Breakfast Topic: Alterac Valley, day one
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jan 12th 2008 at 8:00AM
It hasn't been long since Blizzard announced they were implementing harsher policies on Alterac Valley AFKers, but being as it's the weekend and, I imagine, many people are using their off hours to get in some honor-grinding time, today we're asking whether you think it's helping. The change is already getting mixed reviews on the forums with responses ranging from "I won't play AV anymore for fear of getting banned" to "Thank you, Blizzard! This is everything we wanted!" So what's your opinion -- is this change going to solve the problem of AFKers in AV or just cause new problems? Jump into AV for a while and tell us what you think!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Breakfast Topics, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jumb Jan 12th 2008 8:09AM
The REAL question is whether it will fix the win balance and therefore, fix horde's wait times.
Orestes Jan 12th 2008 8:15AM
The real answer is no. The only thing that'll fix the win balance is smarter play from the alliance side. Having no afkers, if it were even possible, does nothing to help with idiotic tactics and people who don't seem to realize where they are
As for the changes... I'm a little concerned about potential for abuse, but as long as the people cheating the system get nailed I'm happy.
Orno Jan 12th 2008 8:48AM
Day 1: Level 70 Orc Enhance Shaman
This mornings games were something special. With the buff on Bal and Val It was more difficult moving up the map, and with AV being the race it has been for months its now a losing battle at times. Out of the 7 games this morning that I played before our restart we won one, it was a 50 minute game of 35 horde on defense..and the others were loses with no hope of getting pass SH GY.
Horde still gets about 10 AFKers usually (On Ruin battlegroup) but everyone is very report-happy. even so that I was reported inactive while eating some Mage food at FW after a long battle with a Warrior. Hopefully situations like that are not ban worthy. There are little tweaks that re needed.
Dave Jan 12th 2008 8:50AM
I don't think it's an AV-only thing really. It was just more habitual. With the huge queue times in AV, I've been seeing 2-3 AFK'ers frequently in every EOTS and AB pug that I've joined in an effort to get the daily BG quest done.
Those are the BG's where it hurts the most. You can win an AV with 35 on each side or a few less or more on either. An AB with 15 vs 12 is going to be really difficult to win. An EOTS where you can only realistically defend 2 bases becomes difficult to win.
I think it's great Blizzard has finally grown a pair and decided to somewhat fix the problem of AFK'ers. I know it'd be better to solve the question of "why do people AFK in a BG", but I'm not sure that's something you can solve, when the reward was always greater than the risk by far.
If people are scared to join AV, that's great. Less scrubs. I think it's clear to anyone with a clue what non-participation happens to be.
If you're being a moron and you run straight to a node in AV that's not even anywhere close to be contested, you're really not a desireable person in AV anyway. Fight with the pack, fall back when necessary and actually learn how to win in AV if you have to. It's not terribly difficult. The guy who starts the game by running to the Aid Station, just simply doesn't know what they're doing. I don't think most people are going to report that person for AFK'ing, although if the node gets capped while they're "defending" by talking in guild chat while appearing to be defending, I don't think they're any better than the cave AFK'ers and they deserve to be punished just the same.
http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=5064
I personally use that mod (TTLM) to determine who's AFK and who's just slacking or being crap or whatever. It's pretty good, and it's customizable so you can have it be as loose or strict as you want for automatically reporting people in BG's. I personally think Blizzard should be responsible for determining who's afk'ing and who's contributing, but thankfully the mod community is there to pick up the slack. If you've capped a node, you're exempt. If you're doing damage, healing or otherwise actually participating, you're going to be exempt. If you're standing around somewhere and not changing your general location (ie: swimming in the river naked, or running around the frostwolf pen) you're going to trigger the auto report, as well as people literally standing around doing nothing. It's good stuff!
theRaptor Jan 12th 2008 9:33AM
Auto-report mods like that are what is causing horde to lose AV. Far to many idiots seem to have them set far to lose and you get marked AFK after a few minutes on defence. Im talking about when you know there are 5-10 alliance trying to ninja GY's (or van pre-buff), and so you can go a while between direct combat to knock the debuff off. I got so sick of it that now I don't D unless I can pretty much stay in combat the entire time. So now I see very few people who actually will stay and defend towers and GY's from ninja's, for fear of losing honour.
