Project Lore

Fighting in Lake Wintergrasp is among the most effective ways to obtain honor. With the addition of the weekly quests, you can jump in once or twice a week for an absurd return on time invested. Its no wonder that there is such immense lag whenever the battles start. In addition to honor, there are many other rewards to be had in Wintergrasp! Just like in a battleground, you recieve Marks of Honor upon the conclusion of the battle; 3 for a win and 1 for a loss. These can be exchanged for a variety of great gear. The first set of gear to note is the variety of trinkets, which will run you 25 marks each. There are the "Titan-forged Runes", which provide the "PvP Trinket" effect of being able to remove all movement impairing effects every 2 minutes, but also give a PvE stat. I don't really understand these items to be honest or why anyone would use them over a Medallion of the Horde/Alliance. The next trinkets are the Anvil of Titans/Flow of Knowledge, which provide 84 resilience and a chance on a successful melee attack/spellcast to increase attack power/spell power by 1000/590. Some players may recognize this as the PvP version of the Mirror of Truth/Sundial of the Exiled. You should note that they all share the same internal 45 second cooldown. Finally, you can acquire the Platinum Disks of Battle/Sorcery/Swiftness to increase AP/SP/haste on use, as well as provide resilience. Since I usually burst down targets once I open on them in PvP anyway, I use the Anvil of Titans and Medallion of the Horde. Next up are the Titan-forged belts. These are iLevel 213 and are nearly identical to the Deadly Gladiator's series of belts. You can pick them up for a mere 15 marks. The Titan-forged chest pieces are also on par with Deadly Gladiator's chest pieces at 40 marks, while the Titan-forged helms are on par with Hateful helms, also at 40 marks.  The  Cloth wearers can choose between haste (Salvation) and hit (Dominance). Rogues get armor penetration (Triumph), while druids can pick between the rogue piece and hit or haste. Hunters and Shaman also get to pick between Dominance, Salvation, and Triumph, while Warriors and Death Knights get only Triumph. Paladins get the choice of Salvation and Triumph. These provide great alternatives to spending honor on your entry level PvP gear. However, note that by using Titan-forged pieces, you don't get the Gladiator's set bonus from those pieces. Choose wisely!

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Last week, iTZKooPA touched on the information overload we're seeing with patch 3.2, which now is live on the Public Test Realm. One area that I thought it'd be fun to expand a bit on is the new experience changes related to battlegrounds. Patch notes for the PTR informed us that players now will gain experience for actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds. Pretty neat idea. But here's the kicker: players who don't want to gain XP now will be able to turn it off - both for within battlegrounds and for any other means available in the game. This is a huge change for anyone who enjoys the practice of twinking. In some ways, the practice will become much easier to do. You won't have to rely on your higher level character to provide you with all the best gear available at level 19 (or your preferred twink level) - you also will be able to seek out rare drops and quest rewards without worrying about the XP gains. You'll essentially be able to get all the best gear possible and never level up and out of your battleground bracket. Blizzard comically makes light of this - the NPCs who you pay 10 gold to in order to turn on or off XP gains are named Behsten and Slahtz (Best-in-slots). But it's a give-and-take situation. Players who choose to turn off their XP gains and compete in battlegrounds will only face off against other players who also have turned off their XP. Now, some people will be happy for this change - twinks facing off against other twinks would probably make for a more interesting fight. And non-twinks will no longer be battling against twinked out toons with double the stats. I'm certain there also are those twinks out there who are ticked off that they'll never get to beat down on the other unsuspecting battleground fighters. Perhaps those players will move on to world-wide PvP gankage. A lot of people would argue this change effectively nerfs twinks. And it also might drive up the prices for twink gear. I wonder how many players will exploit the changes by turning off XP just barely into their preferred twink level, then getting all the best gear and turning on the XP again for a limited number of glorious battles against weaklings. Meanwhile, a lot of non-twinks out there are rejoicing. The prospect of entering a battleground may be a lot less intimidating if you are more confident that you'll face off against others in similar gear. Then again, I cringe to think of what this change might do to already-long battleground queues. Another unrelated way in which turning off XP may change the game: Classic raiding and role-playing. Blizzard blue poster Nethaera pointed out that many players may have a purpose for turning off XP entirely separate from twinking. If you cap at level 60 or 70, you can raid to your heart's content in that Vanilla WoW or BC content you love. Or, you could turn off XP until a friend you'd like to play with reaches your level. Or, you may just wish to role-play a character at a particular level. Oh, the possibilities. What does everyone else think that these changes will mean for the twink population? Will you keep your twinks after 3.2? Anyone think you're more likely to create a twink? If I had to guess, I'd predict that the twink population may decrease a bit after these changes. But like many things in life, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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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?

