Alterac Valley

[Artega]

Grass is always greener ...

If you think the NPCs are the source of the problem, you've lost me. They're a complete joke now, for either side. The biggest difference always has been the same thing - running through the tower compared to running across the bridge. I would have argued that the tower was worse, but now you can ride through it mounted. They never made a change for the bridge.

Thing is, you don't have to repeatedly kill a load of NPCs with high HP (and some with solid DPS) every few minutes to defend Relief Hut; you do with Aid Station. Those same NPCs will interrupt people trying to cap Aid Station, while there isn't such a problem at Relief Hut.

[Kevin]

Thing is, you don't have to repeatedly kill a load of NPCs with high HP (and some with solid DPS) every few minutes to defend Relief Hut; you do with Aid Station. Those same NPCs will interrupt people trying to cap Aid Station, while there isn't such a problem at Relief Hut.

That damn stable master (who shouldn't be aggro'd but someone always gets feared into them) has 104K life and pretty high armor. Even with 5000 DPS that is still 20 seconds of time you have to spend getting it killed that you aren't spending killing Marshal's or Vann or the other alliance and yeah, some of those NPC's will smack you for 4K damage at times still.

[Xame]

It sounds like you have to get X reports first to receive the honor debuff.

The reporting/debuff is far to limited to really change play much. First you need to get X number of people to report you. Then you get a debuff telling you that you need to damage something (3-5mins). You run out of the cave and hit a ram/wolf and die forcing the whole cycle to repeat. Only penalty for having the debuff on for too long is you get a new debuff that stops you from collecting honor until you damage something.

I guess "jump" has now been replaced with run forward every 5-7 minutes and hitting a npc. I've already killed enough alliance that run out as part of the initial rush and then get knocked back graveyard to graveyard afk. From a Horde point of view its easy to see they are not fighting back, but from an alliance point of view, they have some damage from the inital rush and are "moving" from rez point to rez point, "defending the graveyard". You also see this in AB. Same toon afk moving from gy to gy not fighting back.

The energy to find afk'ers is high. So too should the punishment. Today they are just lazy to the point of not even moving from the cave and don't care who sees them. They know full well that Blizzard doesn't care enough to punish them even though Blizzard has called it an exploit of the BG system.

[Kevin]

The reporting/debuff is far to limited to really change play much. First you need to get X number of people to report you. Then you get a debuff telling you that you need to damage something (3-5mins). You run out of the cave and hit a ram/wolf and die forcing the whole cycle to repeat. Only penalty for having the debuff on for too long is you get a new debuff that stops you from collecting honor until you damage something.

I guess "jump" has now been replaced with run forward every 5-7 minutes and hitting a npc. I've already killed enough alliance that run out as part of the initial rush and then get knocked back graveyard to graveyard afk. From a Horde point of view its easy to see they are not fighting back, but from an alliance point of view, they have some damage from the inital rush and are "moving" from rez point to rez point, "defending the graveyard". You also see this in AB. Same toon afk moving from gy to gy not fighting back.

The energy to find afk'ers is high. So too should the punishment. Today they are just lazy to the point of not even moving from the cave and don't care who sees them. They know full well that Blizzard doesn't care enough to punish them even though Blizzard has called it an exploit of the BG system.

yeah I watched all of Blizzcon 07 WoW PvP Panel and I'm not sure what they mentioned will fix it.

They will leave the cave and pop up at a GY now instead of in the cave, but they will very likely get engaged by alliance and they will be a bit harder to spot by the horde who are actually playing since they won't just be in the cave now and will be at different GY's that may be under alliance attack so there might be several horde that are playing at that GY now.

Though I do think they will have to do damage to ally not just a critter to remove the debuff and yeah I think the penalty should be higher. Shifting the honor so you get more at the end doesn't discourage AFK folks either. They are AFK for the whole match. I am more for draconian measures myself.

[oldmandennis]

They know full well that Blizzard doesn't care enough to punish them even though Blizzard has called it an exploit of the BG system.

