That's all well and good, but i hope by 1.12 they've completed their 1 class review per patch policy and start addressing class balance issues across the board, add more competitive bonuses to prevent people from just looking for the easiest way to earn rep to get the battle ground epics, and match making and modify rep so you earn more rep based on the quality of the team your fighting against, and have the gear earned from battlegrounds be equally compelling for each class.

My only concern would be "longer" queues.

Let’s make a wild assumption that we have 16 servers with the following “average” horde vs alliance teams-in-queue setup.

AB: 2 Horde teams – 4 Alliance
AV: 1 Horde Team – 2 Alliance
WSG: 3 Horde Teams – 5 Alliance

Take those 16 servers and put them together and you get:
AB: 32 H – 64 A
AV: 16 H – 32 A
WSG: 48 H – 80 A

If game time remains constant (time to complete), doesn’t this make alliance team queues “longer”?

One of the reasons of linking 16 realms per BG server is that they can select these 16 realms based on Horde / Alliance population in order to make it ballanced, minimizing the queue times.

Thats great but, I am worried about players called Twinks, who pay top dollar from their high level main characters to buff the equitment of their lower leveled alts to have an advantage.

How will twinks effect cross-server battlegrounds? Every server already has a growing population of twinked alts, so I dont see the problem changing in regards to having to deal with twinks.

Anyway, I can't wait for cross-server battlegrounds. It will mean we can play BGs almost whenever we feel the need, rather than having to wait for a hour for a match to start, only to find that there is only 4 or 5 people on each side, then the match closes because there is not enough people.

Thanks for the heads up Steve!! much appreciated!

I don't think that a server population imbalance really means there are any more or less PvPers on either side; PvP servers notably much more even than PvE servers, where (in my experiences), the Horde is more fervent in the Battlegrounds. Especially when a full Horde team, queued all day, slaughter a minimal Alliance team that just queued up, and don't requeue. Wait times may or may not change, but at least there'll be better chances to *get* into a game.

And as for twinks... well... aside from some twink guilds (maybe), have you ever met one that wasn't farming zero honor HKs/KBs? Marginalize them and go on to win the game :)

I'd welcome any improvements, but I do hope they don't leave World PvP behind.

How are they going to handle transfer of items from one server to another? Couldn't this, theoretically, screw up the economy?

They cant disable trade. Sooo....

This sounds awesome, I play on the Emerald Dream server, the best pvp players are on the Horde side and we are continualy slaughtering the Alliance day after day. Often times there is not enough Alliance players queued for the battlegrounds which is really my only issue, but hopefully this will be solved with the cross server pvp. On this issue of twinks we have quite a few on our server but its not so much a problem, if level 60's want to spend mounds of gold on a twink because their main sucks orc balls in pvp then that's their choice. Although it is somewhat retarded seeing crusader and the various higher level enchants on a level 19. Thanks for the info Steve I'm looking forward to this.

Hrmmm, very interesting indeed this is.

Perhaps I shall give WoW another try, after all it gave me 4 magical months of fun. Ponder on this, I will.

Plumpsy Chekkers

Twinks are only a problem if you level really, really slow. Or i guess maybe if you like being a low level and don't want to level up anymore but don't want to spend gold on gear.

It will be one realm versus another in this case, right? Having people from different realms on the same side would help kill the economy even more by trading items.

I don't mind twinks that much. Sure a rogue dual weilding blue daggers with crusader and +15 agility is cheap at level 19, but first of all, they blew hundreds of gold for a character that cant even make officer ranks. Second of all, waiting at level 19 for the sole purpose of one shotting level 14s gets boring, and then as soon as they level, they will be at the bottom of the level bracket and wont ever land a hit in PVP. If they get up to 29, their gear will be obsolete, and they will have to spend hundreds more gold to do it again. After that bracket, twinking becomes less and less useful. But obviously the main concern about twinks isn't that they are stupid enough to waste 400g at level 19, its that they can one shot you all the time. Well, as far as im concerned, whenver im running WSG with a raid, or preferrably a guild, we just all gang-beat the twinks and send them back to the GY for another 30 second res timer. Hmm... glowing green and white weapons at level 19... might as well be a target painted on your head :)

If they are going to be instituting competitions, they should come up with a way of normalizing everyone's equipment when you enter a battleground. Maybe they can take a page from Battlefield's book and have sets of armor for you to choose from when you enter the battleground that emphasize different tactical play styles. For instance, if you play a mage, you can zone in and choose gear with high +dmg output if you intend to play offensively, or you can choose high resist gear if you intend to play defensively.

The way it stands now, as a new level 60, you stand no chance in any of the battlegrounds. Most of the battleground regulars have obtained the high rank/rep pvp gear or have their tier 1 and 2 armor sets, which give them a vastly significant advantage over players with inferior gear.

With that aside, this does sound very exciting. A well balanced round of battlegrounds can be as thrilling as any competitive FPS.

> If they are going to be instituting competitions, they should come up with a way of normalizing everyone's equipment when you enter a battleground.

Or only putting teams with similar armour against each other. Sure, people head-to-toe in epix wipe the floor with me, but then they have worked for their armour and I haven't had the time to yet. You don't win competitive sports by saying "oh, sorry, if you give me a few more months and a decent guild then I'll be able to compete against you"...

What if two people on different realms have the same name?