You also get the fun of a group of cave campers using them to report the people actually playing.
Dave Jan 12th 2008 9:56AM
I don't know what you're talking about honestly. Horde in my group almost never loses (except to a well crafted Alliance zerg, and even then it's not a 'loss' since they end up with 250ish honor and we end up with 280ish).
There's never been a time where I've gone more than a minute or two between combat actions. At all. I've gotta think you're doing it wrong if you're consistently away from the action. If 5-10 people are "ninja'ing" a node, then I'd like to think that's enough people doing it that you're going to be in combat repeatedly and not waiting around for them to show up.
You don't have to stand idle at a tower or a bunker or a graveyeard to defend it. There's a 4-minute timer on it for a reason. Go where the nearest action is, and recap it when you get clear. In the good games for Horde, we've got a 5+ man group that's constantly on the move between nodes. The other side isn't going to keep 5-10 people sitting in a node waiting for it to cap, why should you stand around in one waiting for the action to come to you?
AV is not about defending by standing still. Defense works when you meet the offense head on and stop them or delay them at their objectives. That's enough to win.
I've never seen the AFK debuff. I've clocked approximately 180k honor in the last 6 months worth of BG's, most of it in AV. I play exclusively on defense, since I don't think the HK honor is as good on offense until the other side's offense gives up. If you're standing around somewhere out of combat, you're really probably needed elsewhere.
Runstadrey Jan 12th 2008 10:40AM
I was in AV last night and somehow couldn't get past the archers in FWVillage, so I began killing the NPCs (all 58K+ hit pts of them) in there and spent the entire battle making it easier for Ally to enter. I only had 3 horde kills but my damage done was 4th in the BG.
Now, I spent some time healing pet & eating & drinking after each NPC encounter, so I could've been flagged during those times. I just hope Blizz will evaluate the whole of the BG period and not just the few seconds when someone passes me on the road before dropping the Big Blue Hammer.
kidsmoke Jan 12th 2008 10:54AM
Something weird has happened lately. On Vengeance we (horde) usually win 9/10 AV's. We usually get a decent defense and offense going, but lately it's gotten really bad where we lose 7/10 games.
My money is on afk reporting. Not that it's bad, but that so many afkers are doing it right outside of drek that you think theres ten on D when really there's only one, and the rest are afk.
The AFKing has seemed to gone back to almost pre-afk report levels.
V Magius Jan 12th 2008 11:01AM
I haven't had a chance to play AV this weekend. I need the EotS tokens. But, my only real concern is the abuse. If you have time to manually report someone, then you're AFK too. The system has it's flaws and will probably be revamped. There will be too many people who just arrived in or are healing themselves getting bans with some of the trigger happy people out there. I don't really see a way to fix it except to alter how honor is gained, but there's too many exceptions to the rule.
Then there's the vindictive jerks like me. If I get reported, I'm reporting you too for the reason above.
Chai Jan 12th 2008 11:34AM
No, it's not helping.
1. I've seen people in Wedding Dresses, who instead of actually participating will zerg in with a fishing pole and die. They don't get reported AFK because they are fighting and dying, but they aren't participating and may as well be AFK.
2. I've seen people find sneakier places to go AFK. Yesterday during an assault on Dun Baldar, I dropped off the bridge to help someone and there were 2 or 3 rogues down there stealhAFK. Not only were they leeching honor from the BG as a whole, but from the kills on the bridge as well.
snivlem Jan 12th 2008 1:46PM
I would say it's not working so far.
I haven't even been able to play an AV game since a couple days ago.
The queue is now over 2 hrs.