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Patch 3.2 is bringing sweeping changes to all sorts of PvP. Blizzard has been trying to push arenas to give WoW an "e-sport" status, perhaps hoping to follow their Starcraft model for longevity. As such, patch 3.2 is bringing major changes to PvP to extend the meta-game of arenas, notably hitting the issues that Ghostcrawler outlined. The first major change to note is the resilience mechanic. Resilience's major selling point has been reducing the chance that the player will be critically hit and reducing the damage players receive from critical strikes. Its lesser benefits include reducing the effect of mana-drains and the damage done by DoTs. Now, instead of only applying to DoTs, the damage mitigation applies to all damage done by players. This is a huge buff to resilience. Most players don't even notice a survivability difference from having resilience until they are at at least 500 resilience, and don't even think you will be effective unless you have at least 800 in this season. However, with all the stats you have to "sacrifice" by using PvP gear instead of PvE gear, many players go into arenas with tier 8 and clean house by bursting down the other teams with no problem. With this resilience change, Blizzard doesn't have to worry so much about itemizing resilience to take less of an item's allocated stats. Players will see much higher returns from resilience much earlier on, and resilience will become much more valuable in arenas, to the point of trumping every other stat. Expect price hikes on resilience gems! Another implication of this is higher survivability overall. Its a subtle nerf to RMP (rogue/mage/priest) in 3v3 as well as as cleave teams (teams that focus on damage rather than survivability). RMP has dominated the 3v3 bracket for quite awhile now and its hardest matchup has been defensive teams with good survivability. The viability of cleave and RMP teams is going to tank, and it its viability is always going to fluctuate proportionally to the survivability vs. damage trade-off. The second huge change to arenas is the change to the 2v2 bracket. The new tier of gladiator gear will require ratings in either 3v3 or 5v5, not 2v2. Your 2v2 rating can still be used to purchase furious gladiator stuff going into season 7, but if you can break 1500, you are going to need a 3v3 or 5v5 to get the new gear. Casual arena players who can't break 1500 won't care, but 2200+ players that have all of the furious gladiator gear already probably won't bother too much with 2v2. For those players or those who can play 3v3 or 5v5 as well as 2v2, the only reason to 2v2 is if their 3v3 and 5v5 can't net them things like the Gladiator title and Frost Wyrm. With less serious competition in the 2v2 bracket, I predict that 2v2 ratings will be easier to get in season 7, and arenas will continue to be more accessible. Blizzard has been trying very hard to push 3v3 and 5v5 since everyone is so concerned with 2v2, such as with the 3v3 and 5v5 rating buffs. Its difficult enough to balance classes to work in both PvP and PvE, let alone battlegrounds, 2v2, and the larger arena teams. This officially gives them an alibi to not have to balance 2v2 as carefully and make some sacrifices to 2v2 balance in order to ensure that the top tier of players playing in 3v3 and 5v5 have the best experience possible. The maps have also gotten some tweaks. The two new arenas in Wrath have been considered to be terrible, gimmicky, buggy, and random by the majority of the player base. They are even disabled for some tournament play. Dalaran sewers is getting a little bit of love. Its getting 25% bigger and the LoSing (line of sight-ing) on the crates is being adjusted. Mounts are also now usable in this arena. This gives this map more room to breathe and a better mechanic for LoSing instead of those tiny crates that are too close to the edge. Ruins of Lordaeron has had some terrain issues fixed with the tomb in the middle, and a couple of gravestones have been added for LoSing, while the starting alcoves have been removed (I wonder where players start after this change...). Finally, lets not forget the profession changes. Alchemy has a whole new mechanic and all the professions are getting buffed. Is this the best patch for arenas yet, or could you care less?

