Wintergrasp Woes - the raid drop exploit

Lake Wintergrasp seems to embody every video game feature that looked good on paper, but never quite lived up to it's potential on implementation. It's not that it's Blizzard fault since they have been trying to address the problems with the zone since day one. If they had just ignored the problems then I could justify nerdrage and blaming them for a horrible gaming experience. Instead, I have to give them kudos for the large number of mostly beneficial changes they've made to the zone over the last year. This includes reworking the daily quests, introducing Tenacity, adding a queue system, and making it slightly easier to defend the fortress.

Of course none of these have any effect in most games since the number of people inside a normal Wintergrasp quickly stressed out the servers and cause horrible amounts of lag. Thus most prime-time Wintergrasp games involve the attackers simply steamrolling through fortress walls as the defenders get to attack every 10 seconds. It doesn't matter if you have five stacks of Tenacity if you can never hit anyone because of the massive amounts of lag. Previous attempts at world PvP areas were never popular because the rewards were uninspired and there really wasn't any reason to do it. However, with the Vault of Archavon providing a chance at the newest tier pieces the Wintergrasp battles are always popular.

This popularity does make Lake Wintergrasp a target for exploits since there are multiple benefits to winning a game. Fortunately, it didn't seem like the open world zone concept was as vulnerable to this issue as battlegrounds and arenas. In fact, this weekend I ran across the first major exploit I've ever seen in Lake Wintergrasp. Players on one faction were joining the Wintergrasp queue with their alts in small raid groups. This allowed them to maintain raid leadership when the game started and they could kick people from the raid groups as soon as they zoned into an active Wintergrasp. As a result my faction had to manually form raid groups using general chat and the time it took to access siege engines was greatly increased for us.

The people doing this were using multiple alts and I know a majority of them were reported. Still it doesn't look like any action has been taken against them yet. I'm not sure how hard the code change would be required to fix the issue. Lately, Blizzard has been focusing on the next expansion and I've noticed they've stopped tinkering with Lake Wintergrasp. Which is unfortunate, since the queue system for Wintergrasp really needs to be changed to prevent joining as a raid or else have the raid kick feature disabled. Either way I don't think this exploit will become too popular since it's highly visible to players and sure to be reported quickly. I just hope the Cataclysm PvP zones are better set up to deal with players have characters of both factions on the same server.

Cataclysm’s Rated Battlegrounds

One of the more interesting system revamps announced for Cataclysm was the introduction of rated battlegrounds. This should be a welcome change since its promises to balance out the PvP systems in World of Warcraft. At the moment the arena system dominates the PvP landscape and often gives an advantage to players in Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds. This is mostly because the arena system is the only way for melee classes to achieve decent PvP weapons. After the Burning Crusade the developers made a decision to tightly control epic weapons since so many people stopped raiding. This is why arena weapons during the Wrath of the Lich King have never been made available for honor.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to reign in the free epic weapons, but it’s gone too far in the opposite spectrum. Arenas may be almost exploit free and have better matchmaking system nowadays, but its still a poor decision to make it the main gateway for PvP gear. The very nature of combat in World of Warcraft makes small squad based fights very dependent on gear and luck. Battlegrounds and to a lesser degree Wintergrasp depend a bit more on coordination and strategy. In arenas things are simple and you just have to kill your enemies, while in battlegrounds you are more concerned with objectives and defeating them. Both are viable forms for PvP so it does seem a bit weird to reward one over the other.

Main Problems with Arenas being the main PvP Gear Gateway
1) WoW combat is still rock-paper-scissors to a certain degree
-certain team combinations will always have an advantage over others because of class
2) Arenas are more heavily influenced by class nerfs and buffs then battlegrounds
3) Arenas tend to emphasize reflexes and gear over the strategy aspect of PvP
4) Allows highly ranked to arena players to faceroll their way through battlegrounds

How the Rated Battleground Systems Works

Players:
-Each player has a personal battleground rating
-Winning matches increases the rating while losing has no effect
-The same matchmaking system used in arenas will decide rating changes

Battlegrounds:
-Each week one battleground will be playable for rated matches
-Rated battlegrounds required a full pre-made raid to queue
-No special battleground team has to be made
-Blizzard said to expect three new battlegrounds

Rewards:
-Battleground Ratings will allow access to arena weapons/armor
-Rated Battlegrounds will reward arena points after each victory
-Arenas will also be changed so they give arena points after each victory
-Your previous week’s rating limits how many points you can earn that week
-The old Battleground titles will once again be available as rewards
-Top Performers in Arenas and Battlegrounds will also get epic mounts

As you can see there are some pretty big changes to both the battleground system and arena system in the upcoming expansion. It looks like Blizzard is serious about making both systems viable ways of gaining PvP gear. Also since rated battlegrounds require pre-made teams you can expect players to police the system and kick out any bots or slackers after a single match. Most likely the only reason Blizzard has been so hesitant to reward battleground play in the past has been because of the honor farming problem.

