The Past of PvP
Insider: The Honor System was introduced more than a year ago, on April 19, 2005. There were some PvP hotbeds when the PvP system was first introduced. Did you foresee those forming?
Tom Chilton: We knew that it was probably going to change the way people played a lot. It was probably going to get a lot more people to PvP than were doing so regularly, because there weren't a whole lot of reasons to do it before, other than just for its own sake. We figured that the amount of PvP was going to go up quite a bit.
We figured there would be some hotspots, but it was hard to predict exactly where. Even before we launched the Honor System, Tarren Mill and Southshore were hotspots already for the people that were PvPing, along with the Crossroads, so it wasn’t any big surprise that those flared up more. The sheer degree to which they flared up was pretty surprising, but it was also interesting to see. It was pretty crazy actually playing in, too. I remember you could run up to Southshore or Tarren Mill, and you wouldn’t really see what was going on, no players would load into the screen. And then, bam, they’d all load in at once and then, you’d die within a couple of seconds. It was pretty crazy.
Balancing PvP and Raids
I: When the PvP system was first released, it became one of the two pillars of the main end-game content for World of Warcraft: one being the PvP content, the other one being the raid game. At the time the PvP content was introduced, the only raid content was Onyxia and Molten Core. That content has progressed a lot since then. How do you see the raid content of World of Warcraft influencing the PvP content?
TC: Well, they're very much intertwined. Any time you can get loot from a raid that will affect your chances to be successful in PvP, they're inevitably going to be mixed in with each other, and for the most part I think that's a good thing. We know that there are a lot of players out there that want to PvP and don't necessarily want to raid, and we try to support them as much as possible through the PvP item rewards.
Something we've also done in patch 1.11 is increase the quality of those rewards that you get, trying to keep up with the inflation from the raid zones. That's one example where they are directly interrelated. If we'd had the PvP rewards at the balance that they are today, back when we first launched the Honor System, they would have been viewed as incredibly overpowered at the time and the perception would have been that you had to PvP in order to be successful and that raiding wasn't viable. It's one of those things where we're always trying to keep the balance going back and forth. And I think that both as a player and a developer, the game is more enjoyable when you mix up your activities. I find that I very much enjoy both going on raids and PvPing, and I really would like to do things to encourage more players to do both.
I don't think players will be able to expect to gear up only by doing PvP. They might be able to gear up a lot of the way by doing PvP, but they'll be slightly better off if they also do a little bit of raiding or do end-game instances.
I: So do you think that the main way of balancing this is through rewards or also maybe through offering different kinds of gameplay in PvP content, like for example in Arathi Basin, where being the one who deals the most damage isn't necessarily the key to winning the battleground?
TC: Absolutely. At the end of the day, people are very reward-motivated, and I think that's what drives people to do what they do. The battlegrounds themselves and the design behind the battlegrounds are meant to keep that entertaining, to mix it up a little bit, keep it organized, make it feel like there is a reasonable chance for a player to succeed in any kind of fair match-up. We want to make sure that all of our battlegrounds have a different feel to them: they have different objectives, our outdoor world PvP objectives that we're going to be introducing will have different feels to them, and I think that it's just a question of building in more content so that in that process of going after those rewards which the players want, they feel like they had a good time getting there because they did a whole bunch of different things to get there.
Lessons of the Battlegrounds
I: Speaking of playing in the battlegrounds and giving every battleground a slightly different feel, you've done a lot of testing on the battlegrounds, and then you've implemented them, and then you and your team actually get to play these battlegrounds in a live environment with live players. Playing these battlegrounds in a live environment, what were the lessons that you learned, and how are those lessons influencing what you're doing with upcoming PvP content?
TC: There's always something to be learned for each battleground with the mechanics themselves. In Alterac Valley, we learned that it was very easy to cross the line and have NPCs impacting the battleground too much. In Warsong Gulch, we learned that you have to spread players out as much as you possibly can to keep all players from concentrating on just one place or having one focal point. In addition, we learned in Warsong Gulch that it's very easy to come out with nothing, it's easy to get blanked there and have nothing to show for it. You come out after a pretty long period of time, and that feels bad. In Arathi Basin, we've learned that the mechanics there might lend themselves a little bit too much to just trying to squeeze off a capture on the flag or that key flag defense and that might influence the battle too much versus actually controlling the points of interest themselves.
These are things that we'll just keep carrying on in our learning. I wouldn't say that any of them have been flaws to the point where the battlegrounds haven't been successful. All the battlegrounds have been very popular--we've seen a lot of use on the battlegrounds, and I've had a lot of fun in all of them myself, too. But there are always things you can continue to improve on, that we can do better.
