Tuesday, October 21, 2008

PvP, the next frontier? A Day In WoW PvP!

So, we are hearing a bit about active PvP coming in the next patch for WoW, and apparently Warhammer has it already. The funny thing is that everyone already knows that DK's will be overpowered at launch and the summarily nerfed once their popularity hits the roof.

So, I wanted to go over some PvP basics for you...

Now, keeping in mind, I am an Alliance character, I will break down for you the basic PvP rules. At least as far as the Oct 15th patch. The Alliance gets an ass whoopin probably 80-90% of the time. This leaves the door wide open for maximum whining. Now, I haven't played the Horde side, but I can only imagine, thier leaders don't have to deal with as much crying.

Now, I will be dealing with Alterac Valley, because until recently, everyone uses the other three BG's for marks only. We all use AV for honor. The honor has been adjusted recently, but AV is still the primary farming grounds for honor.

First we go into the little staging area... We buff, someone asks for a table from a mage. Sometimes we get one, other times we don't ... No one cares if the warlocks provide healing stones or not, so we move on.

Then we get one of a few different "battle plans".

1. Everyone stick together...

This plan works great, we all run to Galv, kill him in about 5 seconds, then we all take towers, and 2-4 stay behind to make sure the towers cap before moving on, then we check on the next one. Continually moving south, we get past tower point, and then move to RH. Take the East and West towers and then kill Drek. About a 99.9 success rate.

2. Groups 1-6 hit RH, Groups 7-8 hit Galv then towers.
A good plan but with the limited intelligence levels within BG. We have people that don't care what group they are in and then of course there is always not enough people to kill Galv and take the towers. I would say this plan has a 75% success rate, and inspires people to leave or call out insults.

Frequent insults include the fact that when Galv or Drek "fear" everyone out of the stronghold. Many people interpret this as that we "ran out" or got scared of dying, when this is not the case at all. You may hear someone call everyone a "retard" or "noobs" because these fellows have the ability of kicking us out of their homes.

Most insults come from someone on a PvP server that is nowhere near the action. They sit back and ask how come this objective isn't met or that one, while sitting on their horse somewhere far from the battles going on. Telling us how it is an "Epic Fail" and we all suck.

Another plan, and my all-time favorite is "Just win", and more recently the "unlock all the acheivements you can and just win" plans.

These plans are almost certian doom accompanied by many insults because everyone stops playing so they can type bad things to each other. I give this plan a 10% success rate and I am being generous.

All Battle Grounds have their own set of funny or degrading comments made by the players, but I still don't get why everyone still finds it necessary to use the word "raped" all the time. I hear that more then anything. I am sure it is mostly the younger guys, but sometimes I just want to slap them for being so stupid.

The BG's really no longer hold any true value except to gain the most honor in the least amount of time. I feel over the course of the new expansion, we will see the developers trying to give some meaning back to completing the quests built into the BG's.

At least I hope they will.

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Joys of Patching Take 2...

Well, I don't know what happened this morning, but WoW and it's website went off the map in the middle of my proudest moment in the BG's... I had about 5 secondary objectives in my pocket and we were on our way to victory yet again today.

I don't know what it is, but you give those Alliance guys a reason to win, and they do! They want those acheivements worse then a hooker wants a case of herpes!

If there was any good done in this debacle of a patch, it has been nice to see the Acheivers step up and show the PvPers they can actually do something given proper motivation. The Hordies have been getting swept frequently the last couple of days. I am not sure if the PvP changes have angered the usually over aggressive hordies, or if they are all on vacation until the patch settles down. In any event, I am taking the points while I can and get my gear before it all becomes obsolete.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

WTB Port to Monday Oct 13,th... Please PST!

Patch went in today as the major application to be prepared for the WoTLK. 12 Hours downtime, followed by an hour patching and getting ready, followed by all the Addons crapping all over the place, followed by server crashes and a rolling restart.

Someone let me off this train please!

Anyway, everyone had to respec their characters so I went for the old PvP favorite Affliction... Miss the pet, but love killing people really fast.

PvP is totally in chaos.. No one knows what the heck is going on in there, but one thing is for sure. We all die a whole lot quicker. Ranting about how Pally's and Moonkins are the new Daddies of PvP.. Rogues got a quick, long overdue bend over the virtual sink and pumped all night long, are no longer the biggest threat in BG.

This is just a quick down and dirty update. I have a lot of info to assimilate, and it is getting late in the day for me. I am sure there are tons of good things to say about the patch, however I am unable to recall anything at this time.

