Battleground preview part 2 everyone

[Stompede]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds-part2.html

Just in case everyone was busy trolling, hehehe.

[Mithras]

Would you be so kind to post the text? The site is blocked from work...

/shrug

Thank you.

[kary]

A few weeks ago, we gave you a hint of what a Battlegrounds experience would be like, and also introduced you to some new concepts for player-versus-player combat, such as a slightly tweaked death system and capture-able graveyards. Now let's explore in greater detail how the battle for Alterac Valley can truly be won.

Alterac Valley is a zone for high-level players, which means those who are at or near the level cap. Rest assured we do not plan to restrict Battlegrounds to the highest-levels of players, so there will be more accessible Battlegrounds for lower levels. However, at least initially, only very high-level players will be able to contest the Battleground in Alterac Valley.

We definitely are aware that the experience can start to degrade if the Battleground is completely packed with several hundreds of players; the sides begin to lose cohesion, individuals feel less able to contribute to the whole cause, and the potential evolves for a lop-sided affair. So we do have a cap on the number of people on each side that can enter a Battleground. Rest assured we want the two sides to be fairly matched. However, if you have to wait for your turn to enter the Battleground, you can still adventure in the rest of the game world before you are summoned to fight. Our goal has always been to create the optimum experience, and so we will continue to tweak the numbers till we feel we've got an epic, yet manageable, conflict that is fair to both Horde and Alliance players.

Victory Conditions

The ultimate goal of a Battleground is to slay the enemy's general and destroy the enemy's main base. We've set up many different quests and mechanisms to give players several strategies for accomplishing this goal.

Ostensibly, one side could decide to simply swarm the enemy territory. This would involve first attacking the enemy's forward base camp. This will be a difficult endeavor. The forward camp is guarded by numerous NPC defenders in the mid-fifties, as well as the elite camp commander and his elite special guards. Not only are these defenders numerous, and tougher due to the elites, but there will also be a tower or two flanking the way through this forward camp.

Towers

The Horde defend their tower's flag

Towers are defensive structures garrisoned by several NPC guards. The garrison is armed with extremely long ranged bows or guns, and can snipe at enemy players from far away. These towers will send volleys of fire at onrushing attackers, softening them up before they crash into the wall of defending enemy players and NPCs. The garrison defenders will also continue their withering fire as the attackers battle it out below. The side in control of the tower maintains a significant advantage in the melee ensuing underneath its considerable shadow.

Like graveyards and mines, towers can be captured. The large flag atop a tower denotes its controller, and just as with graveyards, you can claim one for your side by tearing down the existing flag and erecting your own. At that point, your own NPC troops will spawn in and wrest control of the tower from the enemy. When control completely switches to your side, you will gain the supporting firepower of the tower, making it a key strategic point to capture on your way to your overall goal of destroying the enemy base.

If you can manage to kill the camp commander, wipe out the NPCs, and drive away enemy players, your work won't yet be completed. Taking the graveyard and towers near the forward camp and installing your own NPC troops there will ultimately place the area under your control and make it much easier for you to then mount a final push into the enemy's base.

Horde Stronghold


"Our town is under attack!"

Taking the Main Base

As hard as the forward base camp will be to defeat, the main base will be significantly harder. There will be a high level elite general even stronger than the camp commander, and there will be even more elite guards and more NPC defenders in waiting. And of course, there will be yet more towers defending the area. However, if you can manage to kill this general, then the surrounding enemy base will begin to erupt into flames in sympathetic ruin. As the buildings are consumed by fire, you will finally gain control of the base, and control of the Battleground as well. At this point, your faction will have recorded a victory in the Alterac Valley Battleground, with a huge number of subsequent honor points being added to the honor pool that will then be distributed to all PvP combatants for the day.

Razing the Alliance base We don't need no water...

Rebuilding

Battlegrounds, though, are a dynamic system, and so the conflicts therein will continue to rage back and forth even after a winner is declared. For the next few hours after your side scores a victory, the opposition will have no NPC troops to help them. That will give you greater control over the zone and the ability to fully explore Alterac Valley with confidence.

Enemy players might choose to resurrect in the tunnels leading into Alterac Valley and harass your side's players, but as the entire zone will be firmly in your control, it will be difficult for any opposing players to mount any sort of effective counterattack. Instead, they will have to wait for their base to rebuild itself.

