Ayle

(Besides the wait)

Does anyone think that the battleground just lasts for WAY too long. I know for two straight nights we've had fairly large groups of our guild enter the instance but after 5-6 hours people begin to leave and any advantage we had was quickly lost by new recruits. (We even had a guy today answer (level 60 for god sakes), TS? What is TS?.

Im sure that Tseng, Chocula and even Brownbread can attest to tonites battle. We had you guys pushed up hella far before we got that monster guard zerg after you killed our Forest Lord.

You then executed perfect strat in hitting 2 GY back and then pushing with the wolfriders eliminating another graveyard. Sadly before then half of our entering core guildmembers had left.

I think that whoever makes the instance (if entering with a group) should have a /kick option to boot players in the instance who just joined on happenstance.

All I know now is that my hands are cramped and aching and my eyes hurt....

 

Scorpio!

You know that blizzard makes the instances, and not you?

IT'S BEEN THIS WAY SINCE WC3.

 

Lilpoot

I like the length of AV during the day, but at night too many people fall asleep.

 

◊ Praetorian

Well, on the other hand, isn't it pretty cool that a side can really turn the tide of battle, and push back from a disadvantaged position? It'd be kind of boring if the first 30 minutes decided the outcome, and once one side lost a few objectives they would inevitably be on the retreat for the remainder. When you have some organization and skill on both sides, you naturally get a lot of back-and-forth and that makes it take a long time.

AV isn't always like that, though. I was in an instance tonight from the very start, and we won in roughly 2 hours. And 45 minutes of those 2 hours were spent at the damn Stormpike bridge (gg Lokholar + Reavers). But it was sort of a foregone conclusion what the outcome would be from fairly early on.

Although they can drag on for ages sometimes, those tend to be the most interesting ones in my experience.

But yeah, not really sure what the answer is. :/

 

Blam

It is pretty long right now. I've probably spent 15 hours in Alterac Valley since the patch and have only seen one battle actually resolved. I think the length of games will be reduced as people get more reputation with the frostwolf clan and know how to properly utilize the NPC attacks and quests.

 

◊ Kaubel

So far, I've only once spent more than 30 minutes in an AV instance.

Typically, it's been hours of waiting followed by a) me catching the ass end of the horde steamrolling the alliance or b) the instance shutting down because there aren't enough alliance playing to maintain it.

At least I'm perfect in WG. (4 wins, all 3-0)

 

Guest

I was on for 5 straight hours tonight trying to get into battlegrounds.

I got into warsong once. It was 10 horde composed of 8 different guilds, no one there had raidassist and I honestly feel nearly crippled in a group with no access to voice chat. Funny how we come to rely on things like that. With no readily available way to monitor the raid groups health, along with no one being able to effectively coordinate anything, we lost soundly 0-3

My raid group's levels ranged from 57-60, and the alliance group was composed of 10 level 60 Sons of Troy.

This is somewhat humorous though:

 

Slug

I'm torn on the issue, somewhat. I hate that I often can't get into one with friends and guildies after it has been open for a while, but I like that they can last so long, because it's cool to come in at a disadvantage then roll on the enemy. (Battlefield or any other capture point game is great that way.) Noone says you have to stay until it is won, but it does get tiring to never win.

I personally think there needs to be a hard-set Time Rotation on all BG's. CTF, AV, and all future ones should have set time limits. It should be long enough to allow people to have solid wars and win of their own accord, but it should be realistic enough to kill stalemates before they become a total bore.

I figure their system is such that it could be set to cycle people from that instance into a fresh new one, while adding in people who were queued to get into one. I can get onto a good CSS server and stay there for hours with some of the same people and various new ones as they rotate in and out. I have gobs of fun, but never get stuck on any one map for long enough to tire of it. At the same time, no map is ever over before I've had at least a decent bit of fun there.

For BG's to generate the same enjoyment of play that Blizzard is looking for, they'll need to set them up with a rotation of that sort eventually.

I feel AV, once balanced, should play like a good Tribes 2 map. It should last long enough to give everyone a good sense of having played part in a major war, but it should end within a timeframe that allows people to move into other games once it starts to get slow.

I think at the moment it's a tad too hard for either side to win, so even when one is outnumbered, it can still take aeons for the map to be finished. Being able to finish a round and start over is what makes most PvP style games work. (One of Planetside's major failing points was that the playing field was never reset, so you never had a sense of accomplishment for capping stuff and you also never got to start over on a fresh field.)

I feel it's important to allow for epic battles that wage on for hours, back and forth. I also feel it's important to allow (or force) someone to eventually win and restart the map. The problem at the moment is that there's not any seriously realistic ways to win AV if the sides are even partially matched with numbers and skill.

 

Brown Bread

Tell me about it..

It was a really hardcore battle and when Ivus evadebugged and healed to full from about 10-20% inside our base, not once but twice, I thought we were going to eat it. When we started the push and got Iceblood back we kinda figured a bunch of your guys left, its a shame but I am glad you guys didn't give up at all. You fought right to the end when we were inside fighting Vanndar and you were assaulting the Aid post.

Anyway off to bed its 9:30am (lol brit) and I will hope to see you in force again tommorrow.

