Massive Changes To Wintergrasp in 3.2

[Maticus]

Blizzard updated the patch notes with a whopper earlier; The way we join Wintergrasp is changing drastically:

Wintergrasp

To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.


Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
The queue will accept up to 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 200 players at a time.


Doesn't this kind of go against the whole world PvP idea? Also, flying over WG??

Good news for stability though I suppose, at least the lag won't get unbearable.

[rgirty]

Someone at blizzard finally admitted that they aren't capable of putting in massive pvp on a world scale. It has to be instanced, with a limit for it to be stable.

Those that tried pvp on a large scale on pvp servers over the past few years know this quite well.

Now that blizz has hit what seems to be the end run of the marketing push for the product, they'll scale back one of the major features that just didn't work out.

A world pvp zone...gone.

Also, that dude on the front of the box some guy named... arthas? I think? Why isn't he in the game yet...?

[Maticus]

Also, that dude on the front of the box some guy named... arthas? I think? Why isn't he in the game yet...?

He is! I've seen him loads of times :wink:

He'll be patch 3.3 *nod*

[clevins]

Well, 1) WG isn't instanced in 3.2 (it should be) and 2) 100 v 100 is still pretty large scale.

[rgirty]

Well, 1) WG isn't instanced in 3.2 (it should be) and 2) 100 v 100 is still pretty large scale.

200 of the level 80 people is considered large scale?

RLY?

DAOC and eq have had and continue to have 60-80-100 main raids for a whole slew of years now and wow can't handle 100v100 very well?


As far as arthas being in the game, being able to battle him is the ticket.

I think their promotion of him in their marketing of this game has been a total case of false advertisement.

Patch 3.3 will likely be nearly an entire YEAR post date of the shelf release.

They should have put 5 people doing daily quests and endless rep grinds on the box with a big picture of naxx, because other than the past 60ish days of ulduar that is more or less what it has been.

Or a picture of a DK and Paladin that would cover it as well, or at least be a better representative.

Name the pally HOOLYWURRIOR and the dk DARRKKILLA and you would have a better representation of the game as it is now.

[clevins]

200 people is a pretty big battle. Aside from the server issues, good luck at keeping a decent FPS on larger battles.

On arthas, what did you expect - the end boss of the entire expansion to be in on day 1? Get real. Illidan was never seen by 95% of people in TBC. EVER. In contrast, they've done a good job of seeding Arthas appearances in as you level and quest and it was always clear that he would be the end boss of the final raid in Wrath. If you thought otherwise you were delusional.

QQ about false advertising is pointless - the question is are you having fun? If so, cool. If not, well no one forces anyone else to play. If Arthas never appears as a raid boss you'll have a point, but complaining about him not being in now is bizarre.

[Mazhulsage]

Honestly, I agree, when you put on a box "You'll be able to fight in unlimited sized battles in Wintergrasp" (It was something along those lines.) and "Fight against the Lich King" it should be IN IT.

I've played for 5 years nearly now, and I understand that's not how it works, and that's fine with me... It's the people who log on for the first time, get to level 80 in a few weeks or so cause they're so jazzed to kill the Lich King, then... Oh, wait 3 months.

[Maticus]

To be fair, I've looked at the box and online descriptions of the expansion and I can't see where it says "unlimited" sized battles. And as clevins said, you can't honestly expect the Lich King to be available from launch. Considering how quickly people cleared Naxx, he would've been dead meat within days and where would that leave the game until the next expansion?

Arthas has been in WotLK a lot more than Illidan was in TBC, Blizzard made sure of that. I think they've done a good job of making people understand the lore and care about it this time around.

As far as Wintergrasp goes, it's a shame about the lag problems with groups that are too big, but I doubt the limit will be reached that often. I don't think many people will be left wanting to get in. If so, Blizzard could always up it slightly later, or even during the PTR.

[rgirty]

In contrast, they've done a good job of seeding Arthas appearances in as you level and quest and it was always clear that he would be the end boss of the final raid in Wrath. If you thought otherwise you were delusional.

Alright then, my bad for assuming such.

My assumptions were based upon:

http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/4606524/84400_Full.jpg

I believe that the featured items in the photo were actually in the game, and fairly early on.

http://blog.media-freaks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the-burning-crusade.jpg

Do you see illidan on that box cover? Or do you see a couple of playable races that you could choose day 1 of the xpac?

http://www.mmoger.eu/images/wotlk.jpg
Who's that on the wotlk box?

