And there we have it. The inevitable. In an attempt to simplify things blizzard has decided to do away with the extra currencies of the battlegrounds the infamous marks of honor. Anything previously purchaseable for marks is now available for a (fairly low) amount of honor.
Your leftover marks (including the ever useless IOC marks) can now be turned in for 185 honor each.
Well that's good, I can turn them in now... all my marks and I know I have hundreds and hundreds of them spread out over my various characters.
So off I go with my pally to the nearest 'turn in your marks here' vendor which are conveniently located here: The Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar (Horde) and the Champions' Hall in Stormwind (Alliance).
And as I arrive, flop open the vendor window I start mashing away on the right mouse button to buy as many stacks as my 70+ AV marks would allow for only to see the familiar message 'You can't carry any more of those items' ... which of course I misinterpret for a full bags message until I notice the 33 empty bag slots.... Hmmmm
Commendation of Service: Unique(10)
No more than 10 on your character? really? Did we really have to specifically make them Unique (10) why?
Why? Why? Why are you doing this to us? I wouldn't have minded running through orgrimmar pressing the button as many times as it took to burn up the nigh infinite amount of commendation of service I would've gotten for my marks. But unique (10)?
So as I stand here trying to redeem my marks as quickly as possible I see the day progress and the vendor slowly turning into a parking lot full of people occasionally erupting in a burst of light stoically and silently trying to burn off their marks.
I know what I'll be doing all day...
A tip... stay close to the vendor, keep the trade screen open and bind the commendations to a button so you can buy while you mash the button...
Showing posts with label battleground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label battleground. Show all posts
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Will BG XP bring PVE to PVP?
With 3.2 sitting in the background loader and my low level warrior slowly munching it's way through a few dozen quest mobs I started to think about one of the newer features that will be introduced with the next patch. To quote the allmighty patch notes:
No indication was given by blizzard how much XP you actually stand to gain other than it being less than questing xp. Given the fact that HKs do not yield XP it leaves only a handfull of objectives that will actually give XP per BattleGround.
Add to that the fact that different BG's have different amounts of objectives for which I assume the XP gain will be balanced enough to not favor certain BG's right from the get go and I have to come to the conclusion that we really don't know anything at all yet.
But let's not jump the gun here. If BG XP is 'poor' than most people will ignore it for the large part and the net result will be is that we simply won't have to deal with overgeared twinks in lower brackets anymore which you may or may not find helpful.
If however BG XP all of a sudden becomes a decent way to level up your character, or if nothing else provides a suitable alternative to questing all day then we should expect to see an increase in Battleground activity.
Unfortunately much like holiday event achievements the people going into a bg for the purpose of levelling their characters will be there for just that: The XP
They will stick to objectives that give decent xp like glue rather than focussing on the absolutely vital (*caugh*) task of exterminating the enemy. In fact I can see this giving rise to a whole new slew of win trading where people will cap an objective only to stand there and wait for it to be capped back so they can re-cap it just for the purpose of xp.
You know those people in BG's that would rather do the turn-in quests or sit there and fish all day long? Just imagine that, only far far more of them.
There's some merrit to the idea of course. Why should people that are primarily interested in PVP be bothered with such trivial things as gaining XP through questing when they can just cap,recap and rerecap things ad nauseum. But the worry I have is that BG XP will either be completely trivial or worse, good enough to merrit scamming and abuse.
There's also a social aspect to the whole change. Sure, people flock to 'free xp' like flies to crap (euh... moths to light) but will someone who is primarily interested in PVE even consider PVPing for XP? Will the hoped for larger numbers in the battlegrounds materialize if you throw a handful of XP at the issue?
So the question for the time being seems to be: Will BG XP bring the PVE crowd to PVP and if it does how long will it take before someone gets the bright idea to win-trade WSG?
And what about you? will you BG for XP if it's decent enough XP?
Battleground experience has arrived!
Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included).
Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar - both located near the Battlemasters in either city - and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold.
Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.
Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would've been accumulated if experience gains were not turned off cannot be recovered.
No indication was given by blizzard how much XP you actually stand to gain other than it being less than questing xp. Given the fact that HKs do not yield XP it leaves only a handfull of objectives that will actually give XP per BattleGround.
