Project Lore

Wintergrasp barely got a mention in the first draft of the patch 3.2 notes, but the outdoor PvP zone will in fact see some major changes in the new patch. The updated patch notes show the following changes: To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.

• Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
• Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
• The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
• Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
• Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
• The queue will accept up to 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 200 players at a time.

There are several major implications of these changes. First and most obviously, servers with a large discrepancies in faction populations should have more balanced fights. Blizzard's original strategy to combat population imbalances in Wintergrasp was to adjust the Tenacity buff, but even with 20 Tenacity stacks, the server-side and client-side lag made gameplay difficult, and CC spells like stuns overwhelmed the underdogs. Tenacity is (presumably) not going well, and I think the mechanic will remain useful and should be expanded to Battlegrounds. One hundred players on each side is still a huge number; that's two and a half raids on each side if the battle is full. Horde players on the Proudmoore sever occasionally need a second raid, but I doubt we often break 100. The Alliance, on the other hand, well outnumber us, and getting capped at 100 will increase the Horde's chance of victory significantly. Most Horde players on Proudmoore don't even try to defend Wintergrasp as the Alliance almost always captures it. Since 3.1, Archavon's Log reports that the Horde has defended Wintergrasp 7 times and captured it 303 times, while the Alliance has defended 673 times and captured it 302 times. This is almost certainly a product of sheer numbers in this case. It is unclear if the queue will try to put players in at the same rate between factions; that is, in battles where only 20 players of one faction show up, the other faction's numbers will be limited. I've never played Wintergrasp on a low population server, but I imagine if they implement this change, it will be well appreciated. Gear checks, like the ones used in Battleground queues, could also be implemented to ensure that the factions have similar numbers of well geared and not-so-well geared players. They already select against lower level players, and they have the infrastructure to do gear selection from their Battleground code anyway. I think this could be valuable as well; Battlegrounds with similarly geared players is more fun, and they already showing wants to match similiar players in PvP, such as matching twinks with twinks. Another major implication is where players will be when Wintergrasp is starting. You can almost always see people huddling around where the portal will open before attacking Wintergrasp. Now, those players can queue, go do other things, then get ported to Wintergrasp when it starts. This will be especially handy for Battlegrounds, especially if you are on a server that is likely to have a wait to get into Wintergrasp. It will be interesting to see where players who aren't queued get teleport to if they attempt to enter Wintergrasp; perhaps they will get a debuff warning like when you fly into a no fly zone then sent to Dalaran near the Wintergrasp portal. Its a sort of a reinstatement of "ghetto hearth", where you get a free "teleport". I wouldn't be surprised if these "Battlemasters" become queues like the battlegrounds and you are returned to where you entered from after the battle. Additionally, with the teleport in place for the start of the battle, where will it place players? Its very strategically valuable to get positioned at a Workshop before the battle starts to capture it or start churning out vehicles. There are many unanswered questions, and I'm sure we'll hear more once the PTR is up. Are these changes necessary to balance Wintergrasp, or is capping it taking away from its original purpose? Will you be angry if you are doing your fishing daily and get kicked out of Wintergrasp?

Click to read more ...

