Comments on: The Miracle of Tol Barad

By: Cynwise

Cynwise — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:27:56 +0000

Punishing players for acting logically is hugely unfair.

Unfortunately, it’s sadly consistent with other incidents where Blizzard adopts a policy and does not budge from it, fair or not. There are no exceptions in how they define it. This isn’t the first PvP incident I can think of that is behavior encouraged by the battleground rules, but a bannable exploit. (c.f. fighting from the gun platforms in Wintergrasp).

The problems of Tol Barad were noted during the Beta, but not addressed. The majority of testing, from what I’ve read, was spent with one faction camping the GY of the other until the testers went elsewhere. Blizzard attempted to fix that problem, but didn’t address any of the issues with design.

The flagship PvP area of Cataclysm has made a mockery of PvP. It’s really quite disheartening.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:41:05 +0000

I agree. And I don’t think this is abusing the system, not in the same way that leeching off AV used to be or that exploiting bugs in PvE is. I think that it just shows the community solving problems together.

By: syl

syl — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:56:24 +0000

My opinion is pretty clear on this: call it abusing the system, but the real issue lies on Blizzard’s side. Tol Barad’s design is an utter fail at the moment and I don’t blame players for trying to optimize their honor gains this way which only seems logic. it should never be that losing on purpose is a rewarding tactic – I’m frankly surprised they didnt anticipate it..
I hope they will look into the issues asap instead of blaming the community. it’s a sad state of affairs.

I’ve elaborated on this in an own blog-post of today, and took the liberty to include your post there, Spinks -

http://raging-monkeys.blogspot.com/2011/01/when-losing-is-winning-or-dont-blame.html

I too am somehow positively surprised that so many servers were capable to strike a deal of this kind, wrong or not. it shows that there are real people behind their computers.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:29:54 +0000

I thought this kind of win trading happened with the RvR battles in Warhammer Online, before they tweaked things to discourage it.

By: Iggep

Iggep — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:17:21 +0000

Win trading has been occuring on my server for days now. Frankly, with as completely screwed as this battleground is I haven’t minded it so much because at least this way both sides will get access to the dailies and the raid boss. I don’t think the zone changed hands more than 2-3 times the first two weeks and maybe slighly more the third week.

One of the things we’re starting to really see is that a vast majority of people now queueing to get the 1800 honor, however, aren’t getting in. Word has gotten out about the alternative method for earning the honor if you don’t get called into the battle and each match is now witness to huge clumps of people at the end of the bridge.

If Blizzard were inclined to actually listen to me, and I could profer just one bit of advice for their redesign effort, It would be to completely scrap this design and put in something completely different. You can’t have defenders spawning at a central node with equal, quick access to every other node in the zone. And you can’t expect an attacking force to hold three nodes simultaneously to win when a defending force only needs to hold one. Further another aspect that needs to change is how you gain a node to begin with. Right now the only factor in gaining or losing a node is numerical. If you have more attackers than defenders, you win irregardless of whether you actually defeat anyone or not. That’s a take away from Eye of the Storm where it works. But in a zone like this, and especially in that you have to take all three nodes to win, it doesn’t.

I’d like Blizzard to make the towers a little more meaningful. Make destroying them grant zone wide buffs to the attackers along with the extra time. That should make them worthwhile to defend, which should spilit the defenders. Right now the defenders can completely ignore the towers and not even worry about it.

As far as winning criteria goes I’m conflicted. I like the idea of zone captures being cumulative but also see the issues with it. Instead of having to capture three nodes simulateously I think you should be able to capture them one, or two at a time which would also split the defense. And it would give the defenders a real reason to stay and fight whereas now they simply move to the next node. That just leaves into question about how you actually capture a node. Change to clicking on the flag perhaps so that defenders can recapture.

and lastly I’d like to see the population capped raised to at least 120 as it was in Wintergrasp. 40 vs 40 is too low for a zone like this. Especially now where the honor gain is so high.

By: ladyerinia

ladyerinia — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 16:51:55 +0000

Yeah…we aren’t win/trading often on our server right now. During Wrath, the alliance kept Wintergrasp near 100% of the time (7+ Alliance per 1 Horde). It became a running joke on the Horde side if we actually won WG for a change. If we did actually win, everyone on the server tried to get in a VoA group.

But now? We are keeping Tol Barad. Call it petty, call it revenge for never letting us have WG, but we aren’t giving up TB easy. Sure, we might throw a match or two for some free honor, but not often. We just sit in one building for a while.

And we laugh when the alliance log on to our side and complain about not winning.

By: Samon

Samon — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:07:09 +0000

I think the reason Blizzard decided on these victory conditions in the first place is the most interesting bit.
I’m assuming their designers are experienced and know what they’re doing, so why would they make it so difficult for the attackers in the first place? If anything, I would expect them to make it more difficult for the defenders, so that it changes hands more often and helps prevent one faction dominating.
The only reason I can think of is that, like Cataclysm on the whole with all the bugs and such, it was rushed, both in development and testing, and even worse, never thought through properly in the first place.

Anyway, it’ll also be interesting to see what their next ‘fix’ will be. I’m pretty sure they hate the idea of free honour being dished out and the idea of no one playing their lovely new BG properly won’t be going down too well. Lets just hope the next fix is a little better thought through.

By: We Fly Spitfires

We Fly Spitfires — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 11:03:49 +0000

The thing is incredibly fixed on my server and both sides are doing win trading in order to get the honor. It’s a rather silly amount too as you only need to win about 5 or 6 times to be able to get a full set of PvP gear. Personally I think the whole thing makes a mockery of the concept of PvP. All I’ve seen so far are huge queues and people complaining when they don’t get chosen to enter and can’t get their “free” honor.

I hope Blizzard can fix it soon.

By: arbitrary

arbitrary — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 10:47:14 +0000

To be honest this is happening on our server without any match fixing. People get into the PvP battle, see if they’re defending and if they are they just do very little and lose willingly. Have seen it from both Horde and Alliance players and without any pre-knowledge. It’s a dumb system, totally unlike the fun of Wintergrasp.

I’ve done it a few times, but I doubt I’ll queue for it much more. I love Battle for Gilneas so much more ;p