Add to that the fact that different BG's have different amounts of objectives for which I assume the XP gain will be balanced enough to not favor certain BG's right from the get go and I have to come to the conclusion that we really don't know anything at all yet.
But let's not jump the gun here. If BG XP is 'poor' than most people will ignore it for the large part and the net result will be is that we simply won't have to deal with overgeared twinks in lower brackets anymore which you may or may not find helpful.
If however BG XP all of a sudden becomes a decent way to level up your character, or if nothing else provides a suitable alternative to questing all day then we should expect to see an increase in Battleground activity.
Unfortunately much like holiday event achievements the people going into a bg for the purpose of levelling their characters will be there for just that: The XP
They will stick to objectives that give decent xp like glue rather than focussing on the absolutely vital (*caugh*) task of exterminating the enemy. In fact I can see this giving rise to a whole new slew of win trading where people will cap an objective only to stand there and wait for it to be capped back so they can re-cap it just for the purpose of xp.
You know those people in BG's that would rather do the turn-in quests or sit there and fish all day long? Just imagine that, only far far more of them.
There's some merrit to the idea of course. Why should people that are primarily interested in PVP be bothered with such trivial things as gaining XP through questing when they can just cap,recap and rerecap things ad nauseum. But the worry I have is that BG XP will either be completely trivial or worse, good enough to merrit scamming and abuse.
There's also a social aspect to the whole change. Sure, people flock to 'free xp' like flies to crap (euh... moths to light) but will someone who is primarily interested in PVE even consider PVPing for XP? Will the hoped for larger numbers in the battlegrounds materialize if you throw a handful of XP at the issue?
So the question for the time being seems to be: Will BG XP bring the PVE crowd to PVP and if it does how long will it take before someone gets the bright idea to win-trade WSG?
And what about you? will you BG for XP if it's decent enough XP?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
For the Horde! Leading a Battleground
There comes that time in every players life where they queue into the battleground and find themselves adorned with the crown of raid leadership.
Knowing this you can either drop the raid leadership position into someone else's lap like it's some form of moldy apple, ignore the position entirely assuming that people will do whatever they want anyway or make the best of what you have and try to provide either information or guidance.
There's a lot of theorizing about what battleground strategies are best in what situations and what you should do if for example IB GY gets capped and when it is ok to cap the stables in AB. There's so many forum posts, strategy guides and blog entries about this you can probably make a series of books about it that would put SunTzu's art of war to shame.
Fact of the matter is that none of this matters (at least not right from the get-go). BG's are not about strategy, are not about tactical advantages, rouses, open ground, narrow passes or method and discipline. BG's are about people and as a raid leader that is what you have to deal with.
In any given BG you can find the following general groups of people:
1. The AFKers / Botters happily sitting at various locations on the map trying to not make it too obvious that they're just sitting around doing nothing
2. The Zerglings (term borrowed from starcraft). The people that rush into battle, charging ahead and generally trying to stay with large groups of people. They are where the honor is, and where the honor is in their mind is where the crowd is.
3. The BG enthusiasts are interested in winning. Some of them will pro-actively back-cap towers, ninja mines, recall back to base or organize some form of defence around flags or bottlenecks.
4. Last but not least there are the 'scrubs'. They're introducing their low level character to the battleground, generally are somewhat aimlessly looking around at what to do and if there are quests to be done they will happily skin wolves, collect armor scraps or try to cap mines.
The first thing to understand that whatever instruction you may want to give your raid will be ignored by the AFKers and the Zerglings. The scrubs won't have a clue what you're talking about (cap IB GY wut?) and the enthusiasts will probably take your instructions as a request, consider it and if it has merit act on it.
So the key to organizing or at least making an attempt at organizing a BG is trying to get the enthusiasts on your side. Zerglings have a tendency to follow suit. If all the enthusiasts are turtling around Iceblood for example a lot of the zerg will turn around and join the defense because they are well aware that the larger crowd tends to draw the most honor.
