WoW ClassicApr 9, 2019 2:00 pm CT

WoW Classic PVP will roll out in phases, too

By Matthew Rossi

Last month we talked about how WoW Classic is going to deal with content, and how the complete form of World of Warcraft‘s content before it ended won’t be entirely available at launch, with various raids and dungeons launching in phases. This will help give players new to classic World of Warcraft a sense of how it felt to play the game over the course of its first two years.

warsong gulch long view

Your noses? They’re gonna meet grindstones.

Now we find out that we’ll see a similar delay in terms of WoW‘s PVP content in WoW Classic, with several phases before the patch 1.12 Drums of War version of PVP and all that entailed. Indeed, when we finally get those classic servers up and running, you’ll be able to do world PVP… and that’s it. There won’t be any battlefields, there won’t even be an honor system — you’ll be able to flag for PVP and go out and fight people from the opposite faction for absolutely no rewards aside from bragging rights, because even the Honor System won’t be introduced until Phase 2. Furthermore, it’ll be Phase 3 before we get any battlegrounds – specifically the patch 1.12 version of Alterac Valley and some as yet unknown version of Warsong Gulch, and Phase 4 before we get Arathi Basin. Furthermore, the open world tower objectives in the Plaguelands and the Silithus objectives? They won’t be implemented until Phase 5.

This still leaves me with some questions. We’re getting the Honor System and Dishonorable Kills in Phase 2, but I remember how nightmarish grinding to High Warlord/Grand Marshall was back then. Are we going to see that return? Will it be tweaked so that players don’t feel the need to share accounts and PVP for days at a time, or are they going to introduce that hideous grind, warts and all, to make sure players who want the full classic experience get to see what a nightmare it really was? The language in the post suggests that yes, they’re really going to make it that hard again. Will it remain that hard? Back in the day they eventually made it much easier to pick up epic rewards without the rank system, but based on this post I have no idea if they’ll do that again. I’m fascinated to see if they really stick to their guns here and make this as punitive as it was back in the day.

PVP evolving in real time

We know they’re putting in the Patch 1.12 version of Alterac Valley from the moment it goes live in phase 3, so will they do the same with Warsong Gulch, or Arathi Basin? I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see, for sure. But for now, we know they’re aiming to give players on the WoW Classic servers that same experience of PVP those of us who played back then had — from the initial “We’re going to Tarren Mill/The Crossroads just to annoy the other faction” days up until the introduction of objective based world PVP, with the Honor System, HK’s and DK’s (yes, back in classic days, DK meant something very different) and even Battlegrounds. I know some of you are already salivating at the opportunity to spend days, maybe even weeks not sleeping.

I find myself remembering the months spent with no real reason to PVP — I was leveling to 60 before the Honor System was put in place, and so any PVP I engaged in was usually when the opposite faction decided to hit a low level questing hub and we all got called in by guildmates and it would chain reaction into huge, nearly server crashing brawls. I know they’ll be putting WoW Classic on modern server architecture so I don’t expect players will experience the massive slowdown and the panic we felt back then when dozens of players would charge across the space between Tarren Mill and the first tower on the way to Southshore, spell effects slowing the world to a crawl and threatening to crash us all out in the middle of the fight. I wonder if it will still feel the same, or if it won’t manage to preserve the sheer lunacy of those days.

Bornakk’s full post, including phase details, is below.

Originally Posted by Bornakk (Official Post)

Since we broke down the six phases of content that we’ll be rolling out for Classic, we’ve heard the increase in requests for PvP details so we wanted to get you up to speed on our plans there.

As was the case when World of Warcraft originally launched in 2004, there won’t be a formal PvP system in WoW Classic at the outset. You’ll still be able to PvP, of course, and there will be no Dishonorable Kills, so you’ll be free to repeatedly hunt down every player and NPC in, say, Stranglethorn Vale to your stealthy heart’s content.

That’ll change once phase 2 rolls around and we add the Honor System, which will introduce Honorable Kills, Dishonorable Kills, and PvP Rank Rewards. The items you earn from the PvP Rank Rewards will be the versions from patch 1.12. Keep in mind though, just as it did originally, it will require a substantial time investment to rank up through the Honor System. For those interested in the Rank Rewards, earning epic gear will require consistent dedication over a long period of time as a top contributor on your realm. We don’t expect to see many people running around with these items early on, but we’re certain Hillsbrad Foothills will still see its fair share of action!

In the third phase, we’ll introduce the first Battlegrounds: Alterac Valley (version 1.12 2.2k) and Warsong Gulch, alongside with their associated vendors. One thing to note is that there were a couple of updates to these vendors over the course of the original patch releases, so some items won’t be available right away. For example, the Spell Penetration trinkets available from the Warsong Gulch vendor weren’t introduced until Patch 1.9, so we’re currently thinking that we’ll add these in phase 5.

The Arathi Basin Battleground will follow in phase 4, along with its specific vendor. It’ll be interesting to see how many people stay behind to guard the flag.