I don't see how this'll work with RP servers and the like. What if people who speak fleuent 1337 and major roleplayers are in the same team organising strategys?

this can deffently help the wait time to play witch is the reason they are doing this..but u run into problems....

names like was mentined before what if they have the same one...how does that work

2ndly is about twinks....yea they can 1 shot u, and yes they spend lots of money on there 19/29 pvp class ( and after 20s bracket twinking has little or no effect in pvp ) but twinks can change the game single handly...i have a lvl 29 worrior ( not a twink ) but my friends who pvp with me are all twinks and game in and game out they go as a group ( there is 5 of em ) and run up the tunnel in WSG, grab teh flag and run it home ( 2 worriors, priest. rouge, and a mage ) they never die cuz a twink by himself can kill anyone regardless if they have any skill or w/e, but a group of 5 of em is unstopible, and we win every game 3/0 . the rest of us 5 play D. its really just to easy. we get 100 rep per game, so that adds up fast...they need to do something to regard this growing issue cuz if u through 16 server together thats alot of twinks and a twink group vs another twink group is just stupid. yea the allience has twinks in that bracket but the diffrence is they just farm and try to kill the lower lvls and after the 3 time killing someone u arnt getting any honor at all, really the whole thing is stupid ( talking about now ) so changing the wait is good but they need to go beond that to make it fair for the people that dont have heeps on gold and that cant twink there guy out cuz by the looks of it if ur not a twink u arnt going to be able to do much so with 16 servers of twinking comming together its going to destroy the ppl who just BG for fun and arnt twinked out and sence im not a twink i cant solo a twink just cuz they got the best enchants and armor for there lvl so it gets anoying just dieing 24/7 and if we didnt win alot i would just not pvp at all and im sure other ppl fill the same way when u see a twink and ur not a twink ur done for and dieing 15+ tmes a game is anoying and with the twinks form 16 servers combining that going to end up being twink vs twink cuz the normal pvps that arnt twink will probly get twink ( witch wont help ) or just quit pvp all together cuz they will get anoyed form dieing every time u see someone...

3rd problem i see ( witch is a major problem ) is class overpowerness... now everyone knows about the rouge and then the paliden shileding and then healing themsevles giving em 2 lives in 1 basicly and a rouge choping on everyones screen when they sprit/ or just run and jump around. ( witch that to me is teh 2 bigest problems ) now to go deeper... ( ill use teh rouge and pally as my suspects for this arugment )

a rouge that can chop on everyones screen and makeing unhittible is already hard enough to kill, now lets through the twinked out lvl 19 rouge in the mix with + 15 agi to hands, crusader and lifestealing or +15 agi to wepons, 2x assasions blade, + 100 HP to head, chest, legs and then w/e else enchant they have with the chopyness ability or lag u can call it tehy have now they arnt just unhitible they are unkillible...

now the pally probly to me the most overpowerd class out there mostly in the 10-19 and 20-29 brackets of pvp, with the shileding and then healing of themselfs making a normal non twinked pally hard to kill, now u twink out the pally now killing a twink alone is hard but now the pally can shield himself and heal himself when he was hard enough to get his HP all the way down in the first place, and of course Blessing Of Freedom making it were they can get away from everyone and live to see another day.many more things can be said but i just coverd the basics

4th and final thing i see wrong with pvp as of now is of course the enchants making a twink a twink....

enchanting ur lvl 19 with the best enchants is out of control and in my mind there needs to be a cap on the enchants or something for instence a lvl 19 can only get fier instead of crusader and + 50 HP to chest instead of 100 HP that would making twinking less efective but that has issues by itsealf...
now at 19 u can get on wepons crusader,fiery,lifesteaing,+15 agi/25 agi to 1 hand or 2 handed wepons witch are the most popular that ive seen

also at lvl 19 u pick up engeenaring and at lvl 150 u get a head peice that other wise would be inpossible to get a head peice at lvl 19 and then u get a +100 HP on it should not be avible for a 19 to get again anther idea to slow or stop twinking to make it less effective

+100 HP = chest,head, leg pecies
+ 15 agi = hands ive seen alot these days
+ 9 stam = bracers
+7 str or + 7 agi = hands
minor speed = boots witch makes u avalible to get out of range form other players w/o this enchant in 10-19 and 20-29 and possible even being effectuve in the 30-39 bracket...this enchant should be lvl caped at 40 for reasons of mount were it wouldnt matter....i have this enchant on my worrior one of the few i have and its not a huge speed booste but if someone is chasing u w/o it it makes all the deffrence in the world u can outrun a melee class and get out of range for them to hit u and say slow u down like a warrior hamstringing you when u have the flag but with the enchant u got out of range so i think its a unfair advanted and should be changed...

there are many more but these up there are the most common and best avible that i have seen/know of

anway that is my argument on stuff that needs to be changed in pvp as of right now...

how will ehm ( btw didn't read everything) players who have the same name..

yeea

I just wish you folks would learn how to spell.

But BG should be interesting when this hits.

This is still going to end up being too little too late. So they're going to make yet another type of competition. So is this one going to be determined by who can play the most (i.e. honor ranking), or by who has spent the most time raiding (i.e. every other instance of WoW PVP).

So we can play Arathi Basin with people from another server. It doesn't make it any more enjoyable to play. Heck it doesn't even guarantee that people will be able to find more games. I honestly don't see this changing much.