What to say/do, what not to say/do
As a raid leader you have to have an overview of battle, if you suffer from tunnel vision when you are in combat (focussing a little too much on your personal battles) then consider finding a somewhat more quiet spot so you can take a look at the map a little bit more often.
Participating in defense is probably the easiest way to do this. Holding flags, graveyards, bunkers, home base or other key objectives gives you plenty of time to analyze the situation and still be a valuable asset to your raid.
Once you're nicely settled into your position the second most important thing is to advertise status and request status. Mods like deadly boss-mod and similar allow you to see what objectives are currently being attacked by what side. Report this status to the raid on a regular basis (but not so often that it turns into spam) it will help everybody get a grip on the current situation. Make sure that when you report things you report things grouping them either by level of importance or by side. There's no point in spamming all the current caps that are going on. Report the important ones first (you get to pick which are important). Let it settle in and then report the rest of the objectives sorted by side (either all alliance ongoing caps first or all horde ongoing caps first). Information becomes useless if it's too much at once or when people have to look at their chat for longer than a second or two to see who is doing what and where.
If the rare case occurs that someone asks for a status on a specific objective make sure you give it. It makes the person who asked feel slightly less anonymous and all the more motivated to work towards a win.
Next to providing information it is also your job to collect information.
"Is Galv down?"
"Is Balinda still alive?"
"How many allies at the blacksmith?"
"Where is the enemy flag?"
Are all valid questions.
Keep your questions short, concise and free of emotions.
"WTF? Galv is dead? How did Galv die?" Is not the right question. Galv is either dead or he's not. Don't invite your raid to debate or comment. The more people stand around typing the lower your chance of success and the more likely it is that people will start acting like complete and utter idiots.
If you have obtained a critical piece of information then use it to weave it into new instructions and repeat it once in a while.
"Galv is down, incomming IB tower. Defend IB."
That way people know that galv is down (should they have missed it during the heat of battle) and know that they can expect pressure on Iceblood.
When giving instructions remind yourself that it has to contain useful information and only useful information.
"Allies are backcapping SP GY, offense hold SP GY then take Dun baldar north"
rather than
"We're losing SP GY, WTH are you doing? take it back!"
The way you say things is crucial. You're the general, you're leading the troops. You're not their highschool councellor. If people start argueing with you ignore them. If people start calling you an idiot ignore them. If people start commenting on your gear, the fact that you only have 8k HP and don't have any epics worth anything, ignore them.
You're going to take some fire as a raid leader. Ignore all information that is not relevant to the battle and focus on the information you can use and that is worth repeating.
"OMG WTF our RL only has like 8k HP, loser go enchant your gear"
'The lumber mill was taken by the alliance'
"Haha we're being led by a noob, we're so going to fail"
"STFU and kill stuff retard"
Out of those 4 lines only one is relevant. Ignore the random insults. Highlight the facts and respond once again in a clear and concise fashion.
"LM has been taken by the alliance, how many allies at LM?"
The next step in dealing with people and information is to motivate people to say something when they're in trouble. Nothing puts a bigger dent in a well-oiled offensive than your defense slowly crumbling without informing anyone.
"Report incoming alliance by numbers"
"Call out incoming if you need help"
These are things that can be repeated once in a while. The more people give a clear indication of what is going on on their end the more control you have over a battle.
It allows you to be reactive. If allies are moving in by the bucketload on Farm (AB) then they must've left LM / GM / BS and ST undefended for the most part and you know that with a quick offensive move you can possibly cap 2 to 3 objectives while the allies are standing around at farm waiting for the cap.
The final piece of the puzzle is to commend behaviour you want, and ignore behaviour you don't want. Never call anyone out on their stupidity, they will argue their stupidity and the stupid in them will take over raid chat.
If people call incoming and then manage to mount a proper defense tell them.
"Good job defending Farm, move to BS"
A simple GJ or thanks can go a long way in providing the right atmosphere.
Even if your Raid is losing the match, stay professional, stay clear and stay focussed on the battle. "You are all retards" is not going to help anyone.
There is always something that can be done to gain that last little bit of honor, be it defending a tower or zerging an objective to squeeze out another 60 honor a person.
Find those objectives and motivate people to execute them.
