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The final World of Warcraft discussion panel at the 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational was to discuss everything PvP in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion. The panel was made up of Tom Chilton (Lead Game Designer), and Cory Stockton (Lead Level Designer) and they covered tons of information. They focused heavily on the new world PvP zone called Wintergrasp and then moved on to talk about the two new arenas and the new battleground. Wintergrasp will be covered in depth here.

The Zone

Wintergrasp is going to be Blizzards first full PvP world zone. This means that the whole zone will be meant for PvP all the time, there are very few things for PvE'ers in the zone. Wintergrasp itself is a zone that has a large frozen lake and a river flowing across it. It is located in the center of the continent of Northrend.

The zone is an attack / defend type zone, where one faction will be defending a fortress at the north end of the zone, while the attackers come from the south. The attackers need to cross a river that runs east to west across the zone though and there are choke points at several bridges.

Blizzard is working hard to try and ensure the zone functions according to their vision of it, however they have no real idea of the number of players that will be involved. They are working on estimates but feel that the zone will initially be very busy and then slow down to a manageable level after a few weeks. To cope with this they are ensuring that there are both small and large group activities in the zone so that there will always be something to do.

PvP Aspects

The goal of the attackers is to capture the fortress in the north within a set time limit. If they can not capture it in that time, the defenders win. Whichever side wins, gains control of the zone for a length of time. This is very similar to the spirit towers in Terokkar Forest in the Outlands.

Once the factions control time is over the players that held the fortress must defend it again. Each time the successfully defend it, the attackers gain a progressively bigger advantage in the next fight. This is to ensure that even on servers where the population is at an imbalance, both factions will at least hold it occasionally.

The side that is holding Wintergrasp gains access to vendors that will sell items for what are reportedly the new spirit shards, again very similar to those found in Terokkar Forest and Auchindoun. However when a faction holds Wintergrasp, all bosses in all instances in Northrend will drop the spirit shards! This makes controlling the zone very important for gearing up.

Destructible Buildings

All of the buildings will be destructible in the zone. This includes the guard towers, bridges and of course the fortress. All of the buildings have been made to be large and tall so that any number of players can fight in them, around them and so that they can be seen from a distance. Blizzard is trying to ensure that you can tell from a distance if a building or bridge is still there and in good repair before getting all the way to it.

For more information on Wintergrasp: check out our Wintergrasp PvP session video recorded live at the event.

Siege Vehicles

Siege vehicles are how you will actually capture, defend, or destroy buildings. There are quite a few that will be available. The ones described were:

• Demolisher - Described as the baseline vehicle, has both short and long ranged attacks, has a ramming attack. It carries a driver and up to 3 exposed passengers. Because the passengers are exposed they can fight from the vehicle as normal. Meaning, mages, locks, hunters and others can stand on it and conduct what amounts to "drive by shootings" in WoW.

  Forsaken Catapult

• Forsaken Catapult - This will be the most agile and cheapest warmachine. It will have lower range (still longer than characters normal ranges) and cause less damage than a demolisher though. It will only carry the driver.
• Siege Engine - This is the biggest, hardest hitting siege vehicle. It has a very long gun range and a very nasty ramming attack. It carries a driver, gunner and enclosed passengers (no number specified). The passengers can not attack out, but are protected from attacks.
• Fighters - There will be fast flying aircraft in the zone that can attack both land and air targets. The faster lighter armed ones are being referred to as the fighter variety.
• Bombers - These are slower and more heavily armed flyers that a fighter. Not much detail was given on either flyer as they apparently still in testing.
• Goblin Shredder - This is a small siege vehicle that is essentially personal body armor for a player. It will have anti-air missiles and its main purpose is to counter enemy aircraft. It also has a nasty close combat attack though, and jump packs to ensure it can either jump into the sky to attack a plain or jump over a wall to get at the enemy.

>Want to know more? Check out the Siege Vehicles session video recorded live at the event, as well.

Gear

Blizzard discussed the fact that they like the original spirit shard concept, however would like to refine it. They want the loot to continue to be worth the effort even months after release. To ensure this they will likely be making some gear enchant effects available for shards there, in much the same way as shoulder enchants are available from vendors in Shattrath.

While the shards will only be available from inside instances, the gear rewards will be heavily PvP focused. This is because your faction had to complete a PvP objecting to gain control and the shards to begin with.

Miscellaneous

The zone is still in development as are the siege weapons. Blizzard discussed many of the issue that they are dealing with. One simple thing was to ensure that there is enough space in and around buildings (and especially around the hard mounted defense cannons) that players have space to fight. They also discussed making sure players can see what is going on so they do not drive a siege engine towards a bridge to make it over, only to get there and find out it has been destroyed.

One interesting technical issue is how to have the U.I. dynamically change view distance depending on the number of characters near you. This is being looked at so that when the zone is packed, it will dynamically lower your view distance so that the game continues to function at a good speed.

On the balance side of things several things are being looked at. A good example is he bonuses granted if you lose are still being tuned to ensure both sides have a fair fight. Also capturing of graveyards so that the offense can advance, but ensuring the defense can still rez somewhere.

Overall the zone looks like it could be a blast, and will likely be very busy for a long time after release. However, right now it is hard to tell as how the mechanics work does not appear to be finalized yet. It could turn into another Halaa or Terokkar, that are never really used. Also, many players were not thrilled by the concept of fighting PvP to get the right to fight PvE for rewards. If nothing else though, Blizzard has shown that it learns from mistakes and I can't believe they will just repeat past BC ones. They will find a way to make this one work. Even if they don't it will be busy with people just playing with the siege weapons!