Posts tagged: pvp

The Isle of Conquest

By Lyssa, June 16, 2009 3:00 pm

Blizzard has been teasing us with small tidbits about the new battleground to be included in the 3.2 content patch, The Isle of Conquest.  Finally the blues have pulled back the curtain and revealed the details of this much-anticipated BG.

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever.

Welcome to the Isle of Conquest.

The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island’s precious resources.

An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions.

Once More into the breach…

Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend’s northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island’s unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep.

There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory?

Capture Locations

Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.

The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Docks: The western shore’s docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within.

The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above.

The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes.

Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks).

Main Objectives

The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within.

The General: Holed up behind the keeps’ massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor.

Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over.

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest.

Will you seize it?

Considering how much I’ve taken a liking to Strand of the Ancients recently this looks promising.

WoW Break

By Lyssa, June 10, 2009 11:24 am

I’ve been playing WoW non-stop since December 24th, 2004.  That’s a long time, 4 and a half years actually.  Our logins have been slowing down recently and I haven’t really felt like raiding so I decided to take a few weeks off.

I did log in last Saturday morning, but I was only on long enough to do the Tournament daileys, a normal Saturday would have me on most of the day if I didn’t have errands to run or stuff to do around the house.  On Sundays I normally play all day and into the night but this past Sunday I only did 1 Tournament daily, so I could finish up the badges for Darnassus and move onto the last city- Exodar.  No one else in the guild was on at either time so I haven’t really talked to anyone in a week.

Last night I logged in with the intent to buy my Hateful Gladiator’s Plate Chestpiece and maybe see if my 2s buddy was on to get our weekly 10 games in.  As it turns out the guild was running a pug 25-man Naxx so I figured since I didn’t really have anything else to do so I thought I’d que up for a few BGs with my new chest piece.  Just as we were about to win a very fast Strand of the Ancients Keld asked if I wanted to come do some DPS.  An Emblem of Valor or 3 wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t really have anything else to do so I tagged along.  Also, I don’t have any of the heroic Naxx achievements so that was also a bonus.

We killed a few bosses then I brought in Ipaq because we needed some decursing.  We got to Gothik and after a failed “aoe everything” attempt it was 11:45 and I had to get to bed.  I think they’re finishing up the run tonight.

So I cheated a little bit on my break, but I probably won’t log in again for a few days and it’ll just be so I can get my 2s games in.

Another raid night come and gone.

By Lyssa, June 1, 2009 12:58 pm

Well another raid night come and gone with no raiding being done.

Brianalt did invite me to a 2’s team so we stunk up the arenas for an hour or so for our weekly points. He’s been playing with a DK so he was getting used to playing with a warrior and I was getting used to playing period as I haven’t arena’d since the expansion came out.

I have absolutely no idea how the points work now. We were only gaining 4-6 points per win (while the teams we beat lost as few as zero) and the teams that beat us were gaining up to 24 points while we would lose 16… How can our team, being ranked under 1200, be losing 16 points?!? I have no clue, but it just doesn’t seem right.

LFM PVP

By Lyssa, May 29, 2009 3:24 pm

Ugh…I just finished up a post about our raid last night and wordpress choked in it and I lost all the work. Grrr…

I don’t know what is going on with this funk that we’re in but I’m hoping it’s going to end soon. So last night we went back into Ulduar to try to finish up the mess that we started on Tuesday night and last night was only slightly better in that we actually killed some stuff. We had our missing heavy-hitters back so it was looking to be a good night but it sure didn’t turn out that way.

We started off at Auriaya and wiped at least 6 times… I don’t know what was going on but people were constantly getting 1-shotted by the cats, it was a frustrating mess. Finally after that debacle we moved onto Freya. Not too bad, I’m a tank so I die more than most by nature of the job but we managed to get through all the trash with minimal drama. When we got to the actual boss we wiped 4 or 5 times because the 3-group of adds wasn’t dying properly. Chalk it up to a combination of people not paying attention and doing shit damage…

After Freya we moved onto Thorim, we only wiped once and then we moved onto Hodir. We wiped 2 or 3 times, I got to DPS (thank God, I hate tanking that fight).