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Content patches often bring class changes of the raw number variety, but rarely do we see mechanics almost completely reinvented. Shamans' lives are about to get a whole lot easier, as Blizzard intends to give them their very own hotbar for totems! The new bar will hang just over the left side of your core action buttons, just like a Warrior's stances or a Paladin's auras, and feature four slots where you can drop totems, one of each element. As there are currently twenty-three totems available to the class, this should help cut down on clutter (assuming you're like me,  and keeping all of them readily available just in case you might find the rare use for most of them). This Shaman might still be alive if he was using the new hotbar! Several other buttons will be available on the hotbar just as soon as you achieve the level needed to learn them. Call of Earth, for example, will replace Totemic Call, while a whole new spell, Call of Fire, will drop all four totems at once. Those Shamans who currently rely on macros to do this will be pleased to know that Call of Fire operates using only one global cooldown, making it even more efficient. Likewise, there are Call of Air and Call of Water spells, which essentially function the same as Call of Fire, but allow you to drop two more (different) sets of totems, so you can queue them up as the situation calls for it. Each of these can be hotkeyed for easy access. A total of eight new buttons on your screen might seem like a lot, but it's certainly better, and more organized, than the alternative. Ultimately, this should eliminate several problems for the class, including resetting your totems after they've been destroyed in PvP combat or quickly moving them to avoid adds while questing or running an instance. I, for one, am happy with these changes. My primary alt is a Shaman, and setting down totems before any given encounter gets to be a pain, to the point of not even bothering for most trash pulls. It should also make tasks like dropping an emergency Cleansing or Tremor Totem more convenient. Overall, it looks like 3.2 may be shaping up to be a bigger release that originally anticipated. What do you guys and gals think? Does this sound like something that would appeal to you, or are you just going to continue sticking with macros? Gives us your feedback below!

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No, it isn't the name of the latest Legendary item to appear in Azeroth, although it certainly possess that kind of power.  Summer, with all of its sunshine, growth, and activities, may not be in Azeroth directly, but the season is a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.  With school over for most kids, nearly every human being is going to want to enjoy their few months of sunshine.  Me?  Well I turn in to a freckled lobster when those rays lick my skin, so I do my best to avoid the giant ball of fusion. Here's the rub, my guild isn't full of pale Irish people who's only natural UV defense is to catch a tan through a screen.  Due to this pesky little "evolutionary" trait I have found summer to be an incredibly boring period inside World of Warcraft, at best.  At worst, it's nearly caused my (two times former) guild to collapse, twice, and my former guild to all but disappear from the WoW.  Now I am fearing if my current guild will have a similar fate. Looking back, it seems like previous summers were set up to be a disappointment.  By the time kids left school the most recent content was incredibly stale.  To boot there was nothing on the immediate horizon, a dangerous pairing of inactivity and zero hype.  I would never think that Blizzard would plan such a thing on purpose, after all, letting people escape the game for too long is dangerous, but the early days of WoW were marred with inconsistent content development that caused these unfortunate coincidences. Fast forward to June 2009 and it looks like we might be safe.  First and foremost, Ulduar is still fresh to nearly the entire playerbase - especially Chinese players, a group that hasn't even received Wrath yet!  Backing up, or filling out if you prefer, the new raid content is the excitement around Patch 3.2.  We already know some basics, and major changes, have an inkling of the upcoming Battleground and have been teased with massive additions to the Argent Tournament grounds.  As guilds begin to put Ulduar on farm (I don't see this happening for at least another month) players will increasingly turn to waiting for the next big thing.  But the hype can only hold onto us for so long.  I think Blizzard timed Ulduar correctly, whether by coincidence, or on purpose, who knows, but here's to hoping Ulduar stays fresh for the summer.  If not, then let's hope that Patch v3.2 comes out in a timely fashion. Has your guild been destroyed or nearly so by a past summer?  Do any of the GMs, officers or raid leaders have any tips to keeping things running during these lax months?  The second time All That Remains almost failed we rolled the bored players into PvP groups and tore apart Magtheridon's horde for a solid month.  The mass genocide of five races held us over till the end of the summer.  Twas an interesting way to save a hardcore PvE guild to say the least. We'll see how things play out, but I am looking forward to spending a portion of my lazy summer days in Azeroth.  I just hope there will be others to play with.

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I'm always on the look out for new tools to use to keep track of trends in WoW. And it looks like a favorite of mine, what used to be called TalentChic, recently updated to allow users to find the most popular gear, enchants and gems, depending on a number of filters. I wrote a post a while back about how to use the same site to find talent builds and appropriate glyphs for those filters, so I'll skip over that information this time around. Now, the site is renamed WoW Popular, and has several other useful tools. Here's a refresher on how it works:

"To find the most popular talent builds, the (WoW Popular) system scans both the US and EU WoW armory sites to find the talent points, glyphs, gear, enchants, and gems chosen by characters. It then sorts those according class, spec and playstyle and collates the results."

Now I'm sure this is a debatable point, but the site asserts that the results of this search show the most accessible gear for a class.

