Quel'Delar, The Cataclysm Preview?

As those of you who follow my twitter feed already know, I was fortunate enough to obtain a battered hilt drop in a random ICC-5 the other day. I debated whether to use it or sell it - the lowest buyout amongst the others on the Hyjal AH was sitting at 10K gold - but decided that there's nothing else I could do with the gold that would be more interesting than completing this relatively exclusive questline.

The story thus far...
Once you obtain the weapon's hilt, you can embark on an epic quest to reconstruct the High Elf blade. The reforged weapon must be purified in the reborn Sunwell, which means a trip to the old island of Quel'Danis, like most player have never seen it before.


Present Day Quel'Danis

Introduced with the Sunwell raid in patch 2.4 at the tail end of the Burning Crusade, the story unfolding on the island pits an alliance of Blood Elves and Draenei against the demons of the Burning Legion. Even after players permanently unlock the major quest hubs, portals and fel invaders remain to be battled on a daily basis. The Sunwell itself is occupied by the game's most challenging level 70 raid, which proved nigh unbeatable for many guilds that had cleared the other raid content. All of this is still in the game today for players who want to take a trip down memory lane.

This is now
Time, however, is advancing in Azeroth. Even though the old content remains, the lore says that the Blood Elves have finally pacified the island, and are rebuilding their civilization around the new Sunwell. And so, when I teleported over to Quel'Danis to continue the Quel'Delar quest, I was surprised to see a very different picture.


A more idyllic isle of the future

Gone were the demons and portals. In their place were craftsmen, rebuilding the remainder of the city. Eventually, I was granted access to the Sunwell itself, a location previously restricted to the very end of the high-difficulty raid. Inside, you find the leaders of the Blood Elves, including Lady Liadrin. Liadrin is head of the Blood Elf Paladins (and participant in a lore conversation in Shattrath City that continues on infinite loop to this day) teaching pilgrims about the new source of their power. All of this was accomplished through Wrath's phasing quest mechanic, and had reverted to its original state when I competed the quest, claiming my new weapon.



The future of Azeroth?
Though technically anyone can see this storyline with enough luck or gold, I was a bit surprised to see this much effort put into a storyline that many players will not see (if for no other reason than because people with access to raid gear can get better weapons and therefore might be better served selling the hilt if they obtain it). Then again, perhaps players will see, in 4-6 months or whenever the Cataclysm finally arrives.

Visiting an old stomping ground and seeing what has become of it over the last few years really was a unique experience compared to anything that typically happens in MMORPG's these days. If this is what it is going to be like to see the entire world when Cataclysm arrives, Blizzard's decision to invest in their quest revamp may pay off very well indeed.


[Quel'Delar, Lens of the Mind], the cool-looking reward for my efforts

The Latest Wintergrasp Revision

Above are the stats for Wintergrasp battles on my server, Hyjal US. Each side must by definition possess the same number of captures plus or minus one, since the zone cannot fall into NPC control (i.e. you don't get to take it again until the enemy has first taken it from you). So, the only meaningful number is the number of times defenders are able to fight off captures. In our case, the numbers show a massive advantage to the Horde, which has held the keep in over seven times as many defensive battles.

In part iterations of Wintergrasp, the Alliance on my server often showed up in superior numbers, granting the Horde massive tenacity buffs. Today, it is not uncommon for a prime time battle to turn into a rout, in which my normally squishy mage is running around with 20 stacks of tenacity and 90K hit points, demolishing enemies in 2-3 hits. While this is strangely addictive (I've gotten 50-100 honor per kill in some of those situations, thanks to the tenacity honor buff), it is very unlikely result in capturing the keep. What happened to shift the balance?

The latest rules
Since the last time I addressed Wintergrasp, a year ago, Blizzard has completely redone the zone yet again. The current model requires players to either travel to the zone or two a battlemaster in major cities to queue up for the battle. This can be done no more than 15 minutes prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and was intended to reduce overcrowding. There is apparently an upper limit on how many people will be brought into the battle, and, in Blizzard's defense, I haven't seen much lag in the zone.

On the opposite side of the coin, though, the balancing of the factions is left purely to the tenacity buff. We can have a battle in which there are seven Alliance in a /who for the zone and a decent sized raid group of Horde. Unfortunately, Tenacity does not do enough to enhance the performance of vehicles - a 100K HP siege tank is actually pretty squishy compared to a 15-million HP raid boss. Without vehicles, the attackers cannot win the battle. You can stick around to farm honor points and watch insanely large crit numbers, but that will only stay entertaining for so long.

It's certainly possible that the population balance of the server has changed over the last year in ways that make the Horde suddenly outnumber the Alliance, where the situation was once reversed. The bigger issue, though, is the one that always hits games with non-instanced (or, in this case, non-size-balanced) PVP; the outnumbered side starts losing and becomes less fun to play, and even fewer people show up, starting a vicious cycle.

