AV Alliance Strike...

[NiteFox]

I ran a couple of successful AV runs today (Misery-EU), both fairly close with the first one won with a mere 63 reinforcements left and 10 AFKers, and the second won purely because we decided to attack Vanndar while he still had three marshals alive and kicking with almost a minute left on both the Dun Baldar bunkers (Since the Alliance had effectively managed to shut us out of Icewing Bunker), which was close because the silly Alliance managed to reset Drek'thar while Vann was only at 50%. A good time was had by all.

So I brag to a friend of mine on chat, who informed me that the Alliance on his battlegroup (Stormstrike-US) were boycotting AV.

Curious, I decided to do some investigating on the official cesspit- I mean, forums, to see what kicked all this off. From the first few posts I found, I surmised that an adjustment in AV had all but made the battleground unfair for the Alliance, and they were sulking, and losing games with 0 honour, and were taking the ball with them and going home. So rather than listen to this any further, I looked as to what the adjustment was...

...And found that it was a health buff for Belinda and Vanndar. A kick in the pants for the Horde. Now, imagine my surprise at this: I accept that Belinda was hardly a speedbump in the Horde offensive, though we did somehow wipe on her during my first match (Mainly due to five Alliance defenders) and recovering from that wipe made the battleground as close as it was (We all spawned in Frostwolf Relief Hut, with a zerging Alliance offensive blocking us in). I never got to participate in the second Belinda assault due to modem issues (And hunting down a lone Alliance player in order to get rid of my Idle report with a mere six seconds to spare), but apparently the slowness of the Belinda attack in that run contributed to the Alliance being able to shut out Icewing. But Vanndar is a different kettle of fish altogether, I had always been under the impression that he was the harder of the two Generals despite Drek topping the "most kills by an NPC" some time ago.

So, as far as I could see, Horde gets an even tougher ride through AV, and the Alliance winds up boycotting. This couldn't be the real reason, so I delve deeper into the flamefests and find out that the reason the Stormstrike Alliance are boycotting. It turns out that the health change to Belinda and Vanndar means that, at least according to theorycraft, if both sides simply do the standard race to kill all NPCs and raze all bunkers/towers, the Alliance would win every time with the HP boosts slowing the killing time significantly.

So the Horde started playing to shutout the Alliance completely and allow the offense a greater chance of killing the relevant NPCs. This is attained through (Gasp) taking the Stonehearth Graveyard (Which was always, always ignored beforehand. I've seen BG leaders plotz just because one player decided to click the flag) and use that as a chokepoint. Y'know, just like how the Alliance would use the Dun Baldar bridge, NPCs, and covering fire from the bunker sharpshooters to try and shutout an offense. The net result of this is that Alliance were frequently losing games with 0 bonus honour (Excluding that through player kills), and frankly got sick of it.

So they boycott. And then several other battlegroups followed, lemming-like, through the same procedure of a handful of Horde shutout victories and Alliance boycotts. Horde waiting times for AV are escalating into the hours (Yes, I am fully aware of the irony, but the long Alliance wait times were never the fault of the Horde).

Part of me sympathises. I've been on the receiving end of a few shutouts in other BGs (AB premades kinda make this inevitable in most cases), and I can imagine how nutcrushingly bad it could be to be in a 30 minute BG for only just one Token as a reward, but on the other hand... What the hell is wrong with these people? The Horde actually grows a brain, bring in a tactic that increases their chance of victory in a battleground that was notoriously unfair to the Horde, and the Alliance responds by throwing their toys out of the pram ad refusing to play? Again, I'm somewhat amused and sickened by the fact that a hotfix to make things a lot harder on the Horde results in widespread childishness from the Alliance.

The Horde response is somewhat typical: Learn to break the turtle, it can be done, it has been done (Funnily enough, there was one report of the Horde pulling the turtle in the lower-bracket AV, and the Alliance completely smashing through it. It seems topping the experience meter doesn't automatically make you a better player), and for the Alliance to stop expecting battlegrounds to be free honour of any sort. Stop treating them as a source of welfare honour and actually work for it. Alliance invariably retorts by pointing out that the Horde did a lot of QQing about AV until recently and they should shut up.

