|
||||||
Are You Ready to Rumble Inside Battlegrounds?Are You Ready to Rumble? The Dreaded Queue Unfortunately, in practice, there are a few bumps on this road. Because the initial enthusiasm with which BGs were received by the player base has cooled off a little, the wait to get into a match is sometimes a very long one. You are presented with an estimated wait time, but it can be off by hours, so it isn't much help. Contributing to this issue is that there is clearly a significant faction imbalance on many servers. Typically there seem to be enough Alliance waiting to start several instances, but only enough Horde around for 1 or 2. Ideally, the queue would have an interface more like a lobby, where you could see who was waiting on both sides, just to give you some clue what was going on. There is talk of finding a way to let Battlegrounds accept players from different servers, which might help alleviate some of the problems. Warsong Gulch Looting a corpse grants you a little coin and prevents the dead player from being resurrected or revived on the spot. Dead players must then respawn in the graveyard, where a Spirit Guide brings players back to life at set intervals. Each Warsong Gulch instance has a level range, so you don't have to struggle against characters that are double your level. Depending on your own level, you'll be fighting with players of level 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, or 51-60. There have been calls to restrict 60s to their own Warsong Gulch Battlegrounds, as they tend to be far more well-equipped than characters in their 50s. It's a good idea, with the only potential drawback being that it might make the wait longer for high level players. Any doubts I had about whether this concept was viable in an RPG were put to rest quickly enough. Following the flag carrier across the field as one team furiously casts roots and stuns, while the other team is healing and buffing the same player to beat hell, is so much fun it's sick. The latency is minimal with only 20 players, and as long as both sides have a full team, you can expect a somewhat balanced contest. It usually takes 40 minutes to an hour to resolve, which makes it a great way to get a bit of PvP into a short game session. Things can get ugly when you find your team outnumbered by 2 or 3 players, and there is no way to guarantee that characters on the 2 teams will have the same average level. Nevertheless, the group play makes up for some of the class imbalances in the game, and it's a welcome change from the ganking, dueling, and zerg raids that dominated PvP before Battlegrounds. There is room for improvement. For example, you must have possession of your own flag to score, which has led to efforts to "hide" the enemy flag, or even deliberately delay ending the match so your team can collect more kills. Making the flags visible on the map, or not requiring a friendly flag at the return point would go a long way toward resolving this problem. Like anything else, you may grow tired of it after playing it enough times, but until then it is terrific entertainment for PvP fans. Alterac Valley To win you have to fight your way across the
map and kill the enemy's NPC General. The pace in Alterac Valley is considerably slower than in Warsong Gulch, partly because each faction has a variety of NPC defenders. These defenders are quite tough, and they pretty much rule out running around solo capturing graveyards. By completing specific quests throughout Alterac Valley, players can summon even more powerful creatures to come to their aid. For example, a player-controlled shredder can be acquired and unleashed on the enemy. Under certain conditions, Lokholar the Ice Lord (Horde) and Ivus the Forest Lord (Alliance) can be brought forth to turn the tide of the battle. Because of the myriad of secondary objectives, Alterac Valley is far less repetitive than Warsong Gulch. Whether you're in an offensive bringing down a tower, a small group trying to take graveyards, or a full raid making a last stand at your base, one trip into AV can be dramatically different from the next. Some of the issues with Warsong Gulch apply here as well. It takes a minimum of 30 players on each side to start a match, so you can easily wait hours to get in. Again, as a Horde player, you find your team seriously outnumbered at times. While you can contribute at level 51, especially if you play a healer class, you're going to get knocked around pretty hard by the level 60s, including NPCs. Minor grievances aside, Alterac Valley is a MMORPG milestone, and arguably the best PvP available in a game of this kind right now. Arathi Basin I'm looking forward to Arathi Basin. The nice thing about points-based win conditions is that you know it's only a matter of time before one side prevails. In theory, there is really nothing to prevent Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley from going on forever. Bottom Line |
