Blizzard devs Josh Greenfield and Tim Jones explain how they hope World of Warcraft Forever PvP can “feel casual” without too many rules.
How will you be playing World of Warcraft Forever? The PvE, PvP, and RP split is just as much of a hot topic as Horde vs Alliance, and there's unquestionably a lot of value to be gained from the ever-present threat of real player-on-player danger. But joining the PvP realm comes with its own risks, so should you commit to it when launch day arrives? Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield and Lead Game Designer Tim Jones are joined by Josh Corbett of the Countdown to Classic podcast, plus WoW streamers 'Savix' and 'TipsOutBaby,' for a conversation about the various ways to play, and what Blizzard wants Forever PvP to be.
Because World of Warcraft Forever is adopting a 'realmless' system, all players within its three rule sets are essentially in one giant server, although you won't see everyone at once. There's PvE, where the whole game is co-op and there's no threat from rival players; PvP, where Horde and Alliance can fight each other around the world; and RP, the roleplay server that focuses on people who want to invest more into the story of their character. One thing missing from the MMORPG this time around, however, is the combined RP-PvP bracket.
"We have to look at the service holistically and look at the impact it could have," Greenfield explains, remarking that while the very earliest days of WoW RP-PvP servers were something special, "the unfortunate reality is every RP-PvP realm we've done since then has followed a very different trajectory." He gives the example of Season of Discovery's Crusader Strike realm, where Blizzard ripped the RP tag off about three months in because too many people had joined who simply weren't following along with the roleplay rule set.
Which realm should you choose? Greenfield emphasizes that there's no wrong answer, but stresses that you should think about it carefully ahead of the full release, because "the sanctity of balance" means you won't be able to swap out later. "If you roll on the PvP server and six months in you're like, 'Yeah, you know what? This just isn't really for me,' that's not a thing we can really facilitate, and your only option at that point will probably be to re-roll on the PvE realm. So I just want to remind everyone: search your soul, make sure you're playing in the place that is the right place for you."
Digging more deeply into the hopes and dreams Blizzard has for player-vs-player encounters in World of Warcraft Forever, Jones says the team is particularly keen to see "organic battles happening in the outdoor world." He's already been pretty happy with some of the instances of this in beta, but thinks natural competition for specific areas where limited resources can be found will be even more noticeable once players are set free from the beta's level-30 cap.
"Once people can level to 60 and we have that critical mass of people killing every single type of mob in the game, one person will realize, 'Holy cow, what is this recipe?' Or, 'This new rare material drops from this specific creature, in this specific zone, in this specific POI.' People are going to go crazy once they find out this is possible to get in just this one singular space, like the Crusader enchant, things of that nature. So I think we're going to see a lot of organic competition over these new recipes that people don't even know exist yet."
"We want to create objectives," Jones continues, "give people the tools for organic PvP to happen." He notes that Season of Discovery gave the team lots of good feedback here, both for "awesome world events" like Battle for Ashenvale and the Strangelthorn Blood Moon, and for those that "didn't really land," such as capturing towers in Eastern Plaguelands or gathering sands from Silithyst geysers.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/forever-pvp-horde-alliance-battlegrounds
