An Early Look at the Alterac Valley Battleground

[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.