I’ve recently started blogging over on Curse about a week or two ago to help boost my traffic and viewership. Boy, all I can see is that it works. If you check out Curse, you’ll see my name mentioned on the front page (unless they’ve loaded up on news that it goes down). I’ve teamed up with another blogger there to create a blog called The Daily Quest. We were stuck on ideas for names, and this popped in my mind as I was bombing cannonball stacks. And why not? We’re both writers who enjoy what we do. Other than that, nothing else has really changed. My content will still be published here and there to reach a wider audience. So without further adieu, here is today’s piece.
PvP Zones: The Good and the Bad
Don’t worry, I have absolutely no intention of blasting WSG, AB, EoTS, or AV. That’s already been done to death by countless others and I see no need in further adding my 1.8 cents to that pile (Canadian, remember?). With the release of Burning Crusade, Blizzard decided to add extra PvP related gimmicks to various zones in the outland after the huge, “success,†they had in Azeroth (Eastern Plaguelands) and Kalimdor (Silithus dust stuff). After that mammoth of a post I wrote yesterday about Priest gear and the time it took for me to make all the links Curse-able (Thanks Kody), I needed a break so let’s check it out shall we?
Hellfire Peninsula
The Good
This would the first PvP area that players encounter as they start to level from 58 – 70. The gimmick here is that killing members of the opposing faction or capturing the three points of interest (Stadium, Broken Hill, The Overlook) would net you honor tokens which you can turn in for some cool swag. In addition, if a faction held all three towers, that faction would get a zone wide buff good for PvP or PvE purposes (5% damage, still good in
instances).
The Bad
Those three points change hands more times than Paris Hilton. It takes a party or even a small raid to maintain control of the points. No one’s going to take the time to do that. Players capture them then bugger off allowing the other side to take control and back and forth it goes. Make it more difficult and add something to dissuade the other side. I’m sure the Legion could install some Fel Flak Cannons around the area, which could be controlled by the faction owners of the points.
Zangarmarsh
The Good
A fair number of guilds have begun to enter Serpentshrine Cavern. That makes it beneficial to help get the zone wide buff (Also 5% in damage). What we have here is two towers flanking a middle tower. Capture them, and you get possession of a flag. Plant it at the central spire to gain the buff (No cheating, you can’t mount or shapeshift). Remember those marks you got in Hellfire? Yeah, they’re still good here. I know the Alliance one is somewhere a little ways from Telredor. I don’t have a clue where the Horde one is. Oh, you also get a graveyard in the middle.
The Bad
Did anyone really have an idea of what to do? There weren’t any instructions on how to properly get the bonuses. Talk about being noob-friendly. Aside from the graveyard, there wasn’t much of an incentive to do it.
Terrokar Forest
The Good
Here we go! This is one of Blizzard’s finest. Capture five Spirit Towers, and the entire zone gets 5% additional damage and 5% additional experience gained (Those of us at level 70 should gain 5% additional gold from mobs). Note that the effects last for six hours. After that time is up, the control of Towers can be disputed. With the Towers under your control, the Auchindoun instances now have Spirit Shards that can be looted from the bosses within. These Shards can then be turned into the Spirit Sages (Allerian Stronghold for Alliance, Stonebreaker Hold for Horde) for some cool epic swag. As a Holy Priest, he didn’t have much to offer me. What a waste.
The Bad
Players are too busy bombing eggs to help. The distance between Skettis and Skethyl Mountains makes it difficult to assist. I can’t count the amount of times I’d be busy trying to capture towers and yelling for raid invites and I’d get whispers saying: “Hold on! Just a few more eggs and I’ll be right down!†Get the Skettis Bird guys to start laying some eggs on top of the Spirit Towers. Make it easier for us to bomb them and capture them.
Nagrand
The Good
So here’s a town that’s capturable via PvP. All you need to do is bomb to submission the Guards (if there are any) and then make like Counterstrike radio spammers and “storm the frontâ€Â. Your reward? Halaa, which is a town rich with amenities such as quest givers, vendors, and a (you guessed it) 5% damage increase buff across the zone. There’s 4 of these flight post things you can interact with that stuff you on a Wyvern (weird) which flies you around the city for you to lob explosives on players and guards below. When the Guards are neutralized, players go in and must defend the flag as it is being hoisted. Congratulations! The day is yours.
The Bad
It needs a flight path. Seriously. Or some kind of a portal which will shuttle us between the towns and Halaa. If only I had an epic mount to get me there. I think Halaa also needs some Flak Cannons. Nothing would bring me the satisfaction of shooting down a 64 Rogue who laughs, sneers, and spits as he flies by knowing there’s not a damn thing I can do about it (until he lands, anyway).
Wrath of the Lich King is promising additional World PvP fun. I’m waiting eagerly to see what it brings. That means more things to do in between those 50 minutes AV queues (Come on BG 9, I know you can do better). For the time being, we can only hope Blizzard might add another PvP gimmick in Netherstorm. I’d love to have 5% additional damage when taking on Kael’Thas. You know there’s this really popular map called DoTA on Battle.net, which might be adaptable to WoW…