PvP - 26 January Conquest changes: For better or for worse?

After Australia Day there were some 6.2.3 Hotfixes and the conquest changes were rather interesting.

Conquest point acquisition has increased by 50% across the board, with changes such as:

• Winning the first Random Battleground match of the day now awards 225 Conquest Points, and subsequent victories award 125 Conquest Points (up from 150 and 75)
• Winning a Rated Battleground match now awards 600 Conquest Points (up from 400).
• Increased the amount of Conquest Points awarded to the losing team in a Rated Battleground match based on performance.
• Winning a Skirmish Arena match now awards 40 Conquest Points.
• Winning a Rated Arena match now awards 270 Conquest Points (up from 180).
• Ashran quest Slay Them All! now awards 300 Conquest Points (up from 200).
• Ashran Dominance now awards 750 Conquest Points (up from 500).

When you first hear of the changes, you think "Oh, that's great! Now I don't need to do as much PvP to cap for the week!"

Then you think about it a little and there are a lot of small things that may or may not amount to something due to these changes.

People will cap faster. Which means, there may be less teams to play during the week because people have capped already and aren't in the pool are arena teams to play with. Who does that leave? The hardcore rating teams who are going to cream you as they try to go up the ladders. It could be quite daunting for the casual arena player.

Not everyone likes arenas, and there may be a larger interest in casual battlegrounds now that there is an increased conquest for winning. That's good for my PvP buddies because we like to do BGs when there are more then 3 of us.

It sounds like Ashran is a good place to cap a new toon's conquest when trying to catch up, so you could spend all day in there (if it was a decent Ashran) and get a really good slug of conquest. This may stimulate more interest in Ashran.

The rated battlegrounds may make a whole lot more of YOLO teams which means we may be able to scrape together a RBG team. Even if you lose, you get conquest, but now you can even get more conquest. And, if you put up a bit of a fight you can a decent lot of conquest! If you cap a flag as the losing team you get 100 conquest for that, and if you lose a game 2-1 you get 100 points for not letting the other team get the third flag. You also get 50 conquest points for every 150 resources you earn in other battlegrounds, so it sounds like it may be worth getting a rated BG in if we have more than 5 people so that even if we lose we still get conquest.

The skirmish conquest is interesting. When the Skirmish weekly event was on, I noticed that we got a little bit of conquest for winning a skirmish, which never used to happen before. It makes doing skirmishes more worthwhile now, especially when you want to try out something new and don't want to lose rating over it.

We've had lots of interest in PvP Fridays now, with Jazz and Nath occasionally coming along as well. That will mean we have Shab, Sev, myself, Dan, Crooked, Jazz, Nath, Sars coming along - that's 8 people potentially! Two more and we'd have enough for an RBG! I think that it would be easy enough to pug the last two or we could even find friends willing to PvP with us. If only Damasu was around on Friday nights! Then we'd have 9! However, with Damasu having a new baby (and doing his fitness/sports training stuff on Fridays), it's hard to get something up and running with him which is a bit of a shame, since he's an enthusiastic PvPer. Maybe with time he will be able to play with us more.

Overall, the changes are good for the casual PvPer. I think that it might encourage more casual PvPers to get into PvP, but the downside is that people will drop out of the conquest earning race earlier so it would be more beneficial to do arenas earlier in the week. For those chasing mounts and ratings the changes won't mean much.

The changes aren't live on US/Oceanic servers but apparently they are live on EU servers so it won't be long before we get to see these changes in action. Can't wait!