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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWelcome to Alterac Valley, you can go AFK now.
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 17th 2007 at 9:10AM
If you don't often visit the PvP battleground Alterac Valley, then you may not know what I'm talking about. But AV seems to be the best place for people to go and collect honor points while safely sitting AFK in at the battleground's starting point. Why Alterac? Well, Alterac offers great honor returns for anyone -- and most of the honor is given out zone-wide, regardless of whether you're near the rest of a group when an objective is captured or a boss is killed. It's just too easy to collect large amounts of honor by just sitting around without doing anything -- much to the chagrin of players who are out there fighting and trying to win the battleground.And while Blizzard has shown themselves quite eager to rid people who are botting or hacking to prevent their AFK flag from coming up when they're not at their keyboard, there's not much they've been able to do about the people who sit in front of their computers watching television and occasionally hitting the space bar. So what's Blizzard to do? There are plenty of suggestions on the PvP forums, though I can't say many of them seem practical. They could remove honor gain from the starting point -- but then players would just learn to idle elsewhere. They could alter the battleground's honor mechanics to give out honor based on a player's range to the objective giving honor -- but this would likely gimp players playing defense by limiting their honor gain (despite the fact that defense makes an important contribution to a match). They could somehow tie honor gains to overall damage or healing done -- though such a change probably isn't a quick fix.
What's your solution to the AV AFK problem?
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Gogey Jul 17th 2007 10:30AM
@12 - You never played the old 4 hour AVs did you? Thats what we used to do. Wasnt great honor at all, in fact you could get more out of a few WSGs that lasted 15 mins (Good old non-turtling wsg :D).
As for the "Must be in location x" thing, What if youre playing defense? As a survival hunter Id abuse deterrance and use pets to wipe the alliance. And if not, its not exactly hard to set up a bot to hearth and run to an unimportant location in the base (ex: primalist's cave)
James Jul 17th 2007 10:18AM
As for voting players out of a BG, that is a great idea. Except that what will happen is that BG premades will get in, decide they don't like someone--maybe that someone deserves it, maybe not. They'll vote the guy out. Hell, you won't even need premades. You could just have a random group of people decide that they don't like someone, for whatever the reason, and out they go. Never going to work, I'm afraid. I saw a twink pally one time refuse to heal a guy carrying the WSG flag because he didn't like the guy's gear. Now, imagine that pally, times 6, decide that not only is the guy's gear inferior, he just needs to be removed from the BG entirely. Level 10-19 WSG's would be unplayable--twinks would group together and vote out people who were non-twinks until they got a mix they wanted.
Plus, people have been known to argue and fight in BG's over...whatever. Well, you throw in a vote option to remove someone, and all that is going to happen is people are going to spend all their time trying to get others to vote out whoever they're arguing with.
ben1778 Jul 17th 2007 10:22AM
There will always be AFKers as long as people are lazy, which will be forever. Even if we colonize the moon there will be people who go through all the effort to live on the moon but for some reason they are too lazy to go cap a dang tower in AV.
The solution lies within the question: WHY are people AFKaving?
It's too profitable.
I think a big part of the problem is that AV is worth more honor per minute if you afk than the other BGs often give when you are actually playing. I remember pre-BC when they nerfed the honor gains from the NPC kills in AV. I think they should do that again. GO back to 10 or 12 honor points per NPC zone-wide reward and instead increase the amount of honor rewarded from player kills.
In conjunction i'd like to see the bonus honor rewards for the other battlegrounds be increased. If the other BGs awarded equivalent honor then i'm sure more people would be content to play some of the other ones instead of playing AV 20x and getting bored and afk-ing a few. I would be much less bored and less likely to AFK if I could hit ANY bg I wanted and get AV level honor per minute.
Basically, through a couple different angles, make AFK-ing less profitable. Restructure the honor rewards so that its not worth near as much - or maybe bring in some new gear via REP (mainly for AB, WSG, and EotS) so that they will have to play the other BGs to get those items and can't earn them by sitting in a cave. Let's be honest, any person who is a regular in AV (player or AFKaver) probably already has exalted with AV so no big rewards need to be added, maybe something small geared for only the PLAYERS in AV.
hooda Jul 17th 2007 10:23AM
I don't believe for even two seconds that blizzard care the slightest about our playing experience (consider how long it took to deal with spam pst's, screw up account xfers and this BG fiasco). I would love to see a swift and brutal wave of punishment - as mentioned above - but I doubt that will happen. It seems the best situation is simply to upgrade the honor of other BGs.
@15: I totally understand your frustration. Looking at the official forums, internet anonymity has create an entire group of players with incredible gall. Players feel that since they pay $15 they can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't break the rules.
Here's is my dream solution: Hire one GM who goes into the cave and aoe's group of players periodically. Then takes their gold.
Laurens Holst Jul 17th 2007 10:24AM
To the people bitching about the AB vs. AV rewards: that’s totally unrelated. There are AFK-ers in AB too, make you lose the game every time. It’s even more annoying there, because there is fewer people and more PvP (compared to AV) so every person really matters.
hooda Jul 17th 2007 10:25AM
Heh, do people notice the irony of gaining 'honor' by hiding in a cave?
Tusca Jul 17th 2007 10:26AM
OK, not everyone in the AV starting area is botting, some are just AFK doing other things, and answer when GMs ask them what they are doing. Which means the GM can do NOTHING about the person.
As far as voting to remove players from the BG, it is way too easily exploited.
The only logical argument I have seen here is upping the honor gain in the other BGs to make AV less attractive to the people who actually play BGs. I mean AV barely counts as PvP anyway, because you can go the whole match without even attacking a player from the opposing faction, and still win the game, as most people have realized, it is much more time effective to run straight to the end after killing the mid-field commander, and let the stragglers pick up the towers and GYs while the majority sits waiting for the relief hut to turn.
native Jul 17th 2007 10:26AM
I was going to hit AV for the first time tonight.
