Honor system revamp and world PvP

I always liked the 15-20 person raids better. There was a better feeling of unity as roles could not be as simple as "spam shadowbolt till it drops". You could also figure out who wiped the group without trying to pick through a mile long combat log. MC and BWL were boring as hell but learning ZG took practice and was entertaining for the first few runs. I also enjoyed AQ20 because the bosses had that combat feel where it really mattered if you stopped doing what you were supposed to. I look at the fight in AQ with the bug that must be led around as a promising sign of what kinds of interesting encounters there might be in the BC.

Arena PvP has been something we've been hoping for ever since Blizzard put the Arena into Orgrimmar. I think that the game would have been so much better with uninstanced BGs and the Arena PvP to begin with. I might be biased though, I played during the Golden Age of PVP, where talent builds meant nothing and cities were raized to the ground just for existing. We need objectives to keep the War feeling and a scoreboard for the competitive PvPers. Battlegrounds are too arcade-like for a persistent world.

@NickMmC- It would be extremely difficult to make a tiered progression through 5 person dungeons while also includeing a raiding game. All it would take is one person in your group to be over equiped to trivialize the lower tier dungeons.

Edit: Woah I didn't see this part:
We will have a dungeon difficulty level setting. Party leaders for groups will have the ability to set the level with two different settings -- normal and hard. For example, a 60 to 62 dungeon on hard will turn into a level 70 dungeon with level 70 rewards in it. In a level 70 dungeon on hard, the enemies will be extremely dangerous but you will definitely be rewarded better for doing the harder difficulty mode.

This is going to add a lot of value to the content as time progresses. I liked how in the other interview they said the same technology could be used retroactively to enhance the older dungeons.

"It would be extremely difficult to make a tiered progression through 5 person dungeons while also includeing a raiding game. All it would take is one person in your group to be over equiped to trivialize the lower tier dungeons."

To me, that makes the same fundamental assumption that most people make, that I just don't. Namely, why should the raid gear be so much better that it would trivialise smaller dungeon content? If the answer is that without such incentive then no one would raid, then surely that is an indictment of raiding as a play style?

I don't see why small dungeon tiered content cannot sit side by side with similiar raid content, and provide similiar-ish rewards (with a small gap in the raiders favour, perhaps). If raiding is its own reward, if people love raiding then they will still raid, even with a reduced 'gear gap' incentive.

"If raiding is its own reward, if people love raiding then they will still raid, even with a reduced 'gear gap' incentive." Amen. This could be said in response to so many arguments against making "casual" gaming on par with raiding. If raiding sucks so bad that the rewards have to eclipse casual gaming rewards, then SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH RAIDING. duh

If casual gamers are so obsessed with being at the top of the food chain then they should be required to play at a level fitting that bracket. Going into BWL and killing Nef is supposed to be a huge challenge that requires 40 people to generally work as a well organized unit. The whole point of these raids is so that only a small small percent of players will get the greatest equipment. You don't deserve an epic mount if you can't put the gold together. Likewise you don't deserve epic equipment if you can't get a raid organized. If you don't enjoy raiding ( I don't really ) then you need to realize that you shouldn't expect to be a Max stated destroyer of worlds. The Warrior in top tier equipment who just killed you in PvP probably has tanked things that could also destroy you in one hit. The difference between you and him is that when you get a new weapon you /cheer and marvel at your new dps goodness and when the main tank of a Naxx guild gets a new weapon everyone rejoices because sometimes the increase in threat caused lets the raid take better advantage of its gear.

The reason raiders need gear that eclipses casuals is because the mobs they are fighting completely eclipse anything the casual will encounter. Theres no character development in WoW, how do you expect people to face increasingly difficult content not meant for mass consumption if they can't increase their stats to a level that puts them on par with raid mobs? The 25 man cap both allows casuals an attempt at new content while also controlling the rate at which new level 70s will obtain MC and BWL equipment. There has to be a gear difference in WoW because that's how the game was designed. Even if you had the Tier 2 set given to you your not going to be at the same level as someone who is willing to put in the time to get full enchants and not bitch about it.

There's a number of points in your post that I'd like to address. First, I really do appreciate that people enjoy the challenge of raiding. That's not in question. I would never want to change or interfere in that enjoyment, although you admit yourself that you don't particularly enjoy it. I get the sense from your post that you consider the existance of a gear "gradient" to be integral to your enjoyment of the game. You need to feel that the hours you put in to differentiate your characters gear must be rewarded. I understand that, to be honest, and I wish I had that option outside of raiding. But what you perhaps like to characterise as laziness is, in my case, a total unwillingness to participate in raiding because the bullshit you have to put up with pretty much ruins my gaming experience. I've raided, not extensively, but enough to know it's simply not for me. I also would like to say that the hours I put into my character are rewarded fairly. The difference between you and me is that I have a far lower tolerance threshold for putting up with raiding. Call it laziness if you like, but it is what it is.