A little while after it gets razed, the destroyed base will begin to slowly rebuild itself. Players can significantly reduce the reconstruction time, though, by capturing the nearby mine and delivering supplies between the mine and the base. Control of the Battleground will revert back to a contested status, and the battle for Alterac Valley will commence once again. However, mines, towers, and graveyards will remain under the victor's control, and will need to be retaken.

Player-Versus-Player Quests

Kill 1001 trolls? My pleasure!

Assaulting and demolishing the enemy base will be prohibitively difficult if one side simply decides to storm the enemy. This is where quests come in. The PvP quests in Alterac Valley add strategy and additional avenues to assist in the overall goal of conquering the Battleground.

The initial and repeatable quest you can acquire is to gain improved reputation with the main base fighting for your side. Horde players will be told to kill Alliance players, and vice versa. After you collect the insignias of your fallen foes, you can bring them back to your base to increase your standing with your side; on the Horde side, you would be improving your relationship with the Frostwolf clan, while on the Alliance side, it would be with the Stormpike dwarves. As you improve your reputation, you'll gain a special trinket, which gets replaced by a more powerful version each time your reputation rank jumps up a category, such as from honored to revered. Reputation can also be improved through questing, of course. Improving your reputation will be very important because many of the best abilities for use in Battlegrounds, such as calling cavalry charges and air strikes, can only be done by players with very high reputation.

Miners duking it out

One of the first quests you can undertake is to take control of the mine near your faction's camp. The Alliance's mine is initially under the control of troggs, while the Horde's mine is held by kobolds. You can capture a mine, but unlike with graveyards and towers, you don't do so by planting a flag. Instead, after you kill the mine's kobold or trogg leader, a lieutenant from your side will spawn in with defenders to take control of it.

Deep within each mine are supplies. The quest here involves gathering a certain number of supplies and brining them back to your side's quartermaster. When you complete this quest, all your side's NPC troops automatically get an instant upgrade in weapon and armor effectiveness, and an increase in their level. There are several additional quests beyond this initial one to acquire more supplies, and each time you complete these successive quests, your side's NPCs get further upgraded in weapons, armor, and level. However, over time (usually about an hour), these upgrades begin to degrade. If you want to keep your troops in top fighting condition, you'll also need to keep the supplies flowing in as well.

Get some booty

Another quest is related to this, and it involves storming the enemy's mine and stealing their supplies to upgrade your troops. This is an additional quest, and not only do these supplies benefit your troops, but by stealing them away from the enemy, you also deprive the other side of upgrade supplies as well, since the supply crates within each mine are limited and spawn slowly.

Two other quests can also be accomplished by players, and their rewards have enormous influence on the outcome of a hotly-contested Battleground. One quest enables you to summon aerial units to bombard the enemy. To complete it, you must break into the enemy's camp and free the three wing commanders held prisoner deep within the opposition's base. If you can escort them out of the base and into safety, you will get a whistle as a quest reward that thereafter lets you call in air strikes from the wing commanders. On the Alliance, blowing the whistle will call a griffon to your aid, while on the Horde side, blowing the whistle calls a wyvern. As there are only three wing commanders to rescue, your side will only be able to call down a maximum of three air strikes at a time.

Wing Commander Guse

The quest with the most powerful reward, though, requires you to gather the blood of fallen enemy players for your side's chief spellcaster. On the Horde side, as revealed a few weeks ago, the ranking shaman asks you to bring back the blood of Alliance players. The quest actually needs to be performed by dozens of players, as the shaman requires hundreds of blood samples to be brought before him. When enough is returned to him, he summons an Ice Lord Elemental, which then begins a rampage of the enemy base. On the Alliance side, the leader of the druidic enclave asks you to acquire the essence of Horde players, which is essentially their spirit made manifest in an item you can loot off their body. In both cases, the blood and essence is something in addition to the insignia that you can loot off a fallen player as a trophy of your kill. Once you return the requisite number of essences, the druid will summon a mighty Ancient of War, who will make his way toward the Horde base, dispensing destruction to all Horde players in his path. Both the Ice Lord and Ancient of War will be enormously powerful creatures, easily the equivalent of a raid boss, and will give their side a decided advantage in the battle to seize Alterac Valley.

Other Quests

Summon Help

There are also some neutral quests in Alterac Valley with significant rewards for whichever side can complete them first. At a Syndicate hideout in the Valley, you can meet a neutral Syndicate NPC, who will give you a quest to recover a Syndicate artifact called the All-Seeing Eye. It's been stolen by the elite trolls in the ice cave, and if you recover it for him, he will let you use it, and pledge his Syndicate bandits to your side. The twist with this quest is that once you get the Eye from the cave, you must bring it back to the Syndicate leader. But while en route, you'll be tagged with a glowing aura. If the enemy faction manages to kill you before you return the Eye, they can loot it off your body and finish the quest for you, thereby stealing the Eye and the Syndicate for their use.

