Podcast episode 4 cuts Honor in Alterac Valley
Alterac Valley will give less Honor in World of Warcraft: Forever, and the other battlegrounds a lot more. The developers said it in episode 4 of their podcast, which is all about PvP. An RP-PvP realm is not planned, and arenas are not coming either.
The episode lasts 63 minutes and appeared on 15 October on the World of Warcraft channel. Josh Corbett of Countdown to Classic hosts, with streamers Savix and Tips Out as guests. The developers are Lead Designer Tim Jones and Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield, known as Aggrend.
The full episode is on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=bzaMA5fZ1tE. Episode 2, about classes, appeared on 1 October: Podcast episode 2 puts hybrids 5% below pure specs.
Every battleground worth the time
Players who sit in Alterac Valley and race to the boss for Honor will earn less there. Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Darkspear Islands give a lot more, so that every battleground is worth the time. The team looked at every way to earn Honor in every battleground, say the developers.
Honor and rank points are balanced apart. One activity may suit the currency better, another the rank. A holiday weekend for another battleground should never make players wonder whether they should still run Alterac Valley.
Greenfield believes Alterac Valley keeps its reinforcements that run out. Whether Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin get a time limit, is not decided. Spots where players hide the flag to stall a game will be fixed. For the graveyard jump in Warsong Gulch, Greenfield makes no promise.
Premades meet premades
A premade group gets matched against other premades. Solo players and very small groups play against each other. How big a small group can be, perhaps two or three players, is still being tuned.
War games should work too, through a chat command that challenges a specific group. Perhaps not at the launch, but soon after. They give no Honor, because friends could trade wins.
No arenas and no rated battlegrounds
Rated PvP is not planned. A separate currency for gear that only counts in PvP goes against the overlap between PvE and PvP that the team wants, says Jones. The armor of rank 14 at the launch should look amazing. Greenfield is wary of arenas, because the original game was never balanced around 2v2 or 3v3.
New battlegrounds will come, with new game types and new places. Jones dreams of a king of the hill in Blackrock Mountain.
Choose your realm with care
Forever has one megaserver per rule set: Normal, PvP and RP, where RP has no open PvP. Moving a character between them will most likely not be possible, because of faction balance. Whoever leaves PvP after six months has to start again on Normal, says Greenfield.
An RP-PvP rule set is not planned. The RP-PvP realm of Season of Discovery lost its RP tag after about three months, and the RP community is small. A separate rule set would split it further. “Never say never”, says Greenfield:
We don’t have any plans right now. We don’t have anything really to report, but we’re very carefully considering the feedback. We’re looking at it. We’re reading it.
Nothing will stop a level 60 from camping low levels on a PvP realm, unless it is cheating or an exploit. Where Blizzard turns PvP on for an event in the world, it may add help, such as a short immunity after a resurrection.
Big fights in the open world
The engineers worked hard to make large fights work at scale. On an internal heat map of deaths, PvP is the most common cause of death in the open world. Next, Blizzard wants to allow groups larger than a raid, and to stop players from being phased out of their group. As much of that as possible should be ready for the launch.
The capture towers in Eastern Plaguelands and the fights in Silithus are not active at the launch. Blizzard would love to bring back world events from Season of Discovery, such as the Battle for Ashenvale and the Blood Moon. Whether world bosses get instanced, is not decided.
A duel arena in Hyjal
The developers showed a duel arena in a crater of Mount Hyjal. The crater was there in the original game, but the new zone uses that ground for other terrain. So Blizzard moved the crater to a map of its own.
The top 32 of a community tournament duel there on day two. The tournament runs on 17 and 18 October, is not official and drew over 6,000 sign-ups. Vendors will sell Soul Shards and reagents, and a cooldown reset is possible. Players cannot visit the arena freely. It may come back in a later patch, perhaps during the week of the Darkmoon Faire.
Blizzard asked Corbett for four episodes, and this is the fourth. Whether the podcast continues, is not known.
Source: Blizzard Entertainment