WoW: The Burning Crusade

Cafe Society
101

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I don’t understand what you don’t understand.

3 of the 4 battlegrounds are going to have matches that come down to which team has the most vastly underequipped, underlevelled players holding them back. That’s a terrible design decision. They’re trying to force people to buy their product, but it lessens the quality of both people who don’t have the expansion (because they can’t PVP remotely competitively) and even people who do have it (by making the game all about which team has fewer non-BC people).

There’s no benefit to it, and obvious downsides.
[/QUOTE]

I just don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s an extension of what already exists throughout the leveling in the game. You enter the battlegrounds at level 19, you stand a good chance of kicking ass. You enter the same battleground at level 20, you’ll die a lot. The psychotically competitive pvpers will freak out if someone below level x9 in their range dares enter the battleground just like they always do.

Level 60 isn’t the top of the field any more. People need to adjust. If they don’t want to install BC, then they need to accept the fact that their characters are going to be gimps compared to anyone with the expansion. The original game is two years old. Time marches on.

102

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
And making jewelcrafters pay for their skill ups is a lucrative business. Something like malachite might’ve gone for 80s-1.2g a stack pre-BC, but since it’s in such high demand for skill ups, it’ll sell for 6g+ now. But some people, used to the old prices, still price them that way, so sometimes you can snatch up a stack for cheap and resell it at a 5g profit.
[/QUOTE]

I spent the first couple of weeks exploiting this very thing. I was a miner and blacksmith. When the expansion came out, a good number of people dumped their professions or made new characters for jewelcrafting/mining. But it takes time to work your way up in these things. I had about a two-week “head start” and during that time, I sold large amounts of gems and ores for crazy sums to the impatient ones. I never made money like the thousands you’re talking about, but I did triple my worth in less than 20 days.

I dropped mining a while back. Competition for nodes was getting fierce and I had lots of unpleasant situations in which my node was ninja’d while I was fighting. The prices started to drop from their Tulipomania highs and so I quit. I listened to general chat a bit and made note of the “LTB” calls for various items and services and chose a profession which seemed to be in demand (many of the previous people in that profession having left to try the new one.)

103

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
On average, since Horde players are less stupid…
[/QUOTE]

So, for the vast numbers of us who play on both sides, are we only stupid when we’re on the Alliance side, or does our stupidity bleed over to the Horde side and bring that whole faction’s obviously superior intelligence down?

104

I know, that cracked me up too, DeadlyAccurate. I’m bifactional, and I’ve noticed no significant difference in play between sides.

105

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
I just don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s an extension of what already exists throughout the leveling in the game.
[/QUOTE]

No, it isn’t. Because even for a level 60, the gap between a pre-BC 60 and a post-BC 60 is huge. You get weapons and armor on your first few BC quests that are better than some of the better pre-BC raiding gear.

Not only that, but a level 12 player in a 10-20 BG simply should stop and level up. But a level 60 player without BC has no option to do so.

[QUOTE=DeadlyAccurate]
So, for the vast numbers of us who play on both sides, are we only stupid when we’re on the Alliance side, or does our stupidity bleed over to the Horde side and bring that whole faction’s obviously superior intelligence down?
[/QUOTE]

You make it sound as if I’m pulling this out of my ass, but this is a pretty clearly understood thing among WoW players.

As a cross-faction player, and an SDMB poster, you’re probably smart and competant. Plenty of people on alliance are. But the alliance, as a whole, has a much greater concentration of stupid and/or inexperienced players.

There are different guesses as to why this is. The most common is that immature kids tend to like the attractive races of the alliance over the ugly races of the horde. Most of the “OMG I’M GONNA MAKE A NIGHT ELF HUNTER NAMED LEGOLAS LOLOLOLOL I AM SO UNIQUE” people are on alliance.

Additionally, most new players tend to lean towards alliance, tending to identify with them more, and seeing them as the good guys. So, on average, the people who tend to join the horde are more experienced.

I have characters on 3 servers and I’ve played BGs as both factions. Across all of them, the Horde tends to have a 75% or better win rate in WSG, and AB. I’m not making this stuff up - there is a disparity, and pretty much all WoW players agree. It was probably the driving reason that they gave the horde blood elves.

106

The only difference I’ve ever noticed between Horde and Alliance is that Horde chat seems to be mostly “OMG Alliance r so dumb! Chuck Norris! LOLZ”, while Alliance chat is usually more along the lines of “Chuck Norris! LOLZ”.

107

I have nothing to add other than that I think, “Where’s the Grand Master First Aid trainer?” is the new “Where’s Mankrik’s wife?”

I must have seen five people in a row ask that question in Hellfire Peninsula within a half-hour period.

