Realm: Netherwing Latest News Discussion - "Welcome!"

[Wolfenstein]

You can discuss the latest news Welcome! in this topic.

[Matick]

CoT teleport should be fast forwarded for both factions IMO - it's a nice convenience with Hyjal out.

The rest seem fine enough, but just need to have attempts to localize and communicate these benefits to those who do not speak English

[umarmung]

• Shorter Hearthstone Cooldown ❌
• Shorter Racial Swap Cooldown  ✅
• No Durability Loss ✅
• No Resurrection Sickness ✅
• Caverns of Time teleport option before 2.4 ❌ [should apply to both. The value of this now as a faction balance tool is too low]
• Increased Reputation Gain ✅
• Increased Honor Gain ❌
• Unlocked all flight paths ✅

My feedback. Some of these suggestions are great!

Others would be:

• Increased Profession Rates
• Open world only buffs, e.g. increased health and damage based on faction imbalance. These buffs do not apply in any kind of instance.
  
  The hidden value of the last suggestion is that the Chinese would notice buffs on themselves. They may not even realize there are faction perks at all!

Edited October 9, 2023 by umarmung

[Wolfenstein]

1 minute ago, umarmung said:

Open world only buffs, e.g. increased health and damage based on faction imbalance. These buffs do apply in any kind of instance.

Without mpq client patches we can't create buffs that the players could see, so the only way for this to work at the moment would be a hidden buff which would end up being very counterintuitive. Have to say no to that for the moment.

[nateee]

I like all these buffs. I'm not sure how much it'll help but it could help. I play both factions but mostly swapped to ally to join a guild as an end raider with already full rep/etc and I gotta say not having fps when faction swapping was probably the worst. So i'd def keep that.

 

I'm not sure what benefits would actually help me other than honor gain so I'd def stick with that.

 

Likewise I'd actually recommend lowering the price for faction swapping from ally-> horde. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but having that be 40 coins is actually a huge deterrent to rolling alliance or swapping to alliance.

 

Most of my chars are on horde, and my main is on alliance (swapped it a bit back). I am personally very hesitant to swapping to ally b/c it would cost a fortune to swap those chars back to horde if like my guild died.

 

So what this does is make all new players and old want to stick to horde b/c the swap back is so steep, or in my case keep the vast majority of my chars over there and never fully swap to ally. 

 

Make ally->horde like 10 coins and I think you'd actually see more people be less reluctant to move to ally, because they know they will always be able to go back.

 

I

[Massie]

Rated below from 1 (least persuasive) to 10 (very persuasive) in terms of how relative the perk is for your average player:

• Shorter Hearthstone Cooldown (2/10) Nothing more than a minor QoL; 99% of your playtime you are not "hearthing on CD", not to mention already existing ingame features such as Mage/Lock portals & Shaman hearthstone.
• Shorter Racial Swap Cooldown (2/10) Similar theme as above, your average player is not constantly swapping racials, safe for very minor playerbase i.e. someone who wants to min-max racial on 1 char for both arena + raids. 99% of the server pop will yield next to no value from this.
• No Durability Loss (8/10) Strong perk, especially for plate/tanks & your average casual "prog" guild. Saves gold that can be used for raid consumes. Might not be the most "obvious" benefit casual players will realize when reading until they actually make use of it at max lvl. But combined with the perk below, has a certain risk of exploitation.
• No Resurrection Sickness (3/10) [Exploit Risk] For your average player, a very mediocre perk, even if combined with "no repair cost", as you would still get teleported far away from your original spot. Absolutely busted if planned around by an organized group/guild; If you know where Spirit Healer spots are, you can intentionally death-warp as means of transportation. Also combined with "no repair cost", this would let you indefinitely throw yourself into combat - think of worldboss encounters: Alliance could just instantly rez at Kazzak GY, while Horde would still be locked by an increasing rez timer. Marginal value for the average playerbase - huge exploit risk for people with brains.
• Caverns of Time teleport option before 2.4 (0/10) So niche, this has literally 0 impact on someone's faction choice. If anything, be based enough and just release this early for both factions.
• Increased Reputation Gain (9/10) [Exploit Risk] This is as simple and straightforward as a perk could get. Everyone needs rep, everyone hates grinding rep. Even your most casual Andy gamerdad will understand the value of this from the getgo. However, reputation has a definitive end - and with Faction Transfer A -> H being available in the store, there will be players starting an Alliance alt, with the intent to swap back to Horde anyway after being done with the rep grinds. In other words, this perk bears the risk of only temporarily increasing Alliance playerbase, just to swing back to Horde anyway.
• Increased Honor Gain (9/10) [Balance Risk] Same as above really, although with less incentive to transfer factions. There's only so much Honor you need (per season), but with racial changes, there's no reason not to stay Alliance if you only plan to PvP anyway. However this "may" have an impact on BG winrates, as Alliance would be geared faster than Horde. This will also be something Horde players will actively hate you for/be jealous about.
• Unlocked all flight paths (9/10) This one is actually pretty fair & very welcome by anyone. Maybe not the primary/first perk that should be advertised, but definitely enticing as a secondary perk further down the list. Could potentially also add "free flight paths" on top of it.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Massie

