Is the PVE game dying?

[Fordel]

On Nightfall two things happen.


Either the alliance *screams* towards Drek and caps everything otw and holds onto the RH/FW Towers and wins in 15 mins (with the horde still gaining 200-400 honor, sometimes more then the alliance).

or

The Alliance fails at the above, gets suck behind Icewing and along the SP road, and they lose 30-45 mins into the game with 60 odd honor for the loss (the horde end up with 500+).


Which admittedly, Isn't much different from before the patch, key difference being we skip Galv now, the towers mean a LOT more and an Alliance loss is Long and Hopeless. At least before, even with VanSploits or total suck on our offense, we could still generate 200+ honor a game (Same for the horde). Now? If we lose, we lose it all, if the horde loses, they still get decent honor. The worst part is, the horde dictate how the game will go. They put up a strong enough cockblock at the IB area, pick off enough of us otw to drek, were done. The End. 


And Nightfall is the 'good' Battlegroup other people are flocking too now, Stormstrike is apparently 95% Horde win in AV with alliance honor gain being somewhere between zero and zero. 

[Morat20]

[snip]

Yeah, it's really the 500-600 to 0 wins that are doing it. Who the fuck queues for that shit?

You can't even fix this by doing a random map-flip, as everyone will bail if they're in the Alliance starting position. What a clusterfuck. AV isn't worth the time anymore, and it was the ONLY place for decent honor to buy gear. Trying to grind out enough honor for the BG gear in WSG, AB, or EOTS isn't really an option.

Blizzard -- at the very least -- needs to either nerf Galv or serioiusly fuckiung buff Balinda, move the Alliance starting position up some to mirror the Horde's -- and either totally rearrange Galv/IB or totally rearrange SH/Bunkers/Balinda.

The way the map is set up, all the funnels and conflict points favor Horde until you hit the bases proper. But since you don't need the bases to win, it's meaningless. So if the battle is bottlenecked at IB, the Horde can defend the GY, the tower, and Galv (jesus the disparity between Galv and Balinda is really obvious now) without having to move very far in any direction. The Alliance, on the oither hand, has no hope in hell of trying to defend Balinda, SH, and the bunker. They're too far apart with too many paths to each.

[Fordel]

Fun Fact: Before Balinda's waterpet, rogues could solo her. 

[Morat20]

Fun Fact: Before Balinda's waterpet, rogues could solo her. 

Wiping Alliance on Galv is dead easy. Once the tank goes down -- or loses aggro -- everyone else dies pretty much instantly.

[Zetor]

Warlocks can solo Balinda.. her spells don't hit hard at all, her only cc has a cast time and heals the target, she has almost no armor, and less HP than galv (who can 2-shot tanks if they're not getting heals.. which is possible during a fear, esp. if he MS's the tank first). The only danger is melee (which doesn't happen that often). Hell, she was soloable pre-BC.

Meh, I also miss the old AV (korrak, minefields, syndicate and all), but I don't think anyone'd get any AV tokens if we returned to the old design of 60-hour games. Blizz seems to like the "30-40 min battleground" idea, so AV will probably stay as it is.


-- Z.

[Fordel]

I don't think the 30 mins BG is a bad idea, I just don't see it working in AV without a total zone redesign. The entire place was never meant to be instanced in the first place.

[Chimpy]

They ruined AV. They should revert AV and take the reinforcements idea and move it to WS where it would actually help with endless turtles.

To fix AV they just need to make people who get the AFK debuff get booted from the BG and get deserter.

And it is, in my experience, biased in favor of the Horde now because of the way reinforcements work.

The map has never been biased towards the horde. That is typical alliance whiny-mode.

I play alliance now, I played horde in the past.

Last night I was in several AVs where alliance won handily by simply PLAYING A LITTLE DEFENSE at the bunkers and SH graveyard. And defending what you cap. Too many people think you need to rush the opposing faction's base.

I agree the whole reinforcement idea is dumb, it was just a cave on blizzards part to the "need the most honor per hour" honor farmers, the new AV guarantees that no match will last more than 45 minutes.

[ShenMolo]

I love the New AV.

