WWI 2008 Day 2 PVP Game Systems
Wintergrasp
* First outdoor world zone entirely dedicated to PVP
* Only a few PVE elements
* No control for number of opposing forces, only statistics help designing. Supports large and small scale combat
* Siege Weapons on ground and in air
* Destructable buildings
* Taking control of Wintergraps gives an Spirit Shard-like loot for every boss in Northrend
* Rewards will be unique version of other items
* Honor and "Marks of Honor"
* A river is also added, that ground siege weapons can't cross.
* There are bridges, which are destructable of course. The bridges are wide and tall.
* Graveyards are capturable and help as the offense advances
* The goal is to capture a huge keep. Every wall of the keep is also destructable
* The walls have stationary cannons to defend against siege weapons
* Players can tell what percentage of the destructable elements are destroyed
Siege Weapons
* The Demolisher: baseline vehicle. Support short and long range attack type and ram attack. Bombard players and buildings. Houses the driver who fires the weapons. Also houses 3 exposed players who can fight with their own spells as if they were standing still.
* Forsaken Catapult: faster than the Demolisher. More agile than the rest of the siege weapons. Shorter range, but still longer than player combat range. Lower damage, flame breath attack at the front. 2 additional passanger. Costs less supplies at the siege warshop than other siege weapons.
* Siege Engine: hardest hitting, longest range ground vehicle. Driver controlls the ram attack, independent gunner in the turret that can turn around fires the main weapons. Additional passengers are protected.
* Fighter: very fast air vehichle, used for transportation, vulnerable against anti-air weapons.
* Bomber: fast air vehicle. Carries a pilot and a gunner who controls the bombs.
* Goblin Shredder: counter-air unit, long-range ground-to-air rockets against fighters and bombers. Also works as a personal armor suit, once the vehicle is destroyed the player can continue fighting on its own. Strong melee attack with its shredders. Ability to jump high to destroy incoming rockets and jump over walls. Vulnerable against ground siege weapons
Arenas
* Keep the new ones simple but still innovate
* Moving objects in the arena - dynamic LOS. Can be timed, can be set random. Helps focusing on player skill.
* Unique starting areas, that might be very close to each other
* 2 new arenas, one in Dalaran, one in Orgrimmar
Dalaran Arena
* Based on the new lore of the city
* Arena map is located in the sewers of the flying capital city of Northrend
* No mounts allowed
* Similarly sized as the Blade's Edge arena
* The dynamic element is a pipe, a wall of water flows out of it sometimes, that is a complete LOS block
* Only a few ramps to the center area, player-height ledge on the sides
* Water shoots players out of the starting area, players can't stay or return there
Orgrimmar Arena
* New area in the old world
* Dynamic objects that do damage to players (spikes)
* Moving pillars on timers, players will see a wheel spin up before that happens
* Extremely close starting areas - elevators bring players up to the center of the arena, only 10 yards away from each others, the spikes drop and the fight begins
* Mounts are allowed
* Bigger than Dalaran Arena
* Orcs like watching fights, so there are NPCs on the edges who make noise too!
* Players can stand on the pillars that sometimes move up. Still vulnerable to ranged damage there
* When the pillars go up, the spikes come out of the ground so the player has to decide what to do. Take the damage when moving across the area? Stay separated from the group?
* No other LOS objects
* Players have a couple of seconds to check out the opponents before the spikes go down and the fight starts
Battleground
* Located on an island off Dragonblight, which was a Titan testing area
* The zone has an attack-defend game type: when the event goes active one side attacks, the other defends. Once the time has run out, the winner faction gets control of the resources. If the attack fails the offense gets a resource advantage to help on the next wave.
* Destructable walls and buildings
* Siege weapons and warshops
* Attackers start on 2 steam battleships in the water and play to reach the top of the valley
* Defenders start on the beach close to the dock and play to defend the capture points at the top
* 3 sections of destructable walls in the valley
* Behind the walls there are siege warshops, the controlling side can use it.
* 10vs10 or 15vs15, not decided yet
* Similarly sized as the rest of the battlegrounds
Q&A
Some players lose battlegrounds on purpose to get marks faster.
They are tuning the winning and losing rewards to solve this, they are also using the Report feature for this.
Spectator mode in Arenas?
Still on the list, but some players don't want to be spectated so it's a complex issue. They are also thinking about spectating raids as well
City raids make servers crash. What's going to happen in Wintergraps?
They are working on the technical side. If there are many players, you might see less into the distance to help computer and server performance. The objectives are also spaced apart so players don't cramp up.
Will BG and Arena rewards be freed from each other?
The PVP loot structure will remain the same. Arena will give 5 slots and the weapons, honor will give the rest.
Some class' CC abilities are better for PVP, others for PVE.
They don't see that as a problem. They are trying to balance them.
Any change for Warlock pet resilience and AOE damage scaling?
They are happy with the pet scaling right now.
Faction imbalance in Battlegrounds?
It's the result of being able to queue for more battlegrounds, and the starting time is the same as the popup question timeout. They are going to be changes to fix this.