Please fix the server crashes, thank you Blizz!

-Later

Monday, October 13, 2008

What else sucks...

So, I have this gear, called "S2". You can get this gear by spending a lifetime or two getting your buns kicked in PvP. Well, Alliance gets their buns kicked a lot. I have decided that if this were UO back in the 90's, the Alliance would be the Bluebies aka Great Lords, and the Horde is very much like the PK's aka Dread Lords. So, yea, I am on the wrong side. But the Alliance needs all the help they can get.

Anyway, my gear needs all these socketed gems to make em like all cool and whatnot. So I fill this gear up with gems, and I had one gem that I had received from a dungeon run. I think it was Underbog on heroic or something, but it had "Parry" as an attribute. I don't need parry as a Warlock so I determined I could use it for the other bonuses and just switch it out later. I finally get the money to switch out the gem and I found out why people don't like to do that. It destroys the original gem. Doesn't give it back, doesn't send you any money in the mail, doesn't do anything except destroy it...

Now I ask you, why the heck do they destroy the gem? At the very LEAST they should make it soulbound and give it back to you. Then you could give it to a vendor for a couple of bucks, but NOOOO! Anyway, I am dissapointed that they just waste a gem like that. This gem happened to be "epic" too, so it could have given me a couple hundred gold had I been allowed to sell it at the Auction House.

I was reading something Lum "The Mad Blogger" had to say about what zones you don't like and why. I can tell you volumes about what zones I like and do not. One he mentioned was Nagrand, and I was shocked. I think that is my favorite zone in the whole game. The ones I noteably hate, are as follows.

Silithus - Bug infested zone, and there is no way that I can tell other then to walk to it from Ungorro Crater. I don't like any of the bug quests, and most of the time I will skip it just so I don't have to deal with the bugs.

Zangarmarsh - Another bug zone, but the Naga there are like damn locusts and they are tougher then anywhere else in the game. I also don't really understand what the PvP is good for in that zone. No one ever wants to fight for it, many don't even know how.

Shadowmoon - Too damn hard to solo. I couldn't finish but maybe 5 quests in this zone, and still can't even at 70. I ended up going to Netherstorm to complete my training to 70... Netherstorm, even though it was easier, is actually too easy. Once you get to the bio-domes, it was like the developers just gave up on being original, and just started giving newbie quests. Kill 8 mobs, come get lots of money and experience, etc. So many of the quests were as if they just wanted to be done with it. Many people don't even realize just how easy it is in this zone. Many of my guildies that have been around awhile still insist on grinding the Eastern and Western Plaguelands, and end up going to Hellfire way later then they need to.

Eastern and Western Plaguelands were just not needed. They may have once been very important when 60 was the cap, but now, all that stuff they have there and all those very tricky quests are obsolete.

Anyway, I have not played every zone in the game. As a matter of fact, there are still many places I never even visited yet. I just didn't need to go there. I can't say I have any more fun then Nagrand though. I like to play there, and I love to help people get through that zone. I like to fight for Haala, and I love to kill the bosses there. I don't know, but I think of all the zones in Wow, that has to be my personal favorite.

Right now I am still working on the last couple of pieces to my S2 gear. Then maybe I will finally get the faster mount? Who knows.. 5000G for training is a bit much, but I just keep on grindin' away.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Mr. Roboto... Domo... Domo...

Well, I have become efficient enough at killing players to collect shards on the Battleground. That's not much of an issue anymore. I hear there are some new arenas coming out with WoLK. The big debate in trade channel as late is whether they will erase honor or not. The latest rumor is that they were, but now they are not. Good for me.

Still working on gear and gems for the Glad-wear. Takes a bit of time, which I am sure is the plan. I talked to Kelly Kendred the other day and told her about my adventures. Seems many folks went to Conan to check it out, but we are banking that with the release of the Hero Class in WoW, many people will return.

I didn't try Conan, but I haven't heard any raving review on this side of the park, so I will probably pass over that one in favor of something else down the road.

Today was a good day for the Alliance. We were actually winning on most of the BG's today. I chalked it up to a full moon or the really good hordies decided to give us a break. Still way too much whining going on the Alliance side, but maybe someday, they will suck it up and just learn how to fight back. They have probably been saying that for years, but I still keep the faith.

PS, Blizz, please put a darn mailbox closer to the BG bosses... I hate having to walk real far to check my auctions while playing.. KTHX!