aquacadet

Long story short I have leveled an alliance warrior on Zuluhed, and have decided it's time to move to a new server.

There are two main factors that lead me to this decision. First of all the population of zuluhed is incredibly tiny. Finding groups for non-heroics is a huge pain, and when you do find them the quality of player is very low. I've never wiped so many times in instances. Second my main is from Mal'ganis horde so I'm quite familar with the Stormstrike BG. I know how hard it is for the alliance to grind honor on our battle group. Alliance have not won an AV since 2.3 came out, and even though the queue times are instant it's not worth playing for the 20 bonus honor earned by the alliance most games.

What I am looking for is some server suggestions of medium to high population servers where the alliance are at least competitive in their battle group. I don't really know a lot about the infamous BG9 in terms of how balanced their AV games end up being, but that is where I started my search. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

• Calantus

BG9 is roughly in the same boat as stormstrike, though a little less severe from the queue times as our horde have ~1/2 hour less (or we just have more AFKers filling out the AVs). Depending on your luck you'll also run into a lot of AFKers in the other BGs. Basically we have a very strong AFK culture within alliance here, especially amongst the elite PVPers. I've seen many of our top arena players in BGs but I've never seen one of them actually play the BG. They are there for honor to gear up for arena and don't really care for it.

It's been deleted but Affix basically sums up the attitude in a reply to someone supposedly finding his AFK bot (look at the "Re: Affix-AFK.exe" replies): WoW Forums -> Post Search. Incase it's gone: "Because I AFK bot because BGs are for people with down syndrome."

So yeah, unless you can and want to play against the very best arena teams at the top of our BG it's not advisable to come here I'd say.

 

crimsonsentinel

You can try one of the larger servers on the cyclone bg, eg) crushridge, stormscale. The battlegrounds are all relatively even (except EoTS, which I have yet to win this month in a PUG). Little to no AFKers even in AV, and people still employ the rush strategy (as of a week ago: I haven't been on this AV weekend to see if it's any different).

As for finding 5 man PUG groups, I can't really help you for those servers. On daggerspine, which is a med-pop server you may have to wait a while esp. if you're looking to goto one specific instance but finding groups isn't impossible.

If you want raid progression, cyclone lags a little behind, most servers only have a couple illidan clearing guilds if any, with even the best topping off at around 4-5 per server (some servers are more biased towards the horde & vice versa for progression).

 

Solarion

My battlegroup (Nightfall, BG10) is fairly competitive. It's not uncommon for me, as Horde, to win nearly all of my games one night and lose most of them the next. Overall there's a Horde bias, but it feels to me to be 60:40 or so. As for PVE progression, I'm on one of the top servers in the battleground and we have roughly 5 Illidan killing guilds, most of which got him very recently.

 

Juli

Ruin is pretty good for alliance in AV. I'd say about 50-60% of the AV's I'm in alliance wins, and queues are usually about 5-7 mins. WSG/AB/EOTS pugs are all digusting failures though, but from the 4? different servers/battlegroups I've played on now (2 as horde), that's the norm. The battlegroup is also very large, which I believe is good for arena.

 

aquacadet

Many thanks for all the replies. I'll take a look at each of the servers you have mentioned.

 

Lavode

While this may be a bit out of left field - As a tank, I would very strongly suggest that you solve the problem of no decent groups for non-heroic instances by going to heroics instead. Buy Faith in Felsteel, cram it with solid stars, get the chest from the forgecamp questline in nagrand, the shield from the netherwing prequest, and the tank axe from the shadowmoon questline that starts with helping the orc farmer, a gyro-balanced khorium destroyer if you have the gold for it, -Then hit heroics.
You will suffer many fewer wipes this way because you will get much better groups on average. What the change in the heroic key rep requirement meant for normal instances at 70 is that the only people who want to go there now are the people who feel that their gear is shit (usually an accurate assesment), or that heroics are "too hard".. Which is not the people you generally want to group with.

 

KasumiRevy

Feathermoon has a high pop alliance server. The Cyclone bg is pretty even, as I have come in during several pugs in a row walking away without a lose, and then some days I can't get a win.

