Jan
3

WoW answers WAR

10 Comments

I honestly thought it would take longer than two days to hear about how WoW is going to handle Warhammer Online’s PvP solution…but I guess two days is long enough. Recall what I said about what WoW needs to do to compete against the oncoming horde that is WAR:

WoW is the most vulnerable because WAR is (..supposedly?) doing PvP/RvR right. Half of what?s holding WoW together right now is the PvP. Raiding? Yeah, ok, that too?but not as much as PvP. Remember that our Asian friends across the ocean love PvP. Remember that the angry 13 year old emo kid across the street loves to tea-bag your Tauren. If WAR gives PvPers a better experience, then expect the impact to be huge. WoW needs to beef up it?s PvP experience to compete with WAR and that, unfortunately is the only thing they need to do. So my shaking up is going to have to wait.

Not exactly a rocket science kind of thing to say.

I read this over at CVG:

Upcoming World of Wacraft expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) will feature a large area dedicated to PvP, Blizzard has revealed.

A “cool part of Northrend is new big PvP zone. It’s about the size of Westfall, and will be all-PvP – in no way, shape or form will we support PvE players in it”, the developer’s Jeff Kaplan has told PC Zone.

He continued, “It’ll be optional, but it’ll be completely non-instanced, have multiple objectives, siege weapons and destructible buildings”.

…and Boo-ya baby!!

So there you have it. So now the question is all in the execution of the new “huge” PvP zone in WoW vs the execution of the RvR in Warhammer. What other PvP changes will be made to make WoW more attractive than WAR? Hmmmm?bet there are more details to be revealed there. If WoW gets it right, then the reason d’etre of WAR is muted and it just comes down to the PvE experience. Would entrenched PvP/Endgame WoW players leave just for a different PvE experience? My guess is no.

One answer down…six to go.

D out.

EDIT: Bildo just commented that Blizzard did announce this PvP zone in the initial announcement of the expansion. Yup…they did. However, they gave us a bit more with with announcement than just “Outdoor PVP zone with siege weapons and destructible buildings”. Objective based, non-instanced, no PvE, size of Westfall. Again, there has got to be more to it than this if WoW is going to address WAR’s PvP offering, hence why I’m waiting on more execution details.

Posted in WoW
10 Comments Posted by Darren

10 Responses to "WoW answers WAR"

  • Cameron Sorden says:
    January 3, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Wow. Interesting stuff… thanks Darren.

  • Nat says:
    January 3, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Siege weapons and destructible buildings as well.

    I always expected Blizz would do something like this as WAR got close to release but
    to be honest I don?t think anything WOW can do will save them from WAR?s RvR. Blizz is slow as hell at everything they do and this is what will hurt them most of all over the next couple years. They are not quick enough to keep pace with features newer games will be offering. In this specific case there answer is to introduce ONE zone in the upcoming expansion that is similar to what a large chunk of WAR?s core gameplay is. I don?t think that will keep the PvPer?s from moving to WAR.

    I always find it odd that Blizz does not seem to have a clue about MMORPG PvP when their RTS games are all about PvP. But then again the two are very different.

  • Bildo says:
    January 3, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Not to be a prick, but I thought this was known since they unveiled the expansion? I think the focus was on the Deathknight and all that at the time, though. But what I took away from the press conference more than anything was this. Why? Because it seemed like Blizzard’s answer to what WAR was aiming to offer. I hope it works well, but we’ll see if it’s enough to keep the PvPers in Azeroth.

  • Darren says:
    January 3, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    Nope…not being a prick at all Bildo because you’re absolutely right, they did say that. However, all they really did say was “Outdoor PVP zone with siege weapons and destructible buildings”. I think the announcement above gives us more size and scope of that PvP area, i.e. size of Westfall, no PvE, non-instanced, objective based.

  • SmakenDahed says:
    January 3, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    So… one zone in response to WAR’s focus on that sort of thing? Hmmm…

  • Pixie Styx says:
    January 3, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    I would hardly say that is a response to war and its pvp design, i would say it was more like a gentle we are do pvp as well …. however its two compleatly different games designs, War is designed from groung up with pvp in mind and wow pvp was a add on afterwards ….

  • Ardwulf says:
    January 3, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    There’s really nothing in the recent announcement that’s radically different from the earlier one. I assumed when they said “PvP Zone,” that it would be non-instanced, not because it was obvious neccessarily, but because it’d essentially be just another battleground otherwise – and they’ve said that they don’t plan to add more battlegrounds anytime soon. And given their current PvP setup, it also only makes sense for there to be objectives in some form. So I don’t think this new announcement is a big revelation – it’s a bit more clarification on what we already knew.

    Also, in fairness to WoW, PvP has been a development priority for a while now, and it’s seen marked improvement even since I started paying attention a while back. I’m sure it won’t satisfy hardcore PvP addicts, but WoW PvP isn’t all that bad now.

  • Darren says:
    January 3, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Ardwulf…shame on you. Never assume when it comes to Blizzard :)

  • Keen says:
    January 3, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    Blizzard has shown repeatably in their track record that they just don’t get it. Remember what TBC was supposed to bring? Capturable points, town sieges, and a revolutionary pvp system. There was nothing revolutionary about the addition of arenas or the gear changes. This is more of the same from Blizzard. It’s an aggressive attempt at retaining a portion of their expected PvP player loss.

    Fact of the matter is that Blizzard has proven they can’t do PvP like Mythic. They’ve adopted the rationale that if you can’t beat’em, copy’em.

  • Pixie Styx says:
    January 4, 2008 at 9:08 am

    and copy them poorly ….

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