn from their own lesson.

In short, today's technology is not capable of sharing a lot of dynamic information to and from a lot of players. It's all well and good thinking Blizz are being lazy or incapable of fixing the lag issue, but frankly, it can't be fixed.

Look at games like Planetside which are basic in comparison to the quantity of commands that can be sent and received between players. They had to reduce player limits from 500 to 400 (total) per zone, and that's a game that's purely PvP only. It's designed around large scale warfare. WoW isn't. They would need to disable emotes and a lot of animations in order to up the player quantity to the level that the PvP servers can see.

Don't worry. I expect they're working on a way to make phasing work on the zone as well, so it wont just be one battle at a time.

As for world PvP being dead, well, on PvE servers I've been on, it's always been dead. It's a side effect of being on a PvE server. I hope people that keep saying that world PvP is dead are actually on PvP servers, otherwise they really don't have a valid point.

[chaos986]

At least the discussion here is more intelligent then at MMO-C.

I love the WG changes, and they will have no effect on my farming or my fishing.

Both sides will still have several chances a day to do VoA. On Garona-US the only actual battle is the one nearest 7PM CST when the raiding guilds want to do VoA. Rarely ever do you see more then 80 on a side (actually participating, not fishing) so 100 is a cap that will nearly never be reached except on the most high pop PvP servers.

And the PvP pepole who don't farm, fish, or raid will move on to Isle of Conquest which seems to have the best elements of AV, WG, and SotA.

[chaos986]

Deployed said:

As for world PvP being dead, well, on PvE servers I've been on, it's always been dead. It's a side effect of being on a PvE server. I hope people that keep saying that world PvP is dead are actually on PvP servers, otherwise they really don't have a valid point.

World PvP died then battlegrounds were introduced. The legendary battles at Tarren Mill and X-Roads just stopped. People on PvE servers can now get their occasional PvP fix in BG's, Arena's, and WG.

On PvP servers world PvP never ended it just became more guerrilla and is more focused on attack/defend the cities.

[Geschan]

chaos986 said:

On PvP servers world PvP never ended it just became more guerrilla and is more focused on attack/defend the cities.

'Guerilla' is a nice word for ganking. But youre right, World PvP died some time ago.

[Valaelea]

Well Thrall - US Horde will never own WG again.

We have a large population advantage over the Alliance, and it seems the only strategy our large number of idiots can understand is run from the port in to the keep door and stand there until the 10 people or so actually doing something rank up and get sieges to knock it down.

Doing this isn't such a big deal when you have 5 raid groups in each battle.

[Gloo]

Matija said:

You didn't bother to read Think tank or any other good theorycrafting part on their forum, right?

Have no idea what part of their site i had read, all i know that the part i did read, was trash.
But, not only me. Sometime after the target dummies went live, around 10-12 lvl 80 mages (3 of them from my guild), of several specs, started testing their dps, for good attack sequences.
It become clear very fast that the strat given in the EJ site was very, very poor.
It seems that it was 'common knowledge' that EJ was "always bullcrap".
(some of those mages words, not mine...)

Wont even bother to tell the tale of the combat rogue with the slow weapon on the off-hand, just because EJ said so...

They 'might' have some good info on their site... but quite honestly... most of what i've seen is crap.

[Leviathonlx]

My only issue with EJ are the mods that don't even play the game anymore who decide what is worthy of being posted or not and many times seem to have a stick up their ass (to put it kindly).

[lora]

Nerph said:

Nice browser but I'll stick to Google Chrome

QFT

[lora]

Leviathonlx said:

My only issue with EJ are the mods that don't even play the game anymore who decide what is worthy of being posted or not and many times seem to have a stick up their ass (to put it kindly).

gona have to agree with you

[Gloo]

Also, that change with WG will make it that, the outnumbered side (on heavy faction biased servers [ex. magtheridon, silvermoon {EU}]) will always win.

From personal experience, not only the Tenacity buff was broken on low numbers, the increase in effectivness they gave it some time ago, and now with a limit on player on the map, will be a murder to any server that happens to have alot of pop from a certain side.

The way the tenacity works now, the only way to actually be able to defend/attack against the outnumbered side, is by HEAVY zerging. With a limit of players, that zerging is not possible, since is quite easy for 15-20 players with tenacity to completly faceroll 100 non-tenacity players.

(notice, last time i checked, tenacity stacks were bugged. one could have 20 stacks with having almost half the numbers as hte other team. havent played WG in a couple months, dunno if they fixed it or not)

[Deployed]

That should be something to look towards then, a change to the Tenacity buff. Without the risk of excessive side imbalance, they will hopefully scale it back a bit. Probably limit the number of stacks and/or how much each stack affects a unit.