More AV changes coming
by John Himes 
Oct 31st 2007 at 5:00PM
Big changes are coming to the Alterac Valley battleground in patch 2.3, and, as is often the case with these things, players are already expressing their discontent. Nethaera responded to a thread on the official forums yesterday in order to address such complaints. She reminded everyone that the developers are currently monitoring the changes to AV and are tweaking the honor earned in order to keep the overall gain as similar as possible to the current rate on the live realms.The most interesting part of her post, of course, regards a change being implemented regarding the mechanics of capturing a mine. When a mine is captured by a player, his or her team will be awarded a steady stream of reinforcements. According to Neth, the capturing team will receive about one reinforcement every forty-five seconds or so. Since I haven't played the new AV on the PTR, it's difficult for me to develop an opinion on this change. What do you think?
Update: Blizzard poster Salthem has posted a few more details of the change to the mines.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
exit stencil Oct 31st 2007 5:04PM
New AV is scary.
I fear change.
Buckshot Oct 31st 2007 5:09PM
It's the perfect BG already, not looking forward to any tampering with it.
Aurdon Oct 31st 2007 5:18PM
as of right now i don't think that will have a huge impact...NPC's usually just get rolled in games anyway.
Burgdorn Oct 31st 2007 5:27PM
I generally like the idea of a long term on going battle and the idea that you can keep the fight going longer really is important too. One thing people aren't thinking about though is the that there will be more combat, more player deaths and thus more honor. Really you don't see a lot of death from players and while honor gains can be great via the bonus honor system player deaths can stack up fairly quickly.
Think about how many people can be slaughtered in a short time via on going skirmishes. If they can modify how much honor you get per kill and keep reduced honor gains from staggering it, then it should be just as good at generating honor without the run to one side mentality.
Burgdorn Oct 31st 2007 5:29PM
I generally like the idea of a long term on going battle and the idea that you can keep the fight going longer really is important too. One thing people aren't thinking about though is the that there will be more combat, more player deaths and thus more honor. Really you don't see a lot of death from players and while honor gains can be great via the bonus honor system player deaths can stack up fairly quickly.
Think about how many people can be slaughtered in a short time via on going skirmishes. If they can modify how much honor you get per kill and keep reduced honor gains from staggering it, then it should be just as good at generating honor without the run to one side mentality.
vlad Oct 31st 2007 6:44PM
perfect BG? you joking right? its a PVE race. AV weekend i did well over 25AV's and probably had 2 horde in my sight.
i say make this pvp again. however 2 hour turtles at the mine doesnt seem so fun.
Burgdorn Oct 31st 2007 5:31PM
I... uh... apologize for the double print... oops
Azure Oct 31st 2007 5:34PM
What's most amusing about the change with the mine and reinforcements, is that if your in there doing this for your team and get the afk debuff there is no way to remove said debuff from inside the cave.
infection Oct 31st 2007 5:49PM
@5
Didn't they change the honor gain to be reduced after the 3rd kill? So basically you can't keep camping someone to get honor off of them. This should apply in BG's as well shouldn't it? So effectively saying that "stacking up kills" generates more honor should really not be true.
Did they change that rule to where you can kill the same person over and over and still get the same honor?
Dave Oct 31st 2007 6:59PM
As long as the same 500-600 honor/hr on non-BG weekends keeps up, I won't mind.
If the honor for an hour's worth of AV suddenly takes a nose dive, that's going to pretty much turn AV into yet another BG that's empty and push people to the other BG's instead. People will only play on BG weekend, kinda like EOTS and WSG are on my battlegroup right now.
Instead of crippling AV, they ought to just buff up the honor gains from the rest to make them all consistent and worth playing at the same time, but that makes too much sense.
Burgdorn Oct 31st 2007 7:15PM
@7
I think it is consecutive kills, so basically if the only person on your chart is killed, over and over again, then yeah it will be a problem. Though after much research I don't believe that system is a part of the revised honor system. Previously it was but presently I've looked over all the text I can find on the system. Nothing leans in favor of honor decay at all in the present system though.
