I have to admit I'm a little selfish, but I love the new AV changes. Sure alliance lose ~50% of the time, but theres instant queues now and games last 10-15 minutes max, so honor gain is tremendous.

I LOVE the AV fix. We pretty much romp the alliance now in my battlegroup. It's like they were used to auto AV wins and now that it's fair number wise they don't know what to do. I always knew we were better :P

I believe the fix that the CMs were talking about are going to prevent this, I don't know if you have ever played Alliance, but Drek's room in comparison to Vander's is absolute hell for the average Alliance who has no clue to deal with, where as the Vander's is fairly easy to pull from (or was when I played :P)

Although saying this, it must be nice for you guys to be able to queue and know you'll win for the first time in a year or something :P

Vander's room is the size of Stranglethorn Vale.

The most irritating thing is that Drek is so much easier to defend- one horde with a fear bomb can stand in there and essentially stymie the alliance, because if anyone comes in and tries to attack him, you pull the entire room. When you try to defend Van, the horde just walk right in and kill you, and Van and the warmasters don't even notice.

AV is *greatly* improved, at least from the horde perspective. It's improved to the point that pugging for a few hours this weekend was actually enjoyable. We (horde) probably won 80% of the games I played. Usually we'd win or lose in 20 minutes and a win was worth ~600 honor. We ran some guild groups (queue on one, two, three, NOW!) in the evenings and were seeing 13 minute victories with 15 to 20 guildies + friends. We ran 10 or 15 people straight to SP, turned it, and turned the the first aid station before the alliance could respond. A couple warriors with competent healing make short work any unorganized resistance including marshals and Van.

The funny thing is that both bases are the exact opposite of their leader's room. The horde base is wide open, with plenty of room and fewer annoying mobs to aggro; meanwhile Drek's room is about as roomy as a Pinto. The alliance base, on the other hand, is cramped and full of people to aggro; in contrast, Van's room has plenty of space for killing alliance without aggroing anyone.

Heh, you are speaking about Random Alliance here, I just attempt to heal whatever tank pulls / picks up the mess that is created :P Although I did prefer pulling on Horde, seems as you don't have to pick up those stupid elites if there are no idiots around you, but we're speaking randoms ;D You also have to remember that due to how stupidly 'balanced' AV was before this, the Alliance didn't have to learn anything, because they was at such an advantage >_<

Just going to be interesting to see how they fix the rooms / NPCs, any ideas anyone :P?

The elites to the south, closest to the aid station flag, can be skipped while turning the graveyard, and pugs manage to avoid them. However the horde graveyard guards will agro these elites.

I also don't think I've seen a pug horde group successful avoid agroing the mobs by the blacksmith for the whole duration of marshal pulls.

That being said, the AFK reporting is probably the single largest effect I've seen on AV games. The people AFKing in the tunnel weren't the worst players on the team, they're probably somewhere in the top 20 when they actually play. The effect was much larger than fixing the path going outside the tower and in the waterfall gate to the graveyard, or jumping into north bunker.

How does that "one horde" come back and defend drek once he gets killed?

I never played the alliances side of AV, so I wouldn't know the difference between two sides. But with common sense, it is rather easy to kill that single or several hordes that hide inside drek's room, and then you can rez quickly and come in and take care business.

Well, it depends what graveyards you've capped. A single fear can wipe your entire offensive force (as can a single bad pull, which is more often the case). If you're running all the way back from IB, that's plenty of time for another random horde to get in there and ruin your pull again.

The only thing I've really noticed, other than the lack of AFK tunnel people (thank you for this) is horde are pulling off the "creative pull" on Van about twice as fast as they used to, resulting in anywhere from 12-15 minute wins for them. Honor is about the same for both sides so I'm not really complaining though.

Moving Vans WM out another 5-6 feet would solve this, or make their aggro radius larger.

The alliance base IS harder for horde to get through (I've played both), but once you're at Vans room, grats you just won, alliance still have to kill all the WM in order to even pull Drek.

The moment you even get LOS on any horde in Drek's room, the entire room aggros on you. With Van, you can walk in, throw a party, and none of the guards will aggro.

Common sense has nothing to do with it- it has to do with the positioning of the wm and aggro radius.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to pull Drek without aggroing the warmasters in the first place.

What does that have to do with anything? Horde cannot solo-pull Vandarr unless the only 2 marshalls are on the far ends of the room. Its the same strategy, pull, go evade bug the marshalls/warmasters, tank the boss behind the wall.

The fix to the "boss" pull is really have them both have the "calls for help" action like various mobs have that calls other mobs to the area, only for them it works with the marshals. Have it go off every 5% (95%, 90%...).

WoW Forums -> If Horde winning every BG is acceptable

You wouldn't even need to mirror map it (boring), just have it randomly pick a side for the alliance/horde to start on, and swap the NPC. They don't have to design a new map, and gives people who have never played the other faction a "new" feel to it. And lets both sides get to know the good and bad of each base.

Normally its 2-3. Simply its impossible to get los on a Horde inside dreks room without pulling everything. By the time you do kill them its only 60 seconds before they are back and a player on the ground does not have los on anybody who is off the "wood" ramp. For example i quite happily stymied alliance with a hunter and a frost mage on my 54 undead priest for 30 mins 3 weeks ago. In 30 mins they not once succesfully got a single pull, It was always 4+drek and if it looked like they were succesfully offtanking then simply a suicide run out and fear bombing was enough, I died 4-5 times but port, fearbomb before players even load and I would be back in dreks room. Its also possible to climb the wall at the back of Dreks room and hide behind the pillar.

Pre 2.2 the "slow" games where horde blamed alliance for farming them and slowing things down? Those are the games where you got to drek and realised you had a 68 warrior as your best "tank"

Does 1-2 players make a difference? I beleive so. With a bit of gear switching on my Paladin I can tank everything short of drek, I can even tank a Graveyards guards, kill them and and then cap. I can heal 2 warmasters or even tank 1 while healing myself plus a warrior tanking another. Queues lined up so we had me and a Paladin tank capable of tanking 4 warmasters. 5 wins in a row all <20 mins.

Well, if they do all that, AND lower the Honor you get, then Alliance in the older Battlegrounds are going to never be able to get any real honor. Plus people will stop queuing as the battles will last too long for anyone to see it to the finish.

Simply put. Altering a BG take time, effort, and creativity that Blizzard just doesn't have on staff anymore. They fire all their thinkers for drones that just scrape by on upkeep.
Large scale "battles" have pretty much died in WoW since they moved towards arena. The War in WARcraft is not the center of focus anymore? It's sad, but this game has been shame spiraling PVP wise for quite some time.

I would love to see them revamp old BGs and add new ones with good rewards that aren't just to do Arena with, but sadly I doubt it'll ever be seen.

Clearly, the Alliance winning nearly every AV was acceptable for how long? It's quite pathetic how now that things are even and the Horde win (it's not our fault we have better players, which is made obvious now) the Alliance goes running to mommy (Blizzard) for tissues.

Did I stumble onto the WoW forums?

No, I'm afraid you didn't. I think you need to wake up (not sure what time zone you are in, maybe one where it's 5 am?) and realize what I said is not QQ'ing or complaining, or whining, or whatever you may think it is that would make you call it a WoW forum type of reply. Might as well go up and down this thread and flag various other people for simply stating their opinion on things.