48 minutes to Fail

[Selby]

Pardon my ignorance, but the last time I played AV was 6-7 months before TBC came out, and I don't recall any 20 hour battles, much less any that went over 1hr.  What constitutes "new" AV from "old" AV and when was the change made?

[Koyasha]

AV's had a -lot- of iterations over time.  The NPC's were mostly removed some time before Burning Crusade, but the original AV had many many NPC's everywhere, and they respawned throughout the entire battle.  This allowed a defending force to slow advancment of the enemy.  There was simply no way to ride through and 'race', the best that could happen is if a warlock managed to get all the way to the relief hut with two others they could set up a summon point.  That was about the only time the forces could possibly avoid fighting each other tooth and nail over every foot of ground and every graveyard and tower.

As you can imagine, with two forces of 30-35 players (you could count on at LEAST 5 players on each side not actually participating in the battle, either fishing, farming harpies/gnolls, or some other useless activity) supported by well-positioned NPC's that handled the defenses until the player reinforcements arrived to fight off the assaults, it was very difficult to take objectives - you had to FIGHT over them, and hard.  Both fortresses were almost impossible to break into, as well.  Frostwolf Keep was vastly better defended - instead of an open ride through the lower area and much of the upper area, the entire lower village and upper keep was packed with NPC's.  A mage and a couple hunters could seriously hurt any incoming force just by rooting them and getting more NPC's involved in the fight.  When fully defended, it was a nightmare for the Alliance to crack Frostwolf.  Dun Baldar was also much tougher to take than it is now.

There have been roughly 6 incarnations of AV, I think, perhaps more since I've lost track.  The first redesign, some of the side areas were removed from the map and it was trimmed.  The second, Korrak was moved out of the field of strife (I think that was the second) and more of the winterax trolls and syndicate were removed.  At some point after that, Korrak, the trolls, and syndicate were removed entirely.  Finally the NPC's were almost entirely removed, and that's when the whole race-mode started, and then the recent change adding reinforcements and such.  I've probably missed at least one redesign in throughout all that.

[Fordel]

The Original AV was much larger, had hundreds of NPC guards per side, hundreds of 'PvE' NPC's around the map, a mini-Raid boss, semi-permanent landmines and many Elite 'lieutenants' per side.

Basically, go into current AV, and look at any area of the map where you see 'defenses'. Those static Siege engines, the spikes in the ground, the pre-burned towers. All of that was covered in NPC Guards, and usually led by a Elite Lieutenant NPC. All the NPC Patrols? Multiply the number of them by 5-10.

The other thing, is all those elite NPCs, those were worth points for a long time. So even if you COULD 'race' to the end and bypass them, it wasn't to your own benefit.

It was designed as a static non-instanced zone. Then someone realized every PvE server had a 2:1 Alliance/Horde ratio (if not worse) and they hastily turned it into a 40vs40 instance... A zone designed for hundreds of players and permanency was turned into a Win/Loss Resettable instance. 


Yea, it's had more changes/alterations/adjustments then you can shake a stick at, TWO stick even. Maybe Three. 

[cevik]

Don't forget that the first few hours of the fight were almost always spent being trounced by Korrak (http://www.wowwiki.com/Korrak_the_Bloodrager) in Snowfall Graveyard.  He was removed in patch 1.10 when they made the first major AV overhaul, which is also was the Dungeon 2 set quests were introduced (so well before TBC), which drastically changed the way AV worked.

[Ingmar]

I want to say he even respawned eventually.

[Fordel]

He did, it caused many a offense failures too.


"Alright guys, we almost have this, just need to get those last few horde out of FW..."


*Korrak spawns and announces his presence*


'OMg korrak, I need my spear!'
'LFM KORRAK'
'EVER 1 MEAT @ BLAINDA!!"

"nooooooooooo /cries"