I actually sat down firmly stick-in-ass to write a very serious post about some very serious topics. I re-watched a few of the old Albis vids yesterday and I was reminded how a lot of the best PvPers that I played with before TBC quit due to the death of World PvP in WoW. It made me realize a question I really wish I had asked at Blizzcon:
Are you fags like gay or something?
I'd have probably tried to phrase it a bit more politely and planned to ask:
Did you realize that with the changes you added to TBC you would be effectively removing World PvP from the game?
Now I don't know which faction of The Sucks complained about dieing on a PvP server enough times to warrant the Flying Mount, the Garadar guards, or the ability to hide 100% of the time within instances, but I wish a plague of penises upon their domain.
I'm not going to lie to you because I have strict video game blogging ethics -- I kind of maybe liked it the first time I flew. Things happened pretty fast, besides it was just beta...and it's not like it was even my gold! I still remember how Stryfe got on Beta to give me the gold; I flew around for hours listening to my guild wipe and curse at each other on some Naxxramas boss from which I needed no loot -- I apologize for that was somewhat of an "in-joke" and I try to keep this site strictly just-the-tip when it comes to such things.
Actually, I remember way back in the day there was a bug where you could make a macro that jumped and tried to logout at the same time letting you climb into the sky leading to hours of flying around and sky-dueling. After sending everyone I saw in the air tells, "You'll be my kite and I'll be your kite string" which NOBODY got, I went to Grim Batol to check things out, and wow I really do have some sort of weird "exploration" fetish. The point? Yes, the point is that flying around in the sky is fun, but, in TBC, the price you've paid is the ability to engage in World PvP -- hopefully WotLK will be our "kite string."
I spent about 2 hours today running around trying to get some World PvP clips for a video that I'd like to do. I'd love to do a World PvP/Battlegrounds video with light 5v5 and dueling -- I will inevitably be doing 2s/3s seriously next season hopefully, but it will be on my gnome, and it feels strange to have never released a "traditional" PvP video on Radikal. I didn't really find anyone while running around today, but perhaps Blade's Edge is just a horrible place, so I ended up pugging AB and WSG for a while. It was a lot of fun -- I didn't fraps anything and probably won't until I can practice BGing for a bit longer as I feel extremely rusty, but it was honestly way more fun than I had expected. The video is not exactly on the horizon, but don't think I've lost interest or anything. My goal is to have a teaser out for it before 2.3 hits, but don't hate me if I end up slacking. ^^
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57 comments:
You have a gnome?
Christ people are rerolling as much as I have.
Yuuppp. Can't take the human casting animation any longer.
No silliness post today?
I hate world pvp. I want to fly around like a noob in tanaris and not get ganked by three 45s who think they're cool.
ps carebear clouds are great for finding rogues, just hover above the ground and fly in circles til you see one
WTB Second Base Article
Wpvp is the essence of the best pvp ever.
I love the albis vids.
Dysic still wins BG pvp, though.
Sounds like you'd like DAoC, that was all open field pvp. Great game :)
Rerolling for casting animations.
I approve :D
Done it twice so far ;>
Speaking of DaoC.. Mythic, the creators of DaoC are making Warhammer, which is really why it's getting hype for those that don't know.
"WTB Second Base Article"
seconded
World pvp is alive and well in vegas.
I didn't really want to get into this in my article, but I spent the morning arguing with Dep, who doesn't believe Flying Mounts are to blame for the lack of extravagant World PvP videos anymore, it's that the game has changed such that 1vX is less possible.
I didn't really agree entirely, but there are certainly a few specs of some classes that make 1vX near impossible even if you significantly outgear and outskill them.
BM Hunter, WE Mage, and FG lock are the three that really stand out. All three can put out a huge amount of essentially unavoidable damage for at least some period of time and all 3 are not easy rushdown targets in groups. By the way, I had a FG lock searing pain me earlier today 3 times for 950+ dmg each with no trinkets and no beserking. Cool bro.