"Because there are a limited number of choices, the collective mind of all players usually migrates to the best, most accessible option for players. What’s ‘best’ (top tier raid gear, or top arena gear) is not attainable for most players so it is usually shown a little further down the list."

Time for a little fun. Let's test out the system by taking a look at the most popular gear items among players of ALL classes. Here's the top 5, as of my writing this post!

1. Sundial of the Exiled
2. Band of Channeled Magic
3. Ward of the Violet Citadel
4. Tabard of the Kirin Tor (I guess we have a lot of raiders looking for Kirin Tor rep rewards out there!)
5. Shroud of Luminosity

Now, how about a look at the most popular main-hand weapon, again among all classes:

1. Hammer of the Astral Plane
2. The Turning Tide
3. Wraith Strike
4. Torch of Holy Fire
5. The Impossible Dream

Let's narrow it down a bit - Now a look at the most popular main-hand weapon for a fury-specced warrior:

1. The Jawbone
2. Betrayer of Humanity (I'm envious of that DPS)
3. Titansteel Destroyer
4. Armageddon (You will destroy the world with this weapon)
5. Ironsoul

As you can see, you can narrow down or broaden your search depending on what you're looking for. The search works for each armor slot, and you also can add in another search requirement based on one of five playstyles: crafted, mob, PvP, quest and raid. If it's not gear you're looking for, you can search for glyphs, gems or enchants, too. It's pretty handy and can simplify the dilemma in choosing gear - if you have faith in what other players are using. For the skeptics out there, try it out and let us know what you think. Are the results surprising? About what you expected? ...Laughable?

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Blizzard released some more information on the new battleground that will be coming out in the 3.2. The first thing to really notice is that it is a return to form, of sorts, to the 'bigger' battles. With the release of WotLK we saw the release of Wintergrasp which is only held back by how many players the server can handle (which had a recent change to hopefully alleviate that), alongside the new battleground Strand of the Ancients which was a departure from the typical BG with the inclusion of vehicles. With Isle of Conquest Blizzard is opening a battleground that will support 40 on 40 player battles (the same as Alterac Valley holds). Siege weapons will make an appearance of course (SotA, Wintergrasp), alongside capturable locations (AB, EotS, SotA) which will open access to bigger and better siege weapons. One of the more interesting new vehicles is the Glaive Thrower which sounds as if you can assault the keep walls with it, or load up some friends and shoot them over the walls to engage the enemy directly! The system overall for this battleground seems to be very similar to the new design of AV in that the reinforcements are tied to how many people have died on your side in the battleground. I'm sure this is to prevent those epic seven hour AV sessions that were had before many of the initial changes (oh the good old days). But enough of me talking about the new battleground, why not check out the details Vaneras over at the WoW Europe Forums posted:

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever. Welcome to the Isle of Conquest. The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island's precious resources. An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions. Once More into the breach... Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend's northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island's unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep. There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory? Capture Locations Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team. The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it. The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it. The Docks: The western shore's docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within. The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above. The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes. Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks). Main Objectives The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within. The General: Holed up behind the keeps' massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor. Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over. An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest. Will you seize it?

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Patch 3.1 introduced arena season 6. While PvP will likely get a large makeover in 3.2 and the number of arena players is at an all-time low, it isn't difficult to get some good PvP gear to jump into the fray if you are so inclined. The most successful PvP outlets are Lake Wintergrasp and the five battlegrounds, which award large amounts of honor. Players can also now convert arena points to honor by purchasing Commendation of Bravery for 100 (arena points, or AP), awarding 2,000 honor (and allowing you to get a head start in honor between seasons). Any team that plays 10 games a week gets arena points regardless of their rating. For teams below 1500, a 2v2 team will get 261 AP, a 3v3 will get 303 AP, and a 5v5 will get 344 AP. If you are just going for honor rewards, that is the equivalent of 5220, 6060, or 6880 honor respectively. That's a lot of honor for just playing 10 games! Below is the complete list of rewards from honor and arena and their cost. We earlier speculated about this list; this one is the correct and complete one for 3.0.8 and presumably the rest of season 6 and 3.1. Arena required denotes Arena Points, Honor designates Honor Points, Archavon/Emalon designates that those pieces drop from them, and Option Two lists a second exchange rate for some items. Rating is required only if bought with arena/honor/badges. This list does not include gear bought with badges. Later, we will look at the PvP gear available from Wintergrasp.

