An Early Look at the Alterac Valley Battleground

[MongoJerry]

An Early Look at the Alterac Valley Battleground

This is a collection of a few early impressions of the Alterac Valley Battleground based on about two hours of playing last night illustrated with a few miscellaneous screenshots I took along the way.

Right behind Tarren Mill lies the Horde fort that forms the Horde entrance to the Alterac Valley battleground. (I sure felt silly running all over Alterac trying to find the place). The camp has a quest giver and a Frostwolf Supply Officer vendor who doesn't sell anything, although he repairs armor. I suspect that one has to gain reputation with the Frostwolf faction to be able to see the items he has to sell -- in the same way that one has to build reputation with the Argent Dawn to buy things from the Argent Dawn Quartermasters.

Inside the tunnel, one sees a lot of guards both stationary and patrolling around. This is not going to be a very good place for Alliance gankers to hang out.



There's also a quest giver here named Teeka Bloodsnarl who gives out some basic Alterac Valley related PvP quests. These are all tutorial quests designed to let players know what they can do once they get in the valley. Capture a mine, capture a graveyard, capture a tower. These quests are likely to be fulfilled by players on their first trip into Alterac Valley.



When you walk into the Alterac Valley instance portal, a dialog pops up to ask you to select which Alterac Valley battleground instance you want to join. I selected "First Available" and got placed in the first battleground.



Through the instance portal, the tunnel continues and here you see a *ton* of Horde guards, most or all of whom are high level elite mobs, and I assume the wolves can detect stealth. I think Blizzard wanted to make sure that one tactic people never used was camping the opponent's entrance tunnel.



When I entered the battleground, I brought up the map to get oriented. There are no gray areas on this map that one has to explore to reveal. Everything is known immediately. Red means something occupied by the good guys (Horde), blue means something occupied by the bad guys (Alliance). You can see on the front that there's a tower that's half red and half white. That means that the Horde has just killed the commander of that tower and are in the process of taking it over, but the transition to Horde hasn't completed yet. I don't know how one stops the transformation from taking place if you are on the opposing side. Once a tower or graveyard is conquered, NPC's of the conquering side will appear to defend it.



As soon as I crossed the instance portal, I posted a "LFG" message and got invited into what was initially just a 5-man group but an hour later ended up being a raid group that contained most of the Horde inside the instance. Players were scatterbrained, being lost in the newness of it all, so the 5 of us didn't coordinate effectively at first. However, a couple of us decided to go take an uncontested mine held by kobolds. At first, it was just two of us, me and a warrior named Typho. This seemed OK, because we found out that the kobolds are low 50's elites. I figured it'd be slow going, but doable. Then, a patrol of five kobolds added while we were fighting two other kobolds and we got slaughtered.



But then a couple other players came down to help us, and it was smooth sailing from there. Once we killed the kobold boss at the heart of the mine, Horde NPC miners popped up everywhere around us and started battling the remainder of the kobolds. This was basically a chance to get free loot, since all the kobolds were busy fighting the NPC's, so all one had to do was do a little damage to each of them and collect the loot when they died.



After this final battle, the mine got suddenly silent as the whole place filled with Horde NPC's. The mine stayed in Horde hands for about an hour before the kobolds came back. As I understand it, by holding onto the mine, you make your NPC's all around the battleground a little stronger.



But of course, none of us came here to PvE. After we took the mine, we went back up north to the front line which was at the time near a flat open area in the center of the map. As I understand it, there are landmines all around this area and in order to get rid of them, Horde players have to kill a boss who hangs out in or near one of the bastions just to the north of this field.



Our group decided that the best way to stop the Alliance was to take over the nearby graveyard, so we headed up there. I took a wrong turn on the way to the graveyard (this particular graveyard was up on a hill), so my raidmates beat me there and tore down the alliance banner. The banners turn white when the graveyard turns contested.

[MongoJerry]

After about a minute, Horde banners along with Horde NPC guards appeared and the graveyard was secure. Graveyards seem almost too easy to take over, honestly. Blizzard should beef up the number NPC guards around them.