I've always been the "Defender" type anyway. The guy who stays in Bunkers to make sure they cap. The guy who hearth's back when the relief hut is ninja'd.

The new setup means that someone has to defend. The side which defends against the initial push best is the side that usually wins.

I play Horde in the Stormstrike battlegroup. There is an alliance "boycott" going on in this group that has increased the que times to 35+ at all times of the day.

Yesterday I played 10 matches throughout the day, and Horde won all 10. I was getting 500+ honor per match. Over the weekend the Alliance was kicking our ass.

When the Alliance wins 3 things usually happen:

Take & Hold Snowfall
Take & Hold IB
Delay the Horde capture of SH as long as possible.

10 players on the Alliance side playing defense can accomplish #3. I've seen the alliance defenders wait till we attack Belinda then cap SH behind us, ruining our attack.

When I'm playing defense on Horde we usually have @10 players who snipe the alliance and keep them from capping SF. Because we are respawning close by, we can burn them down through attrition before IB is capped. If they don't cap and hold SF, the game is over at that point because they are bottled up.

If I were Alliance I would:

Send half your team to defend SH & Belinda.
Send Half to take SF.

When SF falls go on the attack for Galv/IB. If SH is still Alliance GG you have won.

[Arrrgh]

It's not a conspiracy. Most people just want the best honor per hour and that's not in AV for Stormstrike alliance. Back when everyone got the best honor per hour in AV (regardless of who won) that's where most people went.

If AV still gave the best honor per hour most people would ignore the few calling for boycotts and pour back into AV.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I've played old AV, I've played new AV.  New AV is not better or worse, it's different.  When people lose it's because they aren't adapting to the changes.  It's a defensive game now and people keep trying to kamikaze to the generals. 

It's really simple, the team that keeps their towers and plays a little defense will get the most honor.  Hell I've lost AV recently where we got more honor cause the alliance wanted to zerg it and we took all their towers/bunkers and they only got drek.

Yes it's true right now the alliance is losing more than winning.  I don't believe it's because the map disfavors them now though as it favored them in the past.  I believe it's because the map disfavors the style in which people are trying to play a changed AV

also before the match begins type:

/em has reported you for being AFK.  Until you type </afk no>  you will receive NO honor for this battleground.  Thank you.

It's hilarious.

[Xanthippe]

Horde players love the new AV.  Alliance players hate it.

I'm in the Vengeance battlegroup.  When horde win, they usually get 400 or more honor, and alliance usually gets up to 300.  When alliance wins, horde usually gets 400 or more honor, and alliance gets up to 300.

See the problem?

The map does favor the horde.  That's indisputable.  The game turns into a clusterfuck if the alliance defends at SH gy.  The SH bunker, gy and Icewing bunkers are pretty much all gimmes for the horde.  Snowfall gy takes a minute longer to cap than SH, plus it's over on the other side, presumably because it's "neutral" but it's not really, because the horde has absolutely no reason to want to take it other than to prevent alliance from having it.  Horde has a straight line down from IB gy to Icewing Bunker. 

I'd rather go back to the 4 hour AV of olde than to play the new AV, and I loved playing the new AV on test.  It just hasn't worked out that way for reals since people game the system (thus exposing the flaws).

I really hope that Blizzard comes out with a new battleground. 

AV as originally done was the best of the 3 incarnations I've seen, although Balinda needs buffing - and what about that big pussy Ivus! Jesus what a joke.

I don't think Blizzard favors either side, but there is no doubt that AV has never been more skewed toward horde than it is today.  The geography combined with the new rules combined with Alliance being trained to never ever defend at SH gy is lethal.

(I'm pretty sure that if you're hit with the afk debuff, fighting npcs will clear it.)

[Fordel]

The only thing that's changed map balance wise is incentive.


The horde have always had the good choke at IB, and SH has always been way to hard to defend. Just before, it was never in the hordes own self interest to defend the IB area, since it would put all the alliance back to SP and cause the 6 hour bridge defense game.

Now with how Reinforcements and TowerHonor works, its better for the horde to hold IB and grind it out. The comparable choke of the alliance is the SP/Bridge area, which means squat of your already 200 odd reinforcements in the whole.