In addition the horde on feathermoon by and large are a great community, and make for some fantastic world pvp targets.

The one thing that may detour you, is the rp elements on feathermoon, but most never get past level 50, and just muck around the lower level zones.

I find my servers community rich, and skilled with plenty of stuff to do.

 

Philberr

I would not suggest anything in the Whirlwind battlegroup if you're concerned about PvP and losing BGs. The alliance of this BG seem to lose 90% of the time in any given BG. There just seems to be a lack of mature players on the alliance side, and now it's at the point where the alliance are fine with getting 5capped, 4capped, losing 3-0, and having Van killed within 5mins (exaggeration) of the start time.
From a PvE standpoint however, Lightbringer (the Whirlwind server I'm on) is a pretty good PvE environment. It's not that hard to find groups for heroics, though tanks are in relatively high demand.

 

• Freddie

I'll reinforce the "don't go to BG9" thing if you're alliance, I have some alliance alts and it is amazingly painful trying to get honour for welfare epics :\

Now playing Age of Conan in short intervals between crashes.

 

xarg

Yeah, horde on BG9 currently has a 1.5 hour wait for AV because alliance simply put do not win unless they're in a pre-formed, co-ordinated group. Generally getting very little to no honor for the game. At any given point in time approximately half of the alliance in the AV will be afk.

 

UnholY_Prince

BG9 isn't all its cracked up to be. Our AVs flip-flopped from pre-change. In the past it was Alliance winning every game, with long ques, and Horde just AFKing for honor, now its the exact opposite. Generally I find that Alliance rolls with more pre-forms in the other 3 BGs now because of AV, but when its PUG vs PUG, Horde will usually win. It's just often Pre-made vs PUG.

BG9 has a lot of good arena teams, but the BG scene is about the same as anywhere else.

 

aquacadet

I'm kinda leaning towards bg9 (mostly because of the level of activity of the arenas), but the whole AV things worries me. Is there a particular server that has a lot of alliance premades that you see?

 

Pamine

Is there really a server out there when alliance dominates? As someone who grinds several thousand honor every day, I can tell you that from the 30-50 BGs I do every day I win on average between 0 and 1. It's not uncommon to not have a single win in a day. The grind is unbelievably boring and slow. I've already decided to stop doing any BG once I finish getting my last piece, which is sad because I like BGs but not like this.

 

• Calantus

I can only speak for Frostmourne alliance and Blackrock horde but both are pretty heavy on premades. Frostmourne has a handful running constantly, most accept whoever and only 1 constant one has resilience restrictions. Blackrock horde have less premades but all of them are 250, 300, or 350 resil minimums to join. I imagine every PVP server on the BG would follow one of the 2 models since AV is just that bad.

The 2 power servers are Tichondrius and Blackrock. Ner'zhul, Frostwolf, and Kil'Jaeden are all pretty solid as well. If you want to go oceanic then either Frostmourne, Barthilas, or Blackrock (Blackrock is american but was the unofficial Aussie server before oceanics so has a lot of them) are the best choices there. If nobody speaks up from alliance on those servers you could always roll an alt on one of them and park them in a city to see how much premade spam there is.

 

xarg

Pretty much agree with all of this. Though I've played Blackrock horde+alliance, and see premades on both sides. One thing I will say about alliance premades in BG9 is that 90% of them afk out when they see another premade, so that they can farm honor better. Works well for us too. They bail after a minute and we get an even more disoragnised bunch of puggies to 4/5 cap.

 

Soul

I know it's too late for your character, but has anyone when levelling an alt considered doing lowbie BGs (that is 60-69 bracket) as a way of grinding Honor in a much more equitable fashion so you hit 70 with maxed out Honor? I mean, if you can scrape a good group of similarly minded lowbies, you should be able to steamroll WSG and AB until the cows come home leaving only the AV and EotS grinds for badges. I was able toi grind 2500 Honor in an hour's worth of AB last night in lowbie land. Getting rid of the Honor part of the grind is half the battle of getting welfare epics... granted you still have to grind AV badges...

