With cata announced changes... leveling any new teams?

[Ualaa]

Well, I don't see Arena going away, just like hard modes.. they will still want to provide a challenge for the more hard-core player base.

But the game is about catering to the masses; look at the relative success compared to Everquest, which had a 95% market share for the genre. Rated battlegrounds is for the masses; I'd be somewhat surprised to see the non-rated BG's as that active really. I'd tend to think players will just queue for rated instead of non-rated bg's, as the game is the same, but you get much better rewards over time.

Arena will still be somewhat balanced, but rather then the primary concern be Arena and Raids, it will be Mass PvP and Raid balance.
At least that's my suspicion.

[Ualaa]

I am scared... that paladins date is on the 16th for cata info.. only class that is that far out =l

That tends to suggest, larger changes or at least more time needed to decide upon how they want to treat the class. I really hope they don't break Prot.

But with the changes to block, and that being the primary defense and threat mechanic for AoE, it might be a very different class in Cataclysm.

[Velassra]

I don't think I would level from the start again. I don't have any mages, so I might (probably not but maybe) make a trio of goblin mages after the initial rush is passed.

Most likely, I have assorted levels (some on different servers and opposite faction) that I may bring over and level to place maybe as a third team once my shaman are set at 80.

We'll see how multibox friendly or unfriendly Cataclysm turns out to be.

[thefunk]

i never played pally in vanilla - started wow the day bc (or week) came out. I remember being laughed at for suggesting prot in any context so based on that particular line of thought I'm not too worried. In fact there are a few comments over the last few weeks about original developers having left and everyone being worried etc... well it seems to me the latest batch of blizz employees are finally getting all the classes approx right, ret pally is now feasible, druids are getting there, and locks are not as laughed at by mages than before. Although my mage laughs at my lock at the moment so i'll put that one on hold.

Any thoughts?

[Mosg2]

@Fat Tire:

I don't know that there's any BG that's especially worse off for having a 4 or 5 boxer in it other than WSG--And that can be mitigated by not having pure retards on your side.

I feel, generally speaking, that I add more to every BG I play than 5 random individuals do. Maybe I'm conceited but...

@OP:

My plan is to get a few different teams to 80 pre-expansion. Once we see exactly what the rated BG's look like and more detailed changes for classes I'll finalize who's getting priorited to 85 first

[Gormand]

I just got more excited for my mage team that I was going to be bringing up next anyway 5x those shiny new fireballs and 5x the "tripwires" particularly when I figure out how to get my mages in a line front to back to make the walls of fog a lethal zone with AoE on top of it, or fireballs shooting through it, or combined with a rogues new smokebomb to force people to run through the fog to hit me. in fact combine
Mage fog with rogue smoke and unholy DK shell and you have a (however brief) nice little immunity bubble thats going to destroy anyone that comes near you.

*note to self, find willing DK and rogue to run with mage team.

[puppychow]

They have said a few times that rated BGs will require a full team queuing up, if you queue individually you won't get into the rated BGs. AV/IOC are also changing to 25 man BGs from 40. To be honest I don't see this staying in very long, too many people are going to want to queue as 1-5 people and still "get points" if they win. But the problem will be that organized 25 man teams will just faceroll through pugs, and you only rank up for wins.

WOTLK imo wasn't that great for multiboxing, in PVE playing solo has been great especially with the LFG system, badge gear, and how easy its been pugging 10 and 25 man raids. Contrast that with TBC where pugging heroics was messy and pug raiding never got past kara/gruuls.

I'll be suprised if I ever go more than 2 box again in WoW. I might xfer my chars to my main account in cata and that way I'll have a lot of alts for alchemy/tailoring

[Mosg2]

They have said a few times that rated BGs will require a full team queuing up, if you queue individually you won't get into the rated BGs. AV/IOC are also changing to 25 man BGs from 40. To be honest I don't see this staying in very long, too many people are going to want to queue as 1-5 people and still "get points" if they win. But the problem will be that organized 25 man teams will just faceroll through pugs, and you only rank up for wins.