It certainly isn't possible to win the 1v5 and up types of fights you could occasionally pull off in WoW 1.0 without extreme luck or stupidity on their part.
It's somewhat tragic that there weren't really any elemental mage videos that came at the end of WoW 1.0 with a fully PvE'd out mage. (not that I can think of anyway) I remember with Atiesh running around with something like 740dmg, nearly 40% scorch/fireblast crit, and 4300 health and it being simply RETARDED. (a scorch+fireblast double crit would kill people in t1/t2) Everyone complained about how much damage mages were doing in PvE and PvP, and with wow 2.0 came the end of rolling ignites and expanded talents that did little for the class in PvP. (Blazing speed the exception back then)
Is it no longer possible to be as flashy as back in 1.0?
Rolling ignites were the heart of fire if you ask me, double/triple critting people pre TBC and watching them burn to death from the ignite ticks was just pure ownage. Fire still is my favourite spec, but it just aint the same without rolling ignites.
And Raddy if you had ever released a video with those stats, people woulda whined to no end :(
Personally i woulda loved to see it though.
And the FG lock thing? Fuck warlocks! Everyone hates them and their imbaness.
You are both right.
Flying mounts killed off opportunities for world pvp, but the changes to hp scaling, as well as resilience, made the 1VN opportunities that present themselves infinitely harder to win.
You base your entire strat on them making mistakes...the longer the fight gets, the more chances they have to do something right.
Oh yea, forgot one thing, nerf WE mages too, i wanna be able to spec fire :P
My casting animation favs:
1.Undead female
2.Human female
3.Undead Male
I am re-rolling alliance mage and love escape artist, but I might take human female just for animations... to a degree I feel animations affect playing confidence.
Noggenfrogger: Boosting player confidence since 1963
no respect for troll casting animations? troll male is about the coolest thing I've seen. too bad it's a pve race
''the way, I had a FG lock searing pain me earlier today 3 times for 950+ dmg each with no trinkets and no beserking. Cool bro.''
Thats ~1300 spelldmg with DK, or you had coe on yourself. :p
Yea, no world pvp kinda ruined everything tbfh. Arenas alone just dont cut it at all.
Nah no CoE. I even SS'd it because I thought it was so ridiculous and nobody in guild believed me! He might have had flask or buffs like mad but no obvious modifiers.
Honestly, WE mages might be the most frustrating of everything in 1vX. I must have died 4 or 5 times trying to 1v3 this holy pally, resto shaman, WE mage group today. Granted I didn't really play it that well but I tried to kite the pet and have the mage chase me ahead of his healers but inevitably he would just IB, I'd be unable to deny healing during IB and the pet and shaman damage would kill me before I had any hope of rushing down the mage during hypo. It's also extremely obnoxious to realize that the pet autoattack plus him mashing his face into Ice Lance is more damage than your scorching, and while the "OMG OBVIOUS" solution is to always kill WEs, that's not so feasible sometimes. ^^
It really was flying mounts. Yeah, it's harder to 1vN, but honestly even on a high pop server, I can barely find a solo player outside of daily quests who won't fly away when they get a chance. And the few I do find.. I'm lucky if they're wearing 2 pieces of gladiator gear. I'd rather fight 1 geared player in world pvp than solo 5 players in a battleground, it's much more fun.
You can still be flashy though, thankfully. Searling is a perfect example of this (fyi you should all download is now-outdated video if you haven't seen it). He plays and moves extremely confidently and with flare. He may not be miles ahead of all other eFamous mages (he's certainly on par with them), but he damn sure looks like he is.
@trig: roll gnome and model change. I do it every now and then when I get tired of my animations.
raddy.. I think the "OMG OBVIOUS" solution is to go back to WE spec and drop the fire. :/
RAddy raddy raddy..
Get a trial account and make a horde character on it on your server. Add all the notable players from your server(horde side) to thte friends list. Then stalk and gank them as you can now track where they are in the world. This will get you pvp against good players and probably a few nabs will join in for some 1vN pwwnnaaggee. Settanta EU.