I'll concede the point that he's in some quests and pops up from time to time here and there.

I guess I was "delusional" in thinking that from the history of the marketing at least from a product view perspective that what you see is what you get.

If Illidan were on the TBC box I would agree, however he isn't and I haven't heard any sort of concrete plans as to when we'll see arthas if ever.

I have a friend who was thinking of taking up the game, he was inquiring about the figure on the box. I gave him the back story, a summarized lore and he thought that was pretty exciting. Right up until the point in which I told him that you can't play him, or battle him or anything at this time.

If the char on the wotlk box is supposed to be a DK, then I can totally understand because that would have made a lot of sense. I can't think it is.

This link http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/?rhtml=y enforces my thought that the person on the box is indeed arthas.

Oh well, he'll be here when he gets here I guess.

[Wintrow]

Well, you ARE fighting him y'know. Just not his physical corpse as in... going blade-to-blade w Frostmourne.

But you're meddling in his business, spoiling his plans and killing his lieutenants. You're not exactly helping him...

And yes, it SHOULD take a while for him to be killable. For ALL the reasons Maticus gave. Demanding otherwise is to ignore the no-life nature of some of MMO's players.

[Anyndra]

Would you really honestly have wanted Arthas in on the first raid of WotLK? He would be dead by now and wouldnt feel epic/great all, more like boring and unexciting.

And what after? I suppose they could have put more Old Gods or Titans or something that have nothing to do with Northrend as the last boss of WotLK, but in my opinion leaving the Lich King there fits much better and is overall more interesting.

[clevins]

YOu're kidding. You're using the BOX ART to whine about this? Get real. The box art isn't any kind of committment to have him in the first raid and sorry, but you're being a whiny little kid on this. If you've played WoW for as long as you have you KNOW that the key bosses are at the end. Anyone who uses the box art blindly and doesn't actually think about how the game's structured is acting like a child. Pull your head out.

[Maticus]

You make a good point about the subject on the cover rgirty, IMO, when looking at the others, and with that said I guess Blizzard could've picked a different image.

They kinda went a different way with this expansion though, the cinematic just revolved around Arthas instead of showing different classes and combat (which I much prefer to the Arthas one). I guess Blizzard just wanted people to actually know what they were fighting this time, and why.

@ Clevins

I think rgirty is just saying that Blizz has over-used the whole "Lich King" thing, considering he's not even in the game yet. It's a fair point really, although not one that many would completely agree with. I don't think rgirty was actually complaining that Arthas isn't a fightable boss yet - or maybe I'm wrong? :P

[rgirty]

YOu're kidding. You're using the BOX ART to whine about this? Get real. The box art isn't any kind of committment to have him in the first raid and sorry, but you're being a whiny little kid on this. If you've played WoW for as long as you have you KNOW that the key bosses are at the end. Anyone who uses the box art blindly and doesn't actually think about how the game's structured is acting like a child. Pull your head out.


lol clevins, i should have worded it better and its my fault for not doing a better job with it.

Ok, let me try to re-phrase.

For a person who is thinking of picking it up for the first time, is it not deceptive? I must say that it is.

They should have featured a DK or something, that would have been more appropriate.


On the subject of arthas being in the game:

If a poll were to have been conducted a week prior to release that asked the question:

Will there be definitive information or a well known plan for arthas to have been inserted in the game as a boss by july 09?


I think a considerable amount of players would have said yes. I don't believe it took near this long for illidan to come into the game.

If you compare arthas to some sunwell bosses, then that makes more sense.

Good points all, and no need to get all fired up with personal attacks!

/woot

[prion]

/sad at the failure of a "dedicated pvp zone"

but i've commented on this before, I think they had already failed at the promise

so now it acts more like a battleground, well what the heck, that's practically what it was anyway

maybe they'll get it in the next expansion.

btw i'm not sure those raids would fill on my server.

[Aerath]

btw i'm not sure those raids would fill on my server.

The problem was they more than overfilled on other realms. They've tried steering players to other sections of the zones, but there was still such a high concentration of people at one spot the servers themselves couldn't cope.
We've had a Wintergrasp victory simply crash the entire Northrend server because the server-stress got too high.

It's become more popular, or at least populated, than they expected/anticipated themselves. I'm not quite sure how they failed to see that, with the current rewards being far and away a better use of time than any other form of PvP.