Item	Honor Required	Rating Required	Arena Required	Archavon Normal	Archavon Heroic	Emalon Normal	Emalon Heroic	Option Two: Honor	Option Two: Arena
Deadly Gladiator’s Wrists	31600	0	0			Yes
Hateful Gladiator’s Gloves	31600	0	0	Yes				7200	200
Hateful Gladiator’s Shoulders	31600	0	0					9600	275
Deadly Gladiator’s Necklace	38000	0	0			Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak	38000	0	0			Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Ring	38000	0	0			Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Belt	49600	0	0			Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Boots	49600	0	0			Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Battlemaster Trinket*	49600	0	0
Hateful Gladiator’s Legs	49600	0	0	Yes				12000	350
Hateful Gladiator’s Tunic	49600	0	0	Yes				12000	350
Hateful Gladiator’s Helm	49600	0	0					12000	350
Deadly Gladiator’s Idol/Libram/etc**	6400	1250	350
Deadly Gladiator’s Gloves	7200	1300	400		Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Legs	12000	1350	700		Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Tunic	12000	1400	700		Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Wrists	39400	1400	0				Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Helm	12000	1450	700
Furious Gladiator’s Belt	62000	1450	0				Yes
Deadly Gladiator’s Shoulders	9600	1500	550
Furious Gladiator’s Boots	62000	1500	0				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Necklace	47400	1550	0				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Gloves	0	1600	1300				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Rings	47400	1650	0				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Legs	0	1700	2150				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Tunic	0	1750	2150
Furious Gladiator’s Trinket	62000	1800	0
Furious Gladiator’s Offhand	0	1850	1100
Furious Gladiator’s One-hand Weapons (tier 1)**	35000	1850	1200
Furious Gladiator’s Two-hand/Range Weapons (tier 1)**	50000	1850	1400
Furious Gladiator’s Helm	0	1900	2150
Furious Gladiator’s Thrown/Wand/Idol/etc	0	1950	1150
Furious Gladiator’s Shield	0	1950	1950
Furious Gladiator’s Cloak	47400	2000	0				Yes
Furious Gladiator’s Shoulders	0	2050	1750
Furious Gladiator’s Tabard	0	2300	500
Furious Gladiator’s One-hand Weapons (tier 2)***	35000	2350	3000
Furious Gladiator’s Two-hand/Range Weapons (tier 2)***	50000	2350	4250

*designates iLevel 213 items from this list **designates iLevel 232 weapons from this list ***designates iLevel 239 weapons from this list What PvP rewards are you picking up these season? What image should I use for PvP articles; I'm as tired of Murkimus as you are. Make or link one in the comments and maybe you'll see it on the next post!