The focus has shifted. Just how in the old AV the horde couldn't out race the alliance due to FW Keeps shitty design compared to The Bridge of doom (not without a vansploit at least), the alliance can't 'out defend' the horde in the new AV due to the StoneHearth area being indefensible.

[Morat20]

The map has never been biased towards the horde. That is typical alliance whiny-mode.

Bullshit. I notice you didn't try to argue the point, though.

The SH-SP road is a natural choke point, and it keeps the Alliance easily bottled up while the Horde reinforcement counter ticks to the win -- because Horde steamrolls SH bunker and Balinda. Alliance can't the bunker and Balinda (especially as Balinda is so freaking easy to kill), and really can't effectively defend SH against a determined Horde push.

Horde reach SH bunker before Alliance can reach Galv, and the Iceblood GY/Bunker/Galv setup is easy to defend as a whole -- especially as two people can force an Alliance wipe on Galv.

The setup of the map, coupled with the way reinforcements work, gives the Horde a huge advantage. Furthermore, Horde tactics pretty much dictate the game -- and a now common ending is something like 500/600 Horde honor to less than 100 Alliance honor.

You can call it "Alliance whiny mode" if it makes your epeen grow. I suggest enjoying the fuck out of it as Horde while you can -- it's not going to last longer. Until then, expect your queue times as Horde to continue to grow.

[AngryGumball]

It's not a conspiracy. Most people just want the best honor per hour and that's not in AV

If AV still gave the best honor per hour most people would ignore the few calling for boycotts and pour back into AV.

Stuff like this makes the point of battelgrounds worthless, stop min/maxing and just play the damn game for fun. Not trying to cause a fight but, I believe you are absolutely failing the game with attitudes that exist like that.

Why give best honor per hour, why not just hand you when you log in all your welfare epics.

Aside from season one gear, why bother to play any BGs anymore....Honor means crap, playing the BG means crap when there is no gear matching.
I really like BGs ...well currently I only like WSG and AB, AV is worthless....but the reasons why so many people play BGs are wrong.

Saw a guy in EoTS twice in a row twoboxxing, first was warlock on epic mount second was some lvl 70 on normal mount just following him around. If I were GOD at that point in time I'd throttle him/her. Thx for playing BGs we're playing a man down becuase of your actions. No, he was skillful in playing both chars at same time stop trying to write that as a comeback.




Oh, forgot to say today was first time I entered Karazhan for first time, everyone else were vets I was first time in, on Holy Paladin, we stopped after failing on Shade of Aran. They are going back tomorrow but I'm prolly not. Go see a movie instead.

[stray]

I don't play WoW, but as a general rule, MMO's are rarely meant to be played for fun. And I think you're wacky for expecting people to.

[Morat20]

Stuff like this makes the point of battelgrounds worthless, stop min/maxing and just play the damn game for fun. Not trying to cause a fight but, I believe you are absolutely failing the game with attitudes that exist like that.

Why give best honor per hour, why not just hand you when you log in all your welfare epics.

Probably because the honor cost of BG epics was fixed on the average honor gains of all Battlegrounds -- including the spigot that was AV?

There are TWO reasons to play battlegrounds -- short term, for the fun of playing PvP. Long term, the fact that PvP also rewards you with gear -- a standard carrot for Diku. You go after the shiny carrot if you raid, if you Arena, or if you play BGs. Alliance won't play AV if they're getting shafted short term (long grindy games that are basically a slow loss bottleneck along the SH-SP road) and the long term (too little honor to ever get any shinies).

Sneer at them as "welfare epics" if you want, but with some Battlegroups running 70 to 80% or more Horde wins in AV, Alliance won't play.

Which is frankly a point I made prior to the latest changes, that if the battlegrounds as a whole aren't at least changed to do rough gear-matching and prevent PuG versus Group steamrolls, and then balanced again on whatever win/loss ratios come out -- casual PvP will go out the window. Alliance considers PuGing AB or WSG to be a fucking crotch-kick as is because the win/loss ratios (at least on my Battlegroup) are something like 80% horde. Alliance put up with it because AV win/loss was heavily tilted in Alliance favor, and Horde put up with THAT because they were winning AB/WSG all the time and because a Horde AV loss was almost as much honor as a win (and they queued faster).