Nobody has been smart enough to mention that while the Horde did cry a lot about AV, they never stopped playing it. Never stopped playing it to spite the other side, which is exactly what the Alliance is doing.

Maybe this is just another bout of eDrama, and hopefully should blow over soon; but part of me worries that this could spread across the pond to the EU battlegroups. Right now, all we have to do is worry about rampant AFKing (You'd better be moving by the time the gates go up, otherwise if you're still in the cave in thirty seconds, you'll be reported by the rest of the raid), but we all know how big a bandwagon stuff like this can be.

So can anyone here from across the pond (Most of y'all, I should think) give me any insight on this state of affairs? Is it really as bad as the forum drama is making it out to be? And, is the Alliance right to do this?

Thanks.

[LtWarhound]

Odd, taking Stonehearth is the norm in the AVs I've done, in fact not taking that graveyard normally means the Horde is not going to win.

Is the alliance right? I don't think that's the right question. There is no obligation for the alliance to field a team for a battleground. I know I boycott WSG personally, because I hate the way people play it. Its CAPTURE the flag, people, not farm HKs in the midfield. Sigh. I certainly sympathize with their plight, my last server, Fenris, the horde in that battlegroup blew chunks, there was no hope of winning an AV back then (first part of last year). And so the response of most of the horde was 'don't bother, suffer enough games to get your tokens then never go back'.

The sad thing is, Blizzard is not drawing the right conclusions from how AV has turned out, and this will just make the devs even more determined to 'avoid repeating the mistake that is AV'. I really don't like the hamhanded approach they have taken to 'correcting' the balance in AV. And this latest one-sided buff is just too damn silly for words. They need to spend the time, money and resources to revamp AV, straighten the map out, get rid of the exploits and the lousy map layout, and do it right.

[Quark]

Nobody has been smart enough to mention that while the Horde did cry a lot about AV, they never stopped playing it. Never stopped playing it to spite the other side, which is exactly what the Alliance is doing.

Clearly, you never played in one of the battlegroups where half the horde would fish in a match. What, you call that playing? Or how about before battlegroups existed, when on our server the Horde dictated exact terms for when and how an AV game would play out - we upset them too much, and next week's game was canceled.

AV is a horrible abomination of trying to make different things equal. You'd think these people never made a single Starcraft map in their life. Just the idea of a whirlwinding warrior whose attacks can't be interrupted being "equal" to caster who just stands there getting chain interrupted still angers me, months after I stopped playing. The entire map is full of imbalances for both sides, and they'll never properly even out. Do you have any original Starcraft designers left, Blizzard? Stick them in a room with no way out until they balance AV. The standard WoW designers obviously can't handle it.

[Crusader]

Hmmm, I haven't played AV since the last patch (I farmed 27k honor for a gladiator's 2h axe for my warrior and now I desperately need a break), but From the alliance point of view, I think nothing changed. For some reason, in my battlegroup (I play on TVC, Europe) horde usually wins WSG&AB through sheer skill (and alliance being pussy HK farmers who have no clue whatsoever what flags are for), and constantly loses AV. From wht I heard, people plain continued playing AV as before. Sometimes horde putsup a defense, but alliance is used to that on our battlegroup even before the patch. What usually happens is that the zergs pass one another by, and there's a few alliance defenders who systematically take back 'our' flags, resulting in the horde getting thrown backto FW GY. From there, alliance has the advantage by owning 3/4th of the battleground's locations, finishing a few horde towers, and grabbing the mines. Then a long HK grind begins where horde runs out of reinforcements before alliance does. This happened about as often as the zergs managing to continue on, racing to the others' general.

Mind you, this was before the last patch. I don't know how things are now, but I heard no compaints so far. Essentially, the big massive zergs meeting one another isn't new to our battleground. We actually play AV as was it was meanth to be. Players killing players, not players racing off to kill npc's for cheap honor. A fact I'm very grateful for, as this way the pvp stays fun.