Once you grasp the basics of how to deal with the people in your raid you can then and only then consider strategies.
Knowing this you can either drop the raid leadership position into someone else's lap like it's some form of moldy apple, ignore the position entirely assuming that people will do whatever they want anyway or make the best of what you have and try to provide either information or guidance.
There's a lot of theorizing about what battleground strategies are best in what situations and what you should do if for example IB GY gets capped and when it is ok to cap the stables in AB. There's so many forum posts, strategy guides and blog entries about this you can probably make a series of books about it that would put SunTzu's art of war to shame.
Fact of the matter is that none of this matters (at least not right from the get-go). BG's are not about strategy, are not about tactical advantages, rouses, open ground, narrow passes or method and discipline. BG's are about people and as a raid leader that is what you have to deal with.
In any given BG you can find the following general groups of people:
1. The AFKers / Botters happily sitting at various locations on the map trying to not make it too obvious that they're just sitting around doing nothing
2. The Zerglings (term borrowed from starcraft). The people that rush into battle, charging ahead and generally trying to stay with large groups of people. They are where the honor is, and where the honor is in their mind is where the crowd is.
3. The BG enthusiasts are interested in winning. Some of them will pro-actively back-cap towers, ninja mines, recall back to base or organize some form of defence around flags or bottlenecks.
4. Last but not least there are the 'scrubs'. They're introducing their low level character to the battleground, generally are somewhat aimlessly looking around at what to do and if there are quests to be done they will happily skin wolves, collect armor scraps or try to cap mines.
The first thing to understand that whatever instruction you may want to give your raid will be ignored by the AFKers and the Zerglings. The scrubs won't have a clue what you're talking about (cap IB GY wut?) and the enthusiasts will probably take your instructions as a request, consider it and if it has merit act on it.
So the key to organizing or at least making an attempt at organizing a BG is trying to get the enthusiasts on your side. Zerglings have a tendency to follow suit. If all the enthusiasts are turtling around Iceblood for example a lot of the zerg will turn around and join the defense because they are well aware that the larger crowd tends to draw the most honor.
What to say/do, what not to say/do
As a raid leader you have to have an overview of battle, if you suffer from tunnel vision when you are in combat (focussing a little too much on your personal battles) then consider finding a somewhat more quiet spot so you can take a look at the map a little bit more often.
Participating in defense is probably the easiest way to do this. Holding flags, graveyards, bunkers, home base or other key objectives gives you plenty of time to analyze the situation and still be a valuable asset to your raid.
Once you're nicely settled into your position the second most important thing is to advertise status and request status. Mods like deadly boss-mod and similar allow you to see what objectives are currently being attacked by what side. Report this status to the raid on a regular basis (but not so often that it turns into spam) it will help everybody get a grip on the current situation. Make sure that when you report things you report things grouping them either by level of importance or by side. There's no point in spamming all the current caps that are going on. Report the important ones first (you get to pick which are important). Let it settle in and then report the rest of the objectives sorted by side (either all alliance ongoing caps first or all horde ongoing caps first). Information becomes useless if it's too much at once or when people have to look at their chat for longer than a second or two to see who is doing what and where.
If the rare case occurs that someone asks for a status on a specific objective make sure you give it. It makes the person who asked feel slightly less anonymous and all the more motivated to work towards a win.
Next to providing information it is also your job to collect information.
"Is Galv down?"
"Is Balinda still alive?"
"How many allies at the blacksmith?"
"Where is the enemy flag?"
Are all valid questions.
Keep your questions short, concise and free of emotions.
"WTF? Galv is dead? How did Galv die?" Is not the right question. Galv is either dead or he's not. Don't invite your raid to debate or comment. The more people stand around typing the lower your chance of success and the more likely it is that people will start acting like complete and utter idiots.
If you have obtained a critical piece of information then use it to weave it into new instructions and repeat it once in a while.
"Galv is down, incomming IB tower. Defend IB."
That way people know that galv is down (should they have missed it during the heat of battle) and know that they can expect pressure on Iceblood.
When giving instructions remind yourself that it has to contain useful information and only useful information.