I haven't really been too impressed with any of the WE TBC outdoor vids -- the level of play is high in a bunch of them, but I don't find myself reviewing them much. The 1v2 rated WE vids are generally more fun than the outdoor vids.
I realized earlier today that I destroyed my Quag's eye -- seems like it will be pretty good again in 2.2 if it ever comes out. I always liked that trinket a lot as WE and would have loved it pre-nerf (or post buff) when we ran 4DPS as I found myself chain casting a lot where it really shines. (Icon might still be overall better because of its effect on WE's dmg)
@ anonymous: Good call. ^^
Raddy! the scorch v ice lance spamming is EXACTLY what i hate about it, now ill admit it completely, i utterly SUCK at WE v WE mage, and i honestly believe its because i dont spam enough ice lance, back when i had frost with burning soul and ignite, i faked this guys CS and CSed his arcane line so i thought "hey time for some scorchin" with both our pets hitting eachother the fucker ended up doing more damage because of the interruption and his ice lance spam.
I was ready to go knock someone down because of what happened. It is quiet possibly the most gay thing i ever encountered(next to FG locks)
I have to agree that the only type of fun world pvp i can find is when i track some well known players from horde side.
I dont really enjoy slaying the pve geared players trying to summon for Shadowlabs but nether the less they die anyway.
P.s Wtb an article on Elemental shamans!
Doomhandle on malganis might be the greatest world pvp mage in the world...of warcraft.
the new Shivan - Frostmage PvP 6 was pretty fun to watch imo
some 1vX there too
The world PvP thing is MOSTLY because of mounts. It's simply an access problem. It's much much much much harder to camp people. Camping people is of course one of the ways to START world pvp. Get a good camp going and people will call in their guildies and then you can get something going. Some of my friends have been leveling alts in STV and I can assure you, world PvP is still alive and well there. It's not awesome because there aren't as many people in the old world, but several times it escalated to the point where it had that old time feel and it's 100% because of the mounts. People actually have to RIDE AWAY, instead of waving their hands for 5 seconds and rocketing into the sky.
The 1vX thing is a video makers issue mostly. By which I mean to say no one is going to be interested in 1v1, especially from a WE mage since they are such strong duelists. And no it's not as easy to fight 1vX as it used to be. Not even close. Throw in ONE top geared skilled player into any 1vX and you're done unless they are a warrior.
Seriously even awesome efamous mages running thier 1v2 rated experiments never cleared 1600. People with gear and a clue are going to shut you down fast if you make any mistakes. And maybe even if you don't.
I still 1v2 people but not if they have top PvP gear, and not if they are good by any reasonable defenition. UNLESS they are warriors. And even then you're probably going to be popping consumables just to keep enough mana up.
I still think making fun videos is possible cause fun stuff still happens in world PvP but your going to have to collect alot more footage to get some gems.
World PvP was already sitting on its death bed the day they invented the honor system. Tarren Mill zergs were fun, but PvP was better before that patch came out. It became worse when PvP became instanced (and you didn't need to leave IF/Org to go there) and when player population density decreased significantly. This virtual world is just too big now and there are far too many servers. Think back almost three years to STV and how you couldn't move 50 yards in any direction before finding someone else. I spent an hour mining SMV the other night and didn't see on person in the zone or even talk shit in /1.
Flying mounts were more of the final blow to a mounting problem. Carebears could fly directly into their instances or hover out of range. It also made the entire world a rooftop to snipe from. While world pvp isn't fair, there is no talent of a spriest sitting for an hour out of reach of people above the Cosmowrench graveyard dotting people as they rez and killing them before they fully load back in.
One interesting thing for flying mounts btw. If you have an epic mount, go to Blade's Edge and hover above people trying to banish demons. They will get 2 or 3 fel fire dots on them. They will either die from durability or you can just one shot them for the remainder of their life.
Want world pvp to get better? Get Blizzard to merge most of the PvP realms. Pair them up and increase the population of each environment by 50,000+ and watch how interesting the game becomes again.