Let me know when they actually let us go to *war* and attack a city or something without the whole realm crashing.

Hah ^^

Stop whining about Twinks!

Nothing is as fun as Twinks :D
My warrior lvl 19 has crusader on a 2hands DM mace + all posisble top lvl enchants... and thet's FUN ! I smash lvl 30 pple with it ^^

Besides, on the Euro realm I'm playing on, both Alliance and Horde have twinks (+20 fire dmg on gloves for warlocks....) so it makes it balanced.

And seeking out the best lvl 19 stuff is somehow fun :)

The game itself is not spoiled by droods taking flags in 10 secs from one basement to another, and so on... WG for lvl 60 is great, but I find lvl 19 WG even better! And I can't wait for inter-server BG :p

omg

Towards the comment of Normalizing everyone's equipment for battlegrounds...

I find that completely against anything the game is about. You put effort into excelling with your characters in level, equipment, guild, etc... The very battlegrounds honor's you with pieces of equipment for attending and being good at it. Why in the world should you not be able to use those particular pieces of equipment that you've earned. It's bad enough that every lvl 60 of a particular class makes their endgame priority to get the gear that every other 60 of that class is wearing. Blizzard's drive for simplicity has defenitly put individuality a very distant second. In far more ways than I can list here.

A few for example. Limited armor selections, limited differences in character of going one talent tree over another, Few classes to choose from. The mere game content in itself is simplified to the extreme. Practically every quest out there involves 1 of 2 objectives, Gathering a dozen of one item or killing a random unique mob. Personally I'd like quests that involved fighting the other faction.

The 2 things this game needs in my opinion is individuality and more pvp! Though I believe 1500 amd opteron servers is defenitly a plus in an area that was also needed!

Um I don't know about you guys, but I PVP on my 60 and not my alts...so I don't see the issue here (for me at least) and who cares about twinks, its still fair game seeing how anyone could do that if they wanted to spend the time and effort for it. I say if they want to have the ability to 1 shot people because they spent 1500g on items for their 19 warrior, go for it...I'm not going to spend hardly that much on an alt.

sounds pretty cool :) but trades between players from different servers should really be disabled :)

This sounds great in theory, but it won't do anything to fix the main problem that the Battlegrounds have on PvE servers: most Alliance players spend a lot of time in the queue, while most Horde players can get game after game, no waiting. Across *all* PvE servers, active Alliance players outnumber active Horde players by more than 2 to 1:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=-1&factionid=-1&minlevel=10&maxlevel=60&servertypeid=1

Even if the cross-realm BGs had a mix of PvE and PvP servers, there's still a population imbalance across the entire *game*. Active Alliance players outnumber active Horde by 1.6 to 1. Blizzard failed to make the two realms equally attractive to players at launch, and now they're paying for it.

Also, doing this would introduce massive issues of cross-realm gear balance. Players from newer servers will be at the mercy of players from more established server, either via low-level twinks, or high-level players in BWL epics.

I'm not saying Blizzard won't do it, just that it won't make any difference to current BG queue issues, and will introduce other balance issues besides.

Problems to be solved by this:

- Sometimes some BG's never come up. Like AB on a WSG weekend. This will ensure all BG's are always up.
- Average time waited on queues for an average player will indeed drop.
- Queue times will be much more consistent. You won't see estimated 10 minutes and have to wait 2 hours.

Only players that will have disadvantage:
- Alliance players who already had no queues. Now they will.

Won't fix the problems. Not even worth me typing it out. The problems with the BGs will not go away until Blizzard fundamentally rethinks how PvP is handled in WoW. What they are doing is just creating a mini-Guild Wars inside of WoW without all the things that make Guild Wars a half decent PvP game.

So it is really true? The game world in world of warcraft is really not going to be anything but a grapical version of the old battlenet chat windows?

Thank God warhammer online is in the works, atleast mythic know how to make exciting realm versus realm combat.

ok just cuz twinking is fun doesnt mean its not hurting pvp and to the person who plays pvp as a 60 twinks has no effect there and u have to witness the twinking effect at the 10-19 and 20-29 to understand whats wrong with it...

so this is the final blow to the only difference between pvp servers and normal servers. the final death blow to the world pvp...

anyhoo its better than the sac of bloody sh!t the pvp system is now I guess....

I swear Blizzard lines your pockets to promote their "wonderful" products. It feels like every other week Blizzard has done something that is just so amazing you can't help write an entry about it.

Yes twinking is the worse at 10-19 and 20-29 but thankfully it improves from that point on, I can understand having boe and bop blues in everyslot but its the +22int +15agi and the various 300+ enchants that cause the inbalance and saying "oh I/he/her paid for it so therefor has a right to it" is not a valid argument its like saying if someone pays X rediculous amount of gold for god mode does it make it right ? I think not. Perhaps blizzard should just have a item level restriction on enchants just like armor kits or perhaps the solution lies elsewhere, I just hope the twink issue is solved and a better pvp system implemented.

Hmmm... what happened here? Did Blizzard take a good look at Guild Wars: Factions, then realize WoW Battlegrounds were in serious trouble?!

Heh! ArenaNet is basically releasing a global version of Battleground next week. This should be interesting. Kurzicks vs Luxons... Horde vs Alliance... which will be better?