[Lissa]

If the alliance are acting that way because of losing SH GY, then they seriously need to learn to play.

But as Quark mentioned, the boost in health to Balinda, while not fixing her entirely, does help some balance between the Captains. It use to be 2 Rogues and a Healer could take out Balinda if no Alliance tried to save her while it takes 5 to 10 people (depending on gear) to take out the Horde's captain with a dedicated tank, dedicated healer or two, and potentially an off tank when the Horde Captain lets off an Int Shout.

Yes, AV still has balance issues, will they ever be fixed, who knows. Right now though, most of the BGs aren't worth playing anyway.

[oldmandennis]

I didn't think the problem generally was at SH, I thought it was at IB. SH isn't much of a defensive stronghold for the horde - if you allies can't at least run past and get to SF, then they have bigger problems.

The problem is IB is actually defensible at this point. If 30 allies ride down from SF, probably about 10 are going to go for the captain, and 2-3 for the tower. The remaining 18 run into about 10 defenders and 4-6 NPC's at IB GY. If the defenders have healers, they can start to drag the fight out and get reinforcements. Unless the allies were moving very fast on the captain and can get those 10ish people back, that will turn the tide at the GY. Now the defenders can quickly move to retake their tower and save their captain - and the allies are ressing in a disorganized mess up at SP. Half of the horde defense goes to the backfield and plays hide and go seek with ally rogues, the rest continue to hold IB as people come drifting in. The horde have a pretty slow go of it the rest of the way with so many allies back at SP, but there is a pretty good chance the allies get nearly shut out doing this.

This isn't the way that all games go, obviously. But with the way the map is currently set up, it is a likely outcome. The problem is that wins of this nature leave the allies with nothing except a mark - and AV marks are relatively useless. If you are solo queuing looking for honor, it isn't really a boycott. It's just a rational use of your time.

The other problem is that once the horde on your BG have generally started doing this strategy, it is the optimal way to play the game. The game runs a bit longer, but both offense and defense get plenty of HK's, and nearly the maximal amount of bonus honor. The longer your queue, the more you want to squeeze every point out of your game, the less honor you leave on the table for the allies, the less they queue, which goes around and makes your queue longer. Even when the map was balanced against the horde, you could still count on taking SH/IW/Balindaeutenants pretty much every game, and come away with pretty good honor/hour. Even as you QQ, it was still rational to queue (QQ in your Q?). In the BG's where they get shut out, it's not rational (or fun) for allies to queue.

Incidentally I think that the map is still pretty balanced. Its just that the allies have to be _slightly_ organized if the horde are putting up a noticeable defense. Either hit the captain like a ton of bricks with at least 20 people and then all move together to the GY, or zerg the GY first and send 5 people back after it has been tapped. But "slightly organized" doesn't fit with a BG where you can't join as a group. IB is stronger then SH for sure, but the bridge is a lot stronger then the joke of a horde base.

Luckily, Nightfall US doesn't have this problem. The horde aren't aggressive enough on defense to reliably shut out the allies. I think most haven't figured out that they get bonus honor for Galv/towers surviving.

Av's real problem has never been balance (which is close enough), for all the QQing. The problem they are still searching for the answer to is how to create an epic battle that will end in a reasonable amount of time, and how to motivate and reward players for aggressively taking part in both offense and defense. Blue posts indicate that they are going to take another crack at that magic formula, probably before WotLK.

[Arethor]

One of the reasons I've stopped playing AV as much is from slight PvP burnout. I spent 3 weeks gearing up my warlock with every piece of S3 pvp gear and the S1 offhand/wand/shoulders. I'd like to gear out my druid with honor gear too but I can only take it in smaller incriments for now.

However there are certain factors that have also led to me taking so long to get back into it.

WSG is terrible honor, even on WSG weekend, unless you have a team that can roll the opposition (and even then the honor still isn't great). WSG typically means a 30 minute match with just kill honor for Alliance on my BG.

