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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMore Alterac Valley changes on the horizon
by Amanda Miller 
Jan 7th 2008 at 5:14PM
When the ability to report a player as AFK was first introduced, there were mixed reactions. The tool did seem to reduce the volume of moochers in any given battleground, but it also put the onus on the honest, responsible fighters to take the time to locate and report the individual.
Because of the fact that no action would be taken against any AFK'd player until a sufficient number of reports had been received, AFK'ing continued, and went back on the rise. To combat this, Blizzard hotfixed the reports, lowering the threshold required before the debuff would be planted.
Of course, this is still inadequate. Many AFK'd players are not away from their keyboards at all. They're watching TV or a movie, and should a flag pop up on their heads, they'll just hit something or jump off a cliff and magically, their flag will disappear. Mooching honor and hindering the team will continue.
In addition, many claim that the debuff is simply not enough, because although it prevents them from gaining undeserved honor, they are still holding their team back.
What could really be done to squash this trend once and for all? The forums and our comment boxes have been hopping with ideas, and we have compiled some of the best and most interesting ones.
Drysc recently commented on the situation, but was expectedly vague. Although "fairly substantial" changes to Alterac Valley are definitely on the way in "a future patch", no details about what these changes will entail were leaked. The hope, Drysc remarked, is that they will "address some of the balance and play issues". Hopefully, these new developments will help us win the war against AFK'ers, as David Bowers points out, we really have no other option.
While we may not know how effective these changes are going to be, we can at least take solace in the fact that improvements are in fact, on the way. Do you have high hopes for this future patch, or are you remaining skeptical?
Filed under: Patches, News items, PvP, Buffs, Forums, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
catherinezetajonesishot Jan 7th 2008 9:58PM
This is a very good post.
From my perspective, being Alliance, my battle group is 95% of the time being crushed by the Horde defence. We end up losing 19 out of 20 games, and thats not an estimate, I bg all the time, its what I really enjoy doing.
But going into these AVs now, and 15 of us run to the south, and 5 of us stay on D, guess where the rest are.... in the bloody cave, friggen AFK.
Here's the deal... you go into a BG and you get 0-60 honor for a 20-40 minute fight, is a complete waste of time, not to mention, very demoralizing. It's much better in the other BGs. You get a good fight, with less AFKers and (sorry to say it) much better odds.
Thats why we are queueing less and less for AV. The word on my server is you get 0 honor for going into an AV, and the word is spreading. It's not a boycott, its picking your battle fields. no pun intended.
We win 50% of the EoTS, ABs and WSG.
Dont expect people to walk into a losing battle, they will go onto a front where they can have a chance to win.
catherinezetajonesishot Jan 7th 2008 10:06PM
I'm seeing this so often now. Pallies walking around aimlessly spamming seal of crusader until they have no mana. Rogues stealthing in circles far behind mines.
I always cheer the horde that kills them... but then we hafta fight and my care bear love fest is gone :(
I have been reporting the obvious bot users for cheating. It takes me some time but seriously, bot usage is a pretty serious crime with bliz. Its one thing to be AFK its another to break your TOS by using some bot.
FED UP !!! Jan 8th 2008 1:54AM
@32..let me recall a AV BG transcript, k?..
:- me:- "guys when youre at the graveyard waiting to res, report afkers, not just the ones in the cave, but ppl with 0 dmg / heals, cuz they know the cave gets reported, hence, avoid it..( /turing test advert)".
*bg random:- "such losers, reporting afkers, who cares?"
bg random #2:-"yeah some people such assholes gtfo" etc, etc, etc. ..
me:- "so bitchy..are you guys girls?".
bg randoms :- *crickets*
i have been verbally assaulted many times for asking other players to help report.
Sirg Jan 8th 2008 4:04AM
Here are some good suggestions, please come with your input to keep this thread alive and catch the eye of some devs
* award each token turnin (from killed players) with 1 or more honor points
* award the faction that summons the boss with 200-300 or more honor
* award the faction that calls an airstrike, reinforcements etc with 100 honor or more
* remove the current reinforcements concept and add a honor cap per game - the side who makes something like 600 or 700 honor wins, unless the end boss is killed.