Micheal well ArenaNet might be doing that but you can't compare Guild Wars to WOW I mean they are two totally different games even thought they are both MMORPG's

Though I think this is a great move on blizzard's part

Twinks? Who cares about twinks? If you are playing alts in BGs and are worried about twinks, then level up. That simple. People who play twinks in BG never level. They stay level 18-19 or 28-29 continuously. These people are doing nothing wrong, as long as they aren't using old they got from eBay.

Dag nab...this is a good thing Blizzard is trying to do but some of you will never be happy and just whine about anything.

As far as duplicate names, I am sure Blizzard will make it so the server allows the same names into the same BG. The manner in which to do this is very simple. Disable the duplicate name verification in their database and/or make it so the name verification also includes server names.

Faction odds...another so what. Whether they bind 16 servers to one BG queue or your server stays on its own BG queue, the fact of the matter is...alliance outnumbers horde everywhere. So if you are alliance, you would have to wait longer whether or not the 16 realms are combined. Use some logic. If you don't want to wait in a queue and you play alliance, get rid of your AC toons and reroll horde. Not a hard fix. Another example of just looking for stuff to gripe about.

Cross realm trading. Well, this is a legit concern. Some servers such as Bonechewer are rediculously priced. I have watched a friend who is on Bonechewer do AH searches on items that are absolutely disgustingly priced. Then on new servers like mine, Anetheron, the prices are still sort of high but not nearly as bad. So this creates an economy problem. If someone bought items off the AH in Anetheron, they could theoretically transfer the item to someone on Bonechewer where it would sell drastically more. Then go back into BG and transfer the gold to another server. This could be havoc considering how unscrupulous gold farmers are. They would be able to transfer tens of thousands of gold from more established servers to newer servers totally destroying the new server's economy. So those that mentioned this above, are not whineing, they are raising a legit concern and I hope Blizzard disables trades in BG for anything other than conjured water and food.

My two cents which doesn't amount to much.

Looks like Blizzard finally saw the light. Guild Wars, as different as it is, got that right the first time.

i don know how fast your time is going put it is not short time if it comes on 1.12 or 1.13

hmm :/

another one of those things that guy said is coming true :s maybe they really were planning on showing diablo 3 at blizzcon

"Player Housing:

As for player housing - Highly doubt that is coming since Guild housing (guilds in D3 will be able to invade another guilds town and destroy it) and is a big feature of D3 I wouldnt see why they would want to take away from that.

The main thing you will not notice after 1.9 but they will start testing out randomly is Battlegrounds with groups on other servers. This will make for really, really epic Battlegrounds between the mega-guilds when it is fully implemented. They will also implement a ladder system where Guilds / groups do BattleGrounds in a tournament fashion. There will be a ladder page and you can challenge other guilds to a BattleGround - You beat them and you move up in the ladder and they move down ... It will be huge."

http://www.wowguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9257

I think there should be level restrictions on enchantments that would eliminate alot of the problems sure in he beginning there would be alot of nerf cries and y u do that i spent upt many hrs getten the mats and gold to enchant this item.I have np with people wanten to keep a guy at 19 to do BGs his choice

So....if the servers will be linked. What will happen to characters with the same names? Leeroy will fight with Leeroy? :P

Not sure how naming conventions would be handled but I think one solution would be to say use...

Annastasia of Emerald Dream
Annastasia of Stormrage
Annastasia of (Insert Server Name)

This method was used when migrating players to a common server on AC2.

yeah, just go ahead and shoot world pvp... the only thing that brought people out of their cities was queue time for these BGs
and well... looks like thats going to be pretty much... gone

I don't understand how World of Warcraft can support tournaments.

Crit %, Dodge %, Parry %, Block %, Resists, Stuns, Reagents, Potions, Bandages, Gear, Procs and Talents have far too much of an impact on PvP.

The game isn't balanced overall, either. For example, Warlocks are obviously overpowered, and Hunters are depending on whether they get the jump or not. Rogues are broken at the moment because of the latest patch as well.

In short, World of Warcraft is not balanced enough for it's tournaments to prove anything at all.

"I don't understand how World of Warcraft can support tournaments.

Crit %, Dodge %, Parry %, Block %, Resists, Stuns, Reagents, Potions, Bandages, Gear, Procs and Talents have far too much of an impact on PvP."

That's quite possibly the dumbest comment (meant in seriousness) that I've ever seen on a message board.

Personally, I think WoW (and most MMORPGs, if not ALL) are vastly over-rated and I liken them to a form of cancer in our favorite hobby. Cancer seems to be the best analogy since it kills its host by crowding everything else out, just like MMORPGs do to our beloved hobby.

Once you get hooked on them, you seldom buy new games or play anything but the level grind machine that they are. (Sorry if this comment isn't really on-base but I think it bore being said.) Heck, we're already being inundated with a ridiculous amount of crappy MMORPGs as it's now the current flavor of the month for PC game design. Please let the madness stop... LOL

Ugh..slow server on Steve's site I guess...sorry for the double post. DOH!

"Sure WoW might not have the best PvP system out there".

Honestly WoW has one of the worst PvP system I've ever seen, I consider this game more interesting for PvE and I play it for that reason.