AB and EotS are only slightly better. Alliance on my battlegroup have a problem with actually trying to defend nodes and play these maps intelligently. EotS typically has ~10 of the alliance at the flag with the others trying to guard or mount an offensive, and yet horde still capture the flag. AB suffers from a slightly different problem in that people cap a node and then just leave allowing the horde to just waltz in and take it.

AV was the only way to have any enjoyment while farming honor, most matches were close in honor points at the end of the match which I found to be good. Both sides would typically get between 300 and 400 honor per match. Recently however there is an ever increasing number of Horde AV Premades using a mod such as Stinkyqueue. These premades create difficulties as they set up different strategic defense points (IBGY, Tower Point, Galv) and take out the alliance offensive, sending them back to Dun Baldar. Clearly this is a sound strategy and that's not my problem. The problem lies in the inability of a PuG set of alliance, that have enough problems listening to intelligent suggestions (such as you can no longer pull Warmasters out), to mount an offensive against a preset defense. AV has degraded into another battleground that gives minimal honor for the time spent and is now worse for honor than AB or EotS if you get a string of bad matches.

In fact as I was typing this I log in only to be greeted by "Stinkyqueue must die" as the first message in guild chat.

[Lissa]

Nitefox's comment about the Alliance boycotting was because the Horde was taking SH GY. That's why my learn to play comment is there.

[Monkey]

I've felt crispity-crunchity burnt on PvP for a while, now.

Part of the problem I had (pvping for the alliance) was that people (even smart people) would consistently play assume that any Alliance PUG was going to lose unless it jumped to a lead right away. In response, they'd just farm HKs instead of trying to win, creating an ugly self-fulfilling prophecy in every BG except for AV. In AV, people would coordinate and 'stick to the plan, chums!'

I haven't played the new AV, but I'm sure that if the Alliance I used to encounter even thought that it was unbalanced, they'd give up and go farm HKs instead.

Judging from the class and objective oriented FPSes available, there's certainly a design solution to this problem. But it might mean allowing people to jump between factions...and we certainly could never allow that;). Swapping factions is the only thing that exceeds character copies and dogs-sleeping-with-cats in pure madness!

[oldmandennis]

Stinkyqueue isn't part of the problem - it's a symptom. The problem was that AV was supposed to be epic, taking hours or days to complete, with rewards that reflected that. 40 people on voice vs a pug can be done in minutes, and that skewed the rewards. But stop for a moment and think about the insanity of telling people in a social MMO that they **CANNOT PLAY WITH THIER FRIENDS!!** The only real long term answer I can see is some sort of matchmaking system.

Really, if a typical AV game goes 25 min and a premade can roll it in 10, is it any different then a AB match that should take 30min getting 5 capped in 7min?

Are there really successful objective oriented FPS's that are balanced around 40v40? I don't know, I haven't played FPS much lately. And what does faction jumping have to do with it? Are you saying that horde are inherently and unalterably better at pvp then the allies? And even if they are, would significant numbers switch over, given the opportunity?

[Monkey]

Are there really successful objective oriented FPS's that are balanced around 40v40? I don't know, I haven't played FPS much lately. And what does faction jumping have to do with it? Are you saying that horde are inherently and unalterably better at pvp then the allies? And even if they are, would significant numbers switch over, given the opportunity?

I'm assuming that in aggregate, Horde and Alliance have the same skill levels. Alliance just (seem to) have a mindset that "Alliance never cooperate". It's just a stereotype and letting players switch sides would devalue / disprove it. Of course, that might create other issues along the way (should players be randomly assigned to a side at the start of a match?).

As for the 40-player FPSes--that's an excellent point, I have never seen one of those.

[Arethor]

Stinkyqueue isn't part of the problem - it's a symptom. The problem was that AV was supposed to be epic, taking hours or days to complete, with rewards that reflected that. 40 people on voice vs a pug can be done in minutes, and that skewed the rewards. But stop for a moment and think about the insanity of telling people in a social MMO that they **CANNOT PLAY WITH THIER FRIENDS!!** The only real long term answer I can see is some sort of matchmaking system.

