WoWMay 2, 2018 4:00 pm CT

Bounty hunting, gear scaling, and more Battle for Azeroth War Mode PVP details

By Anne Stickney

It looks like fans of world PVP have a lot to look forward to in Battle for Azeroth. A new forum post has details on some of the changes coming in the next expansion for PVP enthusiasts. World PVP has always been kind of a mixed bag for players. Players wishing to participate in World PVP have always had the option to roll on a PVP server. But it’s an old system, one that doesn’t work very elegantly with lopsided server populations. While it certainly allows players to actively choose whether or not they’d like to participate in world PVP, some players don’t really want to be on a PVP realm. They have no interest in PVP, but they’re simply stuck there whether they like it or not. This can be because of raiding obligations, or just simply wanting to play with friends.

In Battle for Azeroth, all this is going to change — PVP servers will be a thing of the past. At BlizzCon last year, a new system was announced. Players will be able to opt into PVP in their capital city. If that option is chosen, when they leave the capital city, they’ll be in a world filled with other players who also want to PVP. This War Mode means that Honor Talents will be on permanently while in the outside world. But there are also some other significant differences as well. Game Designer Phalanx hopped on the forums to give us a few more details on the War Mode system.

Originally Posted by Phalanx (Official Post)

We hope to have War Mode up very soon for everyone to try out. Until then, I’ll outline a few details:

Honor Talents enabled

As mentioned by Ion and others, Honor Talents are on permanently while War Mode is enabled in the outdoor world. This was the case in Legion as well, but they would only enable when you got into “PvP combat” causing them to enable and disable while playing which ended up feeling a bit “janky.” Players may also find some added benefit with Honor Talents against normal PvE creatures as well, which is designed to be part of a “package of bonuses” to offset the inherit lost efficiency of World PvP.

Gear scaling

In order to create a fair fights and good gameplay, our goal is to limit the extremes in power between players in War Mode that come from gear and level. We want you to have an advantage if your gear is better, but within reason. The experience should be something similar to Unrated Battlegrounds in Legion (but without the stat templates). Keep in mind this is scaling only in PvP combat, so your power against creatures in the world will remain the same as it would be with War Mode disabled.

Conquest and World PvP

In Battle for Azeroth you’ll earn conquest for doing PvP activities similar to how it was gained in the past: Rated Arena and Rated Battlegrounds as well as some light conquest from Unrated Battlegrounds. But what’s new is earning conquest from doing World PvP activities. This gives you an additional source when filling up that “conquest bar” for your weekly conquest item.

Bounty Hunting

How do you earn conquest in World PvP? One source is from killing other players, of course. But the more of the opposing faction you slay, the higher chance they will put a bounty on your head. When a bounty is put on you, it will be announced to all opposing players in the zone and you will appear on the main map for a reward. Good luck!

And more…

While we have one or two other content features in War Mode we’ll share later on, one of our goals is to keep it minimal. As you point out Ion saying, we want to create a foundation first which we can hopefully build upon (with your feedback!) in the future.

While I’m happy to see that gear scaling is definitely something the devs are paying close attention to, it’s the bounty hunting system that intrigues me here. It sounds a little bit like players themselves are being made into world quests with this system. I remember the days when certain players were renowned for terrorizing other players, like Angwe the Orc Rogue. People spoke of them in hushed whispers — or angry screams of frustration. If a player was exceptionally lucky, they could manage to score a kill on one of these talented PVPers. But it didn’t really matter back then — you’d just get a few honor points, and the assassin would be back as soon as they returned to their corpse. The bounty hunter system sounds like a really fun way to turn that constant terrorizing into a gameplay element.

At the moment, War Mode isn’t available for testing on the beta, but we should see something pop up soon. Hopefully we’ll get some more details as well. But if you’re a fan of world PVP, it looks like Battle for Azeroth is going to have a lot more options for you — and a lot more fun.

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