On my battlegroup, I think only EoTS is even close to 50/50 (still tilts Horde). I understand Horde queue times are rising steadily as Alliance bails on AV, and people only hit the other BG's for the daily quests or tokens. Unless they change honor costs to reflect massive nerf in honor from AV, Alliance won't be queuing for tokens either. Then the Horde will just be scratching their asses waiting for a BG to pop as the Alliance fucks off and finds something more fun to do.

[Arrrgh]

It's not a conspiracy. Most people just want the best honor per hour and that's not in AV

If AV still gave the best honor per hour most people would ignore the few calling for boycotts and pour back into AV.

Stuff like this makes the point of battelgrounds worthless, stop min/maxing and just play the damn game for fun. Not trying to cause a fight but, I believe you are absolutely failing the game with attitudes that exist like that.

See the "most people" part? Most people is not I. I was replying to his post about an AV boycott.

I don't like the new AV because it's either a race or an attrition turtle now. I went into S3 with 75K honor so honor per hour isn't a concern. I actually miss the old school AV matches that went on for days. The new AV simply isn't fun anymore.

[Arrrgh]

On my battlegroup, I think only EoTS is even close to 50/50 (still tilts Horde). I understand Horde queue times are rising steadily as Alliance bails on AV, and people only hit the other BG's for the daily quests or tokens. Unless they change honor costs to reflect massive nerf in honor from AV, Alliance won't be queuing for tokens either. Then the Horde will just be scratching their asses waiting for a BG to pop as the Alliance fucks off and finds something more fun to do.

I mostly do an EoS now and then for fun on Stormstrike and the horde in EoS just keep getting worse. The other day alliance won 8 of the 10 matches I played. Even on bad days we usually win more than half lately.

I can't decide if the well geared horde just never leave AV now, or if it's that they get so much honor in AV now that they're already maxed on their mains and we're seeing their under geared alts out farming tokens.

[Merusk]

I mostly do an EoS now and then for fun on Stormstrike and the horde in EoS just keep getting worse. The other day alliance won 8 of the 10 matches I played. Even on bad days we usually win more than half lately.

I can't decide if the well geared horde just never leave AV now, or if it's that they get so much honor in AV now that they're already maxed on their mains and we're seeing their under geared alts out farming tokens.

Same thing's happening on Rampage, but in more than one BG.  An alliance PUG I was in steamrolled a Horde Premade two days ago and we couldn't stop laughing about it.  I'm fairly certain it's 2nd characters, though, as I was destroying one particular warrior in 3-4 shots.   (You'd think he'd have learned I was just going to frost trap kite him after the first 3 deaths, but noooo.. he was pissed 'some lame hunter' was eating his face.)

[Chimpy]

The map has never been biased towards the horde. That is typical alliance whiny-mode.

Bullshit. I notice you didn't try to argue the point, though.

The SH-SP road is a natural choke point, and it keeps the Alliance easily bottled up while the Horde reinforcement counter ticks to the win -- because Horde steamrolls SH bunker and Balinda. Alliance can't the bunker and Balinda (especially as Balinda is so freaking easy to kill), and really can't effectively defend SH against a determined Horde push.

Horde reach SH bunker before Alliance can reach Galv, and the Iceblood GY/Bunker/Galv setup is easy to defend as a whole -- especially as two people can force an Alliance wipe on Galv.

The setup of the map, coupled with the way reinforcements work, gives the Horde a huge advantage. Furthermore, Horde tactics pretty much dictate the game -- and a now common ending is something like 500/600 Horde honor to less than 100 Alliance honor.

You can call it "Alliance whiny mode" if it makes your epeen grow. I suggest enjoying the fuck out of it as Horde while you can -- it's not going to last longer. Until then, expect your queue times as Horde to continue to grow.

I Play alliance, you obviously reacted to my first line and read nothing else. Good job. You helped make the point I did not argue, as you pointed out.