That's odd. I went to go link you the post where they say as long as it's you at your keyboard, they aren't going to do anything.... but it's gone.

[NuurAbSaal]

That's odd. I went to go link you the post where they say as long as it's you at your keyboard, they aren't going to do anything.... but it's gone.

Oh the joy when I reported a fishing posse in AV a while back now and the GM told me that's perfectly acceptable behaviour in a battleground. He warned me about GM abuse after hearing my less than enthusiastic reply.

take care
Tarabulus

[Kevin]

OK I just got done with what I felt was a super funny AV. The 18 or so no AFK horde killed the LTs by SH bunker and got it and SH GY flipped when the big alliance zerg hit and killed us off. We popped at IB though. So I went back up and got a few more HK's before dying again and popped in the cave. I went back up and since I was in AV just to be dumb I didn't try to get by the alliance but stayed with a group of horde and killed a few more. Next fight was on the road just outside the cave. Then I got to fight in right out side the cave.

The alliance stayed there and kept fighting the horde. They didn't even try to take FW GY. This went on for about 6 or 7 minutes and I kept getting a lot of HK's so I was fine with it. It's not hard to get HK's as a hunter when there are actually 10-15 other horde around you fighting.

At one point I got hit with a seed of corruption. So I ran back to the guards by the cave mouth on purpose and it blew up and activated them. They ran off and pwned the warlock and then started fighting the other alliance. They were of course eventually killed.

After they were dead the alliance came into the cave and started killing the AFK folks. Many of them backed up even farther after they rezzed. I got another seed of corruption on me so I ran back to where 5 of the AFK folks were and blew up on them. Sure it didn't kill em but I got to blow up on them. And I knew they were AFK folks because they had done zero damage and zero healing. They were just there enough to back up.

At this point I had around 100 HK and the match was about 25 minutes old. So I decided to get out of the cave. I did. I got to Balinda and decided to just dance with her. After a bit a pally found me. So I cheered him. Because I was happy that the alliance killed the AFK folks for some extra honor even if the game went longer and sat down while he killed me. He was holy spec though and it took him about 45 seconds to actually kill me, but I cheered him on anyway.

The fact that other than the games I played with other Lurkers a few days back that this is one of my best memories of AV in a long time speaks volumes about how bad that BG is. My fun memories in EotS, AB and WSG are actually related to PvP, not to being happy that the alliance pwned the horde including the cave dwellers.

[NuurAbSaal]

Fun in AV, hmm...

Here I go:

First I'd like to give a short overview of my server, Twilight's Hammer EU. Following the general trend, Horde usually wins the BGs that aren't AV in the 70 bracket. For some odd reason 51-60 AV is a total cakewalk for Horde, I have yet to lose a single game, I have a PvP mount on my 60 huntress and am already up to 24 marks again, so we really win most of the time. As you know my main is a warrior, and a hardcore tank at that. Not the most fun class to play in PUG AV, but it has its moments when you can 2-man all the lieutenants with some solid dps backing you up. Also Rogues accidently attacking you always makes for a few fun minutes:P

A large factor of "fun" in AV comes from the class you play and the type of play you enjoy, in my opinion. When I was more hybrid specced I had a blast suicide-rushing into the alliance zerg and either Recklessness Whirlwinding or simply keep going and watch 15 people being dragged back by one silly warrior with Shield Wall and Last Stand up, often for dozens of yards. Eventually, that got old, unless you communicated with a healer or joined with some friends. As stated earlier, it has its moments.

Now, my second lvl60 char was a Rogue, and I didn't enjoy AV at all with him (still dragged him to Exalted in something like 15 hours total). Combat sword spec isn't the one-shot wonder you need to stack up kills, or maybe I just don't know how to play my Rogue well in PvP. In short, I did it for the ring and got little fun out of it, apart from ninjaing the odd flag now and then with a druid buddy.

