RP PvP Woes

[JustAGuy]

I'm sorry to say that this is your own guild's fault.  These are exploits pure and simple.  You can try to call it "oversights on Blizzard's part" and try to justify their use by saying that one can do it within the game without the use of 3rd party programs, but the bottom line is that these are exploits, and you can't expect other people to play with you when you use them.  Plus, if your guild had to resort to using them to win, then your guild probably wasn't very good at PvPing to begin with.

Personally, I don't, and never did, use of these so called exploits in BGs. The BoP/MC tactic is one of those things that is kind of ironic. You see, Shamans and Paladins are Faction specific classes, the Shaman has his abilities and the Paladin has his. Shamans can Wolf, Earthbind and Frost shock, giving them a great set of offensive utilities to work with in WSG. Paladins have absolutely nothing, really, for offense that helps in WSG, except for the Stun. What can a Paladin do? He can heal and cleanse, both of which are extremely important and useful in WSG. These are clearly defensive skills. The Paladin can also Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection, two more utilities that are defensive. So, from what has been implemented in game with regards to faction specific classes and skills, the Shaman appears to be for offense (jump in, grab the flag, slow everyone down to exit quickly) and the Paladin appears to be for defense (heal and cleanse others, and BoP the casters to help THEM get kills -- make the mages and priests rogue proof).

What's more defensive than stopping a runner with the flag?

When the Paladin finally finds a way to make his defensive skills useful, in a creative way, the forums explode and people label it an exploit. It's funny, the PvP set for the Paladin was nerfed so that it didn't grant the Hammer of Justice cooldown reduction. If a Paladin finds a way to make his play experience seem more involving, Blizzard, at the behest of the Horde, "nerf" it.

On Tichondrius, we had a really good run of fair games of Warsong Gulch.  Looking back, it was quite remarkable really, considering some of the animosity between some guilds on the server.  But the bottom line was that people realized was that if people used cheap tactics like using the Mind Control/BoP trick, using the Judge's Gavel (It's possible that your guild invented those tricks, but I wouldn't bet on it -- they're pretty obvious and well known), or Mind Controling people out of the instance, then that would be the end of CTF on Tichondrius -- just like what happened on your server.  So people didn't use the tricks, despite knowing all about them -- or in the rare cases where a person did use them, the person's teammates would shout at the person for using such cheap tactics.  There was one game where things did blow up, however.  Notorious seemed to pull out all the stops one game and seemed to use every cheap trick in the book, including having the flag carrier disconnect at a crucial point which made him appear to slide way over across the map.  So, we pulled the "nuclear option" and placed our flag carrier in a special spot in the Horde base where the alliance can't get to or hit the flag carrier no matter what they try and then sent nine people off to kill the Notorious flag carrier.  We ended up winning that cheating game, and the forums blew up as you can imagine.

But then, a remarkable thing happened.  Cooler heads prevailed.  It turns out that the Notorious player really did have a crappy computer and did disconnect at that moment.  We also talked stuff out and discussed some of the ground rules on CTF and cleared the air a bit.  And you know what happened?  The next night TO and Notorious matched up again and TO beat them 3-2 fair and square in an incredibly fun two hour match that I still remember vividly.  People went back to playing CTF, and we all had a ball with it.  Unfortunately, people have recently been playing AV more, because the cp is so easy to get there and because the items you get for reputation are so godly.  But still, people speak fondly of the old CTF games and say they'd love to go back if only the cp gains from it were comparable to what you get for AV.

I agree that the Assault probably didn't come up with the tricks first, but I'm pretty sure it was a discovery, and not a "hey, we can use this cheap trick and screw the horde!" It was more of a "I just mind controlled this guy. Hey, what happens if..."

The thing is, the MC/BoP isn't a viable tactic to use. As far as I know MC helmets are on a significant cooldown timer, and they don't always work. Even when it works, it doesn't guarantee a victory, or even a flag recovery. It just means that the flag is dropped, if executed successfully. I've even seen the Horde defend against it, successfully. All that is required is to stun or interrupt the Paladin (not that difficult a task).

As far as the Gavel goes, it's a weapon that the horde and alliance can use. It's like complaining about the druid's ability to clear and snares and debuffs just by shapeshift (GAG, so terrible that idea is!).

I must stress, also, that the Assault did not use the MC/BoP trick exclusively for winning or turning the tide. They barely used it at all. The problem is that just by having used it, cooler heads WERE NOT ABLE to prevail, as the horde quickly packed up and left (relatively speaking). There was also a situation where the Assault was winning consistently, and this was clearly frustrating the opposition. The Assault became the primary targets for the Horde (not just Mischief) on the realm and on the forum. For example, another guild executed a low-numbers raid on Thunder Bluff. There just happened to be a few Assault (3, I think) members partaking in the raid. The raid failed because there were too few people involved (25-30?) and the Horde showed up to defend their territory (as they should). So what happens on the forum? You get a thread called "Nice Try Assault", and screenshots of certain players dancing over Assault member corpses. It was quite sad, as the people taking the screenshots couldn't actually beat the Assault members 1 on 1, or even in a team, yet they take the screenshots to laud some sort of false superiority over them after a zerg of guards had taken them down.

It's easy to say, "all's fair in love and war" and pass off your opponent's complaints of dirty tricks as simple whining.  But your poor paladin who will never gain knighthood is a testament to what can happen as the result of such shortsightedness.
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Shortsightedness? Sure, but it's on both sides' part. The Horde gave up -- it was in part because they felt like the Assault were cheating, but it was also that they were being dominated. They used the MC/BoP as a cop-out. They had their run as undisputed kings of the server until the Assault showed up, and then it all ended.

Thankfully, there is a new crop of 51-60 players that want to PvP. There was an AV held today, and as of this writing, it's still going on. Sadly, though, in order to get the Horde to play, the Alliance had to make weird concessions, like, "not over powering the Horde in group combat". What that means is, there are 31 horde and 40 Alliance, so 9 people on the Alliance side have to sit out. I guess some AV is better than none...