Blizzard should work on a different HS system related to players' skills, put a an hour limit for people health, rewamp PvP outdoor, give plot reasons to this new war, balance the relation between PvP and PvE, work on more BGs and create a queue system based also on equip (I like fair competitions).

With this possible change, I hope that also AV would be joinable in raid. I don't like to play with and against people I don't know, surely it's more interesting play with friends even if I have to wait a lot. A wise idea would be create a the possibility to decide to join 2 different kinds of queue: one for all realms and one for the specific realm; doing like this we will still have the possibility to face and fight with friends of same realm.

This system would help just the farming of rewards from BGs and it's not the best solution.
Considering the actual Pve situation, have 1-2 more BGs would be better.
A weekly tally system, like FFXI, but based on PvP outdoor would be great.

Faster queues are surely good but I still prefer to raid istances and do other.

Im just glad I might be able to play BG's after 49 before 60...

Lol why does evry1 have to mone Each server has cycles alot of the amazing PvP guilds on our server have had there fun an respecced an rerolled lower lvl chars to do it all again with so u dont get "Pwnd". Like the "ROGUE CYCLE" Start of a server hundereds of rogues = most reroll to make say priests then u get 100's of priest they reroll an make mage etc etc. This is a new way to keep people interested and it sounds like a very good IDEA. Also Guild Vs Guild BG would be good (as in Horde Vs Horde)

more bg grind. end of world pvp. gg. blizzard has absolutely no clue what the pvp oriented players want.

WOW is released prematurely. So what do you guys expect? Every class in unbalanced. Tier 2 Priests, warlocks dot you and you can die within seconds. ROFL@ that... good job Blizzard..is that supposed to be a joke? WOW is about group PVP. Because your class can't counter an ability by another class maybe someone in your group can counter that ability. PVP should be normalized. They should have battles that only people with equivalent gear level can enter to make it FAIR.

Unless somewhere there is some servers with 70 percent horde 30 percent alliance in this battleground network how is this going to help us at all besides making it more crowded alliance side from the servers that cant get an AV going?

This has the practical effect of greatly reducing battlefield waits, which is nice, but the real problem is the entire system of PvP. Instanced PvP simply doesn't cut it.

Blizzard needs to adopt a real world RvR type system - castles, towers, sieges, siege equipment, relics etc. Yes its borrowing heavily from DAoC, but so what - their system worked and was far superior to the PvP system available in WoW. It bred competition, it was compelling and was extremely immersive. Instanced battlefields are fun initially, but their attraction wears off quickly.

What about cross-realm instance runs. Make meeting stone's and inn's instance que actually usefull.

This is great!

Oh c'mon you babies! War is NOT fair. Get over that and enjoy the challenge of facing a greater opponent. If you cannot do that, then get ready for a swift kick from real life sooner or later.

personally I think the horde vs alliance imbalance problem across can be easily solved by one fairly logical fix. Create new battle grounds managed by the Steamwheedle Cartel Goblins. Within these battlegrounds allow Alliance to play vs Alliance and Horde to play vs Horde. Perhaps even allow something like 20 man BG where each side is made of 10 alliance and 10 horde. This combined with the Cross Server BG's would probably solve most of the delays due to there being an imbalance of Horde and Alliance across servers. This could even remove delays within a single server.

one comment.. it's a game people.. don't base your life around it.. there's this thing some people like to call the "outdoors" with real people and sunshine =) lol anyways this idea sucks b/c alliance are all lame hah. oh yeah one more thing it's funny how some of you go into this deep discription and all woo hoo WoW PvP 101 sign up for your classes now =)

STFU about twinks already....the only people that actually care about twinks are the same ones that get upset when they get steamrolled by organised groups wearing epics.

Creating a twink isnt out of your grasp. If you dont like getting stomped go put some time/gold into a toon and make one.

I haven't seen ANY reference on ANY other site indicating that Blizzard is planning to implement cross-server BGs. Since that would be a major, major improvement one would think that Blizz would be shouting this from the rooftops. As they are not, I have to be skeptical about the validity of this article. In other words, don't get your hopes up people.

WoW players are never happy. I'd know, i am one

And obviously, Thaarsten, your feelings of a game are the same as the other 6.5 million people playing WoW.

what the hells the problem with twinks? does your server suck so bad you dont have any "twinks" yet?

I think a normalization of gear is indeed needed inside a battleground. You're playing the footsoldiers in a war against the other side and footsoldiers wear the same style of uniforms.

They need to implement sets of battlgrounds armor you earn through pvp inside a battleground and remove all pve elements from the gear advantage.

I wish I could still find WoW worth the subscription fee. I played from when it opened until last may and then again nov/dec. I still enjoy WoW when I do play, but endgame just doesnt have anything for my style of play. I find it hard to enjoy PVP as I'm not good at it and I get frustrated with guilds and groups that take the game way too seriously. I was wondering if they were adding anything that gears toward the non groupie style player? I would gladly go back if I could chat with random people in the world, but never have to group with anyone (or group with NPCs like in GW). My poor priest is level 60, but I dont like to play healer. I had her fully dmg spec'd for a while until I realized I couldnt get any further with her until I joined a group. I started doing raids of larger instances with big groups just to get something decent, but I would be clenching my teeth because it just wasnt fun. After a few hours and getting nothing because there was seniority over everything for those who play all the time, I just went about my business of wanding around the world aimlessly on my horse. How I wish the scenery was like oblivion :) Anyway, I just want to know if they've added things where a single person could play without the constant need to group with others at high levels? I do like being around other peoples characters playing. Its far more interesting then watching the RAI of oblivion going about its automatic ways. GW does come close to what I'm looking for, but there isnt the same level of hussle n bussle that WoW has as well as everything being completely linear (no jumping down hills or jumping at all). Thanks for any info you can relay to me.

