Tigole: Blizz wants to bring BGs back, baby
Reader Thomas pointed us to this forum post by Tigole, which contains some fun news for battleground fans, even if it is a little early in the design process to really expect anything yet. Tiggy basically says that while Arenas have gained some station in the world of PvP, the focus will eventually shift back to battlegrounds -- Blizzard would like to make BG content that "could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility." They're still working on that competitive BG idea, and they want the focus to go back to the solid Horde vs. Alliance idea that's at the foundation of Warcraft.Additionally, they're planning to let us queue up for the BGs from anywhere in the world (which, no doubt, would increase participation from both factions), and Tigole also suggests that eventually they may offer XP through battlegrounds, giving players yet another way to level up (twinks may not like that suggestion, but these changes are a long way off anyway).
This last change there -- offering players a way to level up with PvP -- is seen by many forumgoers as a direct stab at Warhammer Online. That game makes a big deal out of offering battleground-style PvP, and letting players choose it as a way to completely avoid PvE and earn XP and levels. So it may be that Blizzard saw their launch, and plans to turn back in that direction to compete. Which isn't a bad thing for us anyway -- as good as WoW is, some slightly-more-serious competition will only make it better. Being as I'm a BG fan, Tigole's hints that BGs are coming back is music to my ears.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Blizzard, PvP, Leveling, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Kaphik Oct 6th 2008 1:39PM
Best news I've heard all day.
Reaalo Oct 6th 2008 2:12PM
Best news I've heard since BC.
Ryan Oct 6th 2008 2:27PM
Best news since I read it two weeks ago on worldofraids.
Genoce Oct 6th 2008 3:05PM
Two weeks? That forum post was made at the same day you made that comment. Sherlock.
joggoms Oct 6th 2008 10:54PM
WoW needs to steal ALL of WAR's PVP features if it wants to compete. This is good news for WoW, but Blizz still has a long way to go to make WoW PVP fun.
Dyermaker Oct 6th 2008 1:40PM
Read: They want to stop people from playing Warhammer.
Attack Gypsy Oct 6th 2008 2:03PM
Give me a break.
AOC was supposed to be a big threat to WoW. Look where that went. Nowhere.
Warhammer is no threat to WoW.
Bylak Oct 6th 2008 2:10PM
That's what it sounds like to me =)
zlickrick Oct 6th 2008 3:28PM
It's funny, the same people who are about to reply about how it's "OK" for WoW to use Warhammer's ideas probably were foaming at the mouth about how WAR stole X,Y,Z ideas from WoW.....
Dyermaker Oct 6th 2008 4:01PM
Listen, Warhammer will likely never put a dent into World of Warcraft. I have not played the game at all. But to suggest that Warhammer has had no impact on WoW is absurd.
Battlegrounds have been a back burner item for over two years. Now, all of a sudden a game comes out that provides something new in this area and suddenly its Blizzards focus? Come on. They have done nothing but remove reward for battle grounds for two years, treating it as second rate to Arena. They even said as much when the last Arena season came out.
Now, a few months later this turns into Warhammer's biggest plus and Blizzard wants us to believe its their "focus".
Sorry, Tigole is a self serving liar and this is nothing more than further evidence thereof.
Marvela Oct 6th 2008 5:02PM
Yeah, but the difference between Warhammer and Age of Conan is like a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich and a Crap and Old Bandaid sandwich.
You'll enjoy one, the other is a tad hard to swallow, and realy not that appealing.
Warhammer is an enjoyable, polished game, where-as Age of Conan felt like a terribly rushed effort to cash in on WoW's success. Warhammer will not kill WoW, heck, it won't even dislodge it from it's mighty pillar, but it is going to see a little success just from how well it was made.
Plus, competition is good for improving WoW - it urges the developers to see what other games offer players, and in turn try and bring that appeal to WoW.
Go Warhammer, GO!
Preston Oct 7th 2008 12:01AM
@Attack Gypsy:
Warhammer is most definitely a threat to WoW, or Blizzard wouldn't be doing this.
I don't know why people keep bringing up AoC. AoC wasn't finished. Warhammer is.