 

Tizzlewump

I fully endorse this method, but 60-69 bracket is a bad idea. I saw more underlevel toons in that bracket than in the 10-19s. Do the 59 bracket till your 60% mount starts to make you cry, then AV as much at 60 as you can stand. Building up a first-rate pvp set is as simple as combing the AH for the right BC greens during your grind up to 59 (grab a guildie for your trinket and chest quests in Hellfire of course). The amazing tri-stat gear is a no-brainer, but even gear of blanky wrath and stamina are strong.

If you crunch honor/hour you will win an argument against me, but if you just want to have fun and not be slaughtered while you get an initial pile of honor the 59/60 bracket is pure win. I did it on this reroll mage and used the Stockades when I needed spare change, but having a main makes this plan much stronger.

 

epitaffy

I would second this post and I completely agree about the bracket advice. This post echoes my own experience when leveling and gearing up this toon. I sat in AB/WSG at 59 to stack tokens and get basic honor and then played AV at 60 until Exalted and stacked about 40K honor from there alone. I intended to PVP more at 69 in the 60-69 but in Shadowburn BG on Alliance it was not very fun so I went straight to 70 the day of 2.3. So I would agree that as Alliance, if you wanted to enjoy PVP while saving honor for 70, 60 AV is the better choice.

I imagine as Horde in Shadowburn the opposite might hold true. While 60 AV was a lot funner to grind honor than 70 AV as Alliance pre-2.3 at least, I could see how for a Horde toon, it would make sense just to get to 70 and AV there since the honor is greater and, at least in BG8 atm, Horde wins most of the AV's post-2.3.

 

heel

In case you haven't transferred yet - any of the high population servers in Ruin would be a good choice. Queue times are low, Alliance wins somewhat more than half of AVs, lots of arena teams queueing at all times, generally just a very nice pvp scene all around.

 

◊ Robespierre

Ruin is pretty good for honor grinding AV and, depending on the time of day, you can usually crack 40% pug wins in the other battlegrounds. Arena queue times are pretty good too, with 5v5 being extremely fast.

Hu Re Mi Cs

 

• frmorrison

I am also on Ruin, 5v5 and 3v3 are instant to 30 second queues at most times, and Alliance win AV little over half the time.
The other BGs aren't so great, I think about 30% win rate in PuGs, but queue times are fast.

 

xiaoxin21

Aman' Thul is an option in BG9 too, we have one of the most advanced raiding scene(if not most advanced) on oceanic with plenty of 5 mans and heroics. Can easily find group with LFG and the standard is not bad.

Winning AV however is a myth. You will not win in BG9. The other BGs are pretty ok, there are lots of people forming premades in trade channel. Every 1 or 2 mins you will see LFM eots/ab in trade pretty much any time of the day. Most have no requirement too and they juggle BGs so you will never face a premade.

 

Tonk

Being new to PVP, this is actually the best way I have found to get your S1 set fast. I am on Terenas and most AB, EotS and WSG are 90% ally loss. I did all my marks at 69 (on my shammy) for my full Gladiator set (took me a 1-2 weeks), then leveled to 70 once I maxed out my honor. Now I just need AV runs (at 70) which are about 40-50% Ally wins depending on the days. My win rate at 69 for AB, WSG and EotS was about 50%. Also I was only playing an hour or two a night. So if you play more hardcore, it would be faster for you.

Hope this helps.

 

Caligula

I can confirm that Ruin BG has mostly AV wins unless it's a horde premade (most of those I see coming from Skullcrusher or Zul'jin). I'd say 75%+ pug vs. pug are wins. 3v3 and 5v5 queue times are less than 1 minute, 2's queues are anywhere from instant (weekdays) to 10m (Monday night). WSG/EOTS/AB are somewhat poor with a pug. AB being the best (50/50 win/loss), WSG the worst (maybe 20% wins there). All around it's pretty decent, there's certainly no overwhelming "Horde or Alliance always win X BG" going on. I find that even if you get a pickup pre-made going, at least on Magtheridon, you'll end up winning 90% of games. Queue times are hardly ever over 10m for any BG or arena.