We wanted to save Mimiron for Sunday so we could spend the night on him so we went back outside and killed Razzorscale and then took 2 attempts at Ignis before we decided that it was too late and some of us wanted to go to bed.

Ugh…not as bad as Tuesday but not a significant improvement.

Cross-Language Battlegroups!

By Lyssa, May 28, 2009 10:38 am

I didn’t even know this was in the works. Anything to keep the BGs running on short queues is good with me.  Here are the relevant blue posts (from MMO-Champion):

After successful testing on the PTR, we are pleased to announce that the first Cross-Language Battlegroups have been created today. This new feature combines Battlegroups from different languages into one, expanding the pool of players keen for PvP action in both Arenas and Battlegrounds.

Players from realms of different languages will only ever face each other as opponents in battle and will not be playing on the same faction in Battlegrounds, ensuring that those playing on your side will speak the same language as you. Please note that not all Battlegroups will be joined into Cross-Language Battlegroups, and this feature will not be affecting the Russian language Battlegroups. We will provide more details on other new Cross-Language Battlegroups closer to the time they will go live.

Wondering what Cross-Language Battlegroups are? Check out the FAQ here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9446244539

For discussion and feedback, please visit the following thread in the PvP forum — thanks! http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9446264862

New Cross-Language Battlegroups

Nightfall, Crueldad
Realms from English Battlegroup Nightfall and Spanish Battlegroup Crueldad will be united as Cruelty/Crueldad. Please discuss this new Cross-Language Battlegroup here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9446264859

Némésis, Hinterhalt
Realms from French Battlegroup Némésis and German Battlegroup Hinterhalt will be united as Embuscade/Hinterhalt.

Q: How is a Cross-Language Battlegroup different from a Cross-Realm Battlegroup?
A: Cross-Language Battlegroups expand the Battlegroups feature allowing you to face players from realms of other languages. Until now, you would only face players from other English realms.

Q: How will the Cross-Language Battlegroups affect the current Arena ladders?
A: The Battlegroups being merged will have their ladders merged as well. Each team will enter the merged ladder with their current ratings.

Q: Does this mean I am going to find players from different language realms on my side?
A: No, each faction will be comprised of players from realms of the same language as yours. You might participate in a Battleground where the Alliance is formed by players from English realms and the Horde is formed by players from realms of another language, or the other way around. You will not find players from different language realms on the same side in the Battlegrounds.

Q: How does this improve over the current system?
A: The addition of more realms to the same Battlegroup means a bigger amount of players are ready to participate, ensuring swifter entry into glorious battle.

Pretty neat stuff.

Last Night’s Raid Sucked

By Lyssa, May 27, 2009 10:56 am

It sucked bad. We ended up taking some of our scrubs to Ulduar last night because we were missing a few regulars and we paid for it with a lot of frustration and even more repair gold.

To be honest it’s not really the fault of the scrubs, they aren’t familiar with the fights and some of them don’t raid all that often but it’s just frustrating from the standpoint of an officer and a raider that we were making such good progress and some people just decided that they’d rather play f****** Everquest (seriously, Everquest 1!) or PvP…

After only killing Flame Lev and Kologarn after 2 hours of wanting to punch kittens we decided to go do Vault of Archavon since it was up. We did it 10-man, then grabbed the rest of our guildies (15 logged in), picked up a few friends and a few pugs and did it on 25-man too. It went quickly, we wiped once on Emalon because I screwed up (tab-targeted Emalon by accident and charged him, with the 4 adds in tow) but after that it was uneventful.

After that we did a little guild PvP, 10 of us raided up and did a AB which was actually a good time since we won with a 5-cap. I wish we’d do guild PvP more often.

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