Lake Wintergrasp – fail or hit?
Lake Wintergrasp will be the big PvP-addition in the new expansion. -A big World-PvP battlefield. Tho, will it be a fail or a hit? Well, I guess only time can tell. But if we look at the history of world PvP-encounters; EPL, Silithus, HfP, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar Forrest and finally Halaa .. it’s mainly failed projects.
The outland World-PvP zones have been more like “well ok, let’s just take the Hellfire towers before we start our hc SH-run” -feeling, not as a big actionfilled PvP encounter. Let us hope they fill up Lake Wintergrasp with alot of daily quests and other rewarding things to keep players entering the zone.
So what’s Lake Wintergrasp?
It’s a none-instanced battleground, with siege vehicles and buildings! World PvP at it’s best, if they work out the area well enuff imo! :) They have promised destructible buildings .. and bridges :O which is quite a tactical and very cool addition, as most land-based siege vehicles cannot pass water. There will also be air vehicles. And bigger vehicles which can hold several players and allow players to attack as they were standing still. The game is to defend or attack, as in Halaa where one side obtain the core and have to defend it and the attackers comes from all around to siege the core and take it as theirs.
The open battleground has a zone-timer set to 2.5 hours, a average group will complete a capture in 30-45 minutes. If you capture the zone, it will (as previously seen in Terrokar Forrests; Spirit Towers) give a buff to the winning side, allows the gain of “Stone Keeper’s Shard” , just as the Spirit Shards these will be used as a currency for items.
Items such as mounts, gems, gear which hopefully will work a bit as Badge of Justice-rewards, which will be upgraded and attractive on all levels.
Capturing Lake Wintergrasp also allow the winning side entrance to Vault of Archavon which is a single-boss raid. This boss will be raided with a 10-man or 25-man raid, and will drop Hateful and Deadly Gladiator pieces. This will force PvP-players to PvE-raid, which is a odd twist.
Wintergrasp Shards can be used to purchase mounts, metagems (and patterns), shoulder enchants and a item called “Wintergrasp Commendation” which is a Binds to Account- item, which when used will grand the user 2000 honor. Binds to Account is a new add in the expansion and allows you to more or less grind on one character to pimp another xD .
So fail or hit?
Well, the area itself depends very much on active players, as the area is huge it will be a ghostland if it ends up as Halaa or any of the previous projects. Tho as it’s a open area, more or less anyone can just enter it.
Which also reminds me, will it be imbalanced? Well. To treat the population imbalance on a realm Blizzard have worked out a (interesting but) smart idea; the buff Tenacity.
If you’re outnumbered in the area, you will gain the buff which should be something like
“Being outnumbered has increased your tenacity, improving your health, healing and health regen by 25% and increasing your damage dealt by 18%.“
And what’s fun is, it stacks! :O So, the more outnumbered you are, the more heroic and godlike you become! Nice twist aye? ^^
Well, I dunno much more than this.. and the post is quite dang long already!
Now I gotta take a nap, I’m in the middle of a 26h shift… boooring..
//a sloppy, tired, and probably temporarily mentally ill — Mag.
December 18, 2008 at 12:53 am
Lake wintergrasp itself a BIG hit with me, and great pvp area and quests can be completed in raid now.
however, a major disappointment for me is the raid, VoA.. raid instances such as this are PVE, and i do think it was a nice idea to ‘give away’ PvP epics b4 the release of the new gear.. an instanced raid should not have been the answer..
I should be the brain-child for blizz at this rate, i could quite easily get high all day and come up with ideas just as swell as this..