World of Warcraft to Lose Some PvP in Warlords of Draenor

[John Keefer]

World of Warcraft to Lose Some PvP in Warlords of Draenor

The new World of Warcraft expansion isn't even out yet, and Blizzard has cut one of the promised PvP aspects of the game.

At BlizzCon in November, Blizzard unveiled its expansion plans for World of Warcraft, announcing Warlords of Draenor. One of the key components of the expansion was to be a PvP setup called Trail of the Gladiator that allowed players to only compete during certain times and with a specific type of "Trial-only" gear.

Well, you can now cross that feature off the list.

While the goal was "to concentrate high-level competition to specific times, to better match players against competitive opponents, and to make exploitation more difficult," Blizzard said that feedback led them to cancel those plans.

"Ultimately, players who couldn't play during the pre-set times for Trial of the Gladiator might feel like they're missing out, and it was possible that normal Arena games would lose a lot of their replay value without rating to push for," Blizzard said in a blog post [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/12953018/warlords-of-draenor-pvp-update-2-18-2014]. "Because of these issues, we've decided not to continue development of Trial of the Gladiator and to focus our efforts on giving players more ways to find PvP that suits them."

But, Blizzard doesn't plan on ignoring arena-style PvP all together. Instead, it will bring back Skirmishes, which were originally eliminated after Cataclysm. "Skirmishes will return as a form of unranked Arena play that will allow you to queue for 2v2 or 3v3 battles with friends or by yourself. Winning a Skirmish will reward you with Honor and a random bonus, which could be gold, more Honor, a small amount of Conquest Points, or possibly something entirely different. We think this will be a great way for players who haven't tried Arenas before to get their feet wet, and will allow experienced players to experiment with alternate specs or builds without worrying about tanking their rating."

Blizzard also plans to institute a "Spectator Invite System" which will give players and tournament organizers a spectator mode without third-party add-ons. An Organizer will invite two PvP teams to a "War Game." Once the teams are invited, anyone listed in the Organizer's party can watch the event. There will also be War game-only gear for these events. The new system will be made available to add-on makers to allow them to come up with tools for tournaments.

The timing of the announcement comes as Blizzard launches Season 15 PvP today with the new 5.4.7 update [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/12950619]. Season 14 gear is now available for Honor Points instead of Conquest point. A few other changes were made to PvP and can be found in the patch notes. In addition, the new Prideful PvP gear will be dropping from the Celestial bosses on the Timeless Isle.

Check out the patch notes for all the changes.

Source: 5.4.7 Patch Notes [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/12953018/warlords-of-draenor-pvp-update-2-18-2014]







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[Jandau]

That Trial thing sounds like a terrible idea, mostly for the reasons listed for dropping it. Not every idea is a good one and a dev should be ready to abandon the ones that don't seem to be working out. Nice of them to have communicated openly both about wanting to put it in and about dropping it.

 

[shintakie10]

Yeah, I kind of figured that idea would eventually take a dive. Its an interestin idea in theory that would absolutely eliminate tons of the ways people use to cheat the system currently, but it came with way too many drawbacks.

 

[Charli]

Was a pretty minor feature/idea to begin with and seemed like it would flop anyway. Nothing to see here.

PvPers aren't raiders, they're not going to conglomerate on a specific time to do the best content. They're too busy being free spirits and ganking people behind the inn.

(Ever noticed this, Raiders are all like...slow, and philosophical and PvPers are the wild children, with extreme amounts of energy? No? Just the guilds I've been in?)

Whatever, nothing lost, I'd be more infuriated if something major got dropped from Raiding/Character Models/Garrisons.

All is well in the World of Warcrafts.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I don't really play MMOs too much anymore but open unrestricted PvP is the only PvP that I go for. That whole living player controlled world thing. It feels like the only reason to play an MMO. Otherwise it is just a sub par RPG.

 

[JayRPG]

I just find this type of thing to be the epitome of what is wrong with WoW now.

Blizzard 1: "Hey, we've got a cool idea"
Blizzard 2: "Yeah that is cool, let's test it"
Test subjects 1-9: "This is cool"
Test subject 10: "This isn't cool because what if I don't have time"
Blizzard 2: "Well we can't not cater to absolutely every single person in the entire world, scrap the idea"

It's the very reason I stopped playing WoW mid-way through Cataclysm (after playing it since Vanilla launch), absolutely everything Blizzard does HAS to be catered to absolutely everyone with every crazy play-style imaginable.

Good ideas get scrapped, many ideas never even make it past some scribble on a sheet of paper and all because they have some fear that they might leave out a small/tiny portion of their player base.

You can't cater to people who play 8 hours a day with nothing but pure passion for the game AND to someone who plays 30 minutes every other day because they don't have time to play or they are just not that interested.

They just want everybody to be on even ground, but it's the most uneven ground that has ever existed.

In a single player RPG, somebody who plays it 10 hours a day could finish it and see all content in 4 days while someone only able to play 2 hours a week will have to wait 5 months to see all the content;
For some reason Blizzard thinks that everyone needs to be able to see and have access to all content, all the time, any time, right now, immediately.
Whether you put in 2 hours a week or 10 hours a day, you are still able to do and see the exact same content and all meaning of accomplishment is now 100% gone.

And if you think feelings of accomplishment haven't faded from WoW then you only need wait a short time for the next expansion and $60 paid instant level 90's.

Upfront cost, monthly subscription and a pay-to-win micro-transaction store...

 

[devilmore]

"The new World of Warcraft expansion isn't even out yet, and Blizzard has cut one of the promised PvP aspects of the game."
You are kind of saying that as if cutting features after release is more common (or a better idea)...

 

[Verkula]

Nothing new there, this happens every time with almost every expansion, they've cut the "new dances" from Lich King, and Path of Titans from Cataclysm, so this was pretty much expected.