Really, if a typical AV game goes 25 min and a premade can roll it in 10, is it any different then a AB match that should take 30min getting 5 capped in 7min?

Are there really successful objective oriented FPS's that are balanced around 40v40? I don't know, I haven't played FPS much lately. And what does faction jumping have to do with it? Are you saying that horde are inherently and unalterably better at pvp then the allies? And even if they are, would significant numbers switch over, given the opportunity?

While Stinkyqueue is not the only problem, and arguably a small only a smal one, if you zone in and see 30+ people from a single server the likelihood that there is going to be much of any effort on your side is laughable (or atleast from my experiences). Maybe it's just the alliance in my Battlegroup, but they are lemmings that only know how to follow one set plan and if the horde do anything to disrupt it they disolve into HK farming or constantly throwing themselves into brick walls of horde defense at Galv.

If AV is supposed to be an epic and long BG to complete then I disagree that the rewards reflect that. A mesely amount of honor more than the other BGs and level 60 rep rewards does not really reflect the type of battle you describe.

[oldmandennis]

if you zone in and see 30+ people from a single server the likelihood that there is going to be much of any effort on your side is laughable (or atleast from my experiences).

Yeah. Maybe if its a couple of the newer PvE servers they might not win, but other then that it should be an easy win for the other side. But is it any different then zoning into AB and seeing 15 people from the same server?

If AV is supposed to be an epic and long BG to complete then I disagree that the rewards reflect that. A mesely amount of honor more than the other BGs and level 60 rep rewards does not really reflect the type of battle you describe.

Yeah, I'm talking about a very long time ago, back when the rep mount saved you like 600g (also a long time ago when 600g was a lot of money). My point is that they started with a vision of an open ended epic conflict. There wasn't going to be a portal - anybody who wanted to could show up. It was supposed to be a major deal when one of the generals fell, and a world wide buff would be given to the winning faction. Then when they couldn't figure out how to make that work, they made spastic change after spastic change to address specific problems, without a strategic vision of how they want AV to work and how to motivate players to productively participate. Melee ninja the rep items? Make the rep gains global! Now people AFK. Half-assed reporting feature! Premades repping people to exulted in less then a day? No more premades! Turtles? Nerf NPC's to near uselessness! They didn't sit down one day and say "Lets turn the epic BG into a retarded PvE race". They just stumbled into it.

[Trien]

AV I've mostly given up on, mainly due to the fact that it's really not fun anymore (for me), since it's become a race. Who can kill the general first, who runs out of reinforcements first, whatever.

I'll admit that many (most?) found the oldschool (ie. original) AV a tedious grind, from which people tended to disappear once they got their exalted reputation. But as a battleground with numerous things to do which could affect the course of the battle, it was well done for the most part. The main issues with the old design were that spending hours and hours in there just to get a loss was not worth it (for the marks when they added those, or the honor), and that once you'd gotten your purples (at L60) there was no reason to go back.

People like me who would go back after exalted just to *play* were rare I guess... I enjoyed hopping into the battle to do what I could... fight at the front lines sometimes, gather up the medals/crystals to try to pull off the summon, tame rams and gather wolfhide to get a cavalry charge going to try to push them back, interfere with opposing players trying to do the same thing. Given the choice, I'd rather have *more* things to do in AV rather than less, which is what all the redesign changes have done.

My vision of AV has been, "let it turtle if it does happen, just make it fun and worth it during the turtle." If the BG finishes and one side wins, give them a bonus for it, but put the focus everything that happens in the middle of the fighting, and not on getting the win.

