World of Warcraft

Let’s face it, Warcraft is under a lot of player vs. player pressure of late. A lot of players are tired of the arena system, and the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that some battleground gear will actually pigeonhole players into fighting in the arena due to arena points being required to purchase them. Other games focusing more on PvP combat like Warhammer Online have also served to light a fire under the development team, who are looking to offer comprehensive solutions to counter what many perceive as a superior pvp based environment. With that in mind, Tigole recently graced the forums with his presence and had this to say about Battlegrounds and other developments in the expansion:

Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).

But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we’re definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it’s very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it’s important for the community to know that it’s on our minds.

Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we’d like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We’re also exploring the concept of a complimentary “competitive” bg system as well. Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance — the core of our game.

We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.

Please don’t take this post as a promise. This won’t be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it’s important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.

Experience in PvP? Queuing for battlegrounds from anywhere in the world? Sounds a bit like warhammer….not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, I think games playing off of eachother and implementing what works to make players happy is always a welcome change. I mean who would really argue against the ability to queue from anywhere?