First let me start off by giving you all a little history lesson on my World of Warcraft experience. Back when the game was still in the late stages of Beta testing my brother, Graev, received an invite to join. Graev and I were always Warcraft fans and Blizzard fanboys to say the least. We have enjoyed playing Warcraft 1, 2, 3, SC, Diablo 1-2 and it was a no brainer for us to pick up WoW. We love MMORPG’s and having a Blizzard made MMO was absolutely enough to get us screaming like little school girls. So Graev enjoyed beta and FilePlanet was offering early access to a beta phase for subscribers. Being members of FilePlanet we grabbed access for me and we went from there.
So right from the start we were hooked. We went from beta, to stress test, to open beta and were in love with the game. After the game released we played the game up until level 45ish together. I was a Hunter and Graev was a Warlock (both Horde, Orcs) and we enjoyed playing together. However, Graev was simply not enjoying the game as much as he thought he would. He decided to quit the game and go back to his love for console games and single player RPG’s. I continued on in WoW to 60 and eventually (fast forward two years) landed myself over 6 level 60’s, 2 of which were completely geared in Tier 1 and some Tier 2 gear, and rank 11 in PVP. I was what you would call a “hardcore raider” back then. I would stay up until the early hours of the morning raiding with my guilds (yes, I say guilds because I was in multiple guilds on multiple servers) and I would spend hours daily PVPing. I wasn’t addicted to the game like some people become; I simply enjoyed it that much. However as time went on and I entered my second year of playing I decided that enough was enough and I quit abruptly. I had enough of the raids, piss poor pvp system, and the community in general. Burning Crusade was about 5 months from release at this point and I honestly couldn’t care less. To narrow it down further I quit the same day that Naxxramas was released.
You are now up to date on my WoW history. So as the title of this blog entry says, “Why does WoW sound like so much fun?”. Why am I reading that so many people are going back to the game and allowing myself to say “gosh, I sorta kinda maybe want to go back too… i think..”. Cuppycake recently returned to WoW because of her fondness for a guild she left behind. Bildo returned to WoW because, like me, he has absolutely nothing better to do right now while he waits for beta’s to reach release. What hooks does Blizzard have still that are tugging me back?
As I mentioned, the PVP system in WoW was aweful. It was Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, and Alterac valley; I think I named them all. They were boring, repetitive, and offered little to no reward. The gear from PVP wasn’t at all competitive with gear obtained from PVE raids and the huge guilds that cleared BWL had the upper hand against the players who were forced to group with the Asian Farmers (Who were surprisingly good at PVP – the language barrier was simply the problem). But I hear all of this has changed. I hear there is something in the game called “Arenas” now? Can someone explain what they are? I’ve also heard that the gear is actually good now from PVP and the system has been totally revamped from what it was when I quit. I would love to know more about this.
The raiding and large end-game PvE side to the game do not interest me at all and I will likely never return to that way of gaming. I’ve outgrown the need to be “uber” and I simply care about being the best that I can be for my playstyle. I am still “hardcore” in that I spend a lot of time playing and I am good at what I play (by my own standards) but I can log off any time without feeling gilt or like I am “falling behind”. I am interested in the leveling process from 1-60 because that’s always been the most fun that WoW had to offer. I enjoyed the lower level PVP and I enjoyed the questing in various regions. The quests always felt polished and repeatable.
World of Warcraft in general is very polished and obviously a masterpiece. Yep, as much as I hate WoW now (oh the irony that I actually might want to play again), I still think it’s a masterpiece in it’s own right. World of Warcraft has many traits that MMO devs should look to as an example of what should be done. I won’t go into those because that would be entirely off topic, not to mention WoW’s enormous list of flaws that devs should also avoid like the plague. I am still drawn to polished gameplay like moths to a flame.
So am I going to return to WoW? Most likely not. I have Pirates of the Burning Sea to look forward to and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to drool over. I can’t bring myself to spending money or time in something that I would drop in a heartbeat. I am however truly interested in knowing what changes have been made to PvP and I would love to know if Blizzard has added anything to the leveling side of the game from 1-70.
I am seriously considering canceling my WoW subscription. I haven’t played in several months and have little to no interest in doing so. I think I will wait until a friend who’s currently in Afghanistan (with whom we used to play often) has been back for a month to see if we start playing again, and if not—which I suspect will be the case since we’ll be doing more tabletop gaming with him & his family—I’ll probably cancel.
It really is a neat game, but there’s only so long I can play the same game before I want something different. More than two years is a very respectable period of time to get out of one game.
I wasn’t addicted to crack like some people become; I simply enjoyed it 😉
I won’t be going back to WoW. I’d rather mess around with betas and just do other things in general until War releases. One, the game just has zero draw for me at this point. Two, I’d hate to get back in the groove with my guild there only to drop the game like a bad habit and disappear when War comes out.