Yes, the map has a slight starting position imbalance, but none of the imbalances show a "biased towards the horde" mentality at blizzard at all.

Is Balinda easier than Galv? Sure. Is galv that hard though?

All of the problems with the map can be overcome by using a strategy *cough*defend SH GY and Icewing bunker*cough* that overcomes those deficiencies. The idea of fighting other players in AV is so foreign to most players these days, especially alliance, that they just wig out and cry "the map is imbalanced to horde". If the map was seriously imbalanced I would not have been in 5 consecutive winning AVs as alliance where we won handily with all the towers capped. The key difference in those games vs. the dozen or so I have lost since the changes?: Defense at the SH GY / Icewing bunker.

And as for your snide "go enjoy it as horde while it lasts" comment, I would love to go back to playing horde. People whine and bitch about 90% less over there. But I rerolled to play with some real life friends, and they were already playing alliance so I am stuck with turning off all my chat channels when I am in BG or a city, I used to only have to do that in the Barrens.

[Merusk]

Dickwaving aside, the Alliance DOES have it ingrained into them "leave SH the fuck alone."   2 1/2 years of "don't touch that flag, or else they'll just turtle and fuck us over with that flying asshole" means it's a hard habit to break.

Also, he wasn't saying it was Blizzard's menatlity, but the nature of the map.  Given the various ways to approach the Alliance GYs vs the unidirectional funnel to Horde, I'm not inclined to disagree.  The Alliance side has funnels and chokes, they're just not at the key points for the map as the rules are today.  When they revamp it again in 6 months, we'll see what they do.

[Threash]

Which is frankly a point I made prior to the latest changes, that if the battlegrounds as a whole aren't at least changed to do rough gear-matching 

There is a rough gear matching system in place.  If you play a lot of premades you will notice it a lot more than if you do a lot of pugs.

[AngryGumball]

I realize many many people like Blizzard are gods, but are they showing many cracks in their inability to fix some things that should be obvious?

Daily quests for 11g to win a single BG, funny how people fall for that to run crappy BGs as well. I think its more than that though getting the honor to get the epics is where i've seen a huge upswing in amount of people playing BGs

[Count Nerfedalot]

I strongly believe arena gear is welfare epics, and season 1 bought for honor points is easy mode no respect earned.

I've come around to thinking that Blizzard should merely issue gear points to people for being logged in, no matter what activity they are doing.  But then, I don't respect anyone for their gear - the biggest douchebags I've met often have the very best gear. 

I don't care about welfare epics or easy mode or how someone "earns" their gear or if they buy it off eBay.

But I do care about wretched little miscreants who afk or purposely fuck up the battlegrounds that I'm playing in.  That really bothers me because it affects me directly.  Those afkers are leeching off my effort.

Blizzard has ALWAYS done sly little things to bait people who wouldn't otherwise be interested into getting involved in PvP.  Making PvP gear attractive to PvE players is just a more blatant version of that philosophy.  WHY they do this, I can only speculate as my crystal mind-reading thingy broke last week.  My guess is it's probably a mixture of reasons having to do with players providing content for each other plus a desire to reduce queue times and such.  But THAT they have always done this is very apparent, at least to me, my wife, and several friends, all but one of which never PvP, have NO interest in PvP, and thus are very annoyed every time Blizzard tries to trick/tempt or otherwise manipulate us into a PvP situation. 

That said, I find it ironic as well as both sad and amusing that in this particular case, Blizzard's attempts to get more people involved in PvP actually has a negative impact on the play experience of the people who really want to PvP!  Generally it's to the benefit of the wolves to recruit as many sheep into their game as possible.  But in this case the sheep can, in very limited circumstances, ruin the play experience of the wolves instead of vice-versa.  Good for them!  But too bad the team/sport PvPers get screwed the worst in the process.

The lesson I wish Blizzard and all MMO developers would learn is, don't try to force (or "encourage" or "trick" or "convert" or any other manipulation)  PvE people into trying PvP.  It's like trying to teach a pig to sing.  It's doomed to fail and will only result in annoying the pig and frustrating the teacher!

