I've played this 5 times now, all games have been severely under populated (I assume due to time after release and playing at weird times). The net seemed very sparse on info so a few questions/comments:

Over all it seem very fun if unfinished, the armor quest seems to have disasterously bad drop rate and as far as I can see, uncontested defending is very dull. I also couldn't hand in quests unless the game was running which may be a 1 off bug but not played enough to know yet. So far after 5 games I'm on only 4 player kills, would be nice if there could be some way to do that if opposing team won't play. I get no arena points for winning either way.

Do you get marks if you show up late ? (suspect you do) haven''t risked this yet.
Is there a way to accelerate the game if you are defending and none attack ?
Is there anyway to get told when the next game is away from Dalaran or Wintergrasp itself?

Just for record I've so far sucessfully defended me vs 2. lost attacking versus 8 alliance who stayed in big pack whole time in vehichles, and won 3, 2 defending and 1 attacking with no enemy players at all.

I was wondering, does Wintergrasp start at the same times every day? It would be nice if there was a schedule you could follow so you know when to show up.

Wintergrasp has a two-hour or so "cooldown" when the game ends. While the game does have a preset end time (I think it's 45 minutes), it can end sooner than that. It would be nice if hovering over Wintergrasp on the map would show you the time remaining until the next game. There is a timer IN the zone displaying the next game, but that's a slight pain (especially given its No-Fly nature).

The zone is going to be somewhat dead for another week until the bulk of players hit 80.

From whenever the game itself ends, there's a 2:30 cooldown until the next match. If the defenders win, matches take 35 minutes. If the attackers win, the game takes however long it took them to win.

• You definitely get marks if you show up mid-battle. All that matters is that you get some kills.
• You can find out the timer by going to the guy in Dalaran by the BG portals and talking to him; he opens a portal to wintergrasp.

Bugs I've noticed:

• DO NOT GO IN THE PORTAL FROM DALARAN IF YOU ARE A FEMALE TAUREN. You get trapped inside a tower that you can only escape by being feared out or using something like intercept/ to get to someone you're dueling outside and even that's a little hit and miss. Baby Spice and Deviate Fish do not help. I don't know about druid forms or ghost wolf.
• Walls sometimes rebuild themselves. I don't know if this is a 'bug' per se, but it's definitely not a documented feature.
• Rank 3 is unattainable. I have yet to see a single plane.
• The east and west siege camps are buggy; sometimes they are both controlled by the defender at the start, sometimes they're both controlled by the attacker at the start.

My best attempts at strategery:
-If you're an attacker, get a bunch of demolishers or siege engines+gunners and zerg a wall segment. If the defenders all stack up at the choke point, make another hole somewhere else. Ignore death, it means nothing, all that matters is getting the walls down. Engineer explosives are insultingly worthless, even the goblin engineer exclusive ones. If you don't have access to demolishers/siege engines, get a catapult and attack turrets. Once you see the giant orb at the heart of wintergrasp, it's like capturing a flag in any other BG. Everyone needs get their asses there right now; do everything you can to cc/snare/root the defenders. One guy is all it takes to cap it.

-If you're a defender and do not have the siege camps, do not leave your base at the start under any circumstances. They can't make vehicles until they get kills, so just sit in your base and let the timer run; [edit]They can also get kills from Horde NPCs, but at least you aren't making the process go faster than it really needs to. It's ok to start leaving once they have demolishers/siege engines [edit] although you may want to just stay inside and plink; the cannons are better than any siege weapon. I'm not sure what should be done if you DO control both siege camps; so far, sitting in the keep and plinking seems to be the better strategy, but I think an argument could be made in favor of an early assault to knock the attackers flat.

edits: Twice for continuing to be wrong.

I wandered into a game that only had 25 minutes left and got all marks and victory honor, so this looks like Yes.

I don't see any way for a defender to speed up a win though. You can pretty much ensure any horde that show up late will lose, but no way to speed it up.

I've also yet to see any flying machines or shredders.