Never been there before but i've read up on it, and tried to figure out what I need to do.
I might won't do the best, I won't be topping damage, I won't be topping healing and I might not be much help, but I'm sure as F not going to sit in a cave or just "hang out".
I'll be trying my damndest.
Its a mutual respect thing as far as I'm concerned. Why should someone have to work extra hard in a BG they love because I'm lazy?
Thats b.s.
Laurens Holst Jul 17th 2007 10:26AM
So upping the honour rewards in AB and WSG will net you exactly nothing, the AFK-ers will just start to show more presence in the other BGs too.
But yeah, I’m glad this topic is brought to everyone’s attention here, because oh man is it annoying the hell out of me. Making us fight to our deaths and farming honour for you is just pathetic.
Tusca Jul 17th 2007 10:36AM
AFKers honestly dont even bug me anymore in AV, they are part of the game at this point...
I play the game to have fun, not worry about what someone else chooses to do to exploit the system.
Wasyl Jul 17th 2007 10:41AM
Every AV match I play (admittedly not many, I hate the place) I take a screenshot of the bottom part of the scoreboard. When I have enough screenshots, I'm going to compile a list of all the AFKers (zero healing/damage done) and their guilds, and post it on the battlegroup forum. At the very least, it should cause some amusing drama, but I'm hoping that guilds won't like seeing their members giving them a bad name through AFKing, and will do something about it. Maybe getting gkicked will teach these people a lesson.
chriswt Jul 17th 2007 10:43AM
In my opinion, forfeit all honor gained at the end of each battleground for players that do not toggle their combat flag.
Sure, players could still go out and kill trash to get in combat but this would prevent full-scale botters.
Elbows Jul 17th 2007 10:47AM
@22 & 26
I understand that there were AFKers in AB escpecially in 1.0, but this was mostly due to the fact that they were intersted in the rep rewards and not honor. Since they were awarded a mark regardless of whether or not they won or lost, eventually they would get the rewards. The only time I really see people AFK in AB or WSG is when it's obvious that they're going to lose.
If you think about it, the real reason that AFKing is so prevelant in AV is because regardless of your teams' performance they are almost guaranteed to at least kill the leutenants, the commander, and at least cap a couple of towers. That's at least 250 honor every match win or lose. If people AFK in AB or WSG, the impact they have on the performance of their team is much more drastic, and AFKing becomes much less profitable for them.
A lot of the people who are AFKing in AV aren't bots, they just people sitting in front of their computers not playing because they have not motivation. Would taht solution totally wipe out AFKers? No. Would we have significantly less AFKers (% wise) than in AV? I personally think so.
Joyd Jul 17th 2007 11:38AM
I've only PvP'd a little, but I'd be wary of any solution that punished people for doing things that are important but which don't add big damage and healing numbers (such as playing defense when your team has the other team on the ropes) and doing nothing. It might be strategically important to be stealthed on a bridge somewhere, or it could be something to do while you read a book and tap the keys to make your guy look back and forth.
Luclan Jul 17th 2007 11:30AM
how about ingame booting system where if 3-5 people flag the person as an afk the rest can find out for themselves and vote to boot the individual.
Rich Jul 17th 2007 11:58AM
Nerf the honor rewards from objectives and increase honor from killing players... Simple.
I can make 250-300 Honor for caving off holiday and 500-700 on holiday weekends. AV matches last 20-30 min so on Holiday weekends I can get almost 1000 honor per hour. In one weekend, I made enough honor from caving to get my hand and head pieces from just caving.
If I run AV and take objectives and kill people, I make 300-350 honor off holiday and 600-800 for the holiday.
Until there is a drastic different between caving honor and participation honor, people will cave.
Monistatus Jul 17th 2007 12:05PM
To all the people who have all these WONDERFUL (/sarcasm) ideas... all of those punish us who have very specific roles in the raid that don't necessarily generate DPS/healing/honor.
I'm a Rogue.
One of my KEY jobs is to guard capped towers, stealthed. Sap, stunlock, gouge, blind.... keep someone incapacitated so long that backup can come. Almost no DPS there.
One of my KEY jobs is to recap areas Hordies have left unguarded, or guarded by one toon.
Even though PvP Sap lasts 10s, if you time it right, and are on the ball, you can Sap and STILL recap a location before he can interrupt it. Timing's gotta be perfect, but it's doable. Vanish, sprint, get out of there. It gives you another 5 min that a boss hasn't spawned at FWT.
Recapping DBNT or DBST is often a role, too. Many times they'll be left unguarded. I've taken them back over and over again, lots of times.
Sure, recapping is documentable, but if there's more than one of us, only one of us gets credit.
Sorry, even though the scores may not reflect it, I've been called an AFKer more than once because of my 0/0/0 meter, even though I'm busting my ass to do my part.
Chriasas Jul 17th 2007 12:13PM
Let the AFKers sit there, but, at the end of the battleground, if you did no Damage, and did no Healing, you get no honor. Take away the reason th AFK or sit idle, and it stops.
Pelle Jul 17th 2007 12:28PM
The one thing that comes to my mind is,
If a player dosent do Damage, Healing someone that dosent have 100% HP and dosent seem to be AFK, the system will do a ready check where the Player have to type in "Ready" or some random text to prevent bots. Just as you have to do when Deleting a character.
But it wouldnt clear out those semiAFK who perhaps watching TV or something.
dudemcguy Jul 18th 2007 6:02PM
Just make the cave and area around the guards have a debuff that keeps you from getting honor. Something around 1 min because after spawning there you shouldn't be there much longer than that.