Sadly, Blade's Edge is probably the BEST place for "world pvp" in all of Outlands, unless of course you are level 60 in Hellfire leveling.
I actually used to model swap my UD to human just for the casting animation. I guess anything gets old once you've played it for, well, a really fucking long time. Gnomes are baller though.
i think another thing that made 1vX harder in world pvp was the fix to sheep/change to CC. Pre TBC you could sheep someone almost forever. in every movie you would see thr bandage/evocation during sheep with almost no worry about it breaking.
now if you sheep someone and they trinket it almost isnt worth it to sheep again with all the possible pushback and dmg you will take from multiple people.
I apologize for that was somewhat of an "in-joke" and I try to keep this site strictly just-the-tip when it comes to such things.
I see what you did there
In marked contrast to pretty much everyone else, I've never enjoyed world pvp. Its dominated by a shallow metagame of who is willing to take the most precautions to avoid being ganked/who is willing to go farthest to gank. It has nothing to do with player skill, and as such is even less fun than BG pvp.
:x
I do agree that world pvp is pretty dead on BDF. The only place you're likely to find it is where people farm or do dailes, so EP, Ogrila, Netherwing Ledge, or at the escort spawn points in Skettis. The other thing is that since OR is gone and FoH hardly logs on outside of raids, you won't see people in top guilds running around.
Anyway, since I have 70s of both factions I guess i could /who people for you. I could also give you a few vent infos if you promise not to give them to Dan (I know he'll spam the hell out of them). Hit me up on IRC or in game.
wpvp is about ganking and getting ganked. it's dirty, frustrating, ugly and oh so much fun.
everything from 3-4 level 60s trying to take that 70 out to 3vs3 while fighting for quest mobs... getting jumped when you least expect it, getting pwned then spending 10minutes to find the mf and destroy him.
watching someone flee from you while they pull mobs onto themselves and end up with durability loss.
popping an unexpected healthpot when that pesky rogues gonna finish you off, just while you gain enough distance to turn the fight...
or just the plain frustration when you're getting 3v1 zerged and they camp you. the escapes, and the revenge.
i'm leveling up another character atm and i'm seeing this happen everytime i log on that char. it's great and i want more.
Carebear clouds ruined world PvP. The stamina scaling/resilience did make 1vN much harder; it's damn near impossible to pull off against geared opponent(s) + a healer.
On the other hand the gear and teamwork you develop in arenas makes it pretty fun to roll with your 2v2 or 3v3 partners and take out huge groups of people. 1v3 is gone but 3v9 is pretty fun.
Hopefully WLK will fix the flying mount issue by locking flight out of certain zones then putting lots of nodes/daily quests in them.
Someone already mentioned it, but the survivability increase really just affects PVP videos. Flying mounts are what took all the fun out of world PvP. Flying mounts just took any sense of danger, and thus any sense of excitement, out of it.
And to Kzn, the appeal of world pvp as I see it is the variety and the fact that it's far less predictable. It does take skill to do well in world PvP, just as much so as arena (and there's far more adaptation involved and far more situations you can be put in). It's just that there are so many other random factors that the fights are really subjective, so determining who is the better player is much harder. If you're looking for outside gratification and something you can point to and say "see, I'm clearly better then you" then world pvp sucks, but if you're just looking for a challenge it's great. (theoretically... with flying mounts it sucks balls in practice)
Is there a good writeup on how to PvP with the build you're currently using Raddy? Is it solely snaring melee with R1FB and scorching as much as possible? Fireblasting when max Scorch debuffs are reached?
People are talking about changing character models for cast animations? Is this a mod or a reference to rerolling just for cast animations?
It doesn't take skill to be successful in world pvp. Sure, a lot of people who enjoy world pvp and pursue it are actually good, but there are plenty of examples of absolutely terrible players who do extremely well in world pvp simply because of the shallow metagame.
Its not a challenge to kill people in world pvp. Its a waiting game, no more, no less.