What I would have preferred to see in the course of the redesigns is to make it worth your while (for those wanting in marks, honor, whatever) to hop in mid-battle, fight for whatever time you have available, and leave even if you haven't seen the BG through to a win. Let the battle rage on for hours or days, so those who want to play the BG for the sake of it can actually do so, and put sufficient incentive for those who are in there just for the honor/loots/whatever will play as well. Give out reward commensurate to effort. Rewards for taking zones perhaps, though you'd want to avoid the tower-swapping mess that is Hellfire Peninsula where it's worth it just to lose your tower just so you could retake it. Reward being in a zone and helping to defend it. More repeatable in-BG quests which could be accumulated for reward. I dunno, 100 kills for a mark, or whatever... yeah, sound silly and that was off the top of my head so it's probably not even the right proportion. Quests to kill certain NPC's perhaps, which may not necessarily respawn in the same spots. Once upon a time you gained rep from looting corpses (well, the body parts to turn in, which wasn't entirely fair since whoever got to the corpse first got the rep)... but once you hit exalted there was no reason anymore; could they not do something like that to accumulate towards honor points or whatever. Granted, this would be a major overhaul, and would require some major balancing work to make it fair compared to the other BG's... which they're not likely to want to do now at this point with an old BG like AV.

I guess what I really miss about the old AV is that the feeling of it being one big PvP zone where you could play at the front lines with the big group, or run around and have smaller encounters (towers, mines hunting/defending wolves/rams), or sneak around to accomplish different goals (cargo, wolves/rams). It had options to cater to different styles of play. Nowadays, for the most part it's stick with the zerg or get zerged, unless the group automagically splits up into the right size of attackers and defenders, and even then you're still forced into a certain way of playing. Yeah, you can try to ninja or defend the odd tower here or there, but that's about it.

Here's hoping for a future BG like that, but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed...

[Sir_Die_alot]

The alliance on my battlegroup stuck with it for awhile after the boycott started. Most actually know how to play so there were some very good games. What killed it was AFKers. The alliance always had more AFKers than the horde and people stopped playing it because they were losing due to unfair teams, that caused the problem to get worse and worse as people who participate stopped queing and the AFKers kept queing. The last time I bothered to do an AV was when the queue was just over a half hour. The alliance team had about half their players AFK versus 4 or 5 horde. The horde got full honor and those playing on the alliance side got none. It's not so much a boycott for them as a "why bother?" issue.

[Artega]

The alliance on my battlegroup stuck with it for awhile after the boycott started. Most actually know how to play so there were some very good games. What killed it was AFKers. The alliance always had more AFKers than the horde and people stopped playing it because they were losing due to unfair teams, that caused the problem to get worse and worse as people who participate stopped queing and the AFKers kept queing. The last time I bothered to do an AV was when the queue was just over a half hour. The alliance team had about half their players AFK versus 4 or 5 horde. The horde got full honor and those playing on the alliance side got none. It's not so much a boycott for them as a "why bother?" issue.

Before I quit, I'd actually see Alliance AFKers in Warsong and Arathi Basin as well as other areas. It was kinda funny to camp the AFKers at Trollbane so that you could make it so that the Allies couldn't effectively keep the debuff on them:)

[Concillian]

I guess what I really miss about the old AV is that the feeling of it being one big PvP zone where you could play at the front lines with the big group, or run around and have smaller encounters (towers, mines hunting/defending wolves/rams), or sneak around to accomplish different goals (cargo, wolves/rams). It had options to cater to different styles of play.

While big and diverse is good, it suffers from a symptomatic problem just based on size. With so many things to do and feel as if you're contributing, it's very easy to get caught up in things that don't matter.

For example horde re-capping Iceblood when alliance have Frostwolf and are about to cap relief hut. This seems like it should be productive. However, it's actually counter-productive if horde have a GY north of IB. When alliance grab relief hut, you all get insta-ported to your closest controlled GY. If that's IB, and you have people in Dun Baldar, then you have to mount up and take several minutes of riding to get there. If alliance recaptures SH, you leave IB alone, and have SP, then when relief hut caps, your defenders immediately zone into the front lines.

