I've been a big fan of the battlegrounds produced thus far, even AV in it's infancy. They were a change of pace, a new way to pass the time in game without spending hours farming mobs endlessly burning away the 1 through 3 keys. But the latest conception has been nothing but one large disappointment after another. It probably started sometime in the first 30 seconds of my very first match when a mage blinked through the 'wall' and ran off to cap a tower unopposed. Perhaps I thought Blizzard had learned their lesson with shaman in AB, indeed I was mistaken.

My joy quickly diminished when I realized that the new method of capping world towers was mimic'ed within EOTS. I was a fan of the flag system, fighting down a group of freshly spawned players so that an undead priest hidden under a kodo would ninja out the flag before respawns. This new deviation on that system greatly forces and promotes the zerg mentality. 5 people trying to take a tower from 3 defenders can be held what seems an indefinite amount of time. Either the graveyards are too close to the 'main contest area', or the spawn rate is too fast for a system whereby numbers, not a single objective is needed.

It only got worse tonight when I zoned in with some shifty eyed Mal'Ganis mages. Not only were two mages blinking through the shield, but by the time we were out and across the map the mage had capped the flag more than 5 times. I thought at first all the sirens (whatever that noise is when the flag gets dropped) was just them taunting us, till I realized the score was already to 500 to 0, 3 minutes (including the prep time) in. Exploits ho:

http://chuckg.org/dump/2007/eotsexploit.jpg

Icing on the cake. For those interested, I've made a thread on the official WoW forums in hopes something can be hotfixed in. I'm not sure I'll queue up for EOTS again after I get the 30 marks for some armour I'd like, it's a frustrating dump of time (unlike WoW, WoW is the best use of time ever). Is there anyone out there that does like it?

Mages? :D

I daresay that using this exploit is a good way to get your account suspended. I play a mage myself and used said exploit once, after which I reported it.

Anyway - I think that Eye of the Storm brings some different tactical aspects to the game. You still have to manage your numbers the same as in AB, but it's not possible for single people to ninja flags anymore - or at least not in the drastic way that was possible in AB. I also always found it very frustrating to have a single player defend a flag against an overwhelming force for much longer than he should be able to, just by interrupting the flag capturing, and doing nothing else but that. Of course, it's fun for that player, but it also makes defending much more powerful than offense. I think this is somewhat remedied in EotS, since the difference of players of each faction in capturing distance of the tower actually determines which way the tower is going, and not some mage or paladin jumping around popping various AoE spells to delay the capturing. It also shifts the focus of the battle away from crowd control somewhat, and more towards the actual fighting (one of my major griefs with Warsong Gulch - CC is king).

I think Eye of the Storm is different from AB, and I like it that way. I can't wait to have some premades battles in EotS and employ some tactics, such as keeping the flag from the enemy but not capturing it until enough towers are owned, and the flag spawn has been secured. For now, I have 100 Eye of the Storm Marks of Honor saved up - the difficult part is getting enough honor to actually buy something useful.

It's a very fun battleground, other than the way every opposing group in my battlegroup seems to contain a minimum of 6 warlocks and the aforementioned blink-through-shield issue. I think everyone who does it gets reported, though, so it's a good way to get rid of silly exploiters if Blizzard break out the ban stick.

Mostly because it actually promotes fighting (zerg or not).

AV has long since been tuned to the point where many people will actively avoid fighting the other side, and it is indeed best that the majority of your side goes on offence vs NPCs and does not face too many human opponents.

WSG is completely not about killing other people and is completely about incapacitating people and moving on as fast as possible. Midfield fighting in WSG = lose, as we all know.

AB is the closest to EotS in style, and naturally enough also the only other battleground in which there is a decent amount of fighting, but again, the emphasis on clicking nodes shifts the emphasis from "fight" to "incapacitate" a lot of the time.

Maybe they need to tune respawn time or GY placement, but overall I am solidly behind a BG which you win via your guys beating their guys (whether at towers or for control of the flag spawn). Looking forward to playing more once the blink bug is fixed.

Yeah, bugs aside the only real complaint I have is the huge tower capture area and that you can't use flying mounts in the lvl 70 version. 8(

It'll become annoying in the same way that AB/WSG did after roughly 100 reps of it but there's hardly anything they can do about that.

This battleground seems to have been designed with the sole purpose of preventing one team from dominating another.

You can take the worst mismatched teams, games that would never last more than 4 minutes on AB/WSG and they will still last around 15 minutes in this battleground.

This battleground is designed as the source of honor/marks for pugs. For what its worth they seem to have suceeded but I am not sure how much people will want to play this BG 2-3 months from now.

My real only gripe is the fact that at least at the Fel Reaver Ruins, you can defend the node while sitting in the graveyard. There's no tactical reason to not just stand in it. There's also nodes that are significantly shorter to cap the flag at - the mage tower stands out in this regard.

I have noticed a meat grinder type phenomenon in pugs - namely that its two 13-15 man zergs that just run a circle from node to node, crushing the people in front of them and abandoning the nodes behind them.

I think it's too early to tell which way this place will go.

Despite anything else, its really nice to have a new environment to fight in. A face-lift to the other bgs would be really nice.

That really sums it up pretty well.

I was extremely disappointed to see that they used Blizzard's new proximity location capturing system. While this system makes sense in world PvP to prevent players from riding up to a tower unflagged, then just pulling the flag, it doesn't make any sense in BG PvP. The AB/AV capturing mechanism was much better because it allowed both ninja capturing by small, skilled groups and flag defense by small, skilled groups against uncoordinated zergs. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to stealth up to an EotS tower, gank some AFK defender, then have to sit around for 2 minutes, unstealthed, while the tower slowly transitions. Once the opposing team realizes this, its a joke to retake it. Either I stealth when I see them coming, and stop making capture progress, or I stay unstealthed while they ride up and DOT/nuke me from afar.

The idea of merging CTF with King of the Hills seemed cool, until they put the flag on a narrow bridge. It is far to easy for ranged classes to AOE massacre any melee dumb enough to approach proximity of that flag. The only way to reach them, is move through that choke point, or spend a minute riding around through another bridge. Haven't they learned anything from the Alliance base in AV about how ridiculously easy it is for ranged classes to hold a bridge?

Finally, it is really frustrating having to deal with so many unclimbable slopes with relatively few LOS blocking objects. It is really easy for ranged classes to abuse the hills that the towers sit on. They can sit at the bottom picking people off. If you drop down to attack them, its an unreasonably long run around to get back up onto the hill.

How to make EotS actually fun:
1) Fix the Blink through the bubble bug
2) Fix the spam multi-cap bug
3) Change the tower capture mechanism to AB/AV style
4) Make the center bridge about 5 times as wide
5) Add more terrain/features that are usable to LOS, or make all sides of the tower hills scalable

That pretty much sums up my grievances with EotS. Its very tough to hold more than 2 towers simply because of the numbers aspect, which makes for games which are much longer than they need to be. I actually am enjoying the mage exploit atm since it shortens games considerably.

I think EoTS would be a lot more fun if you could use flying mounts. I mean I spent 5000g on this thing, and I can't even use it in battlegrounds. :(

And to those that thing it'd be unfair to people without epic flying mounts, how is it any different than normal ground mount vs epic ground mounts. It's not like you were forced to walk in WSG.

I haven't seen any exploits, but it seems like a very good source of honor points at least in PUGs. The map feels very small. The short distance between towers and flag spawn make running to the fighting and healing very easy.
Honestly, I also like the new setting... even if they had only added "WSG in space," I think I'd be happy. It's fun to see something new.