Another neutral NPC, an esteemed goblin engineer, is held prisoner in the ice troll cave. If you acquire the quest to free him and escort him safely out of the cave and back to your base, he will join your side. At that point, he will give another quest, this time to create a special war machine, the Portable Shredder Unit, for your use in helping your faction in the war.

These aren't the only quests available in Alterac Valley. Several others also exist to strengthen your chances for victory. Through them, you can spawn in waves of reinforcements to assault the enemy base, and accomplish other benefits for your side.

A Final Preview

So there you have it: the conditions whereby you can gain victory in Alterac Valley and the means by which you can expedite your mission. In several weeks time, we'll turn our gaze away from Battlegrounds and focus more on the new PvP Honor System, gaining ranks, and the bevy of rewards that awaits for those who engage in the honorable defense of their lifestyle against the encroachment of the enemy faction.

[Karza]

Alterac Valley is a zone for high-level players, which means those who are at or near the level cap. Rest assured we do not plan to restrict Battlegrounds to the highest-levels of players, so there will be more accessible Battlegrounds for lower levels. However, at least initially, only very high-level players will be able to contest the Battleground in Alterac Valley.

Oh they're going to love this one on the General Boards! :lol: Still, I have to admit, I thought they would address this a little more fairly. I guess this is Blizzards way of making people seriously consider moving to a lower population server. Even if it's a huge number like 200 on each side, there will be players on some servers who will never see the inside of that Battleground during primetime.

[Envie]

Thanks for posting this... after just having a nice discussion about the first article preview, this one adds a lot more info. I'm reading it now and will see how many of my original questions were answered!

....


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[Stompede]

Thanks for posting this... after just having a nice discussion about the first article preview, this one adds a lot more info. I'm reading it now and will see how many of my original questions were answered!

....


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Just a quick clarification, for the people that can't read it at work because the WoW website is blocked, there are several pictures missing from this text only version that lends some weight as to the complexities of the quests that you can take part in.

One picture shows a dwarf giving a 60 gnome rogue a quest that involves killing 1,001 trolls in order to get the leader of the trolls to show up... If i'm not mistaken, those are elite trolls too we are talking about as well. Looks like battlegrounds will be pretty serious stuff, and should be pretty captivating for the higher levels as well.

[thglid5]

Limitd # of players can get in....

gg, huge guilds like the Goon Squad are gonna be filling all the spots =\

[Pseudo]

gogo battleground queues!

[Envie]

So my first impression of more info is starting to be a little more negative. Limited cap of players can be good, to prevent zerging, but it's also bad when you're trying to get an entire raid party in and the instance is full. Another queue to get into an instance will be a turn off for many.

Also, there seems to be a LOT of emphasis on killing NPCs and gathering stuff in order to make the fight swing to your side. I dunno if I like the idea of being forced to PvE or farm stuff just to get an advantage in a PvP battle that -should- be about the players fighting's skill. While having buffs and guards to help is cool, I don't see the point of killing a thousand NPCs... maybe it just isn't clear enough yet and you have to see it in action to understand?

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[Nastrand]

Envie,

Let's pray that is what is needed because on paper (web :P ) it looks like shit to me.

[IN-QQQQ]

Wow, so what's the reward again for the Outside world PvP again?
Right now I haven't seen anything on it. =(

Big Turn off of Battle Grounds is MORE NPC Killing/Farming. Lovely. Blah!
Cap # of people in the Instance, This one's ok......but ONLY ONE INSTACE of it? BLAH!! It's a Freaking Instance, They should be able to divide it out amoung the people, OR allow the people to choose which Battle Ground instance they want to go into if they want to wait for the Que. Such as 1st BG1 instance...Reaches Capacity. BG2 Starts. People can now choose to wait for a Spot in BG1 to open up because all their friends are in that one --OR-- they can choose to go into BG2 because it's avaliable right now. BG3 should spawn if BG1 and BG2 is full.....and so on and so forth.

But just haveing 1 BG and haveing it capped is just stupid. Because there are thousands of players on a server.

Blah pretty much sums up my thought on this last preview.