Enter the huntress. Apart from being a sexy Orc with lots of earrings, she got the AV Crossbow at lvl51 and is now, at 60, decked out in mostly TBC blues and greens that easily pwn standard lvl60 equipment. I am a killing machine, with a couple of cooldowns activated I push 350dps for 15 seconds. Cloth dies in a hearbeat, Leather is still fun and plate just dies a bit slower. I don't have a real PvP spec, choosing insted a few talents that make levelling even easier (like the reduced Mana cost on shots and stings) but I can still manage to hold my own with traps, Beast Within and my trusty boar named Cat. It feels like a totally different game than with my melee classes.

About balance and fixing AV:
I am Horde-biased. Shoot me, but for the love of Thrall I can't figure out why anybody would roll Alliance. So my view on things is probably less than neutral. The terrain favours Alliance, as has been stated, especially the layout of the alliance village. And maybe I missed it, but there isn't a Horde elite patrolling to one of the base towers in Frostwolf Keep, is there? Despite the NPCs being whimps when faced with the zerg, they can quickly spell doom for an ambitous attempt at the bunkers by a small group. Ditto for the other NPCs, every second you lose fighting them off is one second closer to your being found out and annihilated.

But that's cool. Nothing more annoying than people starting the "let's lose fast we can't win it's the map" yodelling before the gate even opens. I for one despise those players. The fact that I'm not one of the honor grinders (and never was, apart from that blissful time shortly before TBC) puts my objective firmly in front of me: Win the game or keep them from winning. I've been in 14 hour games of old, and I can't remember ever thinking of giving up. Sure, you may have to leave at some time, but let me leave after one last attempt to nuke SP away from them or making it across the bridge. From an honor-farming point of view this is stupid and I myself not less despiccable to them then they are to me. I keep them from losing fast and winning honor fast. So be it, the battlegrounds are there to dole it out with the enemy in a somewhat controlled environment, not to abuse the system to get loot. In my opinon at least.

The most fun I ever had in AV was in the time after the honor revamp and before TBC. For some odd reason crossrealm-battlegrounds stopped working and we found ourselves in an instance with 40vs40 of Twilight's Hammer. Among them some of the PvP bigshots (one shaman did the grind to HWL twice on one character after Blizz introduced new HWL caster items, he went for the offhand I think). The usual shout of "leave Snowfall" was drowned out by an uproar of people refusing to let even one square-millimeter of ground fall to the Alliance uncontested. Horde won in a bit over one hour, with all towers and lieutenants up, all Alliance objectives destroyed. Yep, they didn't manage to kill ONE lieutenant or destroy ONE tower. In short, it was glorious. So, apart from your class, spec and preference, I guess it also depends a lot on the crowd you play with. What an amazing insight:)

Well, one of my long ramblings, hope it wasn't too boring.

take care
Tarabulus

[Brista]

Alterac Valley is a classic example of a decent game element ruined by player feedback. Players whined about 20 hour stalemates but the glass can be seen as half full, not only as half empty. How many battle grounds now are so absorbing that players stay up half the night (or all night) because they can't tear themselves away? None

AV as Honor farm is horrible. It's not pvp and it's pretty crappy pve. I was in one the other day and someone complained about people farming the Field of Strife. The answer was apt: "well, do forgive me for pvping in a battleground, I missed the notice that it isn't allowed on my way in"

That being said I play in 2 EU battlegroups where things are pretty even. In one I'm Horde, in one I'm Alliance and in both I have instant queues and wins are approx 50-50. People very rarely defend, the preferred options in order of popularity are
1) leeching
2) zerg to balinda/galv > towers/bunkers > general
3) farming the Field of Strife

The main virtue of AV is that if you are bringing your worst game (playing when on the phone or when just woken up or whatever) you still shine compared to an average team-mate as opposed to arena which is always really hard

[oldmandennis]

Now, my second lvl60 char was a Rogue, and I didn't enjoy AV at all with him (still dragged him to Exalted in something like 15 hours total). Combat sword spec isn't the one-shot wonder you need to stack up kills, or maybe I just don't know how to play my Rogue well in PvP.