I: I remember that at first, battlegrounds were not really intended to be instanced, but more like world playfields?
TC: Right, exactly. When we originally started designing Alterac Valley, we weren't thinking of it as an instanced zone. We thought that you might cross a portal to get into it, but everybody would be going to the same place. The portal would only be there to kind of indicate to you that you're going to be PvP flagged in here and people will be able to attack you. That was really the only reason for that. So we designed Alterac Valley thinking that it was going to be much more like just a normal WoW zone with different quests to do, and you would go there just to try to get some of the rewards out of the zone that you couldn't get anywhere else.
But we headed toward more of the instance concept because we realized that we just weren't going to be able to effectively control how many players showed up and whether there'd be too many or too few, or anywhere in between. We realized that we were just going to have to instance the battlegrounds and turn them into a mini-game of their own. But at the same time, we've found that during that process you have to make sure that everything in a battleground goes toward that final objective. We actually tried building a battleground internally once, called the Gurubashi Catacombs (we spoke a little bit about it at BlizzCon), and that battleground didn't actually have any objectives outside of killing the opponents.
The Arena System
I: Like straightforward deathmatch.
TC: Yes, pretty much straightforward deathmatch. And that in and of itself can be interesting in its own context, but it actually doesn't feel like a battleground. It feels more like a sport. So it didn't really lend itself very well to the whole Horde versus Alliance match-up. That was one place where we learned that objectives are very important. With our upcoming Arena System, we do anticipate doing this sort of deathmatch, catacombs kind of gameplay, and we're actually going to build that up quite a bit, but it's going to be its own separate environment.
I: So there is an Arena System planned?
TC: Yes, one of our major features for the expansion that we're just now talking about is the Arena System. It's essentially a system of gladiatorial combat where players are going to be able to go into arenas in teams of two on two or three on three or five on five (at least that's what we're planning to start with) and duke it out on a ladder-based system to get some pretty cool rewards.
I: So will that be mostly within one faction, or will that also be two teams coming from different factions against each other?
TC: In this case, you can actually have Alliance teams fighting against Alliance teams and Horde teams fighting against other Horde teams. It really makes sense in the context of an arena of gladiatorial battles. It doesn't really make as much sense in the context of a battleground, where it's very much Alliance versus Horde.
I: That's cool, so that goes kind of in the direction of a shift from quantity of PvP to quality of PvP?
TC: Yes, exactly. I think that what we're doing with the PvP system in the expansion is very holistic. We're changing the way the Honor System works to be more of a non-competitive grind so that it's something that you can work toward over time. You'll still be able to get honor points in battlegrounds and from outdoor world-PvP objectives, and from outdoor world PvP in general. You'll be able to get honor points which you then spend to get rewards, but once the expansion comes out, it's not going to be a ladder. There won't be any decay involved – it will be a lot more like an experience system. At the same time, we want an arena, we want a forum to be able to do competitive PvP, and we want to make sure that competitive PvP isn't just a time-grind. We want to make sure that it's skill-oriented, so that's where we're going to focus with the Arena System. We're going to try to make sure that the Arena System will require some kind of time investment, but very light compared to grinding away to the top honor ranks in the old Honor System. With the Arena System I think we can expect to see more of a chess-like rating system involved, and we'll see plenty of players that spend some of their time, maybe 10 to 15 arena battles per week, in order to climb to the top.
I: That's interesting. Speaking of a chess rating system, does that mean that there will also be some sort of automatic matchmaking to make for balanced and even teams?
TC: That's definitely one of the key features for our new PvP improvements. In the Arena System, we'll be matching players up based on their rating, matching teams up based on their rating more specifically. I think it's a very important part of the arena concept that you actually form your team ahead of time, a lot like you create a guild. You'll form a team, you'll maintain your roster, and based on who you have on your team, you're going to be able to go into the battles. Let's say for example you create a five-on-five team. You can actually have more than five people on your team, so you‘ll have benchwarmers! [laughs]
At that point you'll be able to go into arena battles, and the rating is for your team as a whole. Based on the success of your team you're going to get arena points that you can then spend to get rewards. This is different from the Honor System in that the Honor System is still very individual. We're also going to be doing some matchmaking in the battlegrounds. We're going to be taking the approach of trying to match players up in a battleground in more of a fun format. Players that are really well-geared will fight against other players that are well-geared, while players that are disorganized and not as well geared are going to fight against other pick-up groups. As much as possible we're going to try to refine that matchmaking system, and this is made possible by our cross-server battlegrounds, which is a new feature that's going to be coming out soon in our next patch.
