Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsAV improvements slated for 2.4
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 4th 2008 at 2:30PM
It seems like they just can't leave Alterac Valley alone. In this case, that's probably a good thing, because there is a lot of discontentment with the state of that battleground right now. Bornakk just announced (and three different people just dropped us tips to let us know) that AV will get some "very significant improvements" in the upcoming patch 2.4:- Horde starting tunnel moved back "to a more equal distance from the first objectives"
- Each faction's Generals and Warmasters will buff each other for health and damage: the more of them your side has, the stronger they all are. Hopefully this will more strongly motivate killing the Warmasters.
- Balinda Stonehearth will do more damage, but she and Stormpike will have their recent health increases repealed.
Filed under: Patches, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Jon Feb 4th 2008 3:54PM
Also, following up with some of the horde posts here, I basically agree. Alliance can win if they follow the right strategy (I've run long winning streaks in semi-premades with stinkyqueue) but the winning strategy is counter-intuitive so it is difficult to get PUGs to play along. Also, most winning strategies on alliance side only work if the IBGY horde turtle isn't massive (and sometimes it is).
kratis Feb 4th 2008 4:13PM
Sure this has been answered before but when is the patch 2.4 suppose to drop?
Koridane Feb 4th 2008 4:04PM
I love AV for being AV. I am on a realm where Alliance cannot find its rear with both hands, a map and a flashlight in AV. When the changes were first made, many Alliance got tired of the Horde getting 600 honor and them getting 60. I would love to see something done to tighten that difference up a bit. MIght bring back some players and get the queue times back to a workable period..
Lockness Feb 4th 2008 4:15PM
you CAN premake AVs... thats all my server does. We win 100% of the time on Ruin as Horde... download Perform AV Enabler and L2AV. k thx bye.
Roboticus Feb 4th 2008 4:27PM
I am looking forward to the possibility that Alliance will be able to reach their first objective at roughly the same time as Horde, rather than 55 seconds later. In my more Noobly days, I honestly thought that Horde started the game with Alliance's first tower.
I predict that this still won't bring a major change in results, because to defend both towers and keep SH GY, Alliance will have to commit 30+ players to a widely-spread defense. A tightly-packed horde assault will still be able to rip a subsection of that defense to pieces before the defenders of other objectives can reinforce.
Gene Feb 4th 2008 4:32PM
All I have to say is that after this, if the Alliance still lose at AV, they need to just suck it up and deal. In all honesty, I look at it as just another challenge for the Horde to overcome in PvP and it'll be all the sweeter when they do.
andyjay220 Feb 4th 2008 4:41PM
The thing that bothers me about people blaming the map for a losing streak is that in some battlegroups horde wins mostly and in others alliance wins mostly (and others are more even). The maps are identical across battlegroups, so it MUST be the players. There was even a blue post about this, basically telling all the whiny boycotting alliance to lrn2AV. Let them move horde's starting cave, we're still gonna win in my battlegroup because horde plays right (more or less) and allies haven't gotten over the zerg mentality. Of course that means alliance will continue to boycott, long queues, not worth it, etc etc...
WP Feb 4th 2008 4:49PM
I hope the main improvement is the AFK problem!
turkeyspit Feb 4th 2008 5:27PM
The problem isn't, never has, nor ever will be cave, Balinda being a wuss, or whether it's raining in AV. The one problem, the only problem that Blizzard needs to address is the imbalance in HONOR earned by winning and/or losing.
There would be no 'boycott' if the Alliance lost 99% of the time, but walked away with 200 honor. I've often lost a game of AV and walked away with about 320 honor. Compare that to winning in WSG and getting a phat epic 280 honor.
So long as the honor earned for a 45 min roflstomp is so pitiful for the loser, you will continue to see Alliance, and maybe even soon Horde, avoiding AV.
Hire me Blizzard. I can see this, and obv you can't.
Rob Feb 4th 2008 6:34PM
Yeah but if Horde knows their stuff and tramples alliance, it's possible to get ZERO bonus honor. No galv, no towers. You dont' get honor from GYs (or very little). I have once gotten 13 honor in 30 min lose. (Only once)
The basic strategy is D on Galv, don't let alliance get any GYs. Mop up towers as they start to get capped. All Ally are pushed back and back, until RH. Cap RH, game over.
Bearskunk Feb 4th 2008 5:41PM
The iceblood chokepoint will remain, as does the nicely lined up iceblood gy, stonehearth bunker, stonehearth gy, balindas garrison. AV will still be broken after these changes. Sticking to Arathi, EotS and Warsong.