[Wolfenstein]

4 minutes ago, nateee said:

Likewise I'd actually recommend lowering the price for faction swapping from ally-> horde. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but having that be 40 coins is actually a huge deterrent to rolling alliance or swapping to alliance.

Most of my chars are on horde, and my main is on alliance (swapped it a bit back). I am personally very hesitant to swapping to ally b/c it would cost a fortune to swap those chars back to horde if like my guild died.

So what this does is make all new players and old want to stick to horde b/c the swap back is so steep, or in my case keep the vast majority of my chars over there and never fully swap to ally. 

Make ally->horde like 10 coins and I think you'd actually see more people be less reluctant to move to ally, because they know they will always be able to go back.

That's not going to happen, having Alliance -> Horde be too cheap is simply too risky. 

[Wolfenstein]

2 minutes ago, Massie said:

Rated below from 1 (least persuasive) to 10 (very persuasive) in terms of how relative the perk is for your average player:

You have to keep in mind that while some of those perks alone might not be that impactful, having a few of them together stacks up and may be what pushes some undecided players to swap. Not every single perk has to be a massive game changer, it's fine if some of them are just nice QoL bonuses. 

[umarmung]

Increased reputation - and even honor gain - cannot be easily exploited en masse because of the sheer cost to return from Ally to Horde and the gain is capped.

However, more are likely to abuse honor gain because of the value of PvP loot, including entry into rated PvP. Whereas reputation gain has limited to no value there as a PvE equivalent: that really is capped. That is why I approved the rep gain and disapproved honor gain.

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by umarmung

[Massie]

Just now, Wolfenstein said:

You have to keep in mind that while some of those perks alone might not be that impactful, having a few of them together stacks up and may be what pushes some undecided players to swap. Not every single perk has to be a massive game changer, it's fine if some of them are just nice QoL bonuses. 

As filler 100% (with enough of them), but some of these perks are so situational, that if you read them as a new player, you realistically won't give a shit. With an absurd example; Yeah "Free mail postage" is nice to have and looks nice in the list of perks, but if you take a moment to actually think of the value, it's completely irrelevant. The perks should still have a meaningful impact on the choice of someone rolling Alliance over Horde. Dozens of small QoL bonuses are "cool to have", but won't compete with the argument of "Horde has more players". They only matter for people who planned to roll Alliance to begin with.

 

Also to throw a perk suggestion into the pot:

0 Deposit fee for Auction House. Though I don't remember if AH is crossfaction, otherwise someone could just make a lvl 1 ally bank char and have direct influence on horde market too. But eliminating AH fees would open up market for gear/stuff that has high vendor cost.

[nateee]

13 minutes ago, Wolfenstein said:

That's not going to happen, having Alliance -> Horde be too cheap is simply too risky. 

Well horde will remain dominant. Again from my own perspective as one of the people who swapped one char to ally, I simply have too many chars to swap to ally. I play NA which has a smaller playerbase. If i swap all my chars over and NA ally dies off (as it often does) then I will have no recourse but to spend hundreds of coins to go back to horde.

It just isn't feasible. Therefore I will stay horde. Likewise many others make that calculation.

 

Even new players look at it and say well "horde to ally is free" so i may as well roll horde and then swap ally if i decide too.

 

Its literally the biggest perk in the game atm. If i were new I'd still go horde after all these perks b/c I would always still have that option to obtain the ally perks if I ever wanted to.

If I go ally, i get all those perks, but I  never have the option to 2/3rds of the server and may not find a guild on ally.