WatcherZero Oct 31st 2007 7:15PM
1 per 45 seconds? how many people die every 45 seconds in a 40v40 BG raid?
jlpknights82 Oct 31st 2007 8:16PM
The matches on PTR already run too long, imo. (Yes, I was around when they were 10 hours long or longer. I kind of like the faster fights now, though.)
I like the battle the goes on in the field of strife. I find it pretty fun and epic. Sometimes. Other times it gets a bit annoying. Especially when it drags on and on. I say thumbs down to anything that just makes it even longer. Bleh.
Amok2006 Oct 31st 2007 8:18PM
Make BGs simpler: 40v40, last man standing. You're in, you're out. Nobody hits any of the objectives. Horde exploit continued weakness in AV and alliance generally run around not helping win. No entertainment in that.
No graveyards, mills, towers, fancy NPCs. Just outright combat. Who goes to AV to take towers or mines?
Ngnsewa Nov 1st 2007 1:30AM
The main problem I have always had with AV (2 chars exalted pre TBC) is the layout of the map.
IMHO the map imbalances needs to be fixed before anything else.
JP3 Nov 1st 2007 1:01AM
So ive been playing the new av for about a week now on ptr an i say it has its ups an downs.
Each side starts off with 600 resources an the first one to zero loses. Now u can make the others lose resources by capping towers or killing their Balinda/whoever the alliance guy to kill is :P, that automatically -100pts. Of course capturing a mine does increase your resources by 1 every 45sec but it doesn't seem noticeable.
I think the beginning sets the game, defence to slow the offense and believe it or not taking snowfall and the other grave yard in the middle will have major advantages. also no more luring out the guards on drekk or van cuz they are all linked, capping towers make them disappear. this pass av weekend i got about 1k honor in a 30 min match so it wasnt that bad. but you know what? it was way fun playing defense then going offense.
overall it was fun an different, most of the time us(horde) won but if u went the old style of playing like run an gun to the end you lost hardcore, and the prepping before the bg is also nice(mana free buffing an ZOMG mage buffet)
Bloodspirit Nov 1st 2007 5:28AM
i would like to see an av take about 1 hour.
i heard once that there was a patch that make a tweak to the honor you would gain, under 60 = 50% honor over 60min = 100% gain.
Thats at least what i heard.
phil_davidson Nov 1st 2007 6:44AM
Longer battles might = more honour, but it also means its going to take a lot longer to get enough AV marks to make those special purchase :-(
To buy the areana season 1 gear will require 50AV marks (in addition to AB/WSG marks too)
Heraclea Nov 1st 2007 10:23AM
The problem I see with the proposed changes to AV is that AV was the battleground for the rest of us. What I liked about AV was that it made it possible to get honor points while doing what I am built and geared to do - attack PvE targets that stand still and trade blows and otherwise put up a fair fight.
In actual PvP, my function is essentially that of a kamikaze. I can't rely on getting healed in a pickup raid; it's an iffy thing at best even when taking on major PvE targets like Galv and Drek. Actual combat with other players is pretty much useless. I don't have the MS debuff, which is the only thing that keeps warriors afloat in PvP now. As a dedicated dual wielder I'm not going to respec for it. I am only an expendable missile; my only goal is to charge the Horde and hope to get off a couple of debuffs like Piercing Howl and Thunderclap before I die. I then expect to be frozen, trapped, rooted, and focus fired at from range. I stop pressing buttons at that point. Hurry up and get it over with so I can rez and start again.
If you arrange it so that there are fewer PvE targets in AV, and make it so that every time your character dies you weaken your team, I am going to stay away from it. My presence will be purely negative. Courtesy to other players requires that I avoid it.
wowlord Nov 30th 2007 10:53AM
yea i am a big AV fan and i like the new changes to it. i found out that the Alliance is winning a lot more of this BG because of the 2.3 patch. unlike the old AV with the horde winning 80% of the time