[Morat20]

Is Balinda easier than Galv? Sure. Is galv that hard though?

You say you play AV as alliance, but you don't know the answer to that question? You've obviously never had the joy Horde-side of wiping an entire fucking Alliance group on Galv. Once the tank goes down or losses aggro, everyone dies.

If it was a pure PvE encounter, it wouldn't be too bad -- it takes a lot more people than Balinda (and actual healers), but really not a problem. It's the 2 or 3 Horde that come rushing in and fuck everyone, wiping the zerg.

On the other hand, three drooling retards can kill Balinda, and frankly I've seen pitched PvP battles in the room while everyone practically ignored Balinda. You try that shit with Galv, and the result is a bunch of dead Alliance and some happy horde.

All of the problems with the map can be overcome by using a strategy *cough*defend SH GY and Icewing bunker*cough* that overcomes those deficiencies. The idea of fighting other players in AV is so foreign to most players these days, especially alliance, that they just wig out and cry "the map is imbalanced to horde". If the map was seriously imbalanced I would not have been in 5 consecutive winning AVs as alliance where we won handily with all the towers capped. The key difference in those games vs. the dozen or so I have lost since the changes?: Defense at the SH GY / Icewing bunker.

What fucking strategy? I get to the goddamn SH bunker at the same fucking time as the Horde. (Actually, a bit after unless I get lucky with a group). A balanced map would put my ass at Iceblood Tower when the Horde is hitting SH Bunker.

That's the first big fucking problem. It wasn't a real problem back when Alliance D would just bottle Horde offense on the SP-SH road, and later the bridge -- because killing Van was the only way to win. It IS a huge fucking problem now that once the horde takes SH, all they have to do is hold on to win. Now the Horde is bottling Alliance along the SP-SH area, preventing them from doing anything. The Horde is hitting their first reinforcement objective at the same time the Alliance arrives to defend it. How is that fair or balanced? "Fair" would mean Alliance offense reaches their first objective (Galv or IB tower) at the same time Horde O is hitting Balinda/SH bunker. Now, I don't know about you, but Alliance on my server don't have 200% speed mounts.

It's pretty easy for Horde. Exit cave, run past IB GY, jump down, hit SH bunker just as the Alliance zerg hits. IB GY is practically next door, and the Alliance cannot defend SH bunker, SH flag, and Balinda -- it's too spread out (and there's two fucking ways into the damn GY).

I know it's like an article of faith that rolling Horde magically makes you the uber-PvP player, but anyone with a semi-functioning brain and a grasp of how the reinforcement system works can see that right now Horde has all the advantages. The only way for Alliance to win now is to blow past Horde at SH (basically leave it), race to Drek, and kill Drek -- for shit honor, I might add. They can probably hold one of the three SH objectives, but they can't hold it forever because sooner or later the two routes into SH GY mean they're fighting on the flag, and at that point hte Horde's going to flip it.

As for racing Drek -- not only is that boring and shit honor, but the Horde tactics decide whether or not it can work.

I trolled the WoW forums and laughed myself silly over the fucking idiots still complaining about base design. Like it fucking matters -- most AV's now don't see either Drek or Van dying. What I see is Horde flipping SH bunker, killing Balinda, and then bottling the Alliance up along the road while they way for Alliance reinforcements to click out and win.

How the hell am I supposed to get past the fucking Horde O to try for any objectives? Rogues and druids might get through, but the five or 10 Horde hanging out behind the lines generally shitcans that.

[Tale]

Blizzard has ALWAYS done sly little things to bait people who wouldn't otherwise be interested into getting involved in PvP.

Maybe, but I don't think that's due to people being carebears by nature. I have very little interest in WoW's implementation of PvP, but in other games (SWG and AO) my entire game revolved around PvP.

I prefer world PvP consisting of unpredictable large-scale battles over valuable property. I don't like being confined to WoW's formulaic battlegrounds, replaying the same series of objectives, where combat comes down to add-ons that help you play scissors to the opponent's paper. WoW's world PvP grudge matches over cities/towers/levelling hubs are OK, but victory/defeat doesn't feel as significant as destroying/saving a valuable, beneficial player-made structure.