Secondly, the "raiders need epic gear because of epic encounters argument" is, in my view, only a partial justification. The full truth of the matter is, players favouring one play style (raiding) not only get gear that lets them fulfill their playing style, but also dominate another (PvP). If you think this is fair, then you are saying that your play style is somehow more deserving than not only mine (solo/small group), but also people who favour PvP. I don't have much sympathy with that attitude, particularly when you consider that there are many players that put as much time in as raiders do. Why should the same time investment spent solo not yield the same rewards? I also think you conflate player preference with design-driven behaviour. They are not the same. People would flee raiding if there were alternatives and the game would not collapse.

"how do you expect people to face increasingly difficult content not meant for mass consumption if they can't increase their stats to a level that puts them on par with raid mobs?"

The point is that Blizzard design both ends of the stick, here. They control the gear and the mobs. There is no law of design or gaming that necessitates the gear gradient we see in WoW today. You can have epic encounters and smaller five mans that give out roughly equivalent gear. Why could Blizzard not design tiered 5 mans similiar to the current raid content? I have yet to hear a compelling argument against this, from a design standpoint.

At the end of the day, I believe the gear disparity is part of what players like yourself enjoy. That's fine, I can honestly understand that. We all like to differentiate our characters. I don't accept that raiding is somehow more deserving than other playstyles. It deserves no special place in the MMORPG pantheon.

You put a lot a words in my mouth and made a lot of generalizations. I'm not a player, I don't play WoW anymore (quit because of raiding), but yes I do believe there should be something called a power gap. The power gap represents the fact that a child cannot injure a full grown man and a trained UFC fighter will beat the life out someone who has only ever gotten into bar fights. There should be a noticable gap between someone who has run UBRS in PUGs 20 times and the Guild Master who has run UBRS 100 times in beta, 150 times in retail, cleared MC every seven day for a year, cleared MC,BWL and ZG every week for months straight and now makes Naxx attempts while all the while trying to coordinate 60 bickering players who all want their Deathstrikers or some other specific item in an old raid instance. Someone who has done all that and continues to do so is on the level of High Overlord Saurfang, not an Orgimmar grunt. Some people are well into the 200 day play time range. If you have been PvPing that long and only PvPing then yes you should definitly have gear on that level, but if your only coming in on weekends to do AB 3 times, tough luck. It's unrealistic from a lore and gameplay perspective that we can all be happy little players at the same skill and power levels.

When I did play WoW I had 3-4 pieces of Tier 1 and the rest were blues, greens and low rank pvp gear. My gear never gave me an unfair advantage in combat as I rested somewhere between a MC raider and a casual in terms of stats. In PvP my experience was that I could fight and win when I worked as a group or got the drop. Sure I got one shot by warriors weilding Ashkandis and AQ gear but it's not like I didn't have a chance. I had just as much fun watching people in their tier 2 die slowly and helplessly as I would imagine they would killing me in one shot. I just made sure they were still going to die after I did. Where you see gear disparity I see gear diversity. The problem is, until the Xpac comes out and the deluge of new 5 mans give us something to do there will be a gap in the progression of the game. Theres lots of games, if it's bugging you so much go try something else for a few months. I would suggest Shadow of The Collusus since it's my favorite game recently. No gear except some secret stuff that you can only get after clearing.

Getting back to the main topic I think that if the changes to the honor system make it easier to get top tier equipment it would be for the better but I don't think someone standing in a queue all day is any more or less deserving then someone running in circles for dreamfoil for 5 hours before raiding another 6. Raiding contributes to the economy and to the community in ways that have no substitute in PvP. Hopefully by adding more outdoor PvP objectives the game can find a balance that lets people enjoy PvP while exploring and questing that will also contribute to interaction more interesting then "2 @ LM capping". It's a multiplayer game right? Players should be rewarded for not being antisocial.

I went to all the bother of registering for this discussion :)

I think we're actually not in total disagreement, here, and I apologise if I put words in your mouth. Reading back I guess I did. I do fully agree that time investment should be rewarded with gear differentiation. That's never been the issue. The issue is that the game requires this time investment to be of a certain form - raiding, or even worse, the PVP grind. I'd just like a third avenue for people like me who refuse to raid or grind PvP. The faction rewards, you must admit, are small beer. But perhaps like you say the introduction of more five mans will even this out.

