Monday, November 15, 2010

Blizzard’s Focus on Noobs and Elitists

After reading my blog for some time you might know that I am not a noob. Well, actually I am not the elite either. I am just a normal guy; a normal WoW player. Chances are high that you are, too.

Now, have a look at this.

A post on Blizzard’s new forums that are especially concentrated cool. Especially the fact that my European account does not allow me to reply or even rate the post .. ah, another topic.
80% of what I do in WoW and have always done were battlegrounds. Not because I am a PvPler: I hate arena. I did BGs, because I liked the combination of elitists with noobs. It was somewhere in the middle. You could join and leave whenever you wanted, but you could also join together with a friend and leave whenever you wanted. You would find good players in the BG. Organized small groups in Alterac Valley that you could help defend a tower or a flag.

Also, you could work towards a goal. Usually some kind of PvP equip. This was much more fun when the PvE equip also was of use in PvP (and vice versa), but the elitist PvPers didn’t like that the elitist PvEers had better PvP equip. I never cared about it, because I am not part of any elite.

Since TBC we have the divide and battlegrounds are less fun, but still enough to play them. With WotLK endgame PvP became rather strange. PvE equip would make you a onehit and PvP equip would make you a three hit. Unless you had a healer. Then you would live forever. The consequences of Blizzard's ongoing try to give as many cookies as possible to as many players as possible. Cute.

WotLK PvE focused on noobs that did not know anybody on the server and would never organize anything and elitists who would kill the Lich King heroic.
I am neither!

I am somewhere in between and was rerolling all the time, because PvP at 80 was crap and PvE was only for elitists and noobs. There was nothing I could do if I logged into the game at a Saturday morning. No reasonable PvE, no fun PvP.

The PvP problem is about to be attacked by Blizzard with Cataclysm. So, let’s assume they manage to solve it and players can live again for more than a few globals. Will it be fun?
Will it be fun for me? I thought so. Due to rated battlegrounds. My imagination went like this: Epic battles that you could join whenever you wanted. With a few friends if you wanted. That you could leave whenever you wanted. That would contain both casuals and hardcore. That would encourage you to do the little things that make you lose honor-kills, but win the game and thus increase your personal rating.
But now look at what Blizzards has done to rated BGs: You need to have a premade group and you will only be able to do BGs that require 10 or 15 players.

I know that there are statistical limitations for a latter-like system. If you need to play 1000 games before Blizzard can make an accurate latter that is a problem. So this may come down to fairness. In my opinion the game is no e-sport, so I consider fairness rather unimportant. I just want to have fun, damnit.

And Blizzard just destroyed all my hopes for that. People who do rated BGs will be well organized. They will not need any randoms. Consequently, this is a feature for elitists and not for me.

So I will have to do the even worse non-rated BGs. Even worse, because the elite is now in the rated BGs! Non-rated BGs are now noob content and will take even more time to pop up.

And this is what I complain about about in this post (call it QQ if you want): Content that is only for noobs that never organize anything or for elitists who only play with their guild and address their guild management with “Officer Smith, yes Sir!”

In short: I want content that is neither made for noobs nor for elitists.

1 comment:

  1. I've discussed this issue a few months ago in my guild. Blizzard have actually made their thoughts on rated BGs clear quite early on, also see the blue posts in this topic:

    http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tracker/us-forums/25482320318-rated-battlgrounds-why-premades.html

    rated BGs are for the arena types of players and supposed to be just as hard as high end raiding content. they are not meant for 'normal players' the way you describe yourself, but players that dedicate their main focus in wow on PVP, pvp gear, titles and usually also join pvp guilds for that purpose.

    I agree it's a little disappointing for some of us more in 'midfield' but I can see where they're coming from. and the normal BGs could still serve a better purpose if they added different features to them and hadn't destroyed them with things like holiday achis.

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