Zergs just aren't the thing for rogues. Ninja caps and defending ninja caps are. The more of a race the game becomes, the less important that is. Capping a mine in 1/8 the time of a nonstealth class, or sneaking through lines to get wolves/rams used to be important contributions. Now you may as well be in the cave rather then doing those things.

[oldmandennis]

# A new feature for reporting players as being AFK in battlegrounds by right clicking has been added. When enough reports are registered, a 30 second debuff will begin to count down. Once the timer is up a new debuff will appear that will prevent the player from gaining any honor while it is on. This debuff can be negated as soon as the player engages in combat.

GG Wolves and Rams. Somebody should call the ASPCA. I heard somewhere that the siege engine BG will be 15 players. The developers of Conan and Warhammer are probably pleased with this info.

[Zarathustra]

I'll throw my hat into the "fun in AV" list.

I love playing defense on Alliance. My main is Svetok on the Ravencrest realm, and I usually charge up to SHGY and chill there, waiting for the mass of Horde to approach. Often I'll be shadowmelded behind a tree. Just waiting... waiting....

Then it's an all out sniper fest. I can usually take five or six of them down before they know what's hit them, and if I've got a healer with a mind to keep me alive I can laugh at any of the rogues/warriors who charge me. It's a BLAST and I don't need to be decked out in pvp gear. My normal raiding gear (yes, with the +hit that's completely unnecessary in pvp) suits me just fine. If they kill me? Eh, I'll just rez at SH and do it again.

I don't retake SHGY when the inevitable cap happens. But I go out of my way to be a thorn in the Horde's side and slow them down, which is something I never seem to encounter at IB or FW when I'm on offense.

[LtWarhound]

Sadly, I don't think you can 'fix' AV, its become too poisoned, too tainted in the minds of the playerbase. Personally, I like the BG, but I can't stomach what's its become.

Honor Farming is the death of AV. And as long as the focus of the BG is honor farming, you won't be able to 'fix' AV and make it fun again.

On my first server, Undermine, in the Nightfall battlegroup, the Horde won AV about 60% - 65% of the time. This was back in the summer to winter of 2006, and I was alliance then. Despite the horde winning more, it was still a lot of fun fights, I maxed my rep with stormpike and even got a riding ram.

When I rerolled and started a horde mage on Fenris, Whirlwind battlegroup, just a few months before TBC, I was disgusted by what I found there. The Horde just walked into AV, and laid down, waiting to lose. I might still be neutral with Frostwolf.

Like I said, I liked AV, initially. I like the big map, the abundance of options, the large number of players. WSG doesn't feel like an epic fight, it feels more like your average FPS public server. AB is pretty good, but EotS? Bleh, tried it once, saw that the horde wasn't interested in anything but farming HKs (and the chat made it plain this was the overwhelmingly expected result) and left. Pity, looked like a fun BG, too bad I never got to play it.

I just got back into WoW, missed the entire arena season one. Has it changed? Are the honor/HK farmers working the arenas now, are the BGs any better? From the sounds of things, I guess not.

[oldmandennis]

You don't get HK's in arenas, and despite the troubling existence of point selling/smurfing teams, the fact is they are pretty rare.

BG's are honor grinders and the lowest common denominator still. I did have a pretty good time yesterday helping a friend get EotS marks. Of course we had 10 people in the group, and were able to coordinate to the point where they had no bases. Then 5 people can sit under the rock and 2shot people jumping down with no health. Tab-Intercept-Execute.

Nightfall might be an exception as far as horde winning AV. Kel'Thuzad, which is clearly the best PvP server in the group, has always had strong horde pvp guilds. Doomhammer, who I would rate as the #2 PvP server seems to have a very strong horde as well.

[Treesh]

AB is pretty good, but EotS? Bleh, tried it once, saw that the horde wasn't interested in anything but farming HKs (and the chat made it plain this was the overwhelmingly expected result) and left. Pity, looked like a fun BG, too bad I never got to play it.