"Allies are backcapping SP GY, offense hold SP GY then take Dun baldar north"
rather than
"We're losing SP GY, WTH are you doing? take it back!"
The way you say things is crucial. You're the general, you're leading the troops. You're not their highschool councellor. If people start argueing with you ignore them. If people start calling you an idiot ignore them. If people start commenting on your gear, the fact that you only have 8k HP and don't have any epics worth anything, ignore them.
You're going to take some fire as a raid leader. Ignore all information that is not relevant to the battle and focus on the information you can use and that is worth repeating.
"OMG WTF our RL only has like 8k HP, loser go enchant your gear"
'The lumber mill was taken by the alliance'
"Haha we're being led by a noob, we're so going to fail"
"STFU and kill stuff retard"
Out of those 4 lines only one is relevant. Ignore the random insults. Highlight the facts and respond once again in a clear and concise fashion.
"LM has been taken by the alliance, how many allies at LM?"
The next step in dealing with people and information is to motivate people to say something when they're in trouble. Nothing puts a bigger dent in a well-oiled offensive than your defense slowly crumbling without informing anyone.
"Report incoming alliance by numbers"
"Call out incoming if you need help"
These are things that can be repeated once in a while. The more people give a clear indication of what is going on on their end the more control you have over a battle.
It allows you to be reactive. If allies are moving in by the bucketload on Farm (AB) then they must've left LM / GM / BS and ST undefended for the most part and you know that with a quick offensive move you can possibly cap 2 to 3 objectives while the allies are standing around at farm waiting for the cap.
The final piece of the puzzle is to commend behaviour you want, and ignore behaviour you don't want. Never call anyone out on their stupidity, they will argue their stupidity and the stupid in them will take over raid chat.
If people call incoming and then manage to mount a proper defense tell them.
"Good job defending Farm, move to BS"
A simple GJ or thanks can go a long way in providing the right atmosphere.
Even if your Raid is losing the match, stay professional, stay clear and stay focussed on the battle. "You are all retards" is not going to help anyone.
There is always something that can be done to gain that last little bit of honor, be it defending a tower or zerging an objective to squeeze out another 60 honor a person.
Find those objectives and motivate people to execute them.
Once you grasp the basics of how to deal with the people in your raid you can then and only then consider strategies.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Wellfare epics?
My little guild has been heavily investing in PVP the last few days mostly to acquire some of those so called 'wellfare' epics.
Now from what I gather the term 'wellfare epic' has been coined by a blizzard CM in the past and has been widely adopted by most of the WoW community.
What defines these wellfare epics? In general wellfare epics are considered all epics that are obtainable by doing 'nothing'. Which in essence revolves only around Arena and BG's where there's the option to 'just' go AFK and wait for the points to roll in.
But does this not essentially mean that a flaw in the BG / Arena system that allows for these AFKers (or naked dancers when it comes to arena) to get 'free' points and as a result reduce the pvp epics to wellfare status?
If someone on wellfare were to save up their wellfare checks and for some reason buy a BMW Z3 is this then a wellfare BMW Z3? Does this furthermore mean that everyone driving a BMW Z3 is driving a wellfare car?
The whole 'wellfare epic' terminology is further put under duress by the fact that Blizzard is not happy with non-participation (especially in Arena), dancing around naked in the middle of an arena battle is considered against the terms of use. You're allowed to absolutely suck in arena, but you're not supposed to stand there and get beaten to pulp. Similar things apply to the Battlegrounds, non-participation is simply not allowed.
So what it all comes down to is that people who leech off of the arena and BG system by not-participating are not only breaking the ToS but also managed to reduce a whole system of epics to a level where people would rather spit on you than acknowledge the weeks of work you put into getting the gear.
The answer is therefore simple: Do away with the AFKers, the botters and the non-participants and your wellfare honor will no longer be wellfare?
It's not the epic's fault... it's not even the epic that's wellfare. Hell it's not even real wellfare.
These are not some Blizzard issued honor points so you can gear yourself in T4-T6 equivalent gear. These are honor points literally stolen from other people by non-participants and represent a very real problem: that of botters, cheaters and non-participants.