Arena Season 5

The PvP patch is coming today and starting off the new arena season for World of Warcraft. With it comes the delightful addition of PvP armor and weapons that are sure to be on most player's Christmas lists. Still there are some changes to the way things works with the newest arena season. Blizzard has learned a lot about PvP rewards from the previous expansion and they're trying not to repeat any mistakes. In the Burning Crusade they made the season one arena gear a little too powerful compared to the gear from heroics. This sort of resulted in a dead period where people mostly ignored heroic dungeons. It really wasn't until the Badge of Justice loot started to get better that heroics and Karazhan started to see a resurgence in popularity.

This time around it looks like Blizzard is allowing multiple ways of getting the arena gear. Players will be able to use emblems, honor points, and arena points to gear up for their cage matches. Blizzard also seems to be using a more complex tier system this time around. The new arena season looks like it will have three tiers to start with. Most likely as new arena seasons are introduced the lowest tier will be dropped.

Main Set Pieces and Weapons (chest, legs, etc)

Tier 1 - Blue Arena Gear (Savage Gladiators)
(Honor and Arena points: No Ratings) or Emblems of Heroism
Equal to the Blue level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 2 - Epic Arena Gear (Hateful Gladiators)
(Arena points: Ratings from 1600-1800) or Emblems of Valor
Equal to the Epic level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 3 - Epic Arena Gear (Deadly Gladiators)
(Arena points: Ratings in the 1900-2100)
Equal to 25 man raid gear but with more PvP stats (stamina, resilience)


Secondary Set pieces and accessories (bracers, rings, etc)

Tier 1 - Epic Arena Gear (Hateful Gladiators)
(Honor Points: Ratings in the 1600-1800)
Equal to the Epic level 80 gear from Heroic dungeons

Tier 2 - Epic Arena Gear (Deadly Gladiators)
(Honor points: Ratings in the 1900-2100)
Equal to 25 man raid gear but with more PvP stats (stamina, resilience)

I must say that I was not a fan of the introduction of rating requirements to PvP gear. There were too many ways to cheat the early versions of the arena system. Even with rating requirements a lot of players simply bought spots on high end teams or created a smurf team. By the time Blizzard ironed out all the bugs the cheaters were already a couple tiers ahead of most other players. This gear advantage made it impossible to compete fairly and I found myself wandering to other games that promised PvP glory. The same thing could happen again, but not unless a new flaw in the PvP reward system is found. Otherwise I think Blizzard has a fair chance of keeping a static, but somewhat satisfying PvP game going for quite some time.


Some good Arena Gear Links:
MMO Champion and WoWhead

Age of Conan's PvP System

Well it looks like Funcom pushed the first iteration of their PvP system onto their test server and it looks like a doosie. It's a combination of notoriety and PvP levels working together to form a "risk versus reward" system. Basically players gain 100 PvP experience by killing a similar level player, but lose a static amount of PvP experience by dying. Thus if you routinely die more often then you win a fight, you're not going to be racing through the levels. Luckily, you can't lose a PvP level once earned so you don't have to worry about that being a problem. The rewards are spread across ten PvP levels and actually have to be purchased by the player.

What really makes the PvP system interesting is that notoriety will greatly affect players who try to gain PvP levels by going on a killing spree. Players can either be flagged as innocent, criminal, or murderer. Innocents can't be attacked without flagging yourself as a criminal and gaining murder points. Criminals stay flagged for 5 minutes unless they attack another innocent or do another activity which re-flags them. If a criminal manages to gain 100 murder points then they become flagged as a murderer. Only time will de-flag you as a murderer and it looks like 1 hour of real time will decay 1 murder point. The penalties for being a murder are quite stiff and should be avoided.

Murderers lose double the PvP experience when they die and give double the PvP experience to people who kill them. Murderers will also dropped one of their items when killed by a player. Guards will attack murderers on site and Traders will not talk to them. Any players who trade or group with a murderer or criminal will be flagged a criminal. It's basically the line you don't want to cross unless you enjoy the notoriety. The entire system seems designed to encourage some ganking and PvP, but griefing will quickly rack up the murder points. Killing players at a rez point, at a zone line, or who are lower level then you seems to increase the number of murder points.

There are definitely going to be some ways to abuse this system especially with the amount of bugs that Funcom usually has in it's code. Still the system looks fun on paper and might actually be a step above what World of Warcraft offers. There are a couple unanswered questions I have that mainly revolve how the PvP mini games and siege wars fit into the system. Also this system will probably encouraging griefers to level up multiple characters, that way they can simply log out when they become flagged as a murderer. Another issue is that Funcom is going to have to be careful when setting murder points penalties. After all if a player kills a really low level innocent by an accidental AOE, how many murder points do they deserve? I don't want to have to spend a day camped out simply because a level 20 got in the way when I used a 2hand combo.

P.S This is the first iteration and we can expect things to change as bugs and exploits are pointed out by the testers.

Actual Patch Notes: http://forums-tl.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=35914