Oh and those of you who haven't got a full game yet, just queue for it. It's so much fun, better than those pansy 20minute CTF matches ;)

 

Steelfleece

Personally, I love Alterac. I love long, hard-fought battles. I just wish I could get into a fresh instance now and then...

affect –verb (used with object) 1. to act on; produce an effect or change in
effect –noun 1. something that is produced by an agency or cause; result; consequence
Know the difference.

 

• Greybone

4 hours waiting yesterday then I started crying and went to bed

 

◊ Double-Neg

TS blows newbies.

Not on IRC?

 

Trimm

:ph34r:

You can't feed a baby onion rings.

 

EvanTH

I want to know how many CPs that guy who had 2500 kills from the 14 hour Alterac had

 

Falcon24

To be quite honest, what more can you guys do? It's my understanding that the way AV queues are currently set up, the side with the larger population is going to have a rag-tag group while the smaller side will be able to come in with a balanced and highly organized group. While this may seem advantageous in the beginning, it ultimately proves to be a factor that hurts you, because while the larger side (Horde) can continue to get new and fresh people, the smaller side (Alliance) are basically stuck for the long haul with their organized team, and once members of that group get tired and start leaving, it's downhill from there, because you start getting in replacements not in your raid or your ventrillo channel (I'm assuming you guys are using Vent). The strategy just falls apart from there.

Really, it's a sad situation but blame it on the way queues work. If we were allowed to create an instance using the "Join as Group" option rather than letting the queue wait for an equal number of the opposing side to join before creating one, then it'd be great. Personally I think it would be a slick idea if, say, EJ could create a 40-man raid and create their own instance, and then that instance is open for 10 minutes to allow Alliance to join (while blocking off the entrance tunnel to prevent early gathering, sort of how WG is blocked off in the beginning). It would probably solve a lot of problems and also lead to some fun match-ups, like a 40-man EJ vs 40 of you guys in a supremely organized and fast-paced game. As it stands I don't think we've gotten more than 20 EJ into one instance, it's horrible.

The matter boils down to the fact that we know that since your entire strength boils down to high group coordination, if we can outlast you then we win. It doesn't matter how disorganized the Horde side is, once your guys have to leave the battle is over, because we can just push back and take over the map.

Nonetheless, we appreciate you guys sticking through with it. I was there for roughly three hours, and when I left at around 11:30 server time (I can only play for 4 1/2 hours in the evenings these days), we were getting rocked by you guys. The whole three hours was just an incessant back and forth between Frostwolf and Iceblood GYs, with Ivus thrown in the middle, and despite getting smoked I was loving every second of it. If what BB says is true I think it's very commendable that you guys would stick with it to the very end even when losing, I know I would've done the same thing and continually tried to disrupt your attempts on our General.

Hopefully AV will be balanced in the future and the queue system will be improved, but right now we're all sort of suffering because of Blizzard's poor design.

Anyway, couple things on your own strats:

1. The mage AE suicide rushes are silly. I'm not sure exactly how well they worked in the great scheme of things (I'll grant that there were maybe 13 EJ and and a few Legend of Birds, the rest were random GS/SHM/other guilds), but I know whenever I saw one of your mages (you particularly Ayle :P) running in for a suicide rush, I'd just counterspell you and nuke you into the ground. Any mage or shaman with enough sense is just going to Counterspell/Earth Shock you and beat you into a pulp. PBAoE is a strat that really only works against morons, though there were probably a lot of those last night anyway.

2. This needs to end:



Seriously, stop. You guys have Anglakel, have him give you pointers or something. Shield+Consecration is the most retarded thing in the history of forever.

PS Ayle I looted your corpse and I have a bone chip in my bag. :3 I would've turned it in but you guys killed the Commander. >:(

 

Brown Bread

I got 22k from 2 wins and 1.7k HK

Oh and Yes shield + consecrate is laughable, paladin runs in and wastes his only lifeline and does about 120 aoe damage.
One of the things I like doing and I think we should do more is get all our shaman to put on lightning shield and step in a blizzard or flame strike for one or 2 ticks and see the mage take like 2000+ damage from them

 

Ashtelin

I am not 100% sure, and I can't speak for every Paladin, but I think they do that when they hear cloaky sounds, I am sure Anglakel could better educate you on it.

 

Guest

If I remember correctly, Ang didnt even bother picking up Consecrate.

I might be thinking of another paladin that posts here though

 

Brown Bread

Nice spit macro Falc

 

Falcon24

I had to keep it on there all the time to counter Anticloud and Raylen

 

◊ Kaubel

I've yet to see a pally in AV run in to consecrate and actually make it back out alive. It's like free CP!

 

Anglakel

I respeced to 31 holy 20 retribution and no longer have consecrate at all :-)

http://www.ctprofiles.net/1689539

 

Guest

Smart man.

Hell, knowing how that talent works on the receiving end, if I played a paladin, I wouldnt even drop 1 talent point into it if I was actually investing in whatever tree its in.

 

Bodom

Moiven is the pally that posts here that doesnt have consecrate.

Townsend as well I believe

O.B.S

 

Pheidippides

scary are the paladins who play as super hard brick walls with heals. unlike their shimmering glowy friends with spears made of marshmellows