Flambeau Jan 12th 2008 3:34PM
AV is about a 6 minute wait whereas AB and EOTS is taking about 20 minutes now, at least it means The elemental totems see more use, but still, the thing I miss most of AV is seeing people with that goblin shredder toy - is it even possible to get it anymore?
Hnetu Jan 12th 2008 4:12PM
If people are just saying "I won't play AV" then they're just half-assing it. You can AFK in any battleground, it's just "safer" to do so in AV because you have the cave. You can AFK in the building in AB, or anywhere on the map in WSG, and hide up on the starting rock in EotS. So you can be AFK anywhere.
On another note. I think that this is going to be just like when the reporting first came out. I remember being in a battleground and EVERYONE was yelling in /bg to report anything not moving constantly. Then after about a week it died down and people stopped with that. Almost to the point of not reporting at all in some cases. So once everyone learns that you actually have to report people who ARE AFK and not those who are helping by either defending or who are actually fighting.
Personally I'm glad they implimented this change. I'm on the Stormstrike battlegroup and I'd given up on AV because 50+% of the team was usually AFK. I went in this morning just to see if people had changed a little and only saw one or two AFKers each time. It was refreshing. We still lost to the Horde, but it wasn't a 600/0 honor game.
Waiting for AV Jan 12th 2008 5:02PM
When I'm dead, I take those few seconds to check the score list and report anything close to 0 damage AND 0 healing. Sometimes i find someone with a few thousand damage that's been there the whole fight (same honor that I have earned) and I'll report them for doing just enough damage to get out of the 0/0 range.
Other than that, I'm not going out of my way to report someone defending a node or tower waiting on it to burn that appears to be standing still.
Spanton Jan 14th 2008 3:53AM
Not sure if its going to work. I was in AV and got reported AFK when I was res'ed at the Cave due to us having no GY. Even though I had be capping Towers and defending them. The problem is people shouldnt be able to use the map to report AFK. instead it should be though the leaderboard so you can make an informed desission about who is really AfK rather than being on a area of a map.
Amanda Jan 13th 2008 8:41PM
lol, The onnly people making up things like 'I'm scared to play AV!' are people who AFK, cause they're the only ones to have something to be scared of. So if you see anyone saying that, it's because they afk, and be sure to keep an eye out for the botting in AV.
Amanda Jan 13th 2008 8:41PM
lol, The onnly people making up things like 'I'm scared to play AV!' are people who AFK, cause they're the only ones to have something to be scared of. So if you see anyone saying that, it's because they afk, and be sure to keep an eye out for the botting in AV.
mattarin Jan 14th 2008 12:17PM
I like to play AV because I think it is the most fun. It is also the fastest one to get into. I can get into a new battle with less than a minute rather then 10-15min the other ones take and gives me the most honor then the other ones do. The only problem I hate about AV is that as soon as we leave the cave like 5-10 ppl don't come out with us and ppl are like report the AFK. I particapate really well and help at killing Bal and Vann. I am for the horde btw...alliance has gay characters. The only time i don't participate is if the alliance owns all the middle bunkers and when i die i rez at frost wolf keep. i just stay back cuz trying to get to van will take forever cuz i keep dying cuz of the guarded alliance bunkers and i keep rezzing at FWK cuz its the close owned horde graveyard. So i just go behind Drek'Thar and protect him or wait at the entrance and taunt the alliance scum who are waiting to rush in. That doesn't happen all the time im usually with the rest of the horde but horde has a hard time keeping things in the middle capped so i either rezz by the bridge to van or at FWK since that is the only things we keep capped. I still think the AFK should be kicked out but it ppl are at FWK or the Alliance place guarding thier leaders they shouldn't be removed cuz they are still participating.
Zamboni Jan 14th 2008 1:00PM
What I need is a way to report people in WSG who have the flag but won't turn it in. It's bad enough having to break the turtle to get to the flag in the first place, but it's worse when you flag carrier hops up on the roof and decides to pick their nose for the next few hours. I've actually started looking forward to getting rolled by Alliance premades since I'll at least get a mark out of it.