The Spreading Taint, often referred to as Taint for short, is a well-known GLBT-friendly (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) guild on the Proudmoore server.  They have been featured in many publications, both WoW and GLBT related, for their success is many areas. I recently had the privilege of speaking to the guild leader, Kyan, about life in <Taint>. Thanks for talking to us about The Spreading Taint, known more commonly as Taint. Can you introduce yourselves and give us a brief introduction to Taint? I'm Kyan (real name - Jason). I am the guild leader of the Taint family of guilds. Our guild was established on Proudmoore the day that World of Warcraft launched. Taint started as a very small group of friends from the west coast who came together to create an environment to give gay gamers a harassment-free gaming environment and a place that people could come together for social networking. Since then, we have grown from a tiny group of friends to a guild of nearly 3,000 characters, and are currently the second largest guild in World of Warcraft. The Spreading Taint is made up of several guilds. Can you explain the purpose of each of these guilds and why the spreading taint does not use one guild? There are a few reasons why we have split up the guild. First, there is a problem with the guild interface in the game. Once a guild reaches 500 players, newly added players will no longer show up on the guild tab on the social pane. Therefore, you are not able to easily promote, demote, set notes, etc., for any of those new players. Once guild banks were added to the game, we decided to work toward dividing the guilds up according to player level. Each guild bank is designed to provide gear, recipes, crafting materials, and quest items that are appropriate to that level of the game. As we expanded, we added two raiding guilds and a PvP guild. They are able to maintain their own guild banks to store the items needed for their day to day activities. How close are each of the guilds? Are the guilds even considered significantly distinct? We are all one big happy family. All of the guilds are connected in one guild chat via a chat mod that we use, so when you are chatting with other players in game, you could be talking to someone in any of the nine guilds that we currently have. Proudmoore has a reputation for being friendly to GLBT players. Do you feel that Taint has significantly improved Proudmoore's reputation and attracted new GLBT players? I do believe we have. We have many people that transfer to Proudmoore from other servers who hear about how friendly the environment is on this server. Many of the new members we get are transfers from other servers who have heard about us or found our guild through web searches. We also get many first time WoW players that join who were told about our guild by our members. While I would like to think that Taint has played a major role in making Proudmoore a friendly environment to GLBT gamers, I also need to give a nod to all of the other GLBT guilds, both horde and alliance, who make this server a wonderful place to play. How is playing on Proudmoore different from playing on other servers? Do you hear less homophobic comments like "that was gay" after a wipe? I do believe that Proudmoore is more accepting of GLBT players than other servers. I believe that this is a result of our visibility. Just about any time that a pick-up-group gets together for a raid or instance, you are likely to find a Taint member somewhere in the mix. Other players soon realize that we are gamers, just like them, and can play as well, or often better than alot of the other players out there. Why do players choose to join Taint? What benefits are there to being a member of an GLBT friendly guild? To many people, Taint is like a second family. There are always people on, 24x7. The nature of the guild, being what it is, provides an atmosphere where people can chat socially, ask for personal advice, and just feel at home. <Taint Invaders> recently got the server first clear of Ulduar 10 and many other server and horde first boss kills in Ulduar 10 and 25 man. Can you talk a little bit about Taint Invaders? To what level are members of <Taint Invaders> independent of Taint and to what level are they still members of Taint? <Taint Invaders> is our progression-focused raiding guild. We decided to set up a separate guild for the raiding teams to provide their own guild bank space and customized raid ranks. Though we have a different tag above our heads, we are definitely fully integrated with the other Taint guilds. We share the same guild chat, website forums, and run instances and raids with each other. <Taint Invaders> recently got a complaint from a player stating the guild name was offensive and a GM required a name change. You were able to retain the name after a petition. Can you comment on what kinds of harassment Taint receives from players and what Blizzard's relationship with Taint and other GLBT friendly guilds has been like? This is not the first time that we have been confronted with a guild name change. While we generally do not have a problem on Proudmoore, we do occasionally have people that for whatever reason, decide to try and target us with a report of an offensive guild name, and many times, the GM handling their ticket initially sides with them, based on the way they worded their complaint. While this has been frustrating for our guild, we have often managed to get this decision reversed. In this most recent incident, we actually had a very quick and helpful response from Blizzard, and were able to get the name restored, thus, saving our progression rankings on websites that track raid progress and achievements. As far as Blizzard's position on GLBT guilds, I feel that they have taken a neutral position now, which is just fine by me. There was an incident early on with a GLBT guild that was disbanded due to the nature of their membership, and the backlash that Blizzard got was a wake-up call for them. Treating us, and any other GLBT guild out there, with equal respect and consideration as other guilds, is all that we ask, and they have delivered on that. Proudmoore is a PvE server. Can you tell us about <War Taint> (my guild!) and how it came about? <War Taint> is our 9th, and most recent guild. We have quite a few members who enjoy the PvP aspect of the game, and spend a great deal of their time participating in battlegrounds, arena, or world PvP. Following the successful introduction of our two PvE raid guilds, some of the officers and members started seeing the potential benefits of having a more organized structure to the PvP side of the game. Establishing this guild allows us to more easily post in-game calendar invites to upcoming events for those who are interested, as well as the ability to maintain a separate guild bank dedicated to PvP materials. We have seen many dead alliance leaders and war bears as a result! Do you feel that Taint attracts more casual players? Is there a population of hardcore players in Taint? The majority of our nearly 3,000 toons are casual. Most people log on to quest, do dailies, PvP, hang out in guild chat, or do whatever it is that they enjoy doing. Our hardcore raiding members, while extremely successful, actually make up a small percentage of the guild as a whole. What are the demographics of Taint like? Males, females, GLBT, etc? I do not have exact numbers, but I'd guess that about 90% are male, and about 90% are GLBT. Is there an age restriction for guild membership and why? Yes, we have a strict 18+ rule. This is in place because we generally do not monitor or censor guild chat, and therefore, it can get a bit racy at times. As such, it is not an appropriate environment for minors. Can you tell us about Taint RL meetups? We have real-life meet-ups around the country all the time. Most often, they are local meet-ups organized by the members themselves in the major cities, usually held at a bar or nightclub for an evening. Once a year, we put together an annual Taint get-together, where we invite anyone who is willing and able to make the trip to join us. Last year, we rented a famous house in Las Vegas for the weekend. This year, we will be invading New Orleans during Southern Decadence. What is Taint's guild chat like? Is it WoW-oriented or more GLBT-culture oriented? Taint guild chat is "like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna to get." It can go from talking about class/spec theory crafting to someone talking about what they did with someone they met at the club last night. Where can players learn more about joining Taint? Anyone interested in Taint can visit our website at http://taint.rtgc.org to find out more information. Thanks for your time! No problem!

Click to read more ...