In addition to graveyards, players can take over towers and bunkers. Tons of NPC guards spawn around and inside these bunkers, so attackers have to deal with both opposing players and NPC guards. It takes a good coordinated push to make it inside and kill the boss. Here, we've already pushed back the alliance players and are picking off some of the NPC's shooting at us from above. Soon after, we ran inside and secured the bunker for the Horde. After a minute or so, Horde NPC guards appeared and secured the area.



The Horde pushed the Alliance all the way back to their northern fortress. We ended up taking that blue tower you see in the middle of the map, but the one thing we didn't figure out how to do was how to take that outpost just north of that open field in the center of the map. We cleared the whole place and killed all the bosses, but it didn't change sides. I dunno. We must've missed something. It was pretty annoying, because that was a major source of alliance NPCs and it would've been nice to have had that outpost in Horde hands.

A small group of alliance liked to sneak behind the lines and take out graveyards deep in Horde territory. On the one hand, this was a waste of time, because nobody was dying down there, so taking graveyards down there doesn't give you anything. On the other hand, it was a good tactic as it diverted stupid Horde players away from the front to try to retake worthless graveyards.



The Horde pushed the Alliance far to the north, but we ran into terrain problems when we got there. The pass to get in to the heart of Alliance territory is narrow and forms a choke point. What's more, the Alliance had a graveyard right there, while the Horde's graveyard was much further south. This was obviously a design intention of Blizzard to make it hard for any group to gain a total victory over an opponent. The Horde fought hard here, but the Alliance finally organized themselves and managed to push us back. Looking back on this battle, I got two lessons: First, there's a second path just to the east that overlooks this pass. I think it'd be better to go up this path and then drop down on enemies. Second, it's crucial when you're pushing the Alliance to quickly try to take that northern graveyard near the pass before the Alliance players get a chance to regroup.



The Alliance pushed the Horde back and managed to retake one of their lost bunkers. By this time, it was 1:30am and time for me to head to bed. Before I left, though, I noticed a new button on the minimap, and when I clicked on it, a stat sheet appeared that showed how many kills players had, how many graveyards, mines, and towers they had assaulted, etc. (I guess it's only the person who actually pulls down a banner or gets the killing blow on a boss who gets credit for an "assault"). That was neat to see.



Also, before I left, I stopped by the main Horde base to check things out there. I turned in some blood to an NPC who needs them to create some big NPC mob and turned in some armor scraps that the blacksmith uses to make better armor for Horde NPC's. In addition, I found bounty hunters who would pay bounties for bringing in trophies from the bodies of gnomes, night elves, and dwarfs. Yeah, like I needed an excuse to kill gnomes.

Well, that was it. I know there's more to the battleground than what I got a chance to see (e.g. I didn't deal with the trolls at all), but I hope you got a taste of what the Alterac Valley is like.

[Sword_of_Doom]

My first impressions of Battlegrounds, WoW!!!! If they get this implemented fast, this feature will carry World of Warcraft in the short term for PvP'ers. It is well done and was beyond fun. I just spent about 30 minutes wandering around and checking out the instance. It was the same one as posted above, Bunkers and towers. Our Hordies gave up after we captured two of their towers so i wasn't in the instance long enough to see more. This will entertain me for a long time. I have always loved this style of PvP combat.

[oldmandennis]

I played for... well way too long on a weeknight last night. I'll try to chip in a little info. This is also from a horde perspective.

There is a quest given by the quarter master in your city. He is a little hard to find, there is a large tower that is different then the standard guard towers. The quarter master is behind it. He gives you 2 quests, collect 10 each of supplies from the horde and alliance mines. I believe the supplies only spawn if you are in control of the mine. When you do this, I think supplies start stacking up behind the guy.