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2252305946&sid=1
mike Jan 8th 2008 1:41PM
Yes a number of great idea's have been floating for fixing the afk bot issue, but lets be honest blizzard has never been serious about fixing the issue.
The only reason they implemented the vote system was to reduce the number of gm tickets that were being generated by the issue.
Hate to break it to you but blizzard is in the business to making money. Come down hard on the botters and you run the risk that they will leave wow and move to another mmo. Some things to think about.
On average in my battlegroup we are seeing afk rates in the range of 25% minamum to 50%-60%.
Even taking the low range of 25% that 10 players.
Say blizzard decided to come down hard on the 10 people botting and ban them. Thats $1800 a year on lost revinue.
Multiply that by the actual number of people botting and you can see the stock holders will have the CEO's head on a plate. Sadly this isnt like the old Diablo days when blizzard had the money in pocket and could ban 30,000 players for cheating.
Oli Jan 8th 2008 12:23PM
Get reported for afking once a day, get the debuff, twice get kicked and 100 honour deduction (Not hard to regain if its a genuine player. Get reported 3 times a day get 2 hour bg debuff and 2k honour deduction, 4 times a day banned for 3 hours and 5k point deduction, 5 times a day = 48 hour ban from bg and 20k honour deduction.
The problem with the current afk system is not that people are not getting caught, its that no punishment is being rolled out.
The only plausable way to pick up on AFKers is to pick on their weakness, they do it repetitively. So you have to target this and punish it.
Dean Jan 8th 2008 2:05PM
Great idea in theory, but as people have said, how will you feel when a group of 5 people decide they don't like you and report you afk for a laugh. And what if this happens 4 times?
If blizzard do try and fix this (I doubt they're bothered, each side gets afkers, so no-one gets an advantage) it will never give out control over an unrevokable punishment purely to the players as it's too open to abuse. The best you can hope for is auto booting players if they have the inactive debuff for more than 10 minutes, and giving deserter. But since most AVs only take 15 these days you sort of wonder at the point.
Lys Jan 14th 2008 7:48PM
I don't remember about any AFK problem before they changed it to what it is now. Why don't they just put it back the way it was?
jeff Jan 8th 2008 10:47AM
A bit off topic, but since someone touched on this in a previous comment...
It's interesting how people put Kara on a pedestal and got pissed when S1 gear was available through honor and marks. If people recall, Arena gear was introduced so players who weren't hardcore raiders could grind T4.5-ish gear. With the new system for S1, grinding honor and marks is just that - a grind. For some people it takes them a looong time to do it. For others, not as long. Before they made S1 available to "everyone", I cranked out the honor on my "shelved" Warlock for a week and a half until I was maxed out on honor and had enough marks to purchase the entire Gladiator set. I simply wanted S1 gear the day it was available. Call me crazy. It was a vast improvement to my previous gear, but didn't make me "uber" by any means. However, it did made farming and questing a little easier and it also renewed my love for the very first toon I created the day WoW went live.
Perhaps I'm reaching, but I think some players feel epics obtained in raiding grants them a sense of superiority; as though their grind eclipses that of the pvp'er. But you can't compare the pvp grind to the grind in Kara. They are 2 different animals. Some guilds grind Kara each day while others don't. Some players grind honor daily, while others do just a little. One striking difference is you can put Kara on farm and tow non-geared classes through for drops. PvPing is still a grind.
Kara, and it's bosses, are an introduction to TBC raiding life. As a 10-player raid, it's a great way to get a feel for raiding in the expac and isn't an easy raid instance for some. I think one reason why there are so many guilds still in Kara is because of the number of players who never did Gen. Drakk in UBRS night after night for a year for their guildmates. They never raided Onyxia weekly. They never put the time to grind some time in Molten Core or Black Wing Lair for T1 and T2 gear. To many players, it's simply a "fast" grind from 1 to 70 and then jump right into Kara. They ignore aspects of the game which will help them realize that just because it's purple, doesn't mean it's uber.