Take a cold shower whenever you have the urge to return and gut it out. 🙂
I went back. Indeed. To level to 70 and get the Grand Marshal stuff I never had the fortitude to do so.
That’s casual playing. For the hardcores, there’s still two options as there always were: Raiding or PVP.
Instead of BGs though, the “elite” will spend their time better in the Arenas. These are matches (2v2, 3v3, 5v5) of teams (set up similarly to guilds with a banner and everything) pitted against each other in a straight up death match.
You get arena points (different than honor) for your matches. It’s set up like chess ranking, so that the worse your team is, the worse players you face, and the better your team is the better players you face. The downside to this, is that if you suck it’ll take forever to save up for your arena set of gear. But if you’re good at it, within a month or two you could have a full set of “raid-equivalent” gear (probably better in a lot of aspects) as well as special epic flying mounts, and whatnot.
It’s really way above my head. I like to PvP but I don’t get out my headset or my strategy playbook when I do. I just play. It’s meant for the competitive types. And the bonus is that it doesn’t take more than maybe an hour a week to get your minimum 10 matches in. You just need to have your friends who are on your arena team also show up.
But for me, the Honor rewards are still looking mighty nice and are cheap as hell these days. I’m talking 2 weeks of 1 hour or so a day playing AB or EotS (Eye of the Storm, new BG) or even AV to get 15k honor and enough tokens to buy the grand marshal’s crossbow or a couple pieces of the GM gear.
If you had more free time, you coud have the whole GM set inside of a month, because Honor updates daily now and the points required to buy things are very low. They’re not exactly “omgtehepix” like Arena or Raid gear, but they’re close.
I wouldn’t be back in it, if I knew Pirates was coming out soon. But right now, there’s nothing better to do, so I’m back to level to 70 and see what I can get from the BGs before I go a-sailing.
If you’re really bored, I’d recommend it. I really would.
JoBildo pretty much summed it up nicely (and yes, very late reply), but a few things are left unsaid/given a wrong angle.
I have to say, the grind from 60-70 is not painful at all, you dont have the periods you did in old wow where you cant find quests and have to grind a level or two, its very easy and relaxing, not to mention enjoyable.
The main thing they did with PvP was add a stat called Resillience, which basicly reduces the chance you’ll be critcal struck and reduces the damage from critical strikes. This stat is an absoloute must in pvp now, you wont get anywhere without it which now means that you cant pvp, without pvp gear.
The second thing they did was to make the arena’s which is a death match; you loose when all the members on your team has been killed, or win if its the other way around. They also removed the use of every consumable (not magicly created within the arena; Healthstones, Mage water/food)inside the arena. This basicly makes it so that now skill does matter in pvp.
You get rating gained for matches won, and rating lost for matches lost, at the end of the week, your rating gets calculated into points, which is then used to buy items for.
You only get points from the team (2v2, 3v3, 5v5) that will give you the most points and not all three.
For arena points you get a 5 piece set; Head, Robe, Shoulders, Gloves, Legs. And you can also buy all sorts of weapons. Arenas operate in seasons (currently season 2) where at each new season they implement improved gear and weapons. The reason for the seasons is that is has been made a competition, where the top teams of each Battlegroup goes on a qualifying server and in the end a real life tournement. So now its become alot more competitive, more than just the gear upgrade you would get.
The Battleground rewards is where you can collect the rest of your pvp set to complete it; you have a neck, a ring, boots, belt, bracers all in the same quality and same looks. (these are the epic rewards)You also have a blue set which has resillience and can get you started.
It all comes down to this major change: you can still grind your way to the gear, but its not the time you put into it, its how you put your time in it and if you have the skill needed and not the spare time. There are some slight imbalance issues still (Hunters for one are a dread to play in arena’s) and any warlock with a healer is just absoloutely redicolous if they know what they are doing (in 2v2). But its mostly balanced and very well made, most combos their “anti teams”, some has fewer than others, but its mostly down to how good you are, how good your teammates are, and how well you play together (when you have the neccesary gear ofc)
I find it extremely fun and i love it (im pretty average+ ranked, playing a hunter, but its still very very fun and i would deffinetly reccomend it.
Raiding is pretty much the same, but atleast now, people with PvE gear cant walse in and 2 shot pvp’ers. If you got some time on your hands, enjoy the grind from 60-70, find a good partner/partners (nothing less than your skill level will do, or you’ll annoy yourself to death), do some battlegrounds to get the feel of your class again and get familiar with all the new skills other classes have aswell as yours and how to counter them, get some basic gear and throw yourself into the arenas.
Thanks for the fantastic reply Brownbeard. 🙂 You gave me all the info I could possibly want about the PVP system. Now I’m definitely wanting to give WoW PvP another try! Just need to find out how to afford multiple game accounts….