108

I must admit, as someone who’s played both sides, I’ve been in 20-30 BG runs and I’ve seen the Alliance win exactly once. I would guess the Alliance’s record in BG instances I’ve bee in is something like 1-27. That’s beyond any reasonable expectaiton of random chance.

It could be that Alliance players are disproportionately inexperienced. I also suspect Horde players are likelier to be twitchy children and teenagers who are into PvP.

109

The 70 PVP gear sucks.

I mean, it’s not terrible, but it’s in no way worth what it costs.

I was really happy when they switched the honor system from a relative ranking system to a currency system. I figured it gave an alternative path to getting good gear - you didn’t have to necesarily raid all the time, at specific times, and coordinate with 39 other people. You could work at your own pace, PVP, and work your way up to getting good gear.

And the gear was awesome! Sure, you had to work for it - the old PVP dagger would take about 75-100 AB matches to get, but it kicked the hell out of anything you could buy, and was competitive with what you could get on raids. So it seemed worth it, if you liked to PVP.

But the level 70 gear isn’t that much better than the level 60 gear. And more importantly, it’s not much better than that you could easily acquire by buying or questing. The PVP dagger has almost the exact same stats as a world drop BOE dagger I could buy right now for around 400g. And in BC, 400g is nothing. I’ve made somewhere around, I dunno, 3000-4500g since BC came out. There’s another, more rare and expensive, BOE dagger that you can buy that is significantly better than the PVP dagger.

And the armor is garbage. An example: Pants I got from a quest at level 66: +30 agi +45 sta +62 AP. The rogue PVP pants: +28 agi +42 sta +14 crit +28 resilience +28 AP. My current pants, which I acquired from a relatively easy quest, at level 66, are equal to or better than the level 70 PVP pants which would require 23625 honor, which is about 60-75 runs of AB or WSG even on their battleground weekend

So we’re talking about dozens of hours to get something that’s arguably worse than what I already have.

I don’t know how other classes compare really, so maybe their gear isn’t as sad as that of rogues, but most of the PVP armor isn’t all that much an improvement over the common green armor available to me at level 67, and yet you have to work for dozens of hours for every piece.

So, they made a good feature - honor as currency - and then made it useless by making it so that nothing you can buy is remotely worth the effort.

110

[QUOTE=RickJay]
I also suspect Horde players are likelier to be twitchy children and teenagers who are into PvP.
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This is my suspiscion as well. I’ve also heard that Horde PUGs tend to co-ordinate more than Alliance ones do (which, lets face it, wouldn’t take much), but I refuse to PvP with my Horde toon so I can’t say. At any rate, the absolute lack of organisation isn’t helping us any.

SenorBeef, that may be so, but I find that Horde players also tend to have more of an attitude problem, as well as superiority complexes re: Alliance (Thanks Cazzle, I’ve noticed the same thing). Honestly, I haven’t seen much difference in actual intelligence levels, just in how abrasive each side is. Give me the Alliance any day–at least the idiots aren’t pricks as well (not as often, anyways).

111

The theory I’ve always subscribed to is that since the Horde has been largely outnumbered since the game launched, they’ve had more experience working together as a team. The Alliance had often been able to get buy in world PvP (back before Civilians were added, in the glory days of Tarren Mill vs. Southshore) simply by zerging the Horde with overwhelming numbers. Horde players therefore had to learn a great deal of co-operation just to be able to survive. When Battlegrounds were added, that co-operation carried over for the Horde, but the Alliance was no longer able to rely on superior numbers.

(This is clearly a generalization, of course. Some Alliance groups have superb co-ordination, and many Horde groups are morons.)

112

I’m really curious to see how that’s is going to hold out in, say, six months from now. I really believe one of the goals of this expansion was to made the Horde sexy and thus address the faction imbalance. Granted, a lot of players may not stick with their new Blood Elves once they get out of the freakin’ incredible new starting areas for them, but I don’t know. Mana Tap is an awesome racial ability, particularly used as a ranged attack on a paladin and I’m blasting through levels on my Blood Elf priest.

113

The horde/alliance inbalance is mostly on pve/rp servers. Most pvp servers are at about equal numbers, maybe slightly leaning towards alliance, and you also hear a whole lot less of the “alliance suck at pvp” crap. On my server i never noticed the alliance losing more than horde pick up groups, specially since pick up groups are nothing but delicious honor filled piñatas for organized groups. Ever since the cross realm battle grounds though alliance teams just blow, i can’t play pick up groups anymore its like some of those people have never pvped in their life.

The expansion rocks so far, i’ve made it to 64 already and im having a blast like in the old days. The instances are really well done, with interesting boss encounters, and best of all done in a decent amount of time. My guild is all about pushing to 70 to start raiding but im not going to bother with it much this time around.