Big changes to Wintergrasp coming...

[Lax]

Well you have to admit, it is a huge amount of people for one small area -- 3-4+ raids a side at peak, and it lags out everyone in northrend, adversely affecting everyone that isnt even in WG! Cost/benefit analysis would say they are doing the right thing by trying to decrease that number. I believe other possible "fixes" are along these lines:

• Get really beefy servers for Wintergrasp alone -- cost lots of $$$
• Increase network capacity -- they already have huge network capacity. cost lots of $$$
• Decrease amount of traffic going to each player by dropping the distance you see players and other objects in the zone (this would subsequently improve your FPS) -- possibly save $$$ on bandwidth, but would only alleviate so much of the problem, and would piss people off if they dropped it enough to make it workable.

I don't know if the bottleneck is server CPU or bandwidth but neither would be easy to solve without dropping the number of players in WG.

[Maxion]

good ol' Blizzard "omg too many people are playing Wintergrasp, its too hard to figure out how to make the servers lag less so lets try to get less people playing!!" lol

sad thing is my guys have been honor capped for a while now, bought everything I can with honor and now have 200+ WG tokens and 1000+ Stonekeeper shards just banked.

Oh, I thought the WG marks capped at 100 like BG marks do?

[Xinxo]

They capped WG marks @ 1000.

[gitcho]

Blizzard doesn't cheap out on server hardware, and their network bandwidth is more than adequate =) the problem is more likely the architecture model they've chosen makes it difficult to single instance zones with large numbers of users. There's an interesting article on EVE's server architecture and the problems and benefits they get having massive numbers of people in a single instance here: http://www.massively.com/2008/09/28/...-server-model/.

[Caspian]

The issue is not the number of players in the whole zone, it is the number of player in one place - basically in combat log range. Blizzard has stated exactly that [EDIT: Before I get pounced on - To clarify they have said "in one place" not combat log range that is my interpretation of "in one place" I think it is about right but would be happily proven wrong]. In the old days it was TM/SS then the AQ gate opening.

They tried to spread people out by changing the importance of the towers but, for a number of reasons, IMO that has not worked. 150-200 in the keep just flat out breaks stuff. There are a number of technical reasons why, I seriously doubt it is limited to a single bottleneck. As a side note I would still love to see the real server architecture, vs everyone's guesses, just to satisfy my inquisitive and curious nature. So if there are any blizz lurkers on here send me a PM with diagrams please - lol. Though if you could swing a tour of the Dallas Datacenter for me, I will buy you lunch and dinner .

Back to Wintergrasp...
I had the idea of battle based objective quests. You could pick one up every battle and you would be given a task - attack or defend something. You would gain honor/shards based on your time at that target. You could only get one per battle, you could not share it and if you abandon it you can not get another until the next battle. Time spent idle at a target could also accrue credit towards the kill quest and the defend/kill vehicles quest. It would reward enough honor/tokens to compensate if you are idle the whole time. The rewards would be enough that you would want to do it but not so much that you would feel you had to do it if you got something you didn't like.

I also had the idea of portals or Uldar style dialogue based teleporters at the GYs - or somewhere. To get to other places on the quickly, like your objective location.

It probably isn't the best solution for boxers as our dudes would get random tasks but if everyone in WG gets spread out we will be able to move a little better and have more fun.

I wrote it up on the suggestion forums, with more details. Check it out if you care argue for or against. Champion or mock it. Or just ignore it. Whatever, it is here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...cvZNNlCWkJx36e

[Havelcek]

The sad part is that people are in WG for a good reason...the instance is pretty fun, its quick, there are good rewards.

[Tasty]

TBH I couldn't be happier with the changes. Its going to make gearing up my teams SOOOO much easier :|

[Stealthy]

TBH I couldn't be happier with the changes. Its going to make gearing up my teams SOOOO much easier :|

Sadly this is not correct.

At the moment the daily quests offer rewards of 3 shards, 1.2k honor and 13.23 gold. Excluding the tower quest (becuase its a pain in the ass), there are 4 dailies which you can easily box:

1. Victory in Wintergrasp
2. Kill 10 players / NPC's
3. Defend / Kill 3 siege vehicles
4. Gather 10 quest items by killing revenants / players

So each day you can be earning 12 shards, 4.8K honor and 52.92 gold - over a week that adds up to 84 shards, 33.6K honor and 370.44 gold.

The new weekly quests are offering 10 shards, 3.7K honor and 13.23 gold - so that makes a total of 40 shards, 14.8K honor and 52.92 gold.

There is some talk that these quests will offer 20 shards instead of 10, which means you won't be much worse off for the shards. But the honor reward is a huge nerf whichever way you look at it. You will now have to participate in more WG's to earn the same amount of honor as you were in the old system....which kind of defeats the purpose. Or go back to the instanced BG's, which many people no longer participate in because they are bored of them, or sick of always being on a losing side.

Cheers,
S.

[Tasty]

TBH I couldn't be happier with the changes. Its going to make gearing up my teams SOOOO much easier :|

Sadly this is not correct.

At the moment the daily quests offer rewards of 3 shards, 1.2k honor and 13.23 gold. Excluding the tower quest (becuase its a pain in the ass), there are 4 dailies which you can easily box:

1. Victory in Wintergrasp
2. Kill 10 players / NPC's
3. Defend / Kill 3 siege vehicles
4. Gather 10 quest items by killing revenants / players

So each day you can be earning 12 shards, 4.8K honor and 52.92 gold - over a week that adds up to 84 shards, 33.6K honor and 370.44 gold.

The new weekly quests are offering 10 shards, 3.7K honor and 13.23 gold - so that makes a total of 40 shards, 14.8K honor and 52.92 gold.

There is some talk that these quests will offer 20 shards instead of 10, which means you won't be much worse off for the shards. But the honor reward is a huge nerf whichever way you look at it. You will now have to participate in more WG's to earn the same amount of honor as you were in the old system....which kind of defeats the purpose. Or go back to the instanced BG's, which many people no longer participate in because they are bored of them, or sick of always being on a losing side.

Cheers,
S.

Sorry I should have been clearer. I meant it in the sense that I absolutely despise wintergrasp and so only having to go there once to get my honor each week makes me happyface. Yeah I love PvP. No I don't love getting stuck in between 30 horde and 30 alliance aoeing each other then lagging for the next 5 minutes till I catch up and find out that I missed out on completing the siege vehicle daily by one

edit: Yes I realise Blizzard are in a precarious situation with WG atm so its not easy for them

[Stealthy]

Someone in the WoW forums made the suggestion of making the weekly quest rewards offer 7 times as much, but be 7 times harder to achieve. E.g. kill 70 players, attack / defend 21 siege vehicles.etc.

The hardcore players would be knocking them over as soon as they were up, whereas the more casual players would complete them slowly over the week...

To avoid the end-of-week rush, have the 7 day lockout timer start from when you accept the quest.

This seems like a good idea to me...

Cheers,
S