This (http://blogs.parc.com/playon/archives/2006/10/pvp_ranks_by_ho_1.html) is a fascinating study by the Play On blog (http://blogs.parc.com) relating a player's time in game to their pvp rank.
I was honestly pretty surprised by how high a requirement there was for anything over rank 8. My first reaction was to find a hole in the data sampling. It measures all game time, not just pvp time, but that could be "preparation" or "queued" time too, so it's valid to count it. This followed 128,000 players for a week in October, sampling every 12 minutes. Seems like pretty solid research.
"Data from The Daedalus Project suggests that the average MMO player spends about 20 hours a week in the game. This implies that the average player "hit a ceiling" around Rank 5 (Sergeant Major / First Sergeant). They will find it hard to get beyond Rank 5 unless they put more time into the game than they are used to. It takes about 40 hours (or double the average) of play each week to reach Rank 11 (Commander / Lieutenant General) . More tellingly, it takes about 4 times the average play-time (or almost 80 hours) for a player to reach Rank 14 (Grand Marshal / High Warlord). That is more than 10 hours a day of game-play."
I knew I was doing something wrong. Along with a job I needed to put in 80 hours a week at WoW.
I saw some comments there that the pvp ladder is going to change when the expansion hits. Are they going to a daoc-style system of realm ranks? I'm too lazy to research it.
I might actually keep my account active if they did that
i've heard that is exactly what they're doing. well, i'm not sure that it's the same in terms of ranks/levels, but that they're going to more of a cumulative points system instead of a "how do you compare to everyone else this week?" system.
So you'll get accumulation without decay, but when you move up to the next rank is still kept secret and different for every server? I think the key to the successful system is transparency, which this system doesn't really have.
i'm under the impression that it's going to be something like X # of points = rank 2. Once you get there, you get the rank, just like DAoC was. I think what will stay the same is rank rewards, meaning that instead of getting lots of cool abilities like you did in DAoC, you'll instead be able to buy otherwise-unavailable gear. I think at some point it can earn you discounts w/ certain merchants as well (like epic mounts, for instance).
so in a nutshell, last I heard was that the rewards essentially remain the same, but the static/cumulative point system will be implemented. i'm sure there will be all sorts of bitching about how people w/ existing ranks will be "compensated" when this is cut over, but something tells me that they'll just start at zero w/ everyone else. after all, they have to pvp like crazy every week to keep that rank right now, so if they just do it again for a few weeks they'll already be way ahead of everyone else in terms of points.
Ive been playing a Pally on Enor to help my wife and her friends with some dungens
I read on VN tehy will be doing a faction and honour whipe when BC goes live
Honor wipe only, not faction wipe, from what I can tell. That's cool with me.