Influx, would you mind backing up what you say?

It's true, if World of Warcraft is going to have tournaments with rewards, especially real-world rewards such as money or even t-shirts, they need to have the PvP balanced first. This is something that WoW does not have and it never will.

If you are going to lose a match because your Fear was resisted, or because the Feared enemy ran in the worst possible direction, then you didn't lose because you're not as good as the other person. You lost because some random chance said so.

% based chances is the thing WoW revolves around, and as long as Crit, Dodge, Parry, Block, Resists, Stuns, Reagents, Potions, Bandages, Gear, Item Procs, Trinkets and builds which you must pay to get respecced exist, WoW will never have balanced PvP. It will never have tournaments which can prove anything.

"Man, I lost a match because my attack was parried. Oh well, there goes my reward, GG Blizzard."

All of your complaints are silly. You have to realize that the system rewards time + effort players. People willing to spend more time and effort SHOULD have an advantage over other players. If 10 friends want to twink out their alts, oh well, let them. They'll eventually go up against another twink team and have a fair game. What you all are saying is that you want to spend less time and less effort and be on a fair playing field (which....seeing that you don't like it enough that you posted, leads me to think you'd actually rather spend less time, less effort, but HAVE an advantage over the other team so you can win). Major League sports teams spend thousands of hours per month .... still doesn't mean New York Yankees will win every MLB world series.

In the long run, your 'attack got parried', 'fear got resisted', 'etc' will allways pay off. Take 1000 games. You'll win 5-10 of them 'just' because you got that extra crit and feared them back closer to other members of your team to get the flag carrier killed. You'll lose 5-10 games because it happened the other way.....that's just the way it's gonna be....inalienable truths....don't argue with it, don't complain about it.

The main benefit of twinks is they know what they're doing. They go after the healer, they go after the names they see a lot. I played my level 19 druid in a WSG the other day, won 3-0 cause I had swiftness pots and owned the horde. The next match 2 minutes after I got out, same horde players were on the opposing team; they focus fired me because they saw me do well in a BG in a previous match. They got a cap that game and we won 3-1. Neither of these teams were twinks....but, it goes to show that coordination > gear/twink. (btw, my druid is by no way twinked...just is a alchy and i'll use swiftness pots cause it gives me an advantage and levels my skills).
Twinks is by far the least to worry about. Twinks will level up, and once they hit 30-33, they'll get owned, same at 40-43, etc. ..... and when they're 60, they'll go up against pvp gear, tier 1, tier 2, good blues, w/e, and get killed too.....so, they'll have to spend time and effort and get tier 1-2 so they can compete.....after all, it is a competition. If you aren't willing to spend the time and effort 'training' ..... why sign up for the competition. That's like saying all the fastest track runners in the Olympics have to run slower, or farther....just so Billy Bob can have a fair chance at winning the race with no training. Blizzard (nor I) will cater to your needs just so you can win a BG.

Kita, you're making it sound like World of Warcraft is nothing but a game based around work.

What you're saying is, "Well I'm having a ton of fun and all I do is play this game. I deserve a reward, and I deserve to have huge advantages over other players."

Level 19 and 29 twinks are a huge problem. You cannot have a fair tournament involving these levels. Yes, twinks die very easily if they are targetted, but they shouldn't have to be targetted in the first place. It shouldn't take three level 19's to take down one level 19 just because he's a twink.

If you cannot say, "I am better then you, that is why I won." Then you don't deserve to win. If you lost a match because your Fear was resisted, then your enemy doesn't deserve to win.

You can't have a 1vs1 match for $10,000 and win because you resisted a Death Coil. That's not fair, and it proves nothing. It doesn't prove that you're better then your enemy, it just proved that you won because chance said so.

Your Olympic track runner comparison is foolish. Training in World of Warcraft is spamming battlegrounds for Honor. It doesn't require training, it doesn't require skill, it doesn't even require much thought.

WoW is, "My time versus your time." As long as this factor remains, you cannot have any fair matches and any fair tournaments. If World of Warcraft does choose to have these tournaments, you will see that the #1 Guild will have won because they have the most time played behind their backs.

If you believe that someone should get rewarded for being lazy and for having fun, then I'm sorry to say it, but you're an idiot.

Percentage based factors are just *one* problem with World of Warcraft, and just *one* problem as to why you can't fight fairly.

If you can't prevent something in some way, then that isn't balance. You know as well as I know that there are plenty of un-preventable things within World of Warcraft when it comes to PvP.

Let's see, what can I do to prevent a Paladin from shielding and hearthing? What was that? Nothing you say?

There are several broken classes such as Rogues, and racials will always get in the way of things. You lost to a Warrior because he's an Undead Warrior with WOTF. Oh well! There goes your rewards! GG.

This would be a fantastic idea. Those of us that play in Oceania have established characters on US servers and the time difference is a killer for BG queues. Its depressing logging on as most of your guild logs off. X realm BG would help us out with the time difference issue.