 

Its a no-brainer, go horde, and if no luck go ally.

[Tsu]

I think these changes should be more aimed towards new players rather than people who are already set on their factions and do dungeons and raids.
Giving Alliance a hand in leveling faster than Horde would be the best way.

-> Increased Reputation gain for all Outland content (this would drastically speed up the process of getting your HC keys and going into Raids, ultimately helping guilds find new people to raid with)
-> Increased Experience gain for 1-60 or 70 (no-brainer)
-> Flight Paths unlocking as character levels up (no-brainer)
-> No durability loss (no brainer, and big perk as @Massie mentioned)

Others I find minor, and increasing Alliance Honor gain might result in fewer people participating in the Battleground after they get their gear. The Honor rates are already high enough considering all the bonus quests. 

[nihil]

All this perks, becides rep/honor rates, is just QoL and will not force a single player to swap Alliance from Horde (those who already playing Horde or newcomers who played horde fo years before). No matter how many QoL features we will have
What about some little loot disbalance like no Vashj trinket and other never-wanted-shit-loot for Alliance and/or maybe some extra loot in t4?

And the main thing we need is to make Alliance perks the first thing new users see when they trying to make account.
Only things that can force to move old players from Horde to Ally is something rly disbalanced (which shouldn't be implemented), some friends/guild (we have no control ovet this) or strongly increased rates (I don't think it will work a lot too, tbh). So u should focus on newcomers. imho

Edited September 27, 2023 by nihil

[holyrolla]

Very welcome news re moving most discussion back to a traditional forum - discord cannot replace them and I personally don’t get how so many places move everything to discord…so thanks!

All flight paths would be a welcome QoL for all and might (?) help promote more alt leveling? Would def make it a bit easier to run old dungeons and being able to fly to nearby FPs if you haven’t been to that zone. 

[Dzykei]

8 hours ago, Tsu said:

I think these changes should be more aimed towards new players rather than people who are already set on their factions and do dungeons and raids.
Giving Alliance a hand in leveling faster than Horde would be the best way.

-> Increased Reputation gain for all Outland content (this would drastically speed up the process of getting your HC keys and going into Raids, ultimately helping guilds find new people to raid with)
-> Increased Experience gain for 1-60 or 70 (no-brainer)
-> Flight Paths unlocking as character levels up (no-brainer)
-> No durability loss (no brainer, and big perk as @Massie mentioned)

Others I find minor, and increasing Alliance Honor gain might result in fewer people participating in the Battleground after they get their gear. The Honor rates are already high enough considering all the bonus quests. 

Those are good suggestions, but only, if ally to horde faction swap is disabled, because many ppl will just use ally to lvl alts, get rep and move to horde as with other parks it wont be hard to collect gold for faction change.

[Wolfenstein]

15 hours ago, nihil said:

All this perks, becides rep/honor rates, is just QoL and will not force a single player to swap Alliance from Horde (those who already playing Horde or newcomers who played horde fo years before). No matter how many QoL features we will have
What about some little loot disbalance like no Vashj trinket and other never-wanted-shit-loot for Alliance and/or maybe some extra loot in t4?

And the main thing we need is to make Alliance perks the first thing new users see when they trying to make account.
Only things that can force to move old players from Horde to Ally is something rly disbalanced (which shouldn't be implemented), some friends/guild (we have no control ovet this) or strongly increased rates (I don't think it will work a lot too, tbh). So u should focus on newcomers. imho

I find it quite funny how so many players only look at things from their own perspective. Not everyone needs incredibly impactful perks to be convinvced to pick Alliance, there are many undecided players that will look at even the minor QoL bonuses and will happily swap. On Karazhan we had pretty minimal faction balance changes (compared to just the current ones, let alone the bundle we're discussing now) with the "heaviest hitter" being Seal of Blood available to Alliance. That is a spell that only really benefits one spec of a single class and yet the public perception was that this is enough to even the scales and make picking Alliance worth it. If we combine a number of impactful and just minor features together into a nice overall package it should be enough for a lot of people that don't particularly need to play Horde.

 

16 hours ago, Massie said:

As filler 100% (with enough of them), but some of these perks are so situational, that if you read them as a new player, you realistically won't give a shit. With an absurd example; Yeah "Free mail postage" is nice to have and looks nice in the list of perks, but if you take a moment to actually think of the value, it's completely irrelevant. The perks should still have a meaningful impact on the choice of someone rolling Alliance over Horde. Dozens of small QoL bonuses are "cool to have", but won't compete with the argument of "Horde has more players". They only matter for people who planned to roll Alliance to begin with.