Whenever Blizzard has tried to direct my attention to PvP, I've mostly ignored it. I'd much rather help a group/raid survive a crazy huge pull than throw the heal that stopped a flag capture. Each to their own. And yes, the PvE game kind of died for me too - I tried PvP again, but felt the same as before, so I drifted away from the game entirely.

[Phred]

Blizzard has ALWAYS done sly little things to bait people who wouldn't otherwise be interested into getting involved in PvP.  Making PvP gear attractive to PvE players is just a more blatant version of that philosophy.  WHY they do this, I can only speculate as my crystal mind-reading thingy broke last week.  My guess is it's probably a mixture of reasons having to do with players providing content for each other plus a desire to reduce queue times and such.  But THAT they have always done this is very apparent, at least to me, my wife, and several friends, all but one of which never PvP, have NO interest in PvP, and thus are very annoyed every time Blizzard tries to trick/tempt or otherwise manipulate us into a PvP situation. 

Ya, I wouldnt have pvp'd at all if they hadn't put the best ammo in the game on a pvp rep vendor and I really only did av until I could buy the bullets.

That said, I find it ironic as well as both sad and amusing that in this particular case, Blizzard's attempts to get more people involved in PvP actually has a negative impact on the play experience of the people who really want to PvP!  Generally it's to the benefit of the wolves to recruit as many sheep into their game as possible.  But in this case the sheep can, in very limited circumstances, ruin the play experience of the wolves instead of vice-versa.  Good for them!  But too bad the team/sport PvPers get screwed the worst in the process.

The lesson I wish Blizzard and all MMO developers would learn is, don't try to force (or "encourage" or "trick" or "convert" or any other manipulation)  PvE people into trying PvP.  It's like trying to teach a pig to sing.  It's doomed to fail and will only result in annoying the pig and frustrating the teacher!

Revenge of the sheep. Many people play the game for different reasons. I play to see and kill new things, others play to maximize their potential gear for their character. Others play for the fun of PvP. Snidely telling one group they are playing the game wrong just makes you look like an asshole.

[Count Nerfedalot]

That said, I find it ironic as well as both sad and amusing that in this particular case, Blizzard's attempts to get more people involved in PvP actually has a negative impact on the play experience of the people who really want to PvP!  Generally it's to the benefit of the wolves to recruit as many sheep into their game as possible.  But in this case the sheep can, in very limited circumstances, ruin the play experience of the wolves instead of vice-versa.  Good for them!  But too bad the team/sport PvPers get screwed the worst in the process.

The lesson I wish Blizzard and all MMO developers would learn is, don't try to force (or "encourage" or "trick" or "convert" or any other manipulation)  PvE people into trying PvP.  It's like trying to teach a pig to sing.  It's doomed to fail and will only result in annoying the pig and frustrating the teacher!

Revenge of the sheep. Many people play the game for different reasons. I play to see and kill new things, others play to maximize their potential gear for their character. Others play for the fun of PvP. Snidely telling one group they are playing the game wrong just makes you look like an asshole.

er, what?  The only group I claim to be playing the game wrong are the wolves who get their jollies ganking sheep, something that really only barely applies in very restricted circumstances in WoW. (see numerous other debates about PvP where the terms wolf, sheep and gank are defined)   Oh, I guess I'm also willing to say the sheep who find themselves compelled to participate in PvP out of lust for the shinies only available there but who do it in a way that deliberately ruins the fun for everyone else there for the PvP are playing the game wrong.  How that makes me look like an asshole escapes me, but oh well. I think that term is more appropriate for anyone who gets their jollies by deliberately ruining someone else's day in a frikking game.

[Morat20]

er, what?  The only group I claim to be playing the game wrong are the wolves who get their jollies ganking sheep, something that really only barely applies in very restricted circumstances in WoW. (see numerous other debates about PvP where the terms wolf, sheep and gank are defined)   Oh, I guess I'm also willing to say the sheep who find themselves compelled to participate in PvP out of lust for the shinies only available there but who do it in a way that deliberately ruins the fun for everyone else there for the PvP are playing the game wrong.  How that makes me look like an asshole escapes me, but oh well. I think that term is more appropriate for anyone who gets their jollies by deliberately ruining someone else's day in a frikking game.