I partake in discussions like these because I enjoy the debate, not because I need to vent. I still play WoW, and my whole time playing is certainly not spent in an angry rage. I just enjoy the discussion, and have an interest in MMORPGs not just as a gamer but also from a slightly academic bent. I already have Shadow of the Colossus, by the way. As a gaming experience it's almost diametrically opposed to anything WoW offers, but there are similarities. Do you remember the first time you took a griffon ride in WoW? I felt a similar sense of wonder at this massive, beautiful (if admittedly static) world the developers had created, similiar to what I felt upon galoping round SOTC on my horse.

Just to touch on this point - "It's unrealistic from a lore and gameplay perspective that we can all be happy little players at the same skill and power levels".

I don't believe that's axiomatic, frankly. It's the same as the 1-60 levelling curve. Some players will reach 60 far quicker than others, but sooner or later everyone will. I don't believe that hurts the game. The same could be said of gear/content. Raiding could guarantee a quicker return, but to forever lock out people that don't favour that play style is a mistake. I actually think this whole mess would not be such a problem if Blizzard had been a little quicker out of the blocks with the expansion. It's clear that as development proceeded they began holding back content that would have become irrelevant once the expansion was released. This, coupled with the late arrival of a lot of raid content that was no doubt intended for release, caused the 5/40 man imbalance we see today.

A couple of final points I shall attempt to make without putting words in your mouth! "Raiding contributes to the economy and to the community in ways that have no substitute in PvP"

I'd actually contend that this isn't really true. The raiding community pretty much contributes nothing to how I play the game. I'm largely ignorant of guild progress on my server, I use absolutely nothing, buy nothing that raid players put on the AH. I think the raiding community is more insulated than you imagine. Obviously there is the stuff that Blizzard has hard-coded into the game (gates of AQ opening up field quests, for example), but again that's design-driven behaviour and not a natural outcome of there being a raiding community. There's the economic effects of sought-after items on the AH, but again that's absolutely ancilliary to my game playing experience and could just as easily be replicated if Blizzard suddently decided that a bunch of particular pots were needed for PVP. I exist in almost perfect isolation from raiders, in other words.

"It's a multiplayer game right? Players should be rewarded for not being antisocial".

I think this is an important point. Social behaviour should be rewarded, but antisocial behaviour (not what I'd call it, but I'll get to that) should not be punished, either. Many people have talked about the feeling of "being alone, together" in response to the question "why play an MMORPG when you want to solo?". It's because the feeling of being surrounded by people going about their business brings worth to the experience. I might prefer soloing/small grouping, but I prefer doing it in a world that has real people in it.

Think about this. WoW has 6.5 million or so subscribers. It has literally increased the MMORPG market in the West by a massive margin, 5 or 6 times what it was before. Why is this? Obviously there's lots of good reasons - it's a far more polished affair than anything that came before, for one. But I think the most important is that it is accessible. My girlfriend plays WoW. Her boss plays WoW. My boss plays WoW, as does his wife. None of these people are by any stretch "gamers". This game has excelled because it breaks the model of previous games. Hardcore content is not a mainstream business winner. The more playstyles WoW supports, the better it does.

This has got rather far from the original PvP discussion, hasn't it? :)

Thanks for your further comments Nick, I just wanted to let you know that someone is reading and appreciated what you had to say :^). An example to support your thoughts about soloing: I enjoy working on a quest by myself, but find it even more enjoyable to do so in an environment where I can stop and ask another player about parts of the quest (just like you might stop and ask for directions at the gas station IRL), read active dialogue (in character and out of character, both) and pipe in from time to time, and cooperate with other players as the need/desire strikes me, rather than being forced to even if all I feel like at that moment is to jump in to the game world for a few minutes for my own entertainment. Soloing is not so much a separate play style than one of many possible ways to approach content.

Only if Sherlock Holmes had a global chat channel. Imagine:

/say Who done it?

Although, Sherlock Holmes never had to solve a case a few thousand other people had already solved... I can't imagine a life without such thrills.

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Hard to say solitary play is so great when WoW's design hardly supports cooperative play. With the quest reward being granted only after you run off to the NPC with the lit question mark above their head, what's the reasoning behind staying for a stranger to get their last few raptor claws? When the goal is getting to the next level sticking around to kill a couple extra completely harmless lionesses is the antithesis of efficacy! YOUR MISSION IS TO MAKE THE GRIND AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE SOLDIER!! Go go go go go go

Ketzup, I appreciate the humor and the point of your post, but I'd like to clarify that I was not speaking specifically about the implementation of solo play in WoW, nor was I promoting all forms of interactivity that are currently employed by players. So, as clever and true as your comments are, I don't think the criticisms invalidate my point about the enjoyment that can be derived from soloing in multiplayer environments : there is value in soloing in a game where social interaction is possible.