Link for them saying they require a full team? I've seen more than one blue post indicating that you still won't be able to que up with more than 5 people.

[Fat Tire]

Link for them saying they require a full team? I've seen more than one blue post indicating that you still won't be able to que up with more than 5 people.

This section discussed changes being made to Battlegrounds. We realize that players want a bit more out of the Battlegrounds, or don’t necessarily want to actively participate in Arenas to acquire some of the best gear in the game. We’re changing this by providing an alternate method to acquiring Arena rating. We’ve introduced rated Battlegrounds, which will allow players to acquire rating for very powerful gear without setting foot into an Arena, so each player can enjoy whichever PvP activity he or she prefers.

We plan to include featured weekly Battlegrounds for players to enjoy; coupled with the changes made, this will help keep the gameplay changing from week to week.

The way the new rated Battlegrounds work is pretty straightforward. The more games you win, the higher the rating you acquire.

In order to participate in rated Battlegrounds, players will be required to join battles as full groups. However these groups do not need to be committed teams as in the Arena system; rather, the group simply needs to have the required amount of players for whichever Battleground they’re entering. As an example, one would need to join the queue as a group for Warsong Gulch with any nine additional players to qualify for a rating.

There are several reasons (these are the highlights) not to allow players to solo-queue for rated battlegrounds.

1. When players have no commitment to any other members of their team, they're much more likely to try to game the system for minimal effort (afk'ing, or near afk-ing). If they're required to form a group in advance, it implies there is a previously agreed-upon power structure in the group (somebody is the leader, and can kick players that need to be kicked).

2. If players can queue for rated battlegrounds as either solo or as a group (and any mix thereof), it becomes far more difficult to matchmake teams appropriately, or determine how difficult of a win a win was, or how significant a failure on the part of the losing players a loss was.

3. The endgame structure we have for WoW rewards for organizational effort (this is the primary reason that 25-person raids are rewarded more highly than 10-person raids). There is no organizational effort in solo-queue'ing for battlegrounds, yet the ilevel of the rewards are on par with 25-person raiding.

Will you add in an option in the LFG UI to find BG groups?

Yes, we intend to give players somewhere better than the trade channel to form groups.

This is BS. Yeah, I know I probably shouldn't be calling Kalgan's claims about his game BS, but this is BS. Regardless of how those people get into the BG, matchmaking teams and determining the validity of results is still reliant on all the people in the BG. To claim that the process of filling the BG itself has an impact on those metrics is, at best, absurd.

Wait... it's "at best, absurd" to say that it's more difficult to evaluate a team's chances of winning when (for example) one team consisted of two sets of 4 grouped players (that each have a plan and coordinate to some degree) combined with a pair of solo players, and the other team consists of a preformed group of 6 players combined with 4 solo players than it would be if we were able to assume that both teams had 10 people that were all at least on board with some kind of plan before the battle started?

In order to participate in rated Battlegrounds, players will be required to join battles as full groups. However these groups do not need to be committed teams as in the Arena system; rather, the group simply needs to have the required amount of players for whichever Battleground they’re entering. As an example, one would need to join the queue as a group for Warsong Gulch with any nine additional players to qualify for a rating.

The 40-player Battlegrounds are currently planned to be 25v25 when they are available for rated matches.

I am seeing full group here..... would you mind linking that blue post you have saying otherwise? I dont think they are completely sure how they want it to work and i am willing to bet that after its released there will be hotfix changes and buttloads of QQ.

[Ualaa]

They've posted the maximum size you can queue as for Battlegrounds will be 5's.
And then this says you need to queue as full groups.

Unless the first quote is (maximum of 5 queuing at once) is in reference to non-rated battlegrounds. And the queue as a full group is in reference to the rated battlegrounds, this seems to be in conflict. Or maybe they mean, enter rated battlegrounds in full groups of five, with a minimum of "x" groups all queuing for rated stuff at once.

It isn't too clear, but from Fat Tire's post, I would assume 5-man maximum queue size for non-rated, and 10, 15 or 25 for rated BG's... which could make rated BG's a lot harder to get into as a boxer.