Thursday, August 27, 2009

Leveling Via PvP (hint: It's Not Warhammer)

I saw some blue post somewhere (don't have the link) where they said they needed to tune the XP for BGs, since there was 'an awful lot of leeching in the 70-80 range'.

Leeching XP?! Well shit, baby! I got a late 40s rogue that I want at 80, but every time I log in to find myself in Feralas I just... kinda... log back out. I had totally forgotten that BGs even gave XP now, so I figured I'd jump in and give it a go. My rogue has 3 heirloom weaps (Dal Rend's MH sword, plus two daggers), the chest, AND shoulderpads. I went ahead and grabbed dual spec, as if to prove to myself that I really wanted this rogue for the long haul, and went full subtlety Hemo, and proceeded to do teh gankz.

At first, seeing XP rolling by on my screen at random intervals was exciting! Woohoo! 1440 XP! For... something!




I'm not even sure when XP is awarded in BGs. It just kinda scrolls by every once in a while, and it felt like a lot. So I proceeded to camp AB and WSG queues, and had a jolly old time kicking in the teeth of level 40 casters with my 49 rogue. It's a shame these are the only two BGs I can enter at this level range. For some reason they can't allow EotS and Isle of Conquest for 40s? I know AV would require tuning of Vann's HP pool etc, but those other two are just players... what would need to be tuned? Nothing.

Another quirk is that if I jump in the queue and get invited to a BG as Mutilate (every point in Assassination), then show up while the match is underway, I can't change my spec when a match is underway, so everyone sees me in stealth from a mile away. In arena, this makes sense (kinda). But in a BG, if all your healers AFK out, and you're stuck with only ret palys and shadow priests, that kinda sucks for the one guy willing to pop over after a rez and fill that gap. NO, YOU CAN'T CHANGE YOUR SPEC. IT'S A BATTLEGROUND. Uh.. okay, but I can while standing in a dungeon 12 feet from Patchwerk? Hmm... okay.

Whatever.

So I leveled PvPing, and hit 50. Suddenly, I was bottom of the rung again, and it was much less fun. I've never twinked, and feel like it's pretty stupid. I wonder how the twinks feel now being locked in their own little bracket with everyone else that's turned off XP gain. I imagine it isn't as fun, since you're no longer able to walk all over everyone you come across. They probably pretend it's a good challenge now, but to me it always seemed the thing they liked best was spamming /lol at you as you're honestly trying to play WSG at level 19, and the rogue that you can't land a single hit on anyway has enough HP to tank Gruul.

Again: Whatever.

I gained a level, and trained new skills, and then a funny thing happened. No one was joining the queues, so I figured I might as well bang out a quest in Tanaris, since it's so easy to get there now from Dalaran. I jumped thru the portal at the Violet Citadel, killed a Hyena, and kinda stopped short.



Apparently, 1440 xp isn't really a big deal after all. Killing a dog that has no chance of landing a single blow on me thru a stunlock awarded me 406, and they're lined up as far as the eye can see. I can kill four dogs way faster than the 1440 XP was ticking by, and if I do it right, I can kill mobs I need for quests anyway... so yeah.

Back to the grind. PvP was fun for an evening, but isn't really an effective way to level.

I never really ground BGs at any point in my WoW career. I always felt the whole High Warlord thing was stupid, which Blizzard and the rest of the world eventually agreed with. I think the only people that felt it was worth grinding AB for 8 months were those forcing themselves to do it. My point is that AB is still somewhat of a fresh experience for me. I can imagine it's a huge drag for many of the population, which brings me back to why we're limited to these two at this level bracket.

If they want to have people PvP in BGs more (or even level that way), screw battlegroups... make the BG queue system pull from the entire WoW server pool. We'll be getting cross server LFG for dungeons soon, why not crank that dial up to 11 on the PvP side? If queues were instant, then it might be a viable way to level.

Anyway. Warhammer this is not. I'm back to Questhelper and PVE.

Wish me luck. : /

11 comments:

Jong said...