 

Also to throw a perk suggestion into the pot:

0 Deposit fee for Auction House. Though I don't remember if AH is crossfaction, otherwise someone could just make a lvl 1 ally bank char and have direct influence on horde market too. But eliminating AH fees would open up market for gear/stuff that has high vendor cost.

Auction Houses are already crossfaction. I would prefer to refrain from providing features that can scale and affect the overall economy, not to mention all you would have to do is make a level 1 Alliance character which isn't what we're after here.

[nihil]

2 hours ago, Wolfenstein said:

I find it quite funny how so many players only look at things from their own perspective. Not everyone needs incredibly impactful perks to be convinvced to pick Alliance, there are many undecided players that will look at even the minor QoL bonuses and will happily swap. On Karazhan we had pretty minimal faction balance changes (compared to just the current ones, let alone the bundle we're discussing now) with the "heaviest hitter" being Seal of Blood available to Alliance. That is a spell that only really benefits one spec of a single class and yet the public perception was that this is enough to even the scales and make picking Alliance worth it. If we combine a number of impactful and just minor features together into a nice overall package it should be enough for a lot of people that don't particularly need to play Horde.

What's mean "don't particularly need to play Horde"? No one needs to play Horde! It's just a choice they made (mostly random) years ago. And now they have in that faction friends/expiriences they want to repeat.
And I don't think there are many undecided players - it's only fully new wow players actually. 9 out of 10 old guys always play same faction and free fly points wont change their decision.

p.s. I'm already Ally and yeah, I'm look at things from my own perspective. Old player's perspective. No one Not many ppl will betray their faction for some QoL

[Ombridride]

My feedback on the ideas :

• Shorter Hearthstone Cooldown ✅
• Shorter Racial Swap Cooldown  ✅ (1 week instead of 2 weeks seems fair)
• No Durability Loss ❌ (repairing is unfair for everyone, removing it for the alliance only would create a different economy alliance side, were more gold will be available for the same amount of time played, therefore increased AH prices) - Or remove it from everybody in this case
• No Resurrection Sickness ✅ (removing it is maybe too much, but reduce it to max 1-2min why not. A 1-2 min debuff to remove honor gain after resurrection to avoid idiots farming leveling guys / corpse should be considered)
• Caverns of Time teleport option before 2.4 ✅ (should apply to both)
• Increased Reputation Gain ✅ (but it shouldn't be a really high value, a +25-50% range seems fine)
• Increased Honor Gain ❌ (being alliance is already a plus here, they find quicker BG and it seems their winrate is higher as well - less trash players in BG -)
• Unlocked all flight paths ✅(good idea, gain time while leveling, give more possibilities)

Others would be:

• Increased Profession Rates (same as reputation, +25-50% seems fine)

But in the other hand, you need to put a timeframe after a transfer from which it's not possible to come back to the other faction, or abuse can be made (honor, reputation, profession increased XP rates), maybe 2 weeks or 1 month. But you would probably don't do that (even if it makes sense) because it's part of your income, i guess...

I'm always sad we can't discuss, group, be in the same guild, do PvE, have mixed BG PvP, Arenas, etc. together (Alliance and Horde players).
Fine, it's part of WoW TBC (this 16+ years old game), but come on, nowadays it doesn't exist anymore in the wide majority of our favorite MMORPG (even retail), other private server (such as Turtle WoW) did exactly that, it's really pleasant and increase possibilities for all players (LFG more active, BG more frequent, etc.) + reduce sectarian / disrespectful behavior... ! So basically, my main feedback would be to merge both factions instead of dividing players among them, but i doubt this would happen in TBC (not "blizzlike" for this version of the game), but if it happens, it will fix near if not all issues linked to faction balance/choice

Oh also, you really need to communicate more on the Alliance perks you current have, I was a new player 1+ month ago in your server, and i didn't know the perks after playing like 1 week into the server with my first character, and because i was already into horde faction (with guild, friends, and so on) i didn't want to change. At the end I don't really care which side I'm in, but if I would have knew before (or at) subscription the current Alliance perks before choosing a side, i would have chosen Alliance for sure

Edited September 28, 2023 by Ombridride
Last comment addition

[sixtrials]

w server, + first time playing tbc, i believe this server will grow so fast

[nateee]

Any idea when these perks will go in? Would be a big push to make people go alliance if you added in the bonus honor this next week when s3 comes out. If your goal is to entice people to move over to alliance now is when the perk would do that. Same with porting down to caverns of time--wait too long and it no longer matters as people won't do hyjal anymore. (albeit that'll probably be a ways off).

tldr: my point is every day you wait the worse the balance will be.