[Wintrow]

Well, if one could help steer the outcome of the battle from the other side of the zone I guess that would spread players around a bit more. Like... damaging some pylons spread around the zone in order to weaken the gates/walls or something...

[Aerath]

That's exactly what they did. The three towers give the offense a boost, boost the defense if they're gone and shorten the time left for offense if they're destroyed.
They added a 'weekly' for 'em as well. Not that it helped much.

[Maticus]

Yeah Illidan was in the first major patch after TBC was released, 2.1, 4 months after the expansion went live.

[Mazhulsage]

Are you serious? "Doubt we will reach the 100 cap"? We fill 2 raids QUICK on a PvE Medium pop server (Before WG starts) even at 12 PM, or 11 PM. Obviously at peak time, we have about 3 full raid groups at the launch of WG.

[rgirty]

Yeah Illidan was in the first major patch after TBC was released, 2.1, 4 months after the expansion went live.

And he isn't even on the box.

How would you like to buy a box of fruit loops cereal open it up and get BRAN flakes, because they are good for you and you should eat them.

A few months from now you might get fruit loops... maybe.

[Shellar]

IMHO, figures depicted on box covers represent "stuff that you'll find in the starting areas", rather than "bosses that you will get to fight" (at least, I don't recall fighting any Dwarven Gunner bosses in Vanilla).

For WotLK, the 'starter zone' is Acherus and the surrounding chunk of Plaguelands where new Death Knights start - and Arthas is certainly present there.

(Speaking of broken promises, however, where are our new dances?)

[Maticus]

(Speaking of broken promises, however, where are our new dances?)

I asked Blizzard about this; they said new dances are still being worked on. They stated that, for such a big feature, they didn't want it to be lame when it was added to the game, so expect it to be a big thing when it does appear.

[prion]

with acheivements :rolleyes:

[Mazhulsage]

Yeah, in other words Blizzard is simply going to make it either A. A "Pay 100g for your first dance, 200g for your next, 300g for the next one after that." etc. B. A "Pay 5 dollars per dance." through their site.

They should be spending time on more important things instead of friggin dances...

[rgirty]

Dances are important to some, I see people dancing all over the place all the time.

[waflob]

They should be spending time on more important things instead of friggin dances...
Totally agree with this - for instance, making sure that people can enter instances without that stupid error message.

[rgirty]

Totally agree with this - for instance, making sure that people can enter instances without that stupid error message.

People had to wait 30-45 minutes for server que back when WoTLK was new. That wasn't addressed, blizz simply let the demand die down.

Maybe they are thinking if they put enough solo content in the game and after everyone gets all their conquest badges the same will happen.

[Mazhulsage]

NEVER should a problem be "Well, it'll fix itself eventually" when we're paying for it... I know that's been said 12 million times too many, including myself... The thing is, I know they said they're working on it (Main page) but it's not enough to tell us something is SCREWED up, and you're "slowly working on it."

[Wintrow]

Update seems to be that they've found a solution and will implement it next patch or sth...

[Maticus]

Blizzard has announced a few changes to Wintergrasp that will take place on the next PTR build:

In the next PTR build we will be implementing several changes to how the Wintergrasp queue and group formations will work.


While in the queue for Wintergrasp, you will have an icon on your mini map that will allow you to leave the queue. This will function much like the current battleground queue button that is present on the mini map.
Players that queue for the Wintergrasp battle and are selected to join will be placed into raid groups upon entering the zone. These raid groups will function similarly to the battleground raid groups with a few exceptions. Players can leave it at any time, the leader can issue invites, etc. The only restriction is that if a player leaves Wintergrasp while the battle is active, they will be removed from the raid (to make room for the player that will take their place).
If the battle is not active this does not happen.


Thank you all for your feedback and bugs so far, it is incredibly helpful to us.

[semiiramiis]

Also, that dude on the front of the box some guy named... arthas? I think? Why isn't he in the game yet...?

You haven't fallen over Mr. Skulls on his Knees yet? He's everywhere. My only question is how is this going to affect the wg fishing daily? If we're just teleported out... that makes it harsh. I never queued for it, nor engaged in any pvp...just went to my closest fishing hole and completed it. If we're queued, then we're effectively AFKing if all we're there for is to fish.

[Aerath]

WG takes around 10-15 minutes on average. The next WG will then be in 2.5 hours.
I think Blizzard considers that plenty of time and a reasonable window to get your quest done.

You will, from the way it reads, be booted out if you're not queued and selected.