Yet another Alterac Valley change in patch 2.4
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 20th 2008 at 4:00PM
Although this change is not quite like the others! It turns out that in patch 2.4, you will be able to join Alterac Valley as a group! What I can't tell you is whether or not you can join as a raid. Sorry!Personally, I think this is a good change, even if you can only join as a group and not a raid. Especially if you can only join as a group, actually. Joining as a group will let you reliably play with your friends(without the use of tricksy mods) but won't totally throw off Alterac Valley by flooding it with 40-man premades. You can queue for every other battleground as a raid, though, so Alterac Valley will likely be the same. I look forward to this hitting the live servers, I've missed the days of getting into the more 'epic' battleground with a group of my friends, even if we lost due to complete nubbery. Sure, you could still sort of do it with the aforementioned mods, but it wasn't very reliable and unless I'm mistaken, it was slightly against the TOS.
I'm unsure how this will change queue times. Queueing as a 5-man probably won't change much for you from what queue times are right now, but I imagine a 40-man team will be standing around Shattrath for quite a bit longer. I would go try it myself, but I unfortunately do not have 40 friends on the PTR. So lonely.
Filed under: Patches, News items, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DJTyrant Feb 20th 2008 4:06PM
Why would you not be able to join as a raid group?
Raid groups do it all the time for WSG/AB.
To assume that it's possible would be pretty safe imo.
Lucas Feb 20th 2008 4:52PM
Because AV is such a huge honor grind that if they let 40 man premades people would be getting even more dis-proportionate amounts of honor from the other BG's.
springz Feb 20th 2008 6:23PM
@Lucas
In case you havent noticed, the number of AV premades is rising by the day? So your logic does not make any sense.
Rihlsul Feb 21st 2008 2:54AM
That'll be pretty awesome, my guildies will probably LOVE setting up some AV raids on honor weekends or when the random BG quest is AV. Downside is that I may have to up my vent slot count again. Heh, it's still 40 man.
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Rihl
http://www.wowdailies.com
Ircasha Feb 20th 2008 4:28PM
I'm in favor of allowing Join as a Group. I hope that they do not allow joining as a raid in AV. This would allow people to play with a few friends and enhance their gaming enjoyment.
If they allow raids, expect to see honor farming in AV the likes of which we've never seen considering the potential honor/hour gains in there. If you think it's bad now, it will get much, much worse for someone trying to pug it through the bg to pick up marks/honor.
While it is possible to have a raid in AV using the current join queue mechanics and I keep hearing about lots of guilds doing it, I have rarely come across an Alliance pre-made in my battlegroup in hundreds of AV contests. If they make it this easy and do not significantly change the bg rules, that will change dramatically. I'll more than likely be doing it myself to build up honor for my horde of alts.
Blanktarget Feb 20th 2008 5:30PM
I've been doing 40 man premades for a while on our server. Ques are very fast still to get all (or close to all) in one game. I don't think it'll be much worse. What I want to see is if the alliance get good ones going to fight us, right now we steamroll them.
Zamboni Feb 20th 2008 4:34PM
The other half of allowing 40-man premades is that they'll be going against 19-man PUGs. The 15-on-7 steamroller wrecked the level-70 brackets on our server, and now it looks like AV will be wrecked as well. (Not that it matters, as the relocated entrance and the full-strength Alliance zerg means the entire Horde force turtles at the Relief Hut.)
Netherscourge Feb 20th 2008 4:35PM
Won't this increase QUEUEs though? Joining solo vs. Joining in a group - wouldn't you get stuck waiting to find a full group vs. finding room in a PuG group?
Khanmora Feb 20th 2008 4:39PM
Neth actually posted a while back that the queue times were part of their decision in whether or not to allow joining as a group in AV again. So I think they have probably figured at least a few things out in that regard:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3269178173&postId=32333466141&sid=1#4
Khanmora Feb 20th 2008 4:37PM
Alex, take just a few min to look at the Blue posts before posting BS. You will find that, in fact, those mods are in NO WAY against the TOU.
CSR forums on joining AV as a group
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4493769885&postId=44930056783&sid=1#8
Macro and UI forums on what an "Illegal Mod/Macro" is
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=442927843&sid=1
It is exactly b/c of posts like this that we have fools posting on the UI and Macro forums daily about whether or not mods are legal. Take some time to find the stickies (not to mention the ToU and EULA) and read them.
Alex Ziebart Feb 20th 2008 10:41PM
"...and unless I'm mistaken..."
And I suppose I was!
Scoottie Feb 20th 2008 4:41PM
AV will never be epic again. The days of epic 6 day battles is long over, which is sad.
seankreynolds Feb 20th 2008 5:12PM
Yes, the days of getting 166 honor per hour of fighting were AWESOME:
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj267/bulldogbetta/thirtyhourslater.jpg
jedco Feb 20th 2008 5:03PM
It's like having Preform AV Enabler for everyone!
Zor Feb 20th 2008 5:08PM
at Scottie
i think thats what they fixed...lawls 6day AV battle
so tell me, at that rate it would get you to get ONE piece of honor gear.
......just wow, im glad they did FIX this
Zor Feb 20th 2008 5:11PM
and Scott, not a flame, just i couldnt think of a better way to keep 99% people out of a huge part of the game.
do you repair?..do you resupply?
hell BT raids aren't this demanding.
...side note, might be fun to bring in an epic venue, but not our meat n' potatoes
VSpeck Feb 20th 2008 5:19PM
Oh great, games will begin 40vs20. That'll be fun.
infection Feb 20th 2008 6:18PM
Come to shadowburn and play horde. You get that anyway.
I for one hope this is what they fix.
We are getting tired of que'ing up to ANY bg and it being 15 to 7 at the start of EVERY game.
Av doesn't count because we can't lose anyway.
Not sure what blizz done to 2.3, but they sure didn't make the que's even for horde.
imparush Feb 20th 2008 5:23PM
Old AV was more fun, now it's all about to get the most honor, no more big giants boss there can be summon and get stronger for every kill of the other faction :(
Ircasha Feb 20th 2008 5:57PM
You can still summon Lok and Ivus, it's just that no one does anymore.
AV these days consists of 90% of the Alliance players zerging to the FW RH and the Horde either sending enough people to defend to stop this initial rush and usually resulting in a Horde win, or having the entire Horde team zerg the Alliance Aid Station which normally results in a Horde loss (or a win with very little honor since you have to kill Van before most of the towers cap).
The honor farmers on both sides could really care less who wins as long as the game ends in less than 10 minutes and some honor is gained.
While I do 'farm' for honor, I also like to win and have fun playing the BG. Some of the most fun AVs I've had recently were reinforcement wins with lots of actual PvP action. Most of the AVs I run these days have only a handful of hks on either side. If I wanted to PvE, I'd run a heroic or Kara.