Caverns of Time: 2007 A Look Into The Past Year - Part 2

Player vs Player Content

The Burning Crusade wasn't all about PvE though, it also added emphasis on the distinction between PvE players and PvP players, with the inclusion of the resilience stat in most of the PvP earned weaponry and armor, as well as other buffs to the PvP system as a whole.

PvP in the Burning Crusade changed a lot, no longer would it just be about battlegrounds, it began being all about Arenas. Arenas were introduced as a method of seeing who was best in several brackets by fighting others, and at the end of the week, much like the Honor System of the past, rating would be tallied and points would be distributed to people who participated. These points would be then used to buy weapons and armor exclusive to the Arena and with lots more stamina and resilience than their PvE counterparts. What upset many raiders is that Arena gear looked almost exactly like PvE gear!

Players got access to the Netherdrake Mounts with the Daily Quests for Netherwing

Choices for Arena matches range from 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, and 5 vs 5 players. The leader queues up, and the team is matched up against another in the battlegroup of similar rating. Each rating bracket defines how good or bad a team is. Starting at 1500, going as low as 1400 or as high as to over 2000, each team would then fight others and, if victorious, earn 14-16 points, or lose them if defeated.

This system wasn't without its flaws, some were selling Arena Points, letting someone join their high-ranked team for the minimal amount of matches (30%), and come next Tuesday, they would earn the team's points, allowing them to buy more Arena Gear they wouldn't probably have otherwise. This made Blizzard start adding countermeasures to such tactics, and in the latest season, you need personal rating of atleast 1750 to start buying several pieces of gear with your Arena Points.

Later on, they would introduce "Seasons" every 6 months or so, adding new equipment and following the trend of making the armor sets look almost exactly like their PvE counterparts. No longer would someone be distinguished in Ironforge or Orgrimmar for their PvE exploits, since many others could use Arena points to look almost the same.

It is worth noting that Blizzard's Arena System has been proposed as a world cyber game, along with their other competitive online games such as Starcraft and Warcraft 3. Arena teams each season enter internal tournaments for 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5, and are then selected to compete against other players all over to see who's got the best skill and makeup for the #1 spot.

A new Battleground was added, called Eye of the Storm. This battleground had players fight each other for superiority, combining the mechanics of both Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. There are 4 bases to control in Eye of the Storm, as well as a flag. Controlling more bases gives more Victory Points which will make a team win should they reach 2000. Each flag cap also nets a team 75 victory points, so it is important to also keep the flag in check for a complete victory.

Eye of the Storm was the new Expansion Battleground

The addition of a new battleground and revamps of the old ones only sweetened the deal for most players who were playing PvE just to obtain the better items to PvP with. More PvP guilds formed and through Honor Points and Arena Points, many just decided the raiding environment was not for them and went for the PvP aspect almost exclusively.

Alterac Valley saw the inclusion of a new mechanic - reinforcements, as well as a loss of HP and amount of NPCs you had to fight in order to get into the opponent's base. With the reinforcement mechanic, each team would start off with 600, each kill within the battleground lowered your amount by 1, each tower destroyed lowered it by 75, and killing the Captain (Balinda Stonehearth or Galvangar) lowered it by 100. Once the reinforcements reached 0, that team would lose. This was Blizzard's way of going against endless "turtling" that went on in Alterac Valley and favors a more fast-paced battle within it.

Quests and Propaganda

William Shatner in his WoW commercial

Almost halfway through the year, Blizzard kept on adding new questlines and events, the most important ones being the Daily Quests. Initially, these came to be because they wanted to halt massive grinding for their new Netherdrake and Nether ray questlines, giving players a maximum of 10 quests to turn in daily for reputation and some gold. Afterwards, noting the popularity of said quests, every content patch began adding more daily quests as something to do for players at 70 when they weren't raiding or PvPing.

As of right now, players are able to complete 10 daily quests, resetting at 3 AM server time, each yielding gold, reputation, or maybe even Badges of Justice if they complete the daily assigned heroic dungeon.

Another move Blizzard did to entice more and more players to resubscribe, or new people to join, is enlist the aid of William Shatner and Mr. T in a couple commercials they aired for awhile. Both had a very good reception and brought many new curious people into the game. To make it even better, Blizzard also lowered the experience requirements to level from level 20 to 60, along with an increased amount of experience obtained from quests. These couple moves allowed for World of Warcraft to be even more mainstream than it already was, and to bring even more players into their subscriber base.

At the moment, World of Warcraft offers its players many things to do once they hit max level, be it PvE against the most challenging enemies the game has ever seen, or PvP against other fellow gamers, it still has much to live for.

Now it's your turn, what is your most memorable experience this last year? How about the changes you liked or disliked the most?