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Good news for World of Warcraft players. Blizzard, the massively-multiplayer online game publisher, has announced a number of new features which will be included in the upcoming patch – features specifically targeted at gamers who favour player vs. player (pvp) combat.
The first is the implementation of world pvp objectives in two high level areas, Silithus and the Eastern Plaguelands. They will be non-instance based and voluntary, so you don’t have to worry about being forced to engage in combat with enemy players if you don’t want to. Apart from gaining the obligatory Honour Points for your player kills, you will be able to gain reputation with various factions dotted throughout the world.
From the press release: “In Silithus, the situation has grown even worse. Geysers of a strange red crystalline dust have been appearing in the desert. Whatever this dust is, it seems to be related to the crystals nestled in the sands. As it happens, this dust, or spice, has valuable properties. Players can collect spice from these very visible geysers, which spawn throughout the desert, and return the resource to their faction’s base in the area. These bases are the same locations where each faction receives field duty quests for the Cenarion Circle. On normal (player-vs.-environment) realms, players will become PvP-flagged as soon as they collect spice from a node. You cannot carry more than one load of spice at a time.
“Players receive an individual buff upon turning in spice, but beware: should you be defeated before completing the turn-in, enemy players can take the spice from you. When one of the factions collects a certain amount of spice, that faction gains a powerful buff that benefits all faction members in the zone or in either of the Ahn’Qiraj instanced dungeons. At that point, the spice counts are reset, and the competition begins again between the factions to gain the zone-wide buff.
“The world PvP battles in The Eastern Plaguelands are based on a capture-and-hold style of gameplay, centring on the four towers in the region. Players who are flagged for PvP can attempt to capture a tower by controlling the area around it, keeping it free of enemy players. The more allies you have with you near each tower, the faster your faction (Alliance or Horde) will capture it. The faction that controls each tower earns a benefit, such as a fast flight path across the zone. Any faction that manages to control all four towers simultaneously earns a zone-wide buff that increases attack power or spell power against Undead for all faction members in the region or in Stratholme.”
If you´re not a WoW player, that will probably sound more alien to you than Klingon, but trust us, this is gold dust to these people. If you are a WoW fan, and we assume you are as you´re reading this, then perhaps it’s time to respec for some serious pvp action!
Also of interest will be Cross-Realm Battlegrounds, a feature hardcore pvpers have been crying out for, for some time. Currently, pvp is only possible within a server. With the upcoming patch, for the first time in the game’s history, players will be able to challenge the best from other servers.
All three battlegrounds, Warsong Gultch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley, will be included in this new feature. This is good news for a number of reasons. There should now be little or no wait for players to start a battleground, and, excitingly, we will perhaps get closer to answering the eternal dispute raging on WoW forums across the Internet: who is the most skilled pvper in the world?
If you can’t wait for the patch, you’ll be able to try out all these new features ahead of time when the public test realms go live with the new patch content.
