The war is well and truly coming back into World of Warcraft with some recent additions to the PTR. Back in Legendary episode 94, we had a good discussion on just how Blizzard could introduce content which, to quote, would be “a way to build that progrssion into the game such that players who come in a couple of months later don’t miss out on all the fun. [Blizzard] think there is and are planning something that they’d like to try in the 5.x patch cycle…”
And it seems they’re not holding back when it comes to this content, as the PTR has already shown up with the new PvP zones in Krasarang Wilds. Following the Alliance land-grab in Pandaria, and the Horde retaliation, players of both factions have two hubs to reinforce following the two landings. It looks from my initial PTR research like the Alliance are trying to push up the beach and the Horde are trying to push them back down the beach in Krasarang Cove. There are, however, also rather a lot of floating chairs and forges, so it seems this might not be the final version of the area!
The cove is packed with warring NPCs, allowing the area to function properly on both PvP and PvE servers, although Blizzard hasn’t yet clarified how this will work on PvE servers – will it be a PvP zone? Personally, I hope so. You may think otherwise! Killing either the NPCs or enemy players will allow you to loot items from them, known as commendations. These commendations can then be redeemed for things like buffs to your faction, portals, even guards for your building. Where the quests linked below state that you have to kill Alliance or Horde, that appears to be NPCs, as well as players.
There are also two new factions, the Dominance Offensive for the Horde, and Operation:Shieldwall for the Alliance. These open up more dailies, which, naturally, award reputation with these factions. They also award XP, so are definitely available for lower level players, although with the only character I could get acces to on the PTR, none of the quests were available. It may simply be the case that the PTR isn’t quite working yet. The quests take you all over Azeroth, finding relics and items, slaying members of the opposite faction, but none of them seem like they’d be impossible to achieve without PvP gear, or a group. You can check out the Horde and Alliance quests over at Wowhead. It does seem like the quest designers with the better sense of humor ended up on the Horde side, as ever, with quests like Flash! Aaaaaaahh! making the Alliance options seem very tame!
No reputation rewards have been datamined so far, so we will keep you updated as soon as they appear.
It seems interesting that the so-called PvP faction doesn’t require much PvP, instead allowing players to focus on killing NPCs, but it is my hope that on PvP servers this area will rightly transform from a subdued quest hub to a full-scale faction war. What are you hoping for?
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