Edited October 8, 2023 by nateee

[Wolfenstein]

Been a bit busy with other things and was also waiting for more suggestions to come. Will make a decision and implement the perks when Arena Season 3 is fully launched and there aren't any distractions.

[nateee]

19 minutes ago, Wolfenstein said:

Been a bit busy with other things and was also waiting for more suggestions to come. Will make a decision and implement the perks when Arena Season 3 is fully launched and there aren't any distractions.

Yea makes sense. I think all of these changes are good. I think the lack of replies about new ideas is there aren't really any. The only other thing I could think of is giving free riding or something to people at 100% or flying, but I've seen that done elsewhere and all it did was encourage botters. 

I think going ahead with all these perks would at least help with the faction balance. The literal only other thing I could say is crossfaction, but I'm not sure of even that myself.

 

Anyway, just my 0.02 because i'd like increased honor in s3, but as you said we all think about ourselves and our own situation.

[Wolfenstein]

We came up with additional, potential perks:

- Making class abilities not consume reagents (e.g. Soul Shards) - you would still need at least one in your inventory due to client limitations but it would never be consumed.

- Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) persist through death

- Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) have a longer duration. Please note that this isn't related to the death persistence perk listed above - could do both at the same time or just either of them. 

 

Let us know what you think about those.

[umarmung]

• Making class abilities not consume reagents (e.g. Soul Shards) - you would still need at least one in your inventory due to client limitations but it would never be consumed. ✅
• Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) persist through death ❌
• Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) have a longer duration. Please note that this isn't related to the death persistence perk listed above - could do both at the same time or just either of them. 🤷 (meh)

The problem with the buff ones is that it would change how players behave in-combat. For example, individually players take for granted that buffs are reset on death. So they automatically spend gcds, manage when they drink and eat and other activities around it. As a group, buff durations are synced on wipes. Instead now they have to alter their behavior to track when buffs fall off, there would be more variation and timings of buff management across a group. It changes behavior on what were critical buff windows in serious gameplay, e.g. when needing to rebuff in-combat resurrections like tanks, etc. It also results in significant differences for how players both individually and as a group play on different factions.

It is however good to be aware of what kind of changes the project is capable of offering though. Just the last two may not be appropriate here.

The first perk sounds good as a small gold sink to the game, but to an individual the time and gold recovered outside of combat has value. For those with situational, in-combat reagent abilities, it is a big relief (think of Priest and Mage slow falls needing banks of feathers) and we can hear tears of joy from lazy druids and their raid leaders (Rebirth). For warlocks it is probably a little too powerful due to the many uses of Soul Shards, but given any functional warlock has to farm a ton of them anyway, especially when it matters in serious content, then very rarely would there be a situation where lack of them makes any significant difference to how a group achieves anything. So, overall, it appears a small change, but definitely a big Quality of Life impact.

Edited October 10, 2023 by umarmung

[nateee]

1 hour ago, Wolfenstein said:

- Making class abilities not consume reagents (e.g. Soul Shards) - you would still need at least one in your inventory due to client limitations but it would never be consumed.

- Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) persist through death

- Making class buffs (e.g. Blessing of Kings) have a longer duration. Please note that this isn't related to the death persistence perk listed above - could do both at the same time or just either of them. 

 

These could work. I do think having buffs persist through death is a bit op for in combat battle rezzing/ankhing, as it gives a definite strength to those raiders. On the other hand I kinda like having the buffs persist through death as rebuffing is the bane of many people's existence. 

 

If somehow you could make it so you don't get buffs after an ankh/battle rez then I think it would be fair to horde raiders, and just have it persist through death if you are rezzed conventionally (res spell) or by spirit healer/walking into dungeon. 

 

Also I'd say just make all buffs an hour at least. I don't know why shadow resist is only 20 mins.

 

I guess another perk could have elixirs persist through death as well. I know a lot of people use flasks for that but dealing with elixirs every pull is kinda annoying.