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As a dedicated progression raider, I may only PvP once in a blue moon, but when I do it's almost always in a Battleground. To be frank, the beating handed down for my first and only Arena match several years ago was enough to let me know I wasn't cut out. And world PvP? Well, there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of incentive beyond a hearty laugh from ganking some flagged Alliance outside of an instance portal! But I love the concept of a Battleground: a protracted war against a set number of people with actual goals beyond random slaughter. My favorite? Alterac Valley. Sure, the other ones are just fine, each representative of a type of match you're bound to find in other popular, competitive online games (Capture the Flag, Assault, and so on), but AV comes closest to matching my ideal. Or, at least, old Alterac did. It borrowed a lot of ideas from WoW's RTS predecessors, including the gathering of resources, help from NPCs, unit upgrades, and base destruction (well, by proxy through "capturing" towers). By looting materials off of enemy players or the local fauna, you could summon several types of destructive assaults, as well as your faction's super-unit: either Ivus the Forest Lord or Lokholar the Ice Lord. Battles could (and many times would) last for hours, no less heated towards the end than when they began. You'd be hard pressed to find this icy bruiser on the Fields of Strife these days. If you never played World of Warcraft before its first expansion, you might not even realize this version of Alterac Valley once existed. For the rest of us, my complaints aren't exactly recent news. Sure, many of the mechanics are still there, and you might find someone running off to capture a mine once in awhile, but for the most part it's an honor grind these days, likely accounting for why it continues to be the most played Battleground despite the introductions of Eye of the Storm and Strand of the Ancients since. Admittedly, it's hard to keep any aspect of gameplay from narrowing to the razor sharp point of efficiency. Players always tend to figure out the best way to do something, whether it be class tweaking, boss strategy, or otherwise. Their methods get posted on the internet, and everyone else follows. I'm actually not surprised at all that Alterac Valley has turned into what it is, considering that rushing through it is absolutely the best way to earn honor. Of course it could be argued that if Blizzard had retained its original tuning, AV would still as interesting as it once was. On the flip side, there would be a whole lot fewer people playing it. So, keeping these issues in mind, how do we go about making a Battleground that is compelling and fun while satisfying all those ravenous honor hounds out there? Lake Wintergrasp is the first place to look, having revived the same sorts of large-scale battles that Alterac made popular. The addition of destructible buildings and siege vehicles is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are also a few drawbacks. As an element of World PvP, you can't simply jump into a fight any old time you want. Wintergrasp is on a strict schedule, so as to allow the winning side the chance to defeat the raid bosses inside of the Vault of Archavon. Likewise, it seems to accommodate pure Assault gameplay. Wintergrasp is a big zone. It can support a lot of people, but it doesn't exactly give a whole lot of incentive for the defending faction to protect anything but the castle itself, and perhaps the closest factories. On top of all that, there are no hard player limits. Even considering the buffs and debuffs doled out for population control, individual bodies still matter. An Alliance force with 50 players is going to whoop a Horde that only had 10, and vice versa. Battlegrounds tend to ensure that sides are kept even, at least in terms of raw numbers. So, then, what about Strand of the Ancients? It features some of the same conceits as Wintergrasp (namely Assault style gameplay and controllable vehicles/defenses), and makes up for the core balance deficiencies non-Battlegrounds suffer from. Despite that, it has yet to give me a rise, and I blame that on how absolutely wimpy it feels. For a scenario based loosely on D-Day, I expected masses of people, seemingly insurmountable defenses, and bullets flying everywhere. As it is, Strand feels a lot like the Battle of Normandy conducted on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Was 10 people people per side really enough? Or how about those pea-shooters they call defensive cannons? Clearly, both Wintergrasp and SotA suffer from their own unique problems, but I do think they're evidence of Blizzard proceeding in the right direction with Battlegrounds. In fact, the description for their next attempt leaves my mouth watering:

Isle of Conquest, a new large-scale siege Battleground, will be open. The Horde and Alliance will battle head-to-head for control of strategic resources to lay siege to the keeps of their opponents.

Kind of speaks for itself, but let me zero in on the key phrases: "large-scale," "control of strategic resources," and "lay siege." We're talking, in all likelihood here, a happy marriage between the Alterac of old and the best bits of Lake Wintergrasp. Though I'm a bit hesitant to go so far as to say that would be the "perfect" Battleground, it comes damn close to what I've always wanted. Of course, that little blurb is all we know about it so far, and it may not be until Blizzcon that we get a whole lot more. That considered, the only thing left to do is speculate. How could a battle on the Isle of Conquest be executed so as to meet the criteria (fun and gobs of honor) I set above? The simple answer is to actually dole out the amounts of honor people want. Put hard locks on different phases of the battle so that there is no possible way to rush right into the opposition's keep, and give large quantities of honor to everyone who participated in pushing forward. In order to keep people from bailing early, withhold their rewards until the very end of the battle, and at that time, give them appropriate bonuses for completing objectives/gathering resources that are not one-hundred percent necessary to win. In fact, I would award more honor for the optional bits than those required, perhaps as some sort of PvP version of raiding's "hard modes." For instance, how about a fight over some sort of bridge that both sides need to cross over at some point to assault the enemy's keep? Holding the bridge is one thing, but destroying it locks both sides out of the option of a direct ground attack, forcing the adoption of new, more complex strategies. The faction that chooses to destroy said bridge gets the bonus honor, but must also gather resources to produce air units necessary to continue the fight (assuming there will actually be any available), while the other side gets some free "emergency" reinforcements, but no honor at all for it. The bottom line is that there must be some way to incentivize the (perceived) optional mechanics of a Battleground so that the aggregate honor is significantly greater than a pure rush to the end. Now, as we know little about the actual nature of the Isle of Conquest, similar conceits may already been in place, but I'm also quite sure that it's far enough into development that no further major changes to its basic setup can be made before its release with 3.2. Those are my thoughts anyway, and I applaud anyone who's sat through my lengthy brainspew long enough to reach this point! If so, Why not contribute yourself? Let me know what you think of my ideas. Are they shining examples of game design brilliance or pure poppycock? Should Battlegrounds be epic in scale or do you prefer more intimate experiences like Warsong Gulch? What would your perfect Battleground be? Don't be shy, the comment box is just a few scrolls below!

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