Consequences of the NEXT revamp
Blizzard's plan for the expansion (to be tested in Wintergrasp and finalized in the expansion's new version of Wintergrasp) is to limit both sides to relatively equal number of players (with a minimum cap to ensure that one side cannot deny the other victory by refusing to show up and leaving the cap at some number that's too low to complete the objectives).

Like the last half a dozen iterations of Wintergrasp, this one has some problems. Off the top of my head, the more popular side may quickly realize that they are less likely to get in off of the queue due to their numbers and level alts on the opposing faction to enter the battle just to raise the population cap for their real comrades. With Blizzard's new account-wide chat feature, they can even be relaying intel about enemy movements through in-game whispers. There's no stopping players from using third party chat to accomplish this, but it hasn't been conveniently and officially in game before now.

The bigger issue, though, will remain how to keep this kind of PVP - in which one side, and often the same side, will lose more often than not - interesting enough for the losers to choose to continue. This is where Warhammer fans have always claimed that the game went wrong by not emulating DAOC's three-faction model; you might be outnumbered, but there's always the chance of the two smaller teams joining forces against the big guys.

In the absence of changing the system to make sure that victory is always somehow in reach, Blizzard has attempted to use incentives to keep the losing side happy. In Wintergrasp's case losers can snag maybe 1-2K honor and a token (good in quantities of 25 or 40 for a second-tier PVP item, and only redeemable if your side owns the keep), with additional points for any of the weekly quests you are able to complete. Apparently, in an era where all the other forms of gear have also seen massive inflation, those rewards aren't cutting it.

Earning Gear Offline

Age of Conan recently made headlines with a change that offers players free levels simply for having an active subscription. Not to be outdone, Blizzard handed me four major gear upgrades, just for signing back into the game.

Technically, the upgrades in question were more of a correct bet on the pace of gear inflation than a literal handout. Due to my Wintergrasp habit, I wrapped up the patch 3.2 era with 90 marks and 67K honor. Rather than spend them on items that offered minor upgrades, I opted to save them for the following arena season. Now I have cashed in these currencies for the ilvl 264 PVP bracers, ilvl 251 shoulders, and ilvl 245 neck and cloak - I had ilvl 200 or 213 items in these slots previously, so even the PVE->PVP swaps were major upgrades. The hardest part of this transaction was waiting for the apparently dispirited Hyjal Alliance to capture Wintergrasp for access to the vendor.

The irony is that I was actually willing to run a few dungeons for some gear. Prior to my shopping spree, there were a relatively large number of items in the ICC 5-mans that represented substantial upgrades. Also, the gear threshold on Heroic Halls of Reflection appears to have been increased since I beat it twice in random pugs on the week it came out - my gear was suddenly no longer good enough to guarantee an easy clear of the place until I cashed in those upgrades, and I otherwise might have had to grind out some upgrades to regain access to the game's toughest 5-man.

Looking ahead
Strangely, the previews for Cataclysm say that Blizzard is keeping this old system, in which players will be allowed to bank currencies that will be usable to purchase better items in subsequent "seasons". Moreover, the system is expanding from PVP (where it makes some sense - your opponents may be wearing the good stuff) to PVE content. The Wrath era has seen several rounds of emblem quality inflation for the same 5-man dungeons (which have gotten comparatively easier as players become more and more overgeared), but those changes have never been retroactive to currency earned in the PREVIOUS season in the way that PVP honor points are.

At the end of the day, I suppose the moral of the story is that players should do whatever they enjoy most and rest increasingly assured that Blizzard will somehow manage to award them with raid quality loot for doing it. Perhaps banking currency for the future is even necessary as a way to encourage players not to call it quits as the end of a season approaches if they don't have anything left to purchase. Even so, it just seems odd that, in this timesink heavy genre, the trend would move towards allowing players to skip a timesink by banking currencies for future tiers.

A Quick Solution To WoW Goldselling?

Random thought of the afternoon:

What portion of WoW gold selling would be eliminated if Blizzard changed the character transfer service to strip your character of everything but the clothes on their back, and returned the balance of your inventory after 24-48 hours? Gold sellers depend on server transfers to move goods from compromised accounts to servers where potential customers are waiting. Most accounts that are worth stealing are worth it because they log in often enough that a character transfer would be noticed within a day or so.

Obviously, not having cash or consumables would be an inconvenience for players who legitimately want to transfer their characters to a new home (though really, routine questing does not require consumables, and I guess you could provide a 100G stipend for repairs and reagents). Then again, if you're moving to join friends or a new guild, someone can probably loan you the stuff you'll need for a day or two until your stuff arrives. Moreover, how many players would this really affect? How does that number of players compare to the number that are affected by the illicit gold trade? To the numbers who have had their guild banks looted, or had to wait for weeks for character restorations?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that the gold selling problem can be solved entirely by impeding the transfer of assets. In this particular case, though, I'm wondering if the effect on legitimate players isn't so minimal that there is no real downside. Can someone point out the stupid detail I'm missing that argues why Blizzard shouldn't do this tomorrow?