Major Alterac Valley changes coming to Patch 2.3
by Robin Torres 
Oct 5th 2007 at 5:00AM
Blue poster Vaneck announced on the European Forums that Alterac Valley would be undergoing some major gameplay changes in Patch 2.3.In order to emphasize strategy more in AV, they are introducing the concept of "reinforcement count". Both teams will begin with a starting number of reinforcements which can be reduced in various amounts according to what is lost. A team loses when its reinforcement count is reduced to zero.
The death of Drek'Thar or Vanndar will still end the game, as all reinforcements will automatically be eliminated. Losing towers and Galvangar or Belinda will cause significant amounts of reinforcements to be lost. And staying alive will now be very important as player deaths will reduce the reinforcement count by one.
To quote Vaneck:
Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.
More on the AV changes after the jump...
Warmasters:
- Each team will start with 4.
- Warmasters and Generals will be linked so pulling one will bring all of them.
- Destroying a tower will still eliminate the appropriate Warmaster, but your team will no longer gain a Warmaster at the same time.
- It will now take 4 minutes instead of 5 to control Towers and Graveyards.
- Honor for controlling Towers and Graveyards will be increased over what is awarded now.
- You will only respawn in the starting tunnel if your team no longer controls any graveyards. Otherwise, you will respawn in a team-controlled graveyard, no matter where you die.
- Players will only receive Bonus Honor during the battle for killing the captain and destroying the towers.
- At the end of the battle, Bonus Honor will be rewarded for a surviving captain, intact towers and victory.
- Stormpike and Frostwolf Holds will have fewer elite NPCs.
- All of the Lieutenants and Commanders will be removed from AV altogether. Quote from Vaneck: They are currently in search of other battle opportunities.
Do you think these changes will make Alterac Valley more fun?
Filed under: Patches, PvP, Forums, Analysis / Opinion, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Beefmonger Oct 5th 2007 5:11AM
Thus, the age of Honor Farming comes to an end.
No more will players be able to gain 9k honor in one day without really putting in any effort.
Finally PvP gear will start to gain a little of the prestige that they had in the old days, under the old honor system.
Felshen Oct 5th 2007 5:13AM
Wow, those are some big changes, I'm surprised I haven't seen more about it. Reinforcement count should be cool, but theoretically could make it possible to cause your own faction to lose sooner by dancing naked in front of the opposing faction.
woeye Oct 5th 2007 5:14AM
Hehehe, soooo, dear hybrids, if you want to play AV please spec for healing in order to keep the real DPS classes alive. And maybe they should restrict access to holy paladins and warriors only, because these two classes aren't so easy to kill. Sounds funny =)
Sirg Oct 5th 2007 5:33AM
I think the Alliance will almost never win again, because of the increased team play required to win in these new conditions.
Hmm.. I'm sorry because the elites will be removed.. it was fun fighting them.
Linking the warmasters and generals sounds bad.. they are already overpowered, so it will be very hard to kill them if grouped.
AV will take longer and will be harder to win, considering the newbies that enter it and have no clue on what should they be doing. They will wipe and will help the Horde win, because most newbies are Alliance.
I think it was great as it was - it could have lasted 2 hours or 15 mins.
superfrank Oct 5th 2007 5:36AM
its a bit early to add major changes like this so soon after adding an apparently successful anti-afk feature
Brian Oct 5th 2007 5:51AM
@4 I think the idea behind linking the Warmasters and Generals is to stop the zerg rush to the general, which is currently ruining AV. Now we are more obliged to take out the towers on the way and stick with each other rather than one of the problems I have sometimes encountered where the frontrunners get too far without graveyards in between leading to a long strung out line of players being picked off before they can get into the think of things.
I am looking forward to this as I think AV should be the slowest BG of the 3 whereas WSG is currently more likely to drag out if one lot or other turtles.
oshin Oct 5th 2007 5:45AM
So much for av then, it might be worth a fun game or two but then its pretty much pointless again.