.... and about twinks... well i made myself a 19 twinked rogue and although it was fun for a few weeks, how long do you really want to stay at sargeant? so im back to levelling and enjoying the ongoing BG thru the levels much more. The other thing with running a twink is how FAST you get taken down. I deliberately had no glowy chants and it still took hardly any time at all for any opposing team to work me out. Since then ive had more fun with my non-twinks in BG as i actually stay alive longer.

but its all in good fun, and i would LOVE inter-realm BG, but please blizz turn off trading within BG. there are alot of ways to screw economies if we have an ongoing way of trading rare goods and gold between realms.

:0)

This sounds great!

To stop passing of items from server to server, they can just eliminate trading of anything that isn't no-rent. This means mages and warlocks still can pass out their goodies, but thats it.

I find it moronic complaining about the element of "Chance" in a MMORPG. Chance is an element in almost every game concieved by man. Sure you have a game of complete information like Go or Chess, and those games are fun, but we are talking about a video game here. If you are looking for a game that eliminates chance might I point you in the direction of a chess board, but wait. White has an advantage over black because he moves first. Perhaps you should play poker. People happily play poker making a living off of making the "Correct Play" as often as possible. They realize that making the correct move will pay off in the longterm. And I seem to remember there being a few Poker tournaments on TV. What game can be "Fair". And what if you sat across the table from a proffesional Chess player. Someone who spent hours of his life working at building a repertoir of opening moves devised just to beat potzers like yourself. Would you complain that the game wasnt fair because he spent more time than you? Perhaps you need to decide whether or not you enjoy playing games.

Who cares about BGs? I know I don't. I pay a monthly fee to see a new environment that WoW takes care of without the extras like a BG on a RP server. I ain't gonna pay to play deathmatch when there are so many other better games out there for deathmatch that are free.

They're just making it easier to enter a broken pvp system. It'll be more convenient to get into BGs, but none of the glaring flaws with PvP have been fixed.

World PvP is still worthless. And twinks are a massive problem.

Someone before me said this: " You have to realize that the system rewards time + effort players. People willing to spend more time and effort SHOULD have an advantage over other players. "

This is a true statement, but the thing is that people aren't applying it correctly to the issue of twinking.

Player 1 is not a twink: He's a normal player, doesn't have a level 60 alt. He goes through quests, levels his character by himself (no rushing), earns every piece of gold by himself, and uses that to buy his gear.

Player 2 is a twink: He power levels his character to level 19, and has a friend run him through instances to farm for the best twink BoP items. He doesn't earn any of the gold he spends. Instead, he has his level 60 main send him gold.

Player 2's going to utterly destroy player 1, even though player 1 has put in more work, regardless of skill. I don't know about other people, but my level 60 earns more gold in 1 day than I remember having saved up when I had dinged level 40. We don't even need to talk about "hardcore twinks" that cost thousands of gold. You can get a couple fiery enchants and a few stamina enchants for relatively cheap, and you can skillessly destroy the average untwinked level 19 player with a twink you've made in 2 days.

Guys omfg... ok you guys are complaining against twinks... im not saying they aren't unfair... but if they pay 400g Like Me to have a character twinked... then they should have the right of owning people... if your not happy with it then make a 60 and then twink a lvl 19 for yourself... the reason they twink 19's is so that they can have fun trying to own the other twinks and making it competetive... dont BG if you dont like twinks... Twinks are fun and i got a twink for 70g that could own pretty decently... now my char spending 200g full stam enchants... doesn't even wipe the floor... he can take alot of twink on him [3] but he still doesn't own... make a twink or a 60 go on with the game.. So far blizzard is made one of the best games ive ever seen... so Im giving them a cookie... already sent it... just please guys dont cry about anything or complain... i know you have the right... but at least dont complain about twinks...

What is with all of the whining! Get over the fact that some people have pimp gear and others do not. What fun would the game be if everyone had the same crap. WOW as with life is not fair. People that work harder for their gear can compete better in the battlegrounds. Get over it.

Theoretically, if Blizzard integrates 16 different servers into the same BG que, it will ideally reduce the que time nearly by a factor of 16. Think about it...
Suppose server A has 2 hour intervals between AV matches. Every 2 hour period, and AV match starts and ends. Now, if we integrate 16 similar servers together, there will be 16 AV matches starting and ending every 2 hours. The starting and ending times won't all happen at the same time across all the servers. Supposing that the start and end times are evenly spread out across the 2 hours, there will be an AV match starting on average every 7.5 minutes (if a new match starts every 7.5 minutes, a total of 16 matches would have started over a 2 hour interval). A bored and needy level 60 player would only have to wait 1/16th of the time before he or she could lose to the Horde.
The amount of que time this new system would eliminate is mind boggling.

They should still give everyone an option to have all the same generalized gear, so it would be more like an "Arena" feel. That way people can put "Skillz vs Lootz" arguments to rest once and for all.

Just have every class get a choice between 3-5 different "Arena Armours" and Weapons that have different stat combos, and different set bonuses.

I know a lot of people will dissagree, but hey, at least give us a choice, then we could argue over who has better skill instead of instantly blaming loot for a loss.