Arena Teams
I: One thing I wanted to ask about, going back to the Arena System, you were talking about the teams. How persistent will these teams be? Will those be just like guilds that persist over longer periods of time, or like groups that you form and then disband?
TC: It's really up to the players themselves. Much like with guilds, you can create guilds at just about any time, you can join them, you can leave them, you can decide to join a different guild. It's going to be similar with arena teams. You'll create your team, you maintain your roster, you can decide to kick people off the team if you're the team captain, you can add other people to your team, other people can decide to leave your team and join other teams, etc.
I: So it will be completely parallel to the guild system?
TC: Exactly. There are a lot of very strong parallels to the guild system. In addition to the team system, we actually expect the Arena System to have the concept of seasons. You'll fight your arena battles over a period of several months, and that will be one season. And at the end of it, the season will reset and then at that point players start again from scratch and try to fight it out for the next season and try to get the rewards for that season. Using the seasonal system also gives us a perfect opportunity to introduce new rewards to the system. For example as we add new end-game instances or add new raids to the game, it gives us the opportunity to say, "Hey, this is a really good time to add some more powerful rewards to the Arena System!" to make sure the players are able to keep up with that.
Experiencing the Future
I: Like you said, you're one of the lead designers of World of Warcraft, but you're also just a regular player. How do you experience the battlegrounds when you're playing in them, or just regular PvP. Do you find it easy to switch from developer mode to just regular player mode, or do you always have that nagging developer in the back of your head going, "Oh, look, you need to fix that?"
TC: There's always definitely that nagging developer in the back of the head that says "You need to fix that," although at the same time it's interesting how easy it is to be motivated by the in-game rewards. I still play it very much like a normal player does. I'm always trying to get better equipment on my characters, I'm always trying to advance myself somehow, trying to win that battleground, etc. But it's nice knowing that when I see something that feels broken, there's something that can be done about it. It also helps me stay in touch with the player base because, like a lot of other players, I'm part of a guild. I hear people that are in the guild saying, "This particular aspect of the game feels screwy, and I really don't like how it works," etc. If I hear that enough, it's very easy for me to say to myself, "You know what, I think this is really something that needs to be improved or changed."
I: Another thing that you do as designer is the talent review of the classes and some of those other things that keep the game alive, things where the game keeps growing, evolving through time. How do you plan to keep the PvP system and the PvP rewards up to speed with the development of the rest of the game? How do you plan to keep them valid and interesting?
TC: We plan to have avenues to add new PvP rewards to the system. With the Arena System, we can do it through the seasonal concept. Potentially anytime there's a season change or every couple of seasons we might introduce a completely new set of rewards players can get. The same goes with our revamped Honor System. In the new Honor System, as you gain honor points and you spend them on rewards, we'll be able to introduce new rewards to the system at any time. It's really pretty clean: if players got points saved up, then they can get those rewards. If they have been spending them along the way, then they might have to save up a little bit more until they can get the new rewards. But I think that it should give us the ability to keep those rewards very much in line with the rest of the end-game.
I: After about one year of the Honor System being in place and all the experience you've had with it, can you tell us a little bit about your general vision for the part you'd like the Honor System to play in World of Warcraft in one or maybe two years time?
TC: That's definitely very difficult to say. Obviously my answer two years ago would have been pretty different than it is today. Today, I see that we don't want to have a PvP system that is both competitive and a grind in the same system. What we're doing with our new PvP features is we're trying to make sure that we separate anything that is a long-term achievement from a competitive system. We make sure that those are basically separate systems entirely. I think that hopefully, this is going to be something that holds up over time. We're always still learning, we're always still exploring new ground and seeing what players do with the system and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't. But hopefully this is a system that can hold up and stand the test of time.
I: Also, with battlegrounds, they are very popular, I guess that's a fact that can't be denied, but is there anything you would wish to accomplish with the battlegrounds beyond their current scope?
TC: Eventually we'd still like to see battlegrounds get tied more into the outdoor world. We'd like to see it where winning battlegrounds has some impact on the game world, so they aren't entirely off in their own corner of the universe. I think that this is something that we will get over time, but it's not something that will happen immediately. Right now we're focusing on trying to refine both the Honor and the Arena Systems so that they're very viable systems in and of themselves. Once we get beyond that I think we'll probably start focusing a little bit more on tying in the battlegrounds into the outdoor world.
I: Thanks for your time!
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his is the Insider interviewing Tom Chilton for the upcoming PvP content, and we'll also talk about the past of PvP and a little bit about the future vision of where PvP is going in World of Warcraft. You can also download and listen to the interview for 