Honorable Kill

Today Ghostcrawler posted in his blog about the stat changes in Mists of Pandaria. First things first: PVE gear will be a lot weaker. Let me quote the paragraph for you:

• We are renaming this stat to “Defense (PvP)” or possibly “PvP Defense.” All players will have 30% base Defense, the same way all characters have some base Stamina.
• 
  

• PvP gear will have Defense on it, as well as a new stat, “Power (PvP).” Power increases the damage you do to other players as well as the healing you do to other players in PvP situations.
• 
  

• If you have a lot of Power, you’ll do more damage to other players, but they likely have Defense as well. If you fight players in lots of PvE gear, they’ll take more damage. Likewise, a player in PvE gear won’t have enough Power to effectively penetrate your Defense.
• 
  

• The names PvP Power and PvP Defense may not be final, but we’re leaning towards going with stat names that are obviously PvP-related, rather than “fluffier” names that might not be as easy to grasp. We want it to be clear to players that neither Power nor Defense have any relevance when fighting creatures, such as in dungeons or raids.
• 
  

• PvP gear will be lower in item level than PvE gear of an equivalent tier, however the Power and Defense stats will make sure that PvP gear is more powerful in PvP (both offensively and defensively) than PvE gear. In our budgeting system, the PvP stats will be free rather than causing other stats, such as Strength or haste, to be smaller as a result of including Power or Defense.
• 
  

• The goal of this change is to make it easier for a PvP player to participate in PvE, or for a PvE player to get started in PvP. Currently, we feel it is too large a barrier to go from one to the other, and the result has been that we see more and more players choosing to focus exclusively on only PvP or PvE. In earlier expansions, it was more feasible to use PvE gear in Arenas or Battlegrounds until you acquired the more useful PvP gear. The same was true of being able to use your PvP gear in a dungeon or raid until you acquired something better. In Cataclysm, stepping into PvP with no PvP gear would result in a player being so ineffective that it was difficult to even make progress towards acquiring PvP gear.
• 
  

Effictively this removes most PVE gear from the equation with the possible exception of melee weapons. But I remember that weapon damage was less important because of the percentage modifiers in the spells. I just checked the Talent Calculator and find Backstab still at 200% - so I am not 100% sure.

Still...

As much as we like to bash Blizzard for everything - this is a huge step in the right direction and means, that we may finally be able to play a class like rogue or mage without raiding for the best gear. Next to Blizzard allowing me to ride a flying machine and make my head-slot look like the X44 Quad Deathblow Goggles the best change since arenas got introduced.

Without a working ladder WoW as E-Sports cannot continue. These dozen are a mere start if Blizzard intends this to be more than a warning. The movie industry, the music industry and even the fucking porn industry started to sue their costumers and I am pretty sure, that Blizzard would be able to press huge monetary charges against firms and players that offer ingame goods and service against money. I think that this is the only way they could bring back a real pvp community. Find one sorry guy and ruin him for lifetime and the rest will shit their pants and stop the sales or at least the prices will sky-rocket and make it something only few can afford.

Anything else is a minor inconvinience noone really cares about. Hopes are that ArenaNet will keep sales out of GW:2 more effictively than Blizzard did. I have hopes that replays will be effective to shame players that bought achievements and ranks there.

The amazing thing is however, what a huge amount of money is spent on pushes even though everyone always says how bad the game is. I think ways to counter this would be for example contacting Team EG on why they sponsor players that do rating pushs. That would actually hurt. Team EG sponsors Azael, Talbadar and Cdew (who is one the players banned).

You can find Team EGs Facebook page right here: http://www.facebook.com/EvilGeniuses/?ref=tsX_3538X

During the last days many high ranked players got banned for doing rating pushes while playing accounts of other players. While this will by no means change a lot it is a step in the right direction. Among the names I read is Cdew, a very well known shaman and team mate of Azael and Talbadar. 

I would be interested to read more names, as this could also effect further arena tournaments (Cdews team was in the unplayed finals of the latest NAO tournament).