On a side note: I could switch servers and join a friend's BT raiding guild and have them gear me without having to do anything except just stand there and wait for the raid to finish their job (provided I want to be healer or a tank). Does this mean BT epics are all of a sudden wellfare? What happens when an instance goes on farm and people are no longer required to put in the effort and can just stand there waiting for their friends that outgear the place to do all the work? Does that mean your raiding epics are wellfare too?
The truth behind all this is that we simply cannot tell how someone got their gear. We don't know if they have been working their rear-end off in the BG's trying to make their team win and giving it their all or if they've just been standing in a cave AFK.
Controversely we don't know how you got your high level raiding epics either... we assume you put forth the effort but perhaps you were simply leeching them off of a guild that needs to gear you up or they came with your account when you bought it from ebay.
The term wellfare epics is meaningless and derogatory. There are always and will always be ways to cheat yourself into better gear. This should not reflect on your gear, it does not make your gear wellfare... it makes the cheater a cheater, the botter a botter and the leecher a leecher but it does not make the result any less epic no matter what people say about it.
At best it's a split between legit items and contraband... a true wellfare epic would come via the ingame mail system with a note from blizzard saying: here you go, enjoy. I haven't gotten any of those so far, have you?
Now from what I gather the term 'wellfare epic' has been coined by a blizzard CM in the past and has been widely adopted by most of the WoW community.
What defines these wellfare epics? In general wellfare epics are considered all epics that are obtainable by doing 'nothing'. Which in essence revolves only around Arena and BG's where there's the option to 'just' go AFK and wait for the points to roll in.
But does this not essentially mean that a flaw in the BG / Arena system that allows for these AFKers (or naked dancers when it comes to arena) to get 'free' points and as a result reduce the pvp epics to wellfare status?
If someone on wellfare were to save up their wellfare checks and for some reason buy a BMW Z3 is this then a wellfare BMW Z3? Does this furthermore mean that everyone driving a BMW Z3 is driving a wellfare car?
The whole 'wellfare epic' terminology is further put under duress by the fact that Blizzard is not happy with non-participation (especially in Arena), dancing around naked in the middle of an arena battle is considered against the terms of use. You're allowed to absolutely suck in arena, but you're not supposed to stand there and get beaten to pulp. Similar things apply to the Battlegrounds, non-participation is simply not allowed.
So what it all comes down to is that people who leech off of the arena and BG system by not-participating are not only breaking the ToS but also managed to reduce a whole system of epics to a level where people would rather spit on you than acknowledge the weeks of work you put into getting the gear.
The answer is therefore simple: Do away with the AFKers, the botters and the non-participants and your wellfare honor will no longer be wellfare?
It's not the epic's fault... it's not even the epic that's wellfare. Hell it's not even real wellfare.
These are not some Blizzard issued honor points so you can gear yourself in T4-T6 equivalent gear. These are honor points literally stolen from other people by non-participants and represent a very real problem: that of botters, cheaters and non-participants.
On a side note: I could switch servers and join a friend's BT raiding guild and have them gear me without having to do anything except just stand there and wait for the raid to finish their job (provided I want to be healer or a tank). Does this mean BT epics are all of a sudden wellfare? What happens when an instance goes on farm and people are no longer required to put in the effort and can just stand there waiting for their friends that outgear the place to do all the work? Does that mean your raiding epics are wellfare too?
The truth behind all this is that we simply cannot tell how someone got their gear. We don't know if they have been working their rear-end off in the BG's trying to make their team win and giving it their all or if they've just been standing in a cave AFK.
Controversely we don't know how you got your high level raiding epics either... we assume you put forth the effort but perhaps you were simply leeching them off of a guild that needs to gear you up or they came with your account when you bought it from ebay.
The term wellfare epics is meaningless and derogatory. There are always and will always be ways to cheat yourself into better gear. This should not reflect on your gear, it does not make your gear wellfare... it makes the cheater a cheater, the botter a botter and the leecher a leecher but it does not make the result any less epic no matter what people say about it.
At best it's a split between legit items and contraband... a true wellfare epic would come via the ingame mail system with a note from blizzard saying: here you go, enjoy. I haven't gotten any of those so far, have you?
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