9 replies to this topic

[Hash]

Hello Crusade Gamers, 

 

After about a week and a half of work, we have implemented the details pertaining to the items mentioned in the title. I thought I'd outline them here for you.

 

On your initial login, following character creation, you will be presented with a storyline and left with a decision to make - pursue the normal track to battle against the Lich King (hereby referred to as the normal track), or pursue the PvP track to defend your faction against the opposite faction (hereby referred to as the PvP track).

 

If you do not make this decision, you will be reminded every 60 seconds to do so. Any action in-game would require you to have first specified your track.

 

There will be certain restrictions in place for any track you choose. Normal track players will not have access to the PvP vendors in the PvP-only malls (these are currently being built). Other than that, they will have unhindered access to the game, and are free to forge their own destinies. PvP track players, however, will not be allowed to access dungeons/raids, use the Dungeon Finder, accept quests, use the Auction House, or loot creatures. In addition, cross-track interactions such as guild invites, mails, and/or trade will not be possible. Players of different tracks may, however, party up, and participate in arenas/battlegrounds with or against each other. Players that are adamant about not choosing a track will have all of the above restrictions.

 

As far as the PvP system goes, PvP track players will always be flagged regardless of where they might be (with the exception of sanctuaries), and consequently always attackable. Normal track players will have the option to flag themselves if they want to join the fray, or will be automatically flagged if they attack a hostile player from the opposite faction (either a PvP track player or a flagged Normal track player) or enter PvP areas such as the opposite faction's capital cities and/or arena/battleground/FFA areas.

 

All class spells (excluding those obtained from class quests) and weapon skills will be auto-learned as you level or learn new talents (MoP-style quality of life feature). For PvP track players, riding skills will also be automatically learned. Normal track players will have to learn these themselves.

 

Normal track players will be allowed to set their own leveling rates, anything from 1x to 15x, or purchase instant boosts to levels 60, 70, or 80. PvP track players will be instantly boosted to level 80 on track selection. As mentioned above, spells and skills will be automatically learned, where applicable.

 

You can have Normal and PvP track characters on the same account, but the same cross-track restrictions against guild invites and mail will apply.

 

I think we are about 75% done with "merging" Nef and Maly with this . If I have forgotten anything, I'll add it in a follow-up post. For now, I'd love to hear your comments.

 

 

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[Kitteh]

Don't mean to be negative but this looks like an accident waiting to unravel. Looking forward to it however.

[Hash]

We'll let the beta-testers have at it - give the system a good shaking to see if it can hold its own. A first pass of tests yielded very promising results.

[Valiant]

Nice didn't think this was possible, but if it works properly this will be amazing.

[Ink]

Nice didn't think this was possible, but if it works properly this will be amazing.

Agreed. 

[Sempiternal]

Nice! where do I sign up jk jk, can't wait tho, good work! =)

[Dnempr]

If this works out, you might just be the next big thing on the WOTLK scene. Best of luck and can't wait to try it out! 

[Aidiakapi]

I assume you're doing the no cross-track guild-invites because of the guild vault, but it seems rather anti-social. If the guild-vault is indeed the only problem, that's not that hard to solve by either instancing the guild-vault per-track, or limiting guild vault access to the 'normal' track (it doesn't make much sense for the PvP track anyways), or limiting it to the track of the original creator of the guild. If there's any other reason for not allowing this, do tell, because to me it just seems like needless segmentation.

 

Same goes for mail, I can see why you don't want the items to be transferred, but non-item mail should be fine, right?

 

Is there some point after which these track limits disappear?

 

To me it just seems that setting it up like this provides a lot of complexity, for barely any real advantage. The point of not having two servers is to not fragment the player base, the way it seems to be set-up now would fragment it nearly as much as two servers.

 

I'd probably steer more towards locking the loadouts to certain content, where items obtained 'the-easy-way' (ie. through vendors) will be unusable in a PvE context. You could get rid of most limitations, keep your playerbase as a whole, and the only thing that's "exploitable" would be the instant-80. But I don't really see that as an issue, since leveling is only a very small fragment of most player's account's play time.

[Hash]

The player base is not going to be more fragmented than Horde vs Alliance was in retail.

 

Limiting guild vault access and item mails only (though non-item mails are hardly used anyway) is a good idea. I'll run it by the game design team.

 

All the track limits do not disappear. PvP track maybe unlocked to allow for those characters to participate in raids if they wish. This feature is still provisional since no consensus has been reached with regard to when PvP track players would be unlocked. We do have the option to enable it if there is an interest in such a thing.

[Versatile]

To me it just seems that setting it up like this provides a lot of complexity, for barely any real advantage. The point of not having two servers is to not fragment the player base, the way it seems to be set-up now would fragment it nearly as much as two servers.

 

It's easier to understand the decisions if you litteraly think about the server as two realms. Instead of doing separate PvE/PvP realms, we merged them in some kind of hybrid version of Malygos and Nefarian. This was the final and probably the best option, having a combined arena/battleground season as well as minor combined event/world PvP between the two.

 

To comprehend with the whole guild thing, it's simple; you can't invite a player to your guild if the player is on another server.

I think that at this point, we want to encourage players to stick with their "own", refering to the path picking, since we will introduce guild houses later.  

 

But, things are subject to change and we will definitely listen to the community later on, when we get our suggestion section up.