I feel mak’gora is a criminally underutilized portion of hardcore WoW. It creates some of the most amazing gameplay opportunities of any form of WoW pvp out there. However, WoW players won’t seem to do anything if there’s no material incentive to do so.
The ear buff is nice, and anyone who has one knows you will definitely get some whispers and questions about it, but it’s clearly not enough to encourage active hardcore pvp participation. A solution I have that doesn’t really affect anything but will create an incentive: let players purchase the private’s tabard if they get one ear, and the knight’s tabard if they get 3 ears. That will both provide opportunity for more than the 2 tabards available in hardcore (scarlet and guild), and provides just enough reason for players to risk their characters.
This could be further expanded upon, such as humans with 5 ears getting the arathor tabard, night elves getting the silverwing tabard, and dwarves/gnomes getting the stormpike tabard. But for now I think the 1 and 3 ear tabards would be plenty.
The proposal basically just changes a cosmetic reward to a marginally better cosmetic reward. Do you really think that would be enough to create an ear cheesing economy?
Maybe, but I’m not convinced that that matters either way.
Of course it also depends on what we mean by “marginally better”
So, would this be much, much easier than grinding rep in Era or on the normal Anniversary realm, yet allow players to get these relatively unearned tabards without any reputation grind? Does this mean it also awards reputation?
Again, I’m not sure what would or might make sense in this case… or if it matters…
Looking at the mak’gora leaderboards across all HC realms since their inception, there are less than 100 players who have ever won 5 or more ears. Most of those players are either dead or twinks, so I feel this is a non issue, although I understand you’re playing devil’s advocate, and that last idea was just spitballing.
Although I would argue it would be significantly more difficult to achieve 5 ears than a rep grind that tens of thousands of players have completed, a simple fix could be the removal of any pvp tabards upon character realm transfer, so they have to complete the same rank/rep grind as everyone else.
I do not now nor have I ever participated in duelling/deathsports or any form of PVP. You like what you like about the game, and I’m fine with that. I refuse to ‘normalize’ what would seem like bullying to me if I were the one doing it. The only person I’d judge for that is me…but I have to wonder what could possibly drive a different point of view.
I mean, we could just math it out. How much rep does it require vs how much experience to get the the minimum level to award an ear in a Mak’Gora?
And stating significantly more difficult leaves out a ton of variables. It would be significantly easier for a level 19 character to get 5 Mak’Gora kills than for a level 19 character to grind exalted rep with 2 BG factions, I think.
As I stated, I’m not saying this is something that matters, I’m saying as you’ve described it, it would be easy to think of ways one could cheese it. There are doubtless ways that we won’t think of that people would find to cheese it also.
And also as you’ve stated:
It’s not a particularly popular activity that would warrant dev attention and development. Especially to add something that could result in unintended consequences, bugs, and maintenance…
It would be impossible to math. You could probably calculate the time it takes to get to exalted in dozens of hours, no small feat, but mak’gora is theoretically a 50/50 chance 5 times (better chance if you’re good, lower if you’re not). Assuming you and the player you’re facing are completely equal, you would have a 1 in 32 chance of winning 5 in a row. If you consider that level ~20 in hardcore takes 12-18 hours depending on your experience and if you’re leveling professions, the 5 kills could take you relatively no time at all if you’re very very good at pvp, or if you’re very average at pvp it could, on average, take you (32*15hours) 480 hours to finally achieve your goal. Or if you’re below average you could never achieve it.
Or you could just dual box and cheese it, but that would still take 5*15hrs=75 hrs of leveling alts just for a cosmetic, no small feat.
This is all just random thoughts and semantics. I’m just looking for ways to introduce more goals to strive for in classic hardcore.
I thought of a dozen different ways to argue the absurdity of comparing optional video game PvP to the actually serious problem of bullying. However, instead I only ask that you reflect on the fact that you say you care about bullying but you entered this conversation asking if I had brain damage. Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t make it okay to say hurtful things. Do better.
I disagree. I truly enjoy that mak’gora is the only form of competitive pvp in WoW that has no gameplay benefits. It’s solely for glory and honor, as a mak’gora should be. And yes, then there would probably be a farming service where they sell you their level 20 character ear for real world money.
How is it bullying when both players have time agree to the duel? I really don’t understand what your saying or why your virtue singaling over a video game.
It’s easy to math. It’s literally just assigning the numbers to the variables and calculating the formulas.
Oh, I see what you’re saying. But, this isn’t what I meant, nor how I framed it:
Meaning, we are not attempting to measure the statistical chance of competition (though also not far from trivial), we are mathing out the experience required to level alts on another account to kill, with a guaranteed success rate.
Kind of a tiny feat compared to attempting to grind exalted with multiple BG reps at level 19 (or even level 60, but to a lesser degree).
Well cool. You asked for thoughts, and I gave some of mine. I also think that attempting to promote permadeath on an HC server is probably not the most obvious way to start going about encouraging participation.
And I sincerely appreciate your constructive feedback. Although I disagree with the significance of the problems you’re proposing due to both how niche and extremely difficult this side activity is, it is not my decision to make. Should the developers agree with you, I would again propose just removing all pvp related tabards upon transfer to a non Hardcore realm.
That’s the whole point of this entire gamemode, in my opinion. Anyone could, theoretically, grind green mobs and green quests all the way to 60 and then retire their character. But most people I think would not find that fun. The fun in hardcore comes from attempting the sketchy quest, stepping out of your comfort zone to do a difficult dungeon, or risking it all in a mak’gora. My characters that have survived mak’goras I feel significantly more connected to than level 60 characters that haven’t, because of that risk taken and feat achieved. That’s why players are risking their characters with 20+ days played in Naxxramas just to potentially get one shot by some unintuitive mechanic. Risking permadeath IS the fun to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea itself (win n number of mak’gora matches, and gain access to some tabards or other prizes beyond just ears) has some merit, I just don’t think it makes sense to tie it to BG faction tabards (or rep).
Personally, I am all for developing the niche activities and having those communities blossom, because I feel that these types of things, while maybe only enjoyed by smaller actual numbers can have outsized impact and positive trickle-down effects over the entire playerbase. That’s more of a gut feeling though, rather than something that is based in sound reasoning or logical data, so I could be completely wrong here.
Anyway, interesting idea to discuss, and I enjoyed the engagement.
I said I can’t feel okay doing it. It’s not virtue signalling if the limit I impose is on myself. I get that people don’t see it and that’s fine. Since it is my personal limit, it really just doesn’t affect you at all, does it?
