What the New PvP Changes Mean for World of Warcraft

Activision Blizzard’s announcement of the new World of Warcraft expansion entitled Legion was the talk of Gamescom yesterday. With a nearly two hour long presentation that delved into the new features, Blizzard was clear in their intent to separate Legion from the negativley recieved Warlords of Draenor. 

While the PvE raiding content for Warlords has been universally praised by players, the PvP community has been up in arms over the way the competative aspect of the game has been handled in the latest expansion. The lack of new battlegrounds or arenas, the poorly constructed PvP zone Ashran, and the introduction of randomly generated stats for gear has been rejected by the community at every turn. 

While Blizzard did not speak on the current state of Warlords PvP in their presentation, they did announce an entire overhaul of the Honor system that will premier with the launch of Legion. In Warcraft, when you kill a player, win a match, or participate in the completing of objectives within a match, you are rewarded with honor points. These points can then be spent buying weapons, gear, and other items.

In Legion, honor points have been changed into an experience system where you gain abilities and bonuses by “leveling up” through the usual gathering of honor. Similar to the current talent tree where you pick perks from a list, Blizzard is adding an additional tree to exclusively cater towards the PvP environment. By doing this, they can add abilities that will only work in battlegrounds, arenas, and any other designated world PvP area. When you reach the maximum honor level of 50, you can “Prestige” and reset your rank back to 1. Doing this will reward players with cosmetic items such as ridable mounts, titles, and customization options for your new artifact weapon.

– The New PvP Talent Tree

While Blizzard has tweaked its PvP system in the past, players were still able to engage outside of these environments in a semi-balanced way. With this edition of the honor system, it seems that Blizzard has taken this opprotunity to quarantine players who want engage in player vs. player combat. If certain abilities and bonuses are contained to these specific designated battlegrounds, it effectivly kills “world pvp” where players can combat one another in the larger world. 

While the announcement is fresh and tensions are high, there are already a great number of questions from die-hard PvP participants that demand answers. Blizzard will be hosting a Q&A session on Sunday at Gamescom for players to ask these questions. Surely, the new honor system will be a topic of discussion and many concerns will be addressed. Blizzard will be streaming this event and you can check back here for details on what is covered.