So while large and diverse is good if you have a bunch of people who understand the BG well, it's quite the curse when you have a real-world situation where you have some buffons who do more harm than good. The bad comes with the good, and potentially makes matches overly frustrating. I doubt they will be able to remove this aspect from any large and diverse battleground.

[Crusader]

The madness seems to have spread to my Battleground group as well. Yesterday I tried to enter av, but there was a 20 minute queue (normally about 5 mins). Once I entered I indeed encountered the horde massively defending galv. The alliance was, as described above, robbed of their standard honor griding tactic and kept on trying to kill galv non-stop. Some brave souls attempted to grab towers, but horde committed about half it's force to defense and was able to obliterate the alliance in a 400-0 end, where all their towers were standing, and alliance was completely obliterated. The wails of the alliance were many and bear no mention (I shall not defile these forums with the quotations which strike resemblance normally reserved to the level of Donald.

Guess it's time to level my Tauren shammy from 62 to 70. ^^

[Trien]

So while large and diverse is good if you have a bunch of people who understand the BG well, it's quite the curse when you have a real-world situation where you have some buffons who do more harm than good. The bad comes with the good, and potentially makes matches overly frustrating. I doubt they will be able to remove this aspect from any large and diverse battleground.

Maybe my perception of AV was different, but back in the day with the way it was designed (especially before the whole 'honor points' introduction, but I'm thinking mainly long before, when it was first introduced)... sure you'd try for a win if you could to complete the quest for the Ice Barbed Spear or whatever, but most people were there to get their rep points (and then leave). Not many people could afford to stay around for the 10 or 20 hours that it might take to run one to completion. And that's what I'm trying to get at... let the battle rage on for hours on end, and don't make the whole point of playing the battleground to win. Design it to be anarchy. If some people want to farm their HK's, let them. If it ends up being a big turtle at the field of strife, or wherever else, so be it. Let it be like the old Southshore-Tarren Mill days of old. Without a winning objective to worry about, you don't have to get frustrated about the buffoons who aren't working towards it properly.

I guess some would ask, "What's the point in playing if there's no way to win, or if winning doesn't matter." You'd have to design the reward system around certain achievements within the fight, whether it be racking up a couple hundred HK's or whatever. Yeah, I guess that example would caters a bit more to the clueless, but judging from what often happens inside WSG/AB when people fight on the road without watching the flags... I think it'd fit them just fine. AV used to be my stressbreaker BG... run in, pick some fights, have some fun, charge into the front lines and see how many people would chase you back instead of pushing forwards... because at least for me because of how the reward system used to be... it *wasn't* about winning. Sure, winning got you closer to exalted faster, but you didn't necessarily have to accomplish it. And hence you were much less dependent on getting everyone on the same boat... but if you happened to manage it, hey, the win was a nice bonus.

[Icebird]

I think the last time I ran into one of those marathon "Stonehearth stalemates" was on one of the early PTRs featuring pre-made characters. I was therefore for about half an hour of an AV that seemed to be running well into hour 9 or 10.

My results from this weekend: took part in 6 or 7 matches, won exactly 1 (as alliance). In the only match we won, we bypassed every single objective and took the relief hut as soon as possible. Success rates in the other matches varied from "took a couple of towers, attacking the relief hut" to "blocked at Iceblood Graveyard, denied any bonus honor". In one match we attacked IB and FW at the same time which seemed promising until the horde counterattacked and took back both before they capped. I also had the occasional match with a quarter of the alliance team AFK.

My observation is that if Horde parks a reasonable defence force at the Iceblood Graveyard chokepoint, and stops any alliance getting behind them, its very hard to stop them winning. Assaults on IB GY are possible to repel with committed defence; assualts on Stonehearth are much more difficult to stop (unless the alliance commits almost their entire defence sacrificing offence). The infamous Alliance choke-point (the final bridge) isn't much help in the current AV: it only protects the two Dun Baldar bunkers and Vandar. If you're stalling the Horde there, chances are you're down to around 200 reinforcements or less already. By that time, the Horde can play an attrition game.