There are a lot of different player types in World of Warcraft and Blizzard tries their best to appeal to all of them. In order to make it easier for players who come late to the PvP season, 5.2 is introducing a new way of handling how you can obtain the gear.
The changes that are coming are based around removing rating requirements from the gear you purchase and reworking how the ladder system works. Since the ladder system is change isn’t super big, let’s take a look at that first. Blizzard is redoing it so that teams will go up in ranking more gradually instead of immediately, giving other teams a chance to compete for longer parts of the World of Warcraft PvP season, instead of having the winning teams decided pretty early on.
The next part is the biggest change: the removal of the rating requirements for PvP gear in WoW. This is a pretty big deal. At first, for many PvP players, it might seem like they’re getting punished for playing too hard and their hard work is somehow less valid since it’ll be easier for players who join mid season to obtain valor point gear. However, Blizzard does a pretty great job of making a compromise for both player bases.
There will be a set (Malevolent Gladiator’s) that’s purchasable with honor points from the get-go. After that, you have a set that will be unlocked with valor points; the Tyrannical Gladiator’s set can be unlocked with honor points, too, after you’ve hit the cap of 27,000 conquest points. Once you’ve hit that cap, you can buy an even better set, the Elite Tyrannical Gladiator’s set, with valor points.
Another change is that players will be able to catch up on in-between patches much easier with a new system that’s being created to help them catch up with conquest points by changing their cap in WoW. The formula for this is (Current Week of the Season) * 1000 – (Conquest Earned Thus Far.)
Some hardcore PvPers are already in a tiff over this. I can understand their complaints, but talking as someone who’s played for years with varying consistency, sometimes it’d be nice to be able to pick up mid season in WoW and not be super far behind.
This is the second big change coming for PvP in WoW patch 5.2 it seems. With this and the reworking of low level PvP, I’m excited to see what else might be in store for the future of PvP in MoP.