Neofox Oct 7th 2008 1:39AM
@Preston
People keep bringing up AoC because there was just so much hype about AoC. Everyone was saying, "AoC will kill WoW forever!!!!!!!!!!" Seriously, everyone was saying that. Even my friend who had been playing WoW for about two years before AoC's release was saying that AoC would be oh so much greater than WoW. That friend of mine bought the collector's AoC, and he STILL wants to stab himself in the head for wasting so much money. Needless to say, he's playing WoW again.
So, what do we hear a lot of people saying about Warhammer? "Warhammer will kill WoW!!!" ...Where have we heard that one before?
The truth is, calling Warhammer a threat to WoW all depends on how much of a threat you mean. If you mean, Warhammer will take away a few thousand (at the very most) players from WoW? Sure, maybe. But if you mean, a threat like the big hype is saying? Like Warhammer will severely injure WoW? No, it's not that big a threat at all.
Blizzard has dome something amazing with WoW. I don't know how exactly, but they've been able to make even non-gamers want to play their star game. Only time will tell when WoW finally sees its end. No other game, only time.
Matt Oct 6th 2008 1:40PM
From a lore geek's perspective, I've never considered the core of Warcraft to be the conflict between the Horde and Alliance. It certainly affects the plot, but the more interesting story is Azeroth vs. powers greater than itself.
Fro a role-player's perspective, It would be a detriment if the game is so focused on the conflict between the two factions that new role-players would never consider a cross-faction event.
I guess it would suffice it to say that I'd be incredibly disappointed if the designers of the game now consider open war between the Horde and Alliance to be the key factor is deciding where the plot goes.
William Oct 6th 2008 1:41PM
Confused as to why blizzard can't come up with their own solutions rather than just taking PVE xp and Queueing from anywhere directly from Warhammer
Steve Oct 6th 2008 1:56PM
Taking ideas from other areas and building on them is what innovation is all about. It's very inefficient to reinvent the wheel.
On the other hand, companies need to be careful of copyright infringement if applicable, but in this case, I think Blizz is taking something that works and implementing it in their universe.
Tanglebones Oct 6th 2008 2:01PM
Bliz is the market giant, and they act like it. As they have the greatest share of the MMO market at the moment, they have the most to lose if they start to make big changes to the game, thus Blizz design is relatively conservative. On the other hand, start-up MMOs have to be radical in their design in order to stand out from the crowd and attract new customers. Blizz then gets the chance to observe what works and what doesn't and can choose some of the new elements to go into their game. This is a good business decision for Blizz, and ultimately, should make for a better game for us players.
Also, as a side note, there isn't anything particularly dishonourable about this practice. This is how art *works* an artist (or team of artists) cobble together a patchwork horror from the various pieces of culture laying about their lab. If they notice another artist doing something well, they may include that piece into their work. Art (in this case, the art of making excellent MMOs) is a dialogue between artist and consumer, but also between artist and other artists in the same field.
As an example, almost all robot fiction of the last 50 odd years has assumed the 3 laws as a given. Is this because every robot writer since the big A is uncreative? No! The 3 laws have become part of the cultural dialogue regarding robots, and how an artist works that into his statement about robots is where his creativity lies. Even presenting robots in a way that has nothing to do with the 3 laws includes the three laws because such a work stands out because of its difference from an assumed norm... what does not go into the text says as much as what is in the text...
vaguesomnia Oct 6th 2008 2:25PM
...Would it be any better to just not make any changes because someone else already did it?
Then they'd definitely not be able to keep up. Keep trying to modify, improve, both by watching competition and internal innovation.
Todd Oct 6th 2008 2:29PM
Eh, these ideas have probably been tossed around by the Blizzard developers for a long time. These ideas were just never implemented. Nothing new under the sun.
Daniel Oct 6th 2008 3:19PM
Confused as to why blizzard can't come up with their own solutions rather than just taking xp for killing mobs from Everquest.... which took their ideas of that from MUDs, which in turn took their ideas from D&D... so if it works on the PVE side of things, why cant it work from the PVP side? in D&D you could get xp from PVP so it's not exactly anywhere near a revolutionary idea, just let WoW duke it out with warhammer