Your article make interes to the problem.s

the comment with giving ppl generalized gear in bg is really weird imo, why would you want that, the comment can only have been made by someone with lesser gear, if the generalized gear option would go live there would be no point in farming armor, weapons, trinkets and so on if you were only to pvp... come on.. I mean why shouldnt people who have used hours and hours and hours in MC - BWL and so on have some advanteges

I both agree and disagree with generalised gear for BG's.
Think of this...
Player 1 is on his 3rd Lvl 60.. he tried 2 other classes, but didnt like them. Whilst lvling these 2 other classes he gained a pretty good understanding of them and how to beat them. He has now found 'his class' and is very skillful. Unfortunately he has no uber gear.
Player 2 has been the same class since he started, knows his class fairly well, but is pretty ignorant of other classes. He has spent lots of time raiding PVE and has built up uber gear.
Now, player 1 is more skillfull at pvp, he has studied other classes weakness', while player 2 is more skilled at PVE.
Potentially, Player 2 can have better gear from less time invested than player 1, and can win due to better gear.
Is that fair? Should someone in AQ /Naxxramas loot who has never pvp'd before get that advantage over a skilled pvp'er due to gear.
I like the idea of PVP sets being used only in BG's, army soldiers wear uniforms after all. That way, only people who have spent time in the BG's will have better armor.. It would give the pvp'ers a level field to play on and something to aim for. Its kinda weird that you can stop PVP to PVE, and after a short while, come back with better gear than rank 14's (which is what is starting to happen)
In all tho, its a pretty broken system as it stands, and I dont really see many solutions

Those of you who compare twinks to professional athletes who train harder are idiots. Twinks are like athletes who take steriods so that they have a better chance of winning or breaking records. Which is exactly why it is against the rules in the olympics. The object is to put athletes on a level playing field and let their skills determine who is better. Same with battle grounds; players should be on a level playing field. There is nothing wrong with having a "Twink" division for 10-19 but they should only play against other twinks. And non twinks play against other non twinks or twinks if they want. For anyone to think that they have a right to kill non twinks with one hit just because they have a level 60 main is rediculous.

Well, putting players from different reamls in a battleground can cause a certain exploit.

We know item values are different from realm to realm.

Lets say that on an older server, a typical item, a krol blade goes for 150g on ah normally, and that on a newer server, it would be possible for players to exchange those items while in the bg via trade window???

a number of things....

the trade thing shouldnt be an issue because to the best of my knowledge it will be ally from one server and horde from another

e.g. 10 ally from bladefist and 10 horde from silverwing

this means they can only trade with people already on their servers

about the twinks... i have a twink both lvl 19 and 29 and pretty much geared to the max. on vashj server we have an alliance twink guild which contains about 40 lvl 19 twinks (not all active but alot of them are). there are quite a few horde twinks too and we much prefer it when we play a bg againts other twinks. 1.12 and cross server battlegrounds will allow us to *hopefully* play 10 v 10 twink battles which is ideally waht we want. it will be able to develop rivalries between the twinks on different servers.

oh and to the people who say that twinking is unfair, how is that any different to being som1 who turns lvl 60 and goes into a bg and gets wtfpwned by all the people with teir3 epics. if anything lvl 60's are the biggest twinks of all

quit crying about pvp skills vs loot and twinks, i kill people that have better gear than me all the time and i just laugh at them, beacuase im speced for pvp, and those ppl who have the eg raiding gear are PvE spec and i just stunlock them up FTW.. i do however have 5/8 nightslayer and other 3 are upgraded pvp gear

as for twinks.. i have a 29 twink hunter and enjoy running over noobs in BG's.. first of all if i have a 60 main i DO have the right to run over someone whos just starting out .. too bad, if u cry ill just run u over again and again.. in the end its just a game and i can make whatever kind of character i want and use him to do whatever i want, if u dont like it make your own twink or play a char to 60. and remember BG's arent necessary at that low lvl anyway, forget bgs and go lvl

guys last i checked life isn't fair so if your getting pwned by a twink then just deal with it, make your own twink, or just level and forget about playing the bgs at that low of a level. it will usually be much more fun to just play the bgs at 60 if your not going to twink at 19 or 29 etc. from my experience. if your going to level your char to 60 then just do it and stop wasting your time if u dont want to deal with the twinks...bcuz there are a lot of twinks and they are becoming more popular and there's nothing u can really do about it...that's just the way the game was made and is played...if you dont like it then go make your own game however you want to make it....the bgs are never going to be fair and it would just be pretty impossible to make it that way and dull as well....half the fun of the game is farming or running instances to get good stuff and im pretty sure you wouldnt want to go run those instances/farm for gear and then not be able to use any of it in PvP...if u couldnt then well....umm...what's the use or purpose of all that time running instances??? not just to look cool....

Shaz

ummmm.. You are delusional.

I have been playing on-line games since quake 1 CTF
The more balanced a team is the more exciting the play is.
twinks are lame and their sole purpose ti to get the upper hand on the average player. That is not competitiveness, it is taking advantage of an exploit. just because you CAN do it doesn't mean that it is a good feature.

CTF is about team work and strategy; that is why they have kids play it in school.

Twinking a character out to gain the advantage over people that play the game the way it was meant to be played is just lame.

ever have another? But i remain convinced that amanda bynes nudies to. They were exhausted and a broom handle and she could organize some. Pretty much amanda bynes topless more.