First there were these:
- 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 Wintergrasp 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.
- Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
- Wintergrasp factories can no longer be damaged or destroyed.
Then there were these:
In response to some of the feedback we have received about Wintergrasp, I have some brief updates that should be in the next PTR build.
- We are changing the max players per side to be 120 to match up with 3 x 40 raid groups. This should be reflected in the next PTR update.
- The Wintergrasp timer should now be visible in the map view from all continents, not just while in Northrend.
- The time until the next battle is also now shown in the battleground tab of the PVP window.
- The initial players for a battle are chosen randomly, it doesn’t matter when or where you queue from.
- Higher level players in the queue have priority to be chosen.
- Queued players standing in Wintergrasp when the battle starts will only be ported out if they were not chosen to be an initial player.
We greatly appreciate the feedback and bugs that have been received so far from the PTR, and look forward to hearing more throughout this testing phase.
And this quote is just kind of funny:
There are currently no plans to move Wintergrasp to an instanced battleground.
We are also aware of the bug where players that are sent to the graveyard behind the fortress are being ejected from the game and this issue should be resolved after the next PTR build.
Thank you once again for your feedback and bug submissions so far.
So WG is being rebuilt from the ground up to be an instanced battleground… with a queue and everything. But it’s not an instanced battleground. You can’t enter it… you can’t step foot in the zone when the battle is going on unless you get ported in through the queue; but this isn’t an instanced battleground. Yeah right whatever guy; if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it’s OBVIOUSLY a cat.
It is so instanced now. =)
And an amusing scenario occured:
JoeBobTauren is out fishing, a WG battle queues, he gets chosen. =)
He continues fishing and lets others fight.
What’s next — an inactivity port out? So if you don’t join the fray within X minutes you get ported out, and someone new who was queued gets ported in.
For me the 120 limit is going to change pretty much nothing. I’ve seldom seen more than 2 raid groups alliance side, and the Horde always have scads of tencrapity so I doubt that they’ll suddenly start logging in with more people. Net result: Queues and port outs to change if someone can join; everything else will essentially be the same. Oh! And I won’t see as many fishermen during the fight. Big Deal. =)
Quack…….I mean meow
I think the blizz development meeting was:
- If you can’t do what you promised… just do anything stupid… it might work!
- Yeah, we can do WG a BG… but not a BG… but almost… eh… nevermind…
- Hey! If only a few people can play WG at the same time, there will not be lag anymore!
- No, no,no… I have a great idea! Listen to me! We promised outdoor PVP… right? OK, but we haven’t said how many people can play there at the same time.
- OMG! We just have to close WG to players and only a few chosen can fight!
- Great!!! We’ll make it. And… has anyone got any idea on brand new content?
- Mm…
- Er…
- So… maybe recolor old murlocs’ skins and use the DeadMines maps for… THE NEW ENEMY: Unholy murlocs from the dephts of pirates’ cave!!!!
- Great… you have just been promoted to Design Lead for the new patch!
This is the easy way out imo, i really liked that you could have 500 people in the zone and have a huge fight.
This will change nothing for horde on my server, we are lucky to have a small 3rd raid at peak times, wheres the allis always outnumber us atleast 2:1, much more in prime time.
So this change will atleast let us fight them without 5+ tenacity every time, and getting lagged to death on the last wall.
I wish they found a way to get that many plyers into the zone though, tenacity did its job, and the huge battles are awesome to see.
M_Blackbird, you’re my new best friend
Tenacity sucks if you don’t have it. =)
Just last night I got the joy of trying to assault the towers…we ran into a defense team of 3 or 4 hordies — oh, excuse me, we ran into Tenacity. =)
I’ll say it again — tenacity needs to be tuned so that the buff works based on the numbers in a given fight, not on the numbers on the two sides.
And Spoon — WG -*IS*- a joke. =) A bad one at that. Which is quite sad really. It had such potential.
@M_Blackbird: Why does that seem so…right?