[Envie]

Ok, read through it again, and at first I didn't like the thought of having to farm NPCs for benefits to the battlefield scenario, but now I think more and more that it will be a good idea, an alternative strategy to just straightforward players killing players over and over for some unknown reward. While that too is fun, it may grow old fast and players would get just as bored of that as they do running back and forth between Tarren Mills and Southshore.

Those who hate PvE interaction can be assigned to just kill players, while those who like a more backseat support role (like me) can complete other quests with support groups to raise faction and blood for the NPCs. There will be plenty of engagement just doing that, trying to capture the flag and hold your base down.

The only thing I'm REALLY not liking is the limited number that can queue into the instance. Someone said there will only be one instance of it, but I didn't read that anywhere in the review, did I miss something from the Devs?

They can't possibly expect an entire server of players to wait to participate in only one instance of Alterac Valley. Sure, this is the only one they're identifying now, and perhaps there will be several others spread out over the map elsewhere, but if Alterac Valley is only ONE battleground, then I already foresee problems. Guilds are very tight knit in these games and of course they want to play/fight together, not waiting in some queue to join a bunch of random strangers -- that isn't cohesive and does nothing for guild teamwork strategies.

So one of my main questions still remains:

- Will they make separate battlegrounds for just guilds or raid groups to fight one another rather than random free-for-all instances?

So far, the answer appears to be NO. :(

Also, what's up with this?


In several weeks time, we'll turn our gaze away from Battlegrounds and focus more on the new PvP Honor System, gaining ranks, and the bevy of rewards that awaits for those who engage in the honorable defense of their lifestyle against the encroachment of the enemy faction.

Several Weeks time? Wtf does that mean? That's a pretty vague summary... In several weeks time the battleground will be done and released or in several weeks time they will start working on the other parts of pvp implementation?

Many questions, few answers in this second review.

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[Straem]

Yes I want real world killing rewards. Our fights are fun granted on a pvp server. But I could have accepted waiting to 60 then flagging myself all day once ive leveled in peace.

Just give me a reason.

[Ladro]

what about the PvP reward btw? what do you get if u win from the other dudes?

[Stompede]

In several weeks time, we'll turn our gaze away from Battlegrounds and focus more on the new PvP Honor System, gaining ranks, and the bevy of rewards that awaits for those who engage in the honorable defense of their lifestyle against the encroachment of the enemy faction.

Several Weeks time? Wtf does that mean? That's a pretty vague summary... In several weeks time the battleground will be done and released or in several weeks time they will start working on the other parts of pvp implementation?

Many questions, few answers in this second review.

-

My eyebrows raised when i read this as well Envie... Is blizz saying that battlegrounds are not going to be implemented for a while yet, and thus we should focus on the upcoming honor system in PVP which according to this sounds like it will be implemented sooner? soooo vague.

[IN-QQQQ]

If there was more then one instances of Battle Grounds why would they need a Que. The fact that you have a Que, seems to me there is only going to be One Battle Grounds right now. Or else it would just Spawn a 2nd Battle Grounds Instance. That's why I think there's only going to be 1 BG.

Here's the main problem. Unless they let you choose which Que you want to wait in, the chances your able to join your friends in the correct battle field is slim.

[Karza]

If there was more then one instances of Battle Grounds why would they need a Que. The fact that you have a Que, seems to me there is only going to be One Battle Grounds right now. Or else it would just Spawn a 2nd Battle Grounds Instance. That's why I think there's only going to be 1 BG.

Agreed. While nothing specifically says that there will only be one battleground, I think the key statement that implies it is the following:


So we do have a cap on the number of people on each side that can enter a Battleground. Rest assured we want the two sides to be fairly matched. However, if you have to wait for your turn to enter the Battleground, you can still adventure in the rest of the game world before you are summoned to fight.

The WoW boards have conveniently gone down so we can't get an answer to this specific question. However, given the fact that they never mention instance once in the text and there is no information on a minimum number of players for an instance, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that there is only one.

I suspect Blizzard's response on the limited number of slots will be, "Oh, don't worry, we'll be implementing more Battlegrounds in the future."

[Harlan_bagdar]

Guildwars has the guild vs guild thing down, i really hope blizzard does something similar so you wont be waiting to enter the instance and you can choose who you fight with.

[daefuin]

I like the idea of the battlegrounds, I think they're just too focused on PvE. I would take an organized arena type area with rankings for 1v1, 5v5, etc over the current battlegrounds anyday.

[mediocre]

Que


What?



Or, the guy from Star Trek?

[IN-QQQQ]

Que


What?



Or, the guy from Star Trek?
<---------- Check out the Name, =)