- Author: Passion
- Date: August 13, 2022
- Updated: August 13, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
A recent blue post by Pazorax has confirmed that PvP in WotLK Classic will give exp based on honor gained, as it did originally by the end of the Wrath of the Lich King. With this, players will also be able to turn off their experience gain entirely, another feature from the original release.
A key difference this time, though, is that players with their experience gain turned off will be in the same matchmaking pool as everyone else. In the original release of Wrath of the Lich King, this wasn’t the case: instead, exp-locked players were in their own battleground grouping.
This was done at the time to limit the overwhelming superiority of “twinks” — characters made specifically to be the absolute most powerful they can be at any given level bracket. Separating them meant that players who level casually could join the occasional battleground and not get demolished by players 100 hours deep into a level 19 character.
Unfortunately, this separation led to battleground queues. With leveling battlegrounds being mostly nonexistent for both of the groups. As the blue post states, “What’s the point of giving experience in PvP if you can’t find a battleground match to do it in?”.
Hopefully, this can lead to a more involved and vibrant battleground experience outside of the max level, but only time will tell.
Hey Everybody!
I’m here to talk to you about gaining experience from PvP in Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
We’re going to re-introduce experience gain based on honor earned as well as the ability to turn off all experience gains, but we’ve decided not to bifurcate the matchmaking queue based on that feature.
The ability to earn experience from PvP was originally added to encourage people who enjoy PvP to do battlegrounds as part of their leveling up experience. However, this collides with the desires of a specialized PvP community, who enjoyed locking themselves to a particular level-bracket in PvP, such as level 19 Warsong Gulch. Since PvP experience would cost them the ability to lock themselves to a particular bracket, we also added NPCs who could turn off your ability to gain experience entirely.
Originally it was decided that these two groups shouldn’t play in the same matches with one another. Players who had disabled experience were separated into a different battleground queue, but the result of this decision was that neither group had enough players to find matches, defeating the point of both systems. What’s the point of giving experience in PvP if you can’t find a battleground match to do it in?
Having seen that effect, we’re going to keep these groups queuing together, so that both groups can find matches. While an individual who isn’t optimizing their capabilities for level 19 might not be able to compete on an individual level, it’s more fun to play a game with people of unequal capabilities than it is to not be able to play at all.
To summarize:
- We’re restoring the ability to gain experience from PvP activities at the same rate present in patch 3.3.5
- We’re restoring the ability to turn off your experience for 10g from Behsten and Slahtz in Stormwind and Orgrimmar and respectively.
- We are not bifurcating the queue, and players who have turned off experience will continue to matchmake in the general pool so that everybody has the highest chance of finding a match.
I hope these changes help keep low level battlegrounds alive in Wrath of the Lich King.
Thanks for your interest and support!
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