I didn't play AV for the honor grind, or the shinies -- hell, my main still doesn't have a damn single piece of honor gear (I do have a piece or two of AV rep gear). I played AV because I could go PvP 40v40 just by queuing up, and I fond it less frustrating than AB or WSG -- where, if I was PvPing properly, I was generally guarding a flagroom or stables, because lord knows, no one else is. In AV, you tended to have a lot more fighting around flags, so I got my PvP joneses playing either O or D.

And heck, in old AV, I rather enjoyed doing the turnins and the like -- defending SH generally netted you a lot. :)

New AV? Clusterfuck. I've stopped queuing. It's either a 45 minute grindfest near SH, in which case we've lost and the whole alliance knows it so people AFK out, or it's a race to Drek/Van -- which I've seen like twice in the last few weeks. Once we're fighting near the SH flag, the game is lost. No "strategy" is going to fix that, as 30  horde is enough to keep 40 Alliance bottled around SH GY -- and the other 5 to 10 are plenty to keep stealth teams from fully flipping a GY or tower  (and no stealth team is going to take Galv). A 45 minute game that's everyone knows is lost for the bulk of the game, resulting in no honor?

Not my idea of fun. I'd prefer just to go do a Crossroads raid.

[Threash]

I dont see how defending sh could possibly ever help.  You can't defend the bunker, horde get there first and their gy is almost as close to it as ours so if you make it a turtle at sh gy they win.  Theres no way alliance can get a single horde target if you start killing horde at sh gy and sending them back to ib gy, its simply impossible.  The only alliance wins ive seen lately is when the offense rushes ibgy before galv and manages to hold it and theres enough defense at sp gy to hold off the horde o until we manage to catch up to their two tower advantage, nothing else works.

[Morat20]

I dont see how defending sh could possibly ever help.  You can't defend the bunker, horde get there first and their gy is almost as close to it as ours so if you make it a turtle at sh gy they win.  Theres no way alliance can get a single horde target if you start killing horde at sh gy and sending them back to ib gy, its simply impossible.  The only alliance wins ive seen lately is when the offense rushes ibgy before galv and manages to hold it and theres enough defense at sp gy to hold off the horde o until we manage to catch up to their two tower advantage, nothing else works.

Mind you, the honor from that win is shit too.

Horde spoils that easily enough -- all they need to do is drop back, fuck your Zerg at Iceblood. With the tower and the narrow path to IB flag (not to mention the cover from their GY to flag) 10 Horde can break an Alliance Zerg of 20 to 25. And of course, if anyone tries Galv it's lost -- 5 Horde run in there, fuck the tank, and Galv kills everyone. Since Alliance rarely has Snowfall flipped at that point, everyone is rezzing at SP which means the Horde just roll, turn SF and hit SH from two directions.

[Fordel]

One big problem about Snowfall is it's still a 5 min cap since it's 'neutral' at the start. All the other graveyards are 4 mins.

[Threash]

Alliance should get sf at the start, that would make things even.

[Morat20]

Alliance should get sf at the start, that would make things even.

Not really -- a single horde running by would contest it.

The real problem is two-fold. The primary problem is that the Horde and the Alliance reach SH bunker/GY/Balinda at pretty much the exact same time. That used to not be that big a deal, but since the Horde can grind out a 600-0 win just by killing Balinda and destroying the bunker, it's pretty much fucked the game.

For parity, Alliance should be able to reach Iceblood tower when Horde hits SH. Distances are just wrong.

Secondarily, the weakness of Balinda and the stronger defensive nature of IB Tower/Galv/IB GY makes taking that trio of objectives a much harder nut to crack than taking the SH trio.

[Fordel]

Sadly, I don't see Blizz changing geometry in AV any time soon.

Shit, they haven't done it ever as far as I know. Moved some NPC's, removed some landmines, but the actual towers/bunkers and crap have never been adjusted at all.