And in contrast to anonymous, I'm not a coward :>
Gotta agree with Kzn here. I'm sure world pvp was fun and exciting when it was the only thing going on, and everyone was leveling in STV. Flying mounts have little to do with it, though. People fly around because they don't -want- to world pvp, it's largely a waste of time. World pvp is the most random, luck-based, and unrefined type of pvp existant in the game. For people who want to truly challenge themselves, arenas are the far superior alternative.
By the way, the reason you can't 1vN people anymore is because classes, and the game itself are much better balanced. I could gank 2 or 3 cloth in BRM as a 60 rogue all the time, but I wasn't really a good rogue. It's just... I was a rogue. I was very, very balanced in that scenario. (sarcasm)
Or to be more precise, the imbalanced ratio of hp to damage at level 60 strongly favored burst damage as an exponential increase in favor torwards the fight. I once beat two rogues of similar gear level as just me, because I got the jump and killed the first rogue in 4 seconds with Renataki's. To be fair I was probably a better rogue than the two I ganked, but I definitely wasn't TWICE as good.
Also ganking people who are totally unprepared (even at 100% health) takes ENORMOUS skill. It's very challenging to get the jump on someone. =p
Also 100-0 stunlocks, CLEARLY OUTPLAYED.
Rose-colored glasses. =p
People don't like World PVP because they don't like to lose. And if you World PVP you are gonna lose a lot. That's just the nature of World PVP. Now myself I don't mind losing because I'm not sporting e-peen 24/7.
World PVP can be the most fun and rewarding part of the game if you do it right. And yes in the end you will mostly lose.
Go where the people are or make them come to you. For example go to Elemental Plateau (bring a rogue friend) and just start killing whoever you see. Eventually it turns 6v2 but you still get your kicks in.
Another good place for Alliance is Grom'gol in STV. Again come with a rogue friend and just sit outside killing guards. Eventually some hot shot warlock will show up and then let the games begin!
See it's not Blizzard's fault World PVP is dead. It's the people who are so full of themselves they dont even know what fun is anymore.
There is no such thing as being "successful" in world pvp. It's just a fun clusterfuck. Some people enjoy it. Others don't. The main point is that it doesn't happen very much anymore, and when it does, people run away on their flying mounts. It's that simple.
No, it's not the same anymore. If you to EP to gank, you're just pissing off some poor guy who is trying to get primal fires for his raiding gear. It's not fun anymore, nobody wants to be bothered away from whatever stuff they logged on to do to fight some guys who outnumber them.
If making world pvp optional was all it took to kill it, then it really wasn't much fun for most people. I mean, you don't have to fly away if you don't want. Nobody bothered much with ganking when they were doing the 60-70 at expansion release, at least not on the pvp server I was leveling on. It's not like there was lack of interaction, groups of horde and alliance were killing quest mobs side by side, and nobody was flying.
People are tired of world pvp, we've moved on. Flying really fast is honestly more fun.
See vontre World PVP has become similar to forum trolling. The point IS to piss people off. If you want to challenge yourself in PVP there are other and better ways to do so.
I may be anti-social jerk but I like frustrating the person farming primals. He might even get angry enough to invite his friends. PVP happens on a PVP server. If you don't like it then transfer to a PVE server.
The point is world pvp is not popular. Its not like Blizzard killed it - its more like suddenly people have a way to escape the metagame, and since the majority hate it thats what they've done.
I've always been a little confused by the whole "world pvp takes no skill because you fight people unprepared and under-geared" -- the point of World PvP is that you intentionally put yourself in situations where the odds are significantly stacked against you and through strong play and resourcefulness (or luck), you prevail.
You have a large arsenal of tools including all types of consumables, grenades, and engineering goodies to facilitate strategies not possible with just your own inherent class abilities. (hello grenade shatter combos in wow 1.0)
The point of World PvP to me personally was really a few things:
1) Honor/Reputation - It sounds silly and dumb but I liked how when people did those dumb 5man Silithus bosses and they saw me ride by, they stopped that nonsense QUICKLY and started dropping totems and probably shitting themselves in party chat.