Ahrex Feb 4th 2008 5:48PM
give the horde a bridge with a moat or something as the only way in so allies cant just steam roll into rh.
and make the allies fight as many npc's as we horde have to once we get into the base.
av is so unbalanced its ridiculous and the stupid changes listed above won't help to balance it either.
Arnold Feb 4th 2008 5:59PM
My 2 cents worth:
From my observations, if you read the forums where the alliance list their winning strategies for AV, it involves the horde not turtling at IBGY...
So when the Horde defend IBGY, Alliance looses. These new changes for 2.4 won't make much difference, since SHGY is not hidden behind a chokepoint cul-de-sac like IBGY is.
Further, though some people may call them welfare epics, especially now that you can buy them through honor points, I don't. Just consider how long it is going to take you to get together e.g. 27000 honor for a weapon when you are playing AV and getting 60 honor for a 1 hour game... IF that is what the welfare system were like in real life, the poor people would starve before they ever got any food....
Yossarian Feb 4th 2008 6:16PM
Alliance has been DOMINATING AV the last few weeks in my experience. It seems they leave maybe 5-10 back on defense, and all the rest ride right past IBGY as fast as they can. there's no way to stop them short of having 15-20 horde at that chokepoint. We've taken to moving our starting defense all the way back to the frost wolf towers area as there's simply no other area to fight them. Even this only seems to result in winning 1 out of every 10 or so. Does alliance really need ANOTHER geographic advantage?
huntering124 Feb 7th 2008 8:22PM
@#12 your just another person QQing about QQing...but i do agree with most of what your saying about AV's terrain...nothing really needs to be fixed...its fine just need people to follow a chain of command in bg's to win IMO
Good_Idea Feb 4th 2008 6:55PM
The problem is that the Horde base is completely undefendable once IB is gone. And Horde almost always lose "rush" games, if Alliance leaves any defense at all (5-10 Horde defense spread out gets rolled, unlike Alliance D at SP choke).
Pushing the Horde base back will just make it even more obvious that Horde can't win the rush game, we have to defend. And it will be good to defend too, with DR gone from honor kills.
Blizz is just asking for Horde to beat Alliance each and every game with reinforcements, watch it happen.
I'm not sure what the answer is to be honest. If they make a cliff at SH to make it more defendable and/or give FW a moat, it will just mean more fighting in the middle until reinforcements run out. They should probably try to remove the chokepoints altogether if they want us going after multiple objectives.
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I wish there was a classic AV, with no reinforcements, all the NPCs, and Icy and wolf riders, maybe even mostly people from your server. It took hours, but man was it fun (and epic).
Archaic Feb 4th 2008 6:56PM
Congratulations Alliance. Moving the Horde cave back just made Snowfall a required GY for the Horde to cap. Your whining hasn't changed the fact that Horde will run heavy D at IBGY to break up your uncoordinated zergs, and will in fact only extend the length of games by turning Snowfall into an important tactical acquisition for the early game.
eh? Feb 5th 2008 3:50AM
"Congratulations Alliance. Moving the Horde cave back just made Snowfall a required GY for the Horde to cap. Your whining hasn't changed the fact that Horde will run heavy D at IBGY to break up your uncoordinated zergs, and will in fact only extend the length of games by turning Snowfall into an important tactical acquisition for the early game."
Agreed. Unfortunately though, no matter what happens with AV, short of joining and having golden cherubs descend from on high to hand them mountains of honor, Alliance will always have their perma-Q on. Then again, very likely Alliance would find some way to QQ and blame Horde for that too.
This isn't a fairness thing, this is an "I don't want to put out actual effort for my honor" thing.
While moving the Horde starting point back to a comparable place as the alliance one should have been done long ago and the honor differential should not have been changed (neither of these changes will ever stop the alliance from QQing about IB), the map, as it is now, can be won. There are battlegroups out there right now proving it. The fact of the matter is, winning now takes *actual* *effort*, and that's what the Alliance is really QQ-ing about.
Putting out extra and creative effort is something the Horde is used to and has had to do ever since the BG was first implemented, and now it's showing.
twh Feb 4th 2008 7:11PM
Alls I can say is that it's about fracken time!
Jimmy Feb 5th 2008 12:23PM
It can still be fun, win or lose. Or am I being naive? The only ones that I have regretted joining have been the hour-long stalemates. Seems to have been fewer recently.