Necromancer Oct 5th 2007 5:52AM
And now we return to the 5+ hour AVs as people sit back so they don't lose their reinforcements by charging in.
harywilke Nov 3rd 2007 8:20AM
crap more blame the healers comments than you could ever hope for.
AV w/o the fun. less NPC's less to do. AV is looking more and more like WSG. empty.
gief heroic AV pls.
Michel Oct 5th 2007 6:00AM
I loved the older Alterac and the long battles
and theses changes seems to be great : more strategy, more fight between players, death to zerg!
Junzim Oct 5th 2007 6:01AM
What's this?! A return to the pitched battles of yesteryear as factions clash outside strategic points on a map? It cannot be!
I recently got a brand spanking new 24" iMac, 2.8Ghz Dual Core Extreme, 4GB of RAM. The resolution is 1900x1200. I set my camera to a 50 yard zoom and panned out in Alterac Valley last weekend, watching the Alliance and Horde armies dash towards each other climactically on the field of strife. It was like watching Lord of the Rings, for a brief moment my heart sang with the old glory of WoW - when AV really was the WORLD of WARCRAFT.
Then Green Names and Red Names passed thorugh each other silently, no one dismounted, no one was stopped, no one even threw an offensive spell or a frost nova.
It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.
Good for these changes. Screw anyone who prefered 'easy honour' to actually having PVP fun in BGs. I don't play PvP to earn my pretty items, I play it because PvP is fun, actually fighting and beating other players.
As a priest the biggest letdown about the current AV has been that there's almost never anyone to heal, if I play as productively as possible capping towers and bunkers, I basically see no action.
Sure it won't be like the old AV because back then a priest could more or less Downrank and Heal endlessly (god I loved doing that). Throwing an overranked Gheal (I was the only priest in AVs with the Book from AQ20 on our server) on a warrior when he went down to 30% would bounce his HP to 100%, it was like resetting a raid boss. Nowadays our Gheal is about 40% of HP if we've got good gear and our target has decent PvP gear.
However, I welcome the changes if it brings the WARCRAFT back to Alterac Valley.
Mythor Oct 5th 2007 6:58AM
A ticket system? In a BG with a clearly defined objective? Why?
I used to be interested in AV, now I see no reason to bother. Limited respawns is a stupid idea.
Find another way.
Basilius Oct 15th 2007 4:57AM
Happy days and jubilation!! Although I might have to spec elemental to make the Alys day spark with light :). Any ways great changes.
Bearskunk Oct 5th 2007 7:09AM
Not sure it'll actually be PvP but mostly just "which side has the least level 62 idiots who charge into the enemy over and over to their death"
Michel Oct 5th 2007 7:09AM
and with the anti-afk buff, I can now hope new life in alterac.
thanks.
Argent Oct 5th 2007 7:12AM
prosaic notions aside, this, like every other change to AV, will simply make it suck more. they should just kill that BG. by now, it would be a mercy killing.
Razhlok Oct 5th 2007 7:20AM
@8
Uh... you lose a reinforcement number for every PLAYER that dies as well. Game ends when the other side has zero reinforcements. So even if its a stalemate one team will win because one time will run out of reinforcements due to excessive player death.
adranta Oct 5th 2007 8:01AM
I can't decide whether to be ridiculously overexcited about the changes or cry helplessly at the removal of Ichman (oh, how he runs!) and the fact that dying will no longer be a consequence-free return to full mana.
Sonvar Oct 5th 2007 8:02AM
I like AV in its current state and considering you'll be in a mostly PUG a lot this just makes it all the more complicated and easier for some person to really hurt their team's chances. Along with that having the reinforcements go down because a player dies will make the honor you get from this dip as you will not have as many chances to try to kill foes.
Heartless_ Oct 5th 2007 8:18AM
They better be smart and when the reinforcement count gets low, only the best performing players should be allowed to resurrect. Otherwise it will be just the scrubs using up the re-spawns and the first time a good player dies they will get shafted.