2) Unpredictability. Getting pounced by a feral druid you had no idea was there when you were about to CS that pally's heal and fireblast to finish off that rogue were the moments I KILLED for in WoW.
3) Grenades.
4) The goal. My goal was never to get sweet gear or high rating or any of that crap. I just wanted to get better and show off some cool stuff to people.
I'll leave it there though there's more. My point isn't that World PvP is the BEST PvP in WoW or anything like that -- it's just that I miss it. I understand that it very likely will never come back.
Sure, World PvP was always ganking people who were out to do other things, but in the day these were frequently solid players in endgame gear, not suckbags who just dinged 70 grinding primals for their Spellfire or Skillherald.
I'll also briefly add that world PvP had at least mild conseqeuences within the world of the game, such as preventing players in raiding guilds from making it inside the zone, or griefing or camping the mains or alts of big name opposite faction players -- sure it didn't get you efamous or sponsored, but you could at least delight in their frustration and savor the animosity it brought to the server. ^^
"the point of World PvP is that you intentionally put yourself in situations where the odds are significantly stacked against you and through strong play and resourcefulness (or luck)"
Such situations never exist. Even in vanilla wow, if you went up against equally geared players who had a numerical advantage, or numerically equal players with a gear advantage, or whatever combination you want, if you won, it was due to luck or the players you were against being terrible. The problem with world pvp is and has always been that competent players simply _do not lose_ 2v1, or 1v1 with gear advantages, outside of luck or class imbalance. There was no strong play about it.
Kzn - Except for lack of cooldowns, mistakes, unexpected mixups, or any of the other countless things that could happen.
Being 'stronger' doesn't mean you always win. Good players still make mistakes and you could still capitalize on them. Also, class balance was skewed in favor of mages pretty significantly for a moment in time -- I remember in WoW 1.0, in naxx gear, I'd reliably win duels against the best priests and druids in full naxx and pvp gear without ever using Counterspell, the damage output was so ridiculously high that a single impact or a crit fireball was GG.
If your class is a poor matchup to a mage, you don't have full cooldowns or you're somewhat off-guard, it doesn't make you terrible. =\
I mean you're right -- you aren't beating the best players on your server in 1vN. That doesn't mean you can't showoff a lot of skill beating by demonstrating victory over multiple average/mediocre players.
On the flipside, we've all seen arena videos of AWFUL players on 2300+ teams -- hell's there been clickers on 2500+ teams. Skill is just skill, it doesn't really matter what the PvP format is.
Is that kite string line from Buffy? I believe that potential girl said it to Willow the first time they sleep together.
I think I love you perce.
My point isn't that world pvp = terrible players. My point is that its no challenge if you do it seriously enough. Name any player on my server in pre tbc wow, no matter what class, what gear, what help, I could kill him in world pvp. It was just a matter of waiting for them to make the 'mistake' of using more than 20% hp on a pull or whatever and then they're totally fucked, with no recourse.
It also led to people like me who hate losing grinding in full pvp gear and never dropping under 90% hp on mobs just so we wouldn't get fucked by some terrible player who timed it right. Which wasn't fun.
And if you aren't terrible and get 1vN'd, then its cause you're underlevelled, undergeared, badly matched up, or had 0 cds. It never has anything to do with player skill because it is flat out impossible for competent players to lose with a numerical advantage. I am not exaggerating when I say I have only once, in _all_ of wow, lost with a numerical advantage in world pvp, and it was to a warlock when I had 0 cds left.
Where is the fun in pre-decided competition?
Then again I never was anywhere close to being geared enough to compete with semi-competent players from the pve guilds on my server, so maybe that had something to do with it. While you were running around in full naxx with atiesh, I was still in full r13 set with aq20/hwl staff, mana igniting cord, broodlord bracers, and that 21sta neck from emeriss.
shit that neck was fuckwin.
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