Project Lore

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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I already had a nice blog entry written for today but something was announced yesterday that all of you should definitely know about. Well, a few things were announced but Juggynaut already covered the PvE to PvP Paid Transfer news. I am against it, that is my two cents. In lieu of starting a new column this Friday I just had to talk about the so called 'Bind on Account' items, more properly known as Heirloom items. This new development is ripe with awesomeness, even if it is mainly for the alting people out there. Details on the Heirloom or 'Bind to Account' items:

• Purchasable via dungeon tokens (similar to Badges of Justice)
• Can be transferred to characters on your account (ie cannot be traded)
• Only transferable to characters on the same realm
• Items scale with level (see inset picture)
• Scaling will make the item equivalent to a blue item of the characters level
• Heirloom armor will transform based on the character who wears it. Therefore, a level 80 plate piece can be worn by a level 1-39 character who wears mail, but gains the ability to wear plate at level 40.

Future changes:

• Additional Heirloom items aimed at high level alts to come in the future
• Additional ways to earn heirloom items

Best of all this information has been confirmed by Tigole and Verimonde! They even confirm that the goals of the items are to get people to play other classes and support people that love to play alts. Hardcore or casual, I would think that both camps would approve of this move. Don't worry, that blog entry that was bumped for this should return next Friday.

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