The Public Test Realm (PTR) patch notes have been released, and many players grimace or rejoice in what the future holds for their classes and game play in World of Warcraft. Thumbing through the notes, I quickly look for any changes that would affect my shadow priest or warlock. The occasional, new peculiarity such as more robust color schemes for my combat logs are always nice, but as I scroll down I notice two glaring changes that will sweep the game.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the
PTR patch notes, you should before reading on. For those that have, there are two points in the patch notes that I find most interesting. In the Dungeons and Raids section, Blizzard is relaxing requirements for Mt. Hyjal and Black Temple while increasing high end loot distribution. Secondly, in the Items section you will find that level 70 PvP Superior quality (Blue) gear will be purchasable with gold! What does this all mean?
Is Blizzard learning from their mistakes?
If you were with the game from the beginning, you new the intense joy you received as you crawled your way up the tier gear ladder. Those lucky few raided their way to tier 1 gear, then tier 2 gear, played in
AQ40, and finally dabble with
Naxxramas before you had your entire
epeen-ego crushed with the first level 61 blue/green quest item in Hellfire Peninsula! The expansion was a bitter sweet equalizer for the power guilds that controlled the server. All raid guilds became equal because we all had to start at square one again.
While some may argue that a Chinese guild some where downed T6 bosses in T3 gear, I will argue that the majority of all 10 million and growing players (McDonalds watch out, you got competition now) never downed
Nefarian, and surely never had the experience trying to learn
Patchwork. Not to mention, once the Expansion was upon us and new players joined, they never stopped their grind to 70 and spend a couple of months in
Molten Core, or vacation in
Black Wing Lair in their 60s. Hell no! They drank more
power drinks and grinded on killing flashy new boars and turning in slightly different items for quest XP! This means that Blizzard effectively destroyed all of their pre-expansion end-game content. Now I’m not a level designer or game developer, but I would have been pissed-off if I was one of Blizzard’s minions in their basement working on AQ40 for months only to have my bug instance left behind and no one ever to experience it!
Perhaps that is why patch 2.4 has attunement requirements dropped, increase token rewards, and new T6 equivalent gear that can be bought with marks of justice. It strikes me as if they are trying to desperately push through a player base that would likely not achieve these end-game goals with out Blizzards bit of welfare. And yes I call it welfare, perhaps I’m a republican of the video game world, but I along side my guild. FoE has fought tooth and nail, raiding into the late hours of the night to advance where we are only to have Blizzard relax their requirements and gently push those too busy larping in an Ironforge tavern rather than set foot in a raid instance into T6 gear before the next expansion. What of the attunement process; all the hours spent getting attune and sorting the logistical and man-strength requirements needed to get a guild attuned. I guess we’ll be some of the lucky few that get yet another title, can anyone say “Protector of Naaru” 2.0.
PvP is now for everyone?
Blizzard states in their patch notes under the Items section, “Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.”
Now most players may think this a natural progression of worth for gear. As new seasons come out, old season gradually are worth less. Perhaps, but I would argue this is a massive Blizzard attempt to fix a glaring PvP problem. If you can remember before the expansion, PvP gear was earned through a mind numbing, real-life disruptive grind. More time you spent in organized groups (orgs) the more honor you got, the more you went up in rank, the better gear you got. This continued until a player climaxed at Grand Marshal (or some horde equivalent), then you quickly became aware that you probably have failed out of college, haven’t talked to a woman in ages, and your parents are trying to have an intervention with you so you will at least bathe.
The powers that be at Blizzard must have realized that their vision of PvP was nothing short of a deep level within the twisting inferno most god fearing people call hell. That’s why their billion dollar company did away with the honor grind, and opened up the PvP gear for the next phase of PvP,
arenas. No doubt when that day came, some very smelly people who had spent their lives grinding to Grand Marshall jumped hopeless out of windows at a significant height. With the arenas can gladiator gear and the dreaded word “
resilience”.
Yes, you could get grand marshal gear but it became worthless when the first Season One geared player ran into an entire Stables defensive team, effortlessly crushing them with barely a scratch. With the expansion came the age of resilience, those that had it couldn’t be killed, those that didn’t spent most of their time waiting on their resurrection timers. The causal player could not longer raid and take their gear into a BG or arena and PvP. Now players had to divide their time. Either you were a PvPer and once again grinded your honor and played your arena games religious in an effort to be worth something on the battlefield, or you gave up and stuck to killing big bosses.
With the first screen shots and concepts of Blizzards next expansion,
Wraith of the Lich King, one of Blizzards newest PvP concepts is “World PvP”. I’ve been playing on a PvP server my entire time and I can tell you there isn’t world PvP, but blizzard will do their best to give their players a zone that all servers will PvP in. Hearing these reports coming back from Blizzcon, I immediately shriek in horror with thoughts of Alterac-Valley-ish style game play, but allegedly it is open to the world and will be a zone. This of course will be cooler than all the other PvP zones that are on a PvP server cause there will have destructible buildings. I’m sure somewhere a person in Mythic is chuckling to themselves when they heard the news. Perhaps this is Blizzards attempt to bring a scaled down version of RvR into their game. No one really knows, but I can tell you , if you don’t have resilience, it will be a mute point.
Now, it all becomes clear. With the 2.4 patch, Blizzard will hand the average player, likely the same one larping it up in the Ironforge tavern, 250 resilience. While the player may not be able to PvP to save their life, they will now be able to stand nearly toe to toe with those PvPers who have earned their gear in the areas and in the battlegrounds. This is all too important if you want to encourage a server/game full of average players to get in to a “PvP Zone” to fight the each other.
What do I think of 2.4?
I think patch 2.4 will be good for my guild. If anything, the entire guild, including those that have a hard enough time differentiating the marked star mob from the orange circle, will see end-game boss fights. As a guild leader I don’t have to leave anyone behind. Additionally, the average member in FoE will have enough resilience to stand and defend their flag for a bit longer. But, I’m starting to learn that all things in World of Warcraft get easier in time, not because you get better, but because Blizzard dumbs it down.