Has anyone been able to actually hit anything with the RP-GG's yet? I've tried them a few times and the only thing I seem to be hitting is the dang ground. The Turrets on the other hand, those can be absolutely devastating to any attackers. They do splash damage inside their target reticule, with fall off as you reach the outer ends of the circle. So poorly aimed shots just tickle people for a few hundred damage at a time, but dead center bulls eye hits, I've seen them go as high as 4000+ damage. I probably average around 2000 damage on moving targets currently

Also Note: Turrets are 'vehicles' in that the operator is safe until the turret itself is destroyed, so don't try to run up to one point blank, the operator will blow your behind straight to the moon in seconds.

I've played a couple of Wintergrasp games since Sunday, and these are my observations:

- Quest NPCs seem hit or Miss inside the keep. While wintergrasp is underway, I can pick up the Victory in Wintergrasp and Defend the Keep quests, but at other times those NPCs are gone. When we dont control Wintergrasp, sometimes the NPCs are our faction flight master (I think there is only one) sometimes doesnt have all the NPCs.

- On Garona, there is a very lopsided Alliance to Horde ratio. As such, most of the time we have Tenacity, and in large amounts (20 stacks, 12 stacks etc). If you have Tenacity, go on the offensive to the closest siege engine forges and just plow them sideways. It works well and it's more fun than just simple staying in the keep. On the few occasions where we have had low stacks of tenacity, our defenses have been successful when we grabbed 2-3 Catapults and parked them just on the rises out of the vehicles shops, pelting incoming siege tanks and demolishers.

- The most successful offense strategy I have seen is to have multiple groups of vehicles on each side of the base taking down walls. As warcraft players are prone to do, they will zerg one side and the other is left undefended for a bit, until the zerg returns.

- The ranking buff and assocated rewards are confusing, and either buggy or not well understood. Sometimes I will kill 1 NPC and become a Corporal, other times 1 NPC kill yields me to First Lieutenant. Both seem to offer the same rewards, and at neither rank can I kill enough alliance to move up another rank. It may be a populated based ranking, and with the low turnouts on my server, no one is getting high enough for aircraft and what not.

Things I haven't seen mentioned yet:

There's a series of buffs that increase honor gain as well as your final honor reward by a percentage; I've seen 25% and 75%. I suspect 50% exists, and there's one for 100% listed on wowhead. Lok'tar - Spell - World of Warcraft and Lok'tar ogar! - Spell - World of Warcraft. I don't recall the name of the 25% buff; I'll look for it tonight. I have yet to determine what triggers/advances/removes these and any observations would be welcome.

I believe tenacity's effect caps at 12 stacks or 300% health/health regen/healing taken; I didn't catch it going any higher when stacked up to 14 or 15, but I've only had one chance to see it this high and may be remembering incorrectly.

In most of the battles I've seen, the attacking force has started with control of the two workshops closest to the keep. Last night I and a few others arrived to the field early, and we (the defending force) had them. I recall a mention somewhere of the attacking force's resources being increased for the next round after a failed assault, which I suspect is the cause here but it could be bug/initial presence related.

Once you've got the final door down and the orb room is open, catapult zerging is an excellent way to clear the place of defenders for a cap. Before that point I think you'd be better off making sure all of your demolishers and siege vehicles have gunners.

Keep cannons are very powerful, but I've yet to see a single successful defense. Unless the attacking force has so few people that they can't field a full 16 vehicles, my impression so far is that you're going to have to get out there and take a workshop or two; a full fleet of vehicles is going to take your walls down faster than you can kill them. As offense, my inclination is to farm rank on NPCs until you have someone who can crank out the second level vehicles for your team. Sending catapults against the keep is too slow to be productive.

Edit: Proper pluralization is hard.

I can confirm that going into forms doesn't help. Cat form, bear form, moonkin form, either way you're not getting out.

However, when I tried using the auto-unstuck feature, instead of getting teleported back to Dalaran I got bumped out of the room onto the ledge outside. So give that a shot if you're stuck.

I've run into my first real complaint/flaw. The 'Tenacity' buff to help the underpopulated side in the zone? It doesn't actually care if the overpopulated side is made up of AFK'ers, Miners and Farmers.

I've had a few games now, where the number of people actually fighting over the keep was within 1-2 players either way, but the other side got a big Tenacity boost because another dozen people were just farming/gathering in the zone.