You can click his social, and he will tell you if he has enough supplies for a ground assult. If you do, a high ranking character can talk to an officer just outside the front door to this tower. I don't know how high you have to be, but we had a blood guard try and they weren't high enough. If you get the orders, there is at least one npc on the map, just south of the open field in the middle of the battle, who says he is just waiting on orders to start a ground assult. I assume if you give him the orders he spawns NPC's, maybe elite ones.

I'm not sure if this is the only benefit for controlling the mine. I don't know what happens if you get to the alliance mine.

By looting armor scraps from both PC's and NPC's, you can turn them in in sets of 20 to a black smith near the quartermaster. Evenually he upgrades the general NPC's of your side. Even nonelites are quite a handful when they have been upgraded several times. The alliance got theirs to "champion", and it became big a pain. Ours were veteran. I don't know if this decays.

There is an easy and boring quest to the east of the main town. A beast master wants you to tame wolves, and bring them back (one at a time) to him. If you do this enough, he will probably spawn wolfriders. I didn't have the patience. He also wants harnesses from the rams of the alliance.

If you liberate the wing commanders, the reward is one very powerful elite air unit, with an aoe attack, and knockback. It will take 10 or so mages/hunters a couple of minutes to take him out.

In the forward post, we took out everything, yet it remained blue, and still spawned NPC's. It was on fire though, and the NPC's stopped attacking our base.

Right when I logged on, the Alliance spawned their big champion, what we would get if we turned in all the blood. I think they have something different. It was a beast! An enormous "son of cenarious" model, with an entangling roots attack that did more then 100 damage per tick. It made it all the way to our gates, before the alliance did a poor job of supporting it and we were able to zerg.

After that, due to my uber leet skills, we started rolling them back, before stalling at the same point MJ did. We tried running around the graveyard and dropping in on it, but it is very tough. They have enough NPC's there to make it tricky, any alliance deaths will be ressing there, and even if you get their flag down, you are still closer to the final alliance graveyard then your closest one. We were able to get the flag down, but not get ours up.

If you could get a cohesive group togeather a stratagy occurs to me. If you look at the map MJ posted, you can see a red tower about 1/4 the way down the screen, just south of the main mob of horde. There is a grave yard right there, to the SE a bit, covered by a couple of PC. The combonation of graveyard and tower makes it VERY strong, even though I'm not sure if it is possible to stop some alliance NPC's from spawning on the road there. Also, I don't know if it is a bug, but it is very difficult to loot items from PC's. I'm pretty sure the NPC's drop the blood

So the strat I was thinking of is get about 15 people to hold the tower/graveyard. The rest farm the NPC's around the area for blood. Since the alliance should be very bottled up, it should be not very difficult to quickly amass very significant quantities of blood and armor. Pump up your NPC's, summon the elemental, and punch right through that troublesome grave yard and maybe to the victory. The hardest part would be keeping people from pressing the graveyard without the elemental, as that opens you up to counter attack.

Two questions I have are is it possible to completly destroy one of the forward garrisons? and what are the blue huts in the northeast of the map for. Also, if anyone has anymore info about the "neutral" guys on the map like trolls, that would be sweet.

You can tell I am VERY excited about this. It was awesome!

[MongoJerry]

and what are the blue huts in the northeast of the map for. 

Thanks for the info! Good stuff. I'll have to make sure to revisit mines I take to collect supplies in the future. Regarding the huts, those are Alliance lumberyards. We killed a bunch of stuff around there, but they never turned Horde. I think there's something special we're supposed to do there, but I don't know what.

[LochnarITB]

I am going to wait for this to be implemented in release but, when it is, I expect it might seriously cramp the progress of Lochnalts! PvP (on a dedicated server or PvE) holds very little interest for me. I did enjoy the Lurker attack on Thunder Bluff but only because it didn't seem we were interfering with anyone else's game play (or maybe I just convinced myself of that so I could enjoy it). Anyway, this is the way I can enjoy PvP. Everyone is in it simply for that. Even the quests are to enhance the PvP. I am excited and hope it lives up to the feeling I am getting about it now.