"Suddenly, I was bottom of the rung again, and it was much less fun." rofl

I didn't know they implemented bg xp already. I think I'll stick to pve too.

Kiryn said...

Well, until they find a way to implement all-realm battlegrounds, they'll have to limit your choices at lower levels. The queues are long enough without having people spread out between five or six different battlegrounds, one of which contains 40 people on each side.

Limiting the expansion battlegrounds to the higher levels does a good job of preventing people who haven't bought the expansions from entering. Kinda like they stuck all the jewelcrafting trainers in the new cities and Outland so that only people who bought BC could learn it. Sure, there are other ways to handle it, but this one works out okay for now.

And I can see why they want to prevent you from switching specs in the middle of a battleground. I'm not sure I like the idea of hiding behind a building for 15 seconds to switch spec becoming a valid strategy. But there should definitely be a grace period if you join in the middle of a match.

Bri said...

XP is in battlegrounds for 2 reasons. Blizz wants more people to enjoy them, they've publicly stated that, and it's an elegant solution.

Firstly, it entices the questers to do something fun for an hour or two without feeling like they're falling behind in their levelling.

Secondly, and most importantly, it addresses the problem of non-twinks going into the 19 WSG, getting repeatedly roflstomped by a twink, and never ever stepping foot in a BG again until Wintergrasp at 80 because it was such a negative experience.

Rich said...

Secondly, and most importantly, it addresses the problem of non-twinks going into the 19 WSG, getting repeatedly roflstomped by a twink, and never ever stepping foot in a BG again until Wintergrasp at 80 because it was such a negative experience.

that's a non-issue.

Twinks that choose to shut off the XP earning (at a cost of 10g) are locked in twink only queues. If you're earning XP, you're fighting other normal players. Twinks only fight other twinks now.

James Warne said...

that's a non-issue.

Twinks that choose to shut off the XP earning (at a cost of 10g) are locked in twink only queues. If you're earning XP, you're fighting other normal players. Twinks only fight other twinks now.



I think that's what he was getting at. Now that there is XP in BG's, and you can choose to turn it off, all the twinks will by design remove themselves from the normal queues.

Rich said...

ah! I totally misread that comment. So... yeah. We're all on the same page.

OMG something just occurred to me. I wanna make a level 10 'twink' in the worst greens and grey pieces of gear I can find (or have a level 10 rogue fully twinked with +INT enchants). Turn off the XP gain, thereby entering the twink queues, and just piss off my team by having a 'wasted' slot on their team.

JOY!

Poule said...

OMG something just occurred to me. I wanna make a level 10 'twink' in the worst greens and grey pieces of gear I can find (or have a level 10 rogue fully twinked with +INT enchants). Turn off the XP gain, thereby entering the twink queues, and just piss off my team by having a 'wasted' slot on their team.

What battlegroup are you on? I might join you and we can /dance together and waste TWO slots...

Rich said...

BG9, the 'hardcore' one

;)

Bloodshrike said...

Ixo, I never really thought about using the portal in the Violet Citadel to get to Tanaris.

My Gnomish engineers just port there, and my one Goblin engineer DK has to step thru to TB, and then fly all the way down.
Thanks for the tip!

oshin said...

The xp in bgs was only a small concession really, it was never going to be massive xp, I think its more to encourage people to spend a bit of time in bgs, but still level the old way. Its probably for the best, as it would just make leveling a horrible bg grind.

Would be nice to see a more interesting pvp leveling system though, maybe something for the expansion.

Pazi said...

Hm, I'm doing a little experiment right now with my farm-hunter. He is lvl78 and I play him for about 2 wintergasp-games a week (to do the weekly quests) and then 1-2hours a week to farm herbs (no experience-gain). I want to see if he can get enough wg-emblems and honor to buy a complete epic pvp-set when he finally reaches 80. The highest xp-amount I got during a wg-game was ... *drums* 2. I'd estimate that I got a total of 100 xp for a complete game. Fortunately I get like 50k xp for the quests otherwise this would take forever.