So we had 'even' numbers for the actual PvP action, but the other side was virtual Raid bosses in terms of HP and Damage. I don't see any way to actually win with that situation



It's not like the farmers actually care one way or the other, they still get their motes/ore/herbs etc.


-edit- forgot a word.

The best solution to that problem that I have read is that 5 minutes before until 5 minutes after, all elementals despawn for the conflict. That gives farmers 2 hours and 20 minutes to farm whatever materials they want, but while Wintergrasp is underway, those elementals do not spawn.

That way when the time comes to play, you either leave to zone or participate to make the fight end sooner.

As for the Tenacity buff, I'll link this screenshot: http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6...8002558yv2.jpg

The Tenacity buff maxes out at 20 stacks (which I've had before, it's incredibly hilarious):

- Health increased by 500%.
- Healing Taken increased by 500%.
- Health Regen increased by 500%.
- Damage Dealt increased by 360%

Just for clarification, the game ends when an attacker channels the orb for 10 seconds or do they just have to click it and it's done?

The quest Concerted Efforts - Quest - World of Warcraft was changed to take SOTA marks instead of AV marks.

Duh, i'm dumb. That was wintergraps marks you meant.

There's a ten second "casting time", during which any damage will break the use and require the attacker to restart.

I assume it's subject to the usual methods of interrupting flag caps, Channeled AOE won't work after the first hit etc etc?

Ran into an issue this weekend in Wintergrasp:

I joined a game late where we (the alliance) were on offense. After winning the event the raid dungeon opened up. We quickly smashed together a 10 man to try our hand at the Vault of Archavon. However we couldn't actually try the dungeon as a couple people went outside (back into the keep area) or back to Dalaran to get healing gear, etc and got locked out of the keep and instance lobby area.

Does anyone know the ins and outs of this bug yet? I know I read that the winner's faction was supposed to be able to access the raid for a certain length of time after the victory, but it doesn't seem to be working out this way now.

Might be their Wintergrasp buff dropped off for some reason, had it bug out a few times yesterday in heroics, where half the group was able to pick up Stonekeeper's Shards, and half the group couldn't. Bets are the requirement to enter is having the buff.

The defender portals were non-functional. Sorry to have left that out in my original post. The only thing we couldn't try was a warlock summons.

I'm willing to bet that the 'Essense of Wintergrasp' buff is the key to all this. I'll be attempting several more runs this week and see what kind of data I can bring back here.

I found that battle timer running out initiates a very confusing sequence of events. It seems to intention is to disable vehicle shops. What seems to happen when the timer stops (from an losing attacker POV, basically because Ally only started arriving when the Dalaran NPC yelled about final five minutes):

- Walls start to behave awkardly, tending to rebuild themselves.
- When you breach a wall and get in, your vehicle gets ported out
- Whoever is left inside (without a vehicle) finds mobs that are still killable (although they seemed to start evading at times).
- We were not awarded any mark, nor did we even receive any sort of notification of a game ending. It just sort of petered out into nothingness.

If the portals bug out - which they often tend to do for some reason - you can get around them somewhat with a variety of ways - if one of your raidmates has a passenger mount such as the motorcycle or mammoth, you can position the mount to be parallel with the door, and after exiting the passenger seat of either mount you'll be on the inside of the door.

You can also duel each other and blind/fear/polymorph/etc each other through the door - having a Warlock can speed this up a little bit.

On this note, be wary of fearing enemy invading players near that door, I feared one and he ran inside, through the door. I luckily was able to get inside and kill him before he could channel the orb, but that would be an easy way to lose unexpectedly.

I have seen the portal bug several times on my server, it seems like the transition from one side to the other does not fully take place, the opposing venders will still be inside and you can't use the portals. Thus, once the doors reset you can't get in. Basically if you want to do Archavon be sure to get inside immediately after taking over and always have wipe protection and a warlock just in case.

If you wipe to Archavon you really don't deserve a second chance.

The majority of the LWG bugs are caused by control of LWG switching over. The vendor bug, the portals bug, the inconsistency in who holds the siege shops are all caused by this. If you win LWG twice in a row none of these bugs occur but if you take control from the opposing faction they all do.

Also, concerning LWG battle announcements, there are warnings yelled in Dalaran when there are 15 minutes and 5 minutes until the game starts as well as one when it begins.