WWI ‘08 Notes from the PvP panel

July 1, 2008 | By admin In WOW News |

Here at DeathknightWoW, we pride ourselves on bringing you the latest, greatest news about the WoW we all know and love. (You haven’t all gone off to play Diablo, have you?) What this means is that we crawled out of bed at what our watch says was three in the morning, even though by local Paris time it was already mid-morning under a sunny sky. We’ve fought our ways through crowds at the Worldwide Invitational to bring you a front-row seat to today’s PvP panel, starting shortly. For the latest updates on the game’s PvP system — right from the developers! — keep reading for live updates from the panel.

1:30 PM CEST: Tom Chilton (Lead Game Designer) and Cory Stockton (Lead Level Designer) take the stage.

To start off, Chilton talks about Lake Wintergrasp.

Non-instanced PvP
Siege vehicle combat: we’ll talk about that more later
Air combat: there are two types of air vehicles
Destructible buildings: wouldn’t be fun to have siege vehicles if there wasn’t stuff you could blow up
Supports both large and small scale combat: Blizz has been trying to predict average participation and make it fun for small and large groups
Attack / Defend game type: Like the Spirit Towers. One team claims territory, but only holds it for a set amount of time before the other side has a chance to attack again. Each time territory changes hands, the attackers become the defenders.
Rewards: Northrend “Spirit Shards” that you can use to buy rewards you can’t get through other mechanics (read: honor or arena points). But these won’t be more powerful than other PvP items — just alternatives. Don’t want people to feel they aren’t competitive if their faction isn’t winning. Also honor and marks of honor just like you’d get from a normal instanced battleground.

1:39: Stockton talks about the iterative map design process — from a very simple hand-drawn map, to a carefully drawn out map, to detailed in-game maps, to the same with notes on where they’ll add items, destructable buildings, etc.

The placement of water in the zone is important because siege vehicles can’t move through water, so these will be potential chokepoints.

1:43: Graveyards will be like graveyards in other battlegrounds with a basic 30 second respawn. You’ll also be able to capture graveyards so your team isn’t always respawning across the map.

Stockton shows off a keep. All parts of the keep are destructible. The scale is described as “epic” — it’s large enough for siege weapons to fit inside. Had to make them big enough for gameplay because, since it’s non-instanced, there could be 50 people in the zone or 200 people in the zone.

1:46: Siege vehicles! Chilton covers five different types, all usable for both factions:

The Demolisher: baseline vehicle. Has both short and long-range attacks and a ram attack. Can carry a driver and three passengers. (The passengers are exposed, can be targeted and attacked — but it also means you can fight back!) Drive-by shootings. The driver is also the gunner.

Forsaken Catapult: much quicker than The Demolisher (says Chilton: more agile). Not as long range as The Demolisher, doesn’t do quite as much damage, doesn’t carry any passengers, has a flame attack. Lowest cost vehicle.

The Siege Engine: hardest-hitting and longest range vehicle. Carries a driver, gunner, and passengers (but not exposed — which means they can’t attack).
Flying Machine: a flying vehicle that’s very quick but fragile. Vulnerable to anti-air weaponry. Carries a pilot and a gunner.

Goblin Shredder: an anti-air vehicle that fires rockets and can rocket boost yourself into the air to reach air vehicles (or jump over walls!). Essentially a personal armor suit — if the suit is destroyed, you can jump out and keep fighting. Close-range melee attack. Vulnerable to siege vehicles.

They’re still considering how to obtain the vehicles, but they want the process to be fast-paced and fun.

1:55: Time to talk Arenas. Design ideals for these are:

Keep it simple
Still leave room to innovate (keep it simple, but add some new twists)
Dynamic points of interest (read: moving objects)
Unique starting areas/events. Might put starting teams close to each other.
Room to grow: we need to be able to make quest adjustments during beta

1:57: Stockton takes center stage again to talk about the two new arenas in Wrath: Dalaran and Orgrimmar.

Dalaran Arena:

Located in the sewers of Dalaran city. When Dalaran came over to Northrend, it took a large chunk of rock out of the ground with it, including the sewers.This environment seemed like a great fit for the arena.

Dynamic line of sight: we can move objects in arenas and have the line of sight move with them. Think about the pillar in the Nagrand… and think if that pillar could move. We could make these move randomly or based on a specific timer. This can mix up the gameplay.
Simple layout
Mounts will not be usable. It’s a small arena and wanted to let people get right into gameplay.

There’s a pipe in the center of the arena that water will occasionally pour out of. While the water is falling, it will block line of sight. It’s a simple layout, but a few dynamic elements that will mix it up. There’s a pipe on either side of the arena where each team will start, and a blast of water will push people out of the pipe early on.

It’s currently in playtesting.

Orgrimmar Arena:

There’s been an arena in Orgrimmar for a long time in the Valley of Heroes, but Blizz has never done anything with it.
Elevating pillars will create line of sight (on set timers — there will be little wheels and gears on the side of the arena that will spin before the pillars move)
Triggered objects that damage players (thinking as the pillars go down, a wall of spikes may come up — you can get across them but you’ll take some damage)
Extremely close starting areas: players start on elevators that rise out of the ground ten yards apart from each other. The elevators will be surrounded by spikes that will drop a couple of seconds after the elevator reaches the top — so you’ll have a couple of seconds.
Mounts will be allowed inside — this arena is a bit larger than Dalaran. Thought this was the perfect place to get NPC spectators who cheer, etc.

These dynamic elements will make each arena feel different. Not testing yet.

2:09: Chilton comes up to talk about Northrend’s new battleground

Tital isle located off the southern coast of Dragonblight
Attack/Defend gameplay, but a bit different since it’s instanced. You play half the game on defense and half the game on offense, switching mid-fight.
This battleground will have siege vehicles and destructible buildings
Based on the Titan lore. A lot of Northrend circulates around Titan lore.

2:11: Stockton explains the layout. Attackers will come in on boats and assault the city. Siege vehicles will need to be used to break through the city’s walls and break in. The further you get, you’ll capture points allowing access to more siege weapons.

They’re currently planning it to be 10v10 or 15v15. They BG is currently being play-tested.

Q&A

2:17: Q: Now we have one source of honor, Alterac Valley, and everything else is a source of marks. Some people lose on purpose to get marks quicker. Is there anything being done to solve this problem?
Chilton: It’s a very very difficult problem to solve. We find that if we give no rewards for losing a battleground, it’s very punishing. That’s why we have systems to report players for not participating and we’ve lowered the number of players who need to report someone. (There is a certain point where the system can’t determine how hard you’re trying.

2:19: Q: Do you have plans to implement a spectator mode?
Chilton: Definitely on our list of things we want to do. To add to that, we also have the idea of using that spectator mode to extend to other things, in raids for example

Q: Unique (racial) combat moves?
Chilton: We don’t plan to add any more racials.

2:24: Q: My girlfriend and I love PvP, but since the Burning Crusade, we feel like we’re forced into arenas
Chilton: We do plan to keep a pretty similar sort of reward items.

Q: For the frost mage, some crowd control talents seem to be PvP-oriented, don’t you think this could cause unbalance?
Chilton: It’s always going to feel that way because bosses tend to be immune to crowd control, but we’re trying to open it up.

Q: What do you plan to fix Warlock pet scaling?
A: Right now we’re pretty happy with pet scaling. It should be a viable tactic to spend some time attacking the pets. A player has to make a choice. We feel like if that scales very well, it’s going to be a viable tactic to just focus on one.

2:34: That’s all she wrote, folks! The Invitational’s final WoW panel has come to a close.

Gallery: Worldwide Invitational 2008