08-07-2007, 12:53 AM
The original post is far too dire about the horde's chances. I'd say on Nightfall the horde win 30-40% of the time. We also have cave dwellers on the Ally side - maybe our BG is a bit more balanced and the queues are shorter.
In it's current incarnation, AV could easily be dumped. I believe WoW needs epic combat though, to compete with Conan and Warhammer. Blizzard appears to believe that too, which is why they announced new BG's and siege engines for Wrath. True they did specifically say that the engines were for the outdoor zone, but I would be surprised if they weren't used in a new BG, especially since on many relms the outdoor zone will have about as much PvP as Goldshire. If they do intend to continue with epic BG's, testing their ideas out on AV would be much better then scrapping it, and giving the new BG the aura of failure when they don't get it totally right the first time.
I don't believe terrain is a major factor. SP might be more defensible then FW, but IB is probably tougher to crack then SH. If they fixed everything else and terrain was still a problem maybe they could tweak it a bit, but even if they made the map a mirror (ignoring the fact that it's boring) would that really solve the existential problems AV has? Also, there are 2 ways around the canyon by SP - running through the harpies and under the bridge is usually the route my guild takes when we get 10 or so people in a game.
I believe the only answer to the AFK issue is to make a rating system similar to arena ratings. You can have one personally, and compare it to the average rating of the other side. This does a ton of things. It no longer gets you anywhere to AFK - you are causing your team to lose and dragging your own rating down. It rewards skill and not time. It throttles the rate of point gain - it is entirely possible to get all of your honor items in a rather short period of time. By removing the value of HK's you focus everybody on winning the game. This also works towards fixing the meta game issue Skan mentioned (if it's in Blizzard's considerations, I'm not sure I buy it) - you can make AV balanced and fun because all the helpless ally puggies will drop in rating and play the horde puggies.
Once you have everybody playing, you have to make the combat epic. I believe the best way to do that is to return NPC's to their previous strength. To break turtles, increase the strength and rate of respawn for the summons - reavers and riders. To bash the last two towers, you can summon catapults. These can only be summoned by resources from the other sides mine. You can tweak the relative strength of defensive units and offensive units until you get a game of the desired average length. I would say for epic combat, it's got to be at least 1 hr and maybe 2.
In it's current incarnation, AV could easily be dumped. I believe WoW needs epic combat though, to compete with Conan and Warhammer. Blizzard appears to believe that too, which is why they announced new BG's and siege engines for Wrath. True they did specifically say that the engines were for the outdoor zone, but I would be surprised if they weren't used in a new BG, especially since on many relms the outdoor zone will have about as much PvP as Goldshire. If they do intend to continue with epic BG's, testing their ideas out on AV would be much better then scrapping it, and giving the new BG the aura of failure when they don't get it totally right the first time.
I don't believe terrain is a major factor. SP might be more defensible then FW, but IB is probably tougher to crack then SH. If they fixed everything else and terrain was still a problem maybe they could tweak it a bit, but even if they made the map a mirror (ignoring the fact that it's boring) would that really solve the existential problems AV has? Also, there are 2 ways around the canyon by SP - running through the harpies and under the bridge is usually the route my guild takes when we get 10 or so people in a game.
I believe the only answer to the AFK issue is to make a rating system similar to arena ratings. You can have one personally, and compare it to the average rating of the other side. This does a ton of things. It no longer gets you anywhere to AFK - you are causing your team to lose and dragging your own rating down. It rewards skill and not time. It throttles the rate of point gain - it is entirely possible to get all of your honor items in a rather short period of time. By removing the value of HK's you focus everybody on winning the game. This also works towards fixing the meta game issue Skan mentioned (if it's in Blizzard's considerations, I'm not sure I buy it) - you can make AV balanced and fun because all the helpless ally puggies will drop in rating and play the horde puggies.
Once you have everybody playing, you have to make the combat epic. I believe the best way to do that is to return NPC's to their previous strength. To break turtles, increase the strength and rate of respawn for the summons - reavers and riders. To bash the last two towers, you can summon catapults. These can only be summoned by resources from the other sides mine. You can tweak the relative strength of defensive units and offensive units until you get a game of the desired average length. I would say for epic combat, it's got to be at least 1 hr and maybe 2.