World Defense (January 2005)

World of Warcraft obviously has a number of issues right now. Though it's well polished and it's PvM is doing well, the technical and PvP aspects are hurting. From server stability, poor or simply unstable server performance during PvP raids, to the sub-par PvP balance and some flaws with certian types of Crowd Control (AE Fear being my most hated).

However, an issue that takes a backseat to many others, is that of World Defense. It's in a sorry state right now, and is basically a joke. Firstly, there's an inbalance between the factions. Certian Horde outposts have pathetic defense. Sun Rock Retreat, Freewind Post, and Splintertree in Ashenvale all are ridiculously easy to take control of. Their guard spawn system is toned down a lot, and compared to Alliance camps, only a fraction of the guards spawn, at a fraction of the time. The placement of guards and patrols in those locations (and many others) is poorly done and often does little or nothing to hinder or even annoy raiders. Beyond the inbalance, World Defense as a whole is very poorly designed and far too weak. Right now, any lone wolf can have a hay-day slaughtering in the heart of his enemy's territory. A single group of Lv60s can take over many outposts completely. Raiding in the global world is trivialized and a joke right now.

Basically World Defense as a whole needs a total reavulation, and the design team needs to spend a week going around adding realistic and practical guard stations, patrols, and spawns to both Alliance and Horde territories. Raiding enemy faction targets and the heartland of the faction needs to be far more challenging, and far less common.

There needs to be Lv60 Elite guards defending every key base for a region. There need to be sparse Lv58 Elite patrols, and more Lv57 non-elite patrols. There's little lore sense for the low levels of so many guards, it's not as if "Lv60" is exactly am epic achievement or a rarity in Azeroth. The levels must be designed to deal with Lv60s. If Lv30s want a target to raid, give them a Battlefield. Raiding the enemy homeland must be end-game PvP content: sacking the heart of the enemy faction is the pinnacle and greatest goal. If a faction like the Dark Iron Dwarves can have amass so many elite guards, I sure as hell hope the Horde and the Alliance can. The defense of Durator and the Crossroads should be stronger than even Battlefields, as you can't tell me that Thrall cares more about some goldmines in Alterac Valley, that the first true home his people have had in decades.

There need to be better defended bottlenecks to hinder the simple presence of raiders. Some lore-base logic or sense would be nice too. Add a small barracks to each outpost where guards spawn out of, add a war skald that yells for help and summons in guards, anything. Simply spawning a zerg of NPC guards out of thin air isn't going to cut it. Next, the AI of guards needs improvement. Some guards should chase you for far longer, it's not like they have better things to do than kill raiders, after all. Hell, they should even camp your corpse with a small aggro range, just to be a pain. But designate them as specific NPCs, scouts or trackers. Have the regular spawned grunt return, to prevent someone mounted easily training the bulk of the defense away for 30 minutes while the rest of his squad attacks the city. Guards dying need to "step up" patrols and other defenses around the local region too, not just at 'kill points' in the main city or hub. Add different times of guards too, such as mages and priests. Making them all melee makes them very prone to AE attacks and because of how they cluster, easier to manipulate.

Fixing that aspect of World Defense will help fix another issue, player support of World Defense. Right now because raiding is so triviliazed, people have come accustomed to simply not caring. They may of helped a few times originally when it was neat, but soon after they realized, why bother. Beyond knowing the guard assistance is worthless, the fact that raiding is so trivialized has also trivialized how it's percieved by the opposition. It's not a rarity or a big deal in WoW, it's easy and common, so people just don't care. If a heartland raid was actually a rarity, and even a murderer penetrating deep into the heartland to snipe whelps being less common, players would be quicker to come to defense.

Another issue is actually the defense of such raids. Only through constant presence can you do anything. You can't simply turn back a raid and head back to what you're doing, as for whatever ridiculous reason, raiders can use local graveyards at no cost. They can simply remain in that area, zerging from the graveyard over and over, with no penalty and very little effort too. Hopefully the plan to add Battlefield-style dynamics to the global world will help. Beyond that, there needs to be harsher deaths for raiders. Whether it's longer graveyards or durability loss from using enemy graveyards, or something else, is up to Blizzard.

Lastly, and probably the biggest flaw, is player incentive. Again, "what's the point?" echoes. Not only do you not hinder the enemy from making any sort of real 'character progression', there's none of it for yourself either. Obviously, no Honor points yet. But beyond that, there's no specific reward for coming to the call of World Defense. I'm not confident the Honor system will fix this. People may still ignore such calls, and opt for better forms of progression (ie; Battlefields). There needs to be specific incentive for defending the Crossroads, or killing troll rogues in Duskwood. Perhaps when a raider kills someone in a homeland region like Duskwood or Redridge, they're flagged as a homeland raider, and when you kill them, you can loot a special item that identifies you as someone who aided his younger brethren, which you could turn in to a NPC for some sort of reward. Perhaps when a target puts out five World Defense calls, any kills give additional Honor point credit. Maybe when a location becomes seriously "under attack", a special defense squad is spawned, including a defense captain, and if that NPC survives, the faction as a whole, or just those in that region, recieve a bonus. Or anything else that makes a player, on his way to his 47th Blackrock raid feel like he can "progress himself" through Honor Rank and Reputation by taking his raiding and defending Freewind Post instead.