The choke point at Stormpike Graveyard needs to be fixed.

The lack of a choke point at Frostwolf Graveyard needs to be fixed.

In my opinion those are the real problems.

Pretty horrible changes overall unless AV group queue is brought back in. I don't think Blizzard realizes how stupid the majority of their customers are.

Even though some of those changes might be good , i just can't believe they didnt fix the fence-jumping spots on the horde-side base yet.

WoW BlueTracker: Bring back "Join as a group" in AV.

Although this change is rather awesome, I'm going to REALLY love this as Alliance... Oh wait, another BG to be slaughtered in due to my incompetent 'team-mates' running around being idiots/themselves -_-

I really would love to play this as Horde though :P

I think you put a little too much faith in the average horde player

Outside of the first AV weekend (where I did win probably 60% of the games) the place has generally been filled with the usually assortment of retards and lemmings horde side and I haven't won a single game since the weekend. Most of the time I spend soloing or duoing the elites just to get them done.

From a Horde perspective and having to defend towers now, I would really like a non-stupid version of them, but on the other hand Alliance might have a real bad time attacking Galvager with a dedicated defense team there.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but it's hard to say how it will all balance out before we know how quick games are and how much the new system will impact the honor gain (in conjunction with the extra honor tagged to the end of the other three battlegrounds). If it takes too long get games decided with too much defense it might revert back to Alliance and Horde riding past each other at the Field of Strife racing to get to the enemy base first.

Hopefully we'll get to see in a month or so (yes, I'm an eternally optimistic soul).

The reinforcement system is no different than a game like battlefield. You die you lose a ticket. This will allow teams to win or lose without even killing the general.

Perhaps "penalty to your team when you die" was a poor way of phrasing it. "Getting closer to victory for killing the other team's players" is more the idea behind the change. They simply score it in a way that you lose points everytime the opposing team kills one of your team mates.

Personally, I quite like the idea of each "life" in a BG not being almost entirely disposable. Currently, the main penalty for dying in a BG is simply not getting the HK you would have had you killed whoever killed you. (Dying while carrying the flag, etc, notwithstanding.)

I think the changes are excellent, and I look forward to trying the revamped AV. Currently, most games are simply a rush past the opposing team to zerg down the General. Now, the balance between offense and defense can be weighed with a much keener eye for strategy. Turtling could easily win the game now.

I'm excited.

What do they mean by reinforcements and what will losing them mean?

Are they a limited number of rezzes your side gets?

Reinforcements means the number of rezzes you get. So lets take some made up numbers. Lets say you have 1500 reinforcements that means your entire team can die up to 1500 times.

So losing reinforcements means that you have less times you can die and come back. So losing Belinda or Galv now is a big loss, along with the towers.

Neth wasn't particularly specific, but it would seem that each side starts out with a set number of "Reinforcements". Let's say it's 1000.

Each time the other team kills one of your players, you lose 1.

Each time the other team destroys a tower, you lose a significant amount (say 100 for the sake of example).

If the other team kills your captain, you lose a significant amount (say 100)

If the other team kills your General, your "Reinforcements" are reduced to zero and you automatically lose.

As you can see, killing the general is still an instant win, but it is no longer the only way to win. If you turtle up and the other team continues to throw themselves at you, you could very well rack up enough HK's to win the game without capping a single tower or GY.

I'm interested to see how this plays out. I'm glad they're bringing back the focus to player versus player combat in AV.

Ah, either way I understand. For a second there I thought it might be tied to NPCs that help you or something.

If they really want to make AV have more strategery ;-) they should make it so you can also increase your reinforcements by doing stuff like running supplies from the mine to your base and such. That would give it a larger paradigm that the teams would have to decide how many they would devote to it.

Before, it took just too long and that is why nobody did them...that and you could easily skip those NPCs.

Haha, is this still true, given that the Horde is overrun by blood elves nowadays? I remember when I used to play an orc shaman on Horde pre-TBC, we almost never lost an AB. But I've heard that since TBC, 70% of new characters created on the Horde side are blood elves.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

ANY FACTION VS. ANY FACTION BATTLEGROUNDS

I'd say, Look Blizzard, you solved abysmal queues depending on faction and talent/racial disparity in the Arena by allowing whatever pops the queue to be pitted against eachother. If you really wanna stop treating battlegrounds like the red-headed stepchild, please implement the wonderful and obvious solution you have *ALREADY INVENTED* and works well.

What's wrong with blood elves? A blood elf player has already made a better choice than anyone that rolled troll (exaggerating but damn near true)

What the hell are you going on about? I don't care about who I am facing, I know that when I played Horde I would win 90% of PUG BGs, and as Alliance I currently lose 90% of them in my battlegroup. I have no real complaints in the system any more, I did the whole Rank 14 bullshit for 4 months. The only reason I commented is that this will now make the BG a waste on my battlegroup as Alliance, but should overall be an improvement for everyone ;p

Considering AB and EotS have 2000 resources as their goal, I would assume AV under the new changes would have each team start out at 2000 reinforcements. Granted we haven't been able to test the new AV out, but at first glance it seems like we will see a lot of stalemates at IB tower/SH Bunker or Galv/Balinda. I think Van and Drek might be left alone for awhile. However, I remember Blizzard posting that they wanted to re-implement group queuing for AV. With these new changes and 40man premades I can see some epic battles that would be quite fun.

The point system is just a timer so games won't last forever, its highly doubtful that people will die 2000 times before the usual game is over.

We don't know what the starting Reinforcement amount will be, nor how many reinforcements are lost per tower, captain, etc.

If the starting amount is 500 and towers/captains are worth 50 each, then the team that rushes headlong into a well-defended choke point will lose by attrition. I somewhat doubt it will be as high as 2,000, unless capping towers/NPC's is worth a very large amount of points (say, enough to add up to 1500 without killing the General, meaning it would take 500 HK's to win the game without killing the General and with capping all points, killing the captains, etc.)

If you're going to be penalised for dying, am I wrong to think they need to fix the geography around Stormpike and the Bridge of Death, otherwise Horde are getting shafted?

They are removing the swarm of elite NPCs in the base so it should be easier to break through. Also, you don't have to take the bridge. I imagine you'll see a lot of horde also turtling up and killing alliance all day.

I think there are some bad changes there.
You shouldn't die anymore, so
-Healing gets more important wich is an advantage for horde, because most horde paladins are healers where alliance shamans are mostly not healers.
-Mana regeneration gets much more important, you cann't burn your mana and kamikaze (AE'ing into enemys) anymore.
-Destructive players have an easier job loosing the game because of the WM pull changes and the can lower the "Reinforcement count" running directly into horde again and again.
-When one of the factions count gets critical they will stop attacking and just deffing. When both teams have a low count the match can stuck with both teams deffing and not want to risk kills.

When you loose counts when you loose a graveyard or tower, you also should get additional counts for (sucessfully) capturing GYs and towers.

I'd suggest to make the starting area for the teams randomly, so that horde has a 50% chance to start in the alliance base, this would stop the complaints about unfair layouts and make the matches more variativ.

Additionally they should allow Horde<->Horde and Alliance<->Alliance matches like in Arena.