I am very glad my experience differs from yours. There have been a couple of matches where the idiots decided to just sit in the middle and kill folks instead of actually getting towers, but the vast majority of my time spent in there, horde wafflestomps alliance in EotS, frequently 3 and 4 capping towers and then working on the honor kills. Much fun when you have folks working on the towers first. You may want to give it another shot. Could have just been a bad match. The two tower matches are the most fun though.:)

[Legedi]

EotS is the easiest BG to judge who is going to win in the first few minutes. Which side is focusing more on the towers than the flag? That team wins 95% of the time.

Just try to get your team to focus on towers and you'll have a win, or at least a good game.

[Artega]

EotS is the easiest BG to judge who is going to win in the first few minutes. Which side is focusing more on the towers than the flag? That team wins 95% of the time.

Just try to get your team to focus on towers and you'll have a win, or at least a good game.

I find I win more consistently when the PUG focuses on holding two towers and dominating the flag. Requires a lot less coordination than conistently capping and holding three towers at once while containing the remaining Allies to prevent them from utilizing the flag.

[Bolty]

I find I win more consistently when the PUG focuses on holding two towers and dominating the flag. Requires a lot less coordination than conistently capping and holding three towers at once while containing the remaining Allies to prevent them from utilizing the flag.

That's wild - I have the same experience as Legedi. I can tell within the first minute which team is going to win. If 10 Alliance players run out to mid to get the flag and 5 go to the towers, it's a loss. Meanwhile the Horde side has maybe 3-4 people run out to mid and the rest grab the towers. Then I see the Horde groups moving from their towers to our towers - we call out "inc blah blah" in battleground chat, nobody at mid cares, and we get 4 capped.

Then we have some games, very very rare games, where Alliance does actually go for the towers and we have a shot at winning. Horde always seems much more organized and willing to work as a team rather than farm HKs, and only loses when they're terribly outgeared/outskilled by the Alliance side.

-Bolty

[Falomin]

Here is something I cannot understand. Before we had cross realm queues we (the pathetic Alliance on Azgalor) lost just about all of the BGs. I grinded my rogue to exalted in the time of 10 hour games and people refusing to turn in their trophies for rep and horrific stalemates in the Alliance town.

I would be in a winning AV once per week. There would be about 4 or 5 of us trying to win, or even do something, and 35 people in the Field of Strife farming Honor in order to make rank 6 or something.

Once cross realm queues opened up Alliance started winning. I just assumed that this trend was due to the fact that fewer Azgalor people (read: completely worthless players) were in the BG.

In fact when horde won all the time we were all pretty sure it was due to unbalanced terrain, namely we could turtle well, but our set up was not conducive for a good offense. And the IB setup is completely unfair for Alliance players to have to assault.

I now hear Horde crying that the terrain is unbalanced and Alliance win all the time. Does anyone really know what drastically changed that completely reversed the fortunes of AV for alliance?

The only thing I can think of was that when it was all just Azgalor, the Horde all worked together while the Alliance were akin to a schoolyard full of kindergarteners, once the cross realms came out the Horde side became just as bad. Just an idea I guess.

[Swiss Mercenary]

I'm in the lvl 51-60 AV bracket on Tich... And I'll have to say that from my non-BG weekend experiences, it seems that Horde typically win AV. We very rarely have any leechers, and while we have no choke point to defend (Usually, the alliance holds all the three southern GYs before we can even assault First Aid Station), the alliance turns out to be completely inept at killing our general. In one of the matches, in which we were down by 5 most of the game, the alliance was wailing on our general for at least 30 minutes. Every time they got him down to low health, some fool on their side would screw up, and pull him out of the bunker (Either that, or we'd fear the tank out of the said bunker). In the meanwhile, as their entire team was zerging Drek'thar, the horde destroyed both northern bunkers, took first aid station, and killed the Stormpike general in one try.

I can't speak for the 61-70 bracket.