While I can log on to an account and play a T5/6 Hunter, I don't discount those who grind Arena and honor for gear. I feel it is an accomplishment for those who do it. Also, I feel just as strongly for those who get through Kara. The gear there helps out in the next step in the progression of the game. But players getting pissed at PvP'ers because they have better gear seems silly when the haters have the same opportunities. It's all a grind, just a different form of it and how you look at it.
GameJunkie Jan 8th 2008 1:04PM
You guys sound like a bunch of whiney nerds. Some many players complaining madly about AFKs instead of a clear strategy to win.
The solution to beating AFK is Blizzard will have to make AV more fun and interesting instead.
Before the AV changes, while there are tons of AFKs, on typical AV weekends you see more players playing rather than AFK because they want to maximize honor gains. Now with little to no honor, nobody wants to play.
bloodlight Jan 8th 2008 5:49PM
couple of changes to make BG, work a bit better and drop remove the AFK issue.
1) AFK is ony useful ask long as ther are BG wide honor awards. with no requirement to earn the honor. so Make certain level of participation a requirement to get any honor,
take AV the big AFK BG. To earn any honor at all a player must earn at least 5 honorable kills, or be present for a mine, tower or graveyard claiming. Now the AFK has to participate some at least. obviously this idea would need some tweeks tomake sure of viable numbers.
2) Make BG random, first any bg should allow for premade groups. then remove all battle group cryers and replace with one single guy. You dont sighn ip for a given battle groud, You imple sign up and when a BG is open, your group will get slotted into it.
3) to remove the AV super zergs we have now. Make at least some of the lower level NPC's required to kill the General. example Untill you kill Belinda there is a un-openable gate locking off Van from from the Horde. Then once she is dead the gate must be batterd down but only the elemental ihas the strength to do so. That kind of idea.
bloodlight Jan 8th 2008 5:51PM
couple of changes to make BG, work a bit better and drop remove the AFK issue.
1) AFK is ony useful ask long as ther are BG wide honor awards. with no requirement to earn the honor. so Make certain level of participation a requirement to get any honor,
take AV the big AFK BG. To earn any honor at all a player must earn at least 5 honorable kills, or be present for a mine, tower or graveyard claiming. Now the AFK has to participate some at least. obviously this idea would need some tweeks tomake sure of viable numbers.
2) Make BG random, first any bg should allow for premade groups. then remove all battle group cryers and replace with one single guy. You dont sighn ip for a given battle groud, You imple sign up and when a BG is open, your group will get slotted into it.
3) to remove the AV super zergs we have now. Make at least some of the lower level NPC's required to kill the General. example Untill you kill Belinda there is a un-openable gate locking off Van from from the Horde. Then once she is dead the gate must be batterd down but only the elemental ihas the strength to do so. That kind of idea.
Kraki Jan 8th 2008 8:53PM
the problem isn't afkers anymore as much as the disparity of honor in an AV loss. people say its unbalanced in one way or another, and i'm not going to argue that point. The trouble is that when Horde steamrolls an AV, which it tends to do now, Alliance gets jack for honor, which is no fun for anyone, because now they simply don't play AV at all.
cluffer Jan 8th 2008 5:59PM
The AFK's are a result of the Alliance having no chance to win so people AFK for a mark. So fix the cause of the problem.
Simple simple concept: make the frikkin map symmetrical!
The problem is IBGY is equivalent to SPGY on the map. IBGY has a choke point, SPGY does not. If Alliance guard SPGY, we get a turtle and Horde win attrition contest because Balinda is a pussy and they can cap a tower because of location.
If Blizzard won't change, Horde need to STOP DEFENDING IBGY. We don't defend the equivalent because of the result. Now Horde has seen the result of defending IBGY, ALLIANCE WON'T QUEUE UP!!!
So adapt or enjoy your 3 hour queues.