The inevitable loss
by Allison Robert 
Jul 9th 2008 at 7:00PM
Around every 4th of July I reread Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, which is a book about the battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. There's an early passage about the Southern general James Longstreet's unease over the Confederate push north to Pennsylvania: He had never believed in this invasion...He did not believe in offensive warfare when the enemy outnumbered you and outgunned you and would come looking for you anyway if you waited somewhere on your own ground. Longstreet, one of the finest military minds of the age, spends much of the subsequent bloody fight knowing that Union forces had a terrain advantage impossible to overcome.There's been a lot written about battleground strategy (particularly Alterac Valley) but I think all of us have known the sinking feeling you get when you realize that your side isn't going to win. Some causes of failure are relatively easy to pinpoint; starting a battleground with a heavy numbers or healing disadvantage often seals the fate of a match. And of course the collective quality of a team's gear will always play a role; people in Season 4 are unlikely to lose to those in Season 1.
All other things being equal, what I find most fascinating are the matches -- PuG versus PuG, or premade versus premade -- where the battle can swing either way depending entirely on each team's degree of foresight and strategy. Rarely, single players can sometimes decide the outcome; I once saw a protection paladin in a 2-cap versus 2-cap Eye of the Storm prevent the opposing side from taking any flags by parking himself in the middle and simply taking forever to die, and one of my own favorite techniques is to suicide/harass heavily-defended nodes in Arathi Basin and EOTS while Horde quietly caps elsewhere (you'd be amazed at the number of players who prefer an easy kill over responding to "Inc!" calls elsewhere). But failure and success are usually collective and hard to pin down. How do you convince people to do the less-glamorous jobs -- defense, distraction, crowd-control -- more likely to result in a victory? How do you know when the battleground is lost for sure?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Witty Jul 9th 2008 7:11PM
When half of your teammates are sitting afk in a cave.
MisterMoose Jul 10th 2008 1:44AM
You can write down the names of those people and report them to a GM. It's apparently against the terms of a service. I reported some people and I haven't seen them again (though I don't know what happened). The GM told me I should continue to report people who are afk, don't do anything, advocate others do nothing, etc. So that's a small help against some of the most egregious offenders.
JDM Jul 10th 2008 2:05AM
I don't follow this logic, because the other team has just as many players sitting AFK in their cave. It balances itself out.
darian Jul 10th 2008 11:46AM
It's not that tidy a situation. In the same way both sides rarely have an even number of any given class, gear level, or any other variable, the number of afkers is rarely the same.
Seidhkona Jul 9th 2008 7:17PM
Oddly enough, I can usually tell if I'm going to win based on the conversations taking place beforehand. If there is a lot of chatting, it will eventually turn into whining, and people will spend all of their time complaining about why their side always loses. Almost all of my wins have come when everybody already knows the basic strategy, few people say anything, and we take care of business.
Playing defense, however, is one of my favorite jobs. I love defending towers in Alterac Valley with a fire elemental totem, or pairing up with a hunter to make the Horde spend excessive time trying to take down Belinda. There is glamour to those jobs as well, and something fun about dying for the cause!
Michael Jul 9th 2008 7:19PM
What about premades that are formed to throw a match quickly to farm marks? Is this a significant problem too? An AB premade like this was advertised just last night in my realm in trade. What does Blizz do about players like this if they are reported to a gm?
AB is my favorite bg, and the main problem I see for a losing side is this: 3 out of 5 players in an assault don't survive long enough to retake a node, and when they rez, these 3 find something easier to do. In fact, they don't even survive long enough to get healed. If this is a gear problem or a skill problem, I'm not sure. I rarely take the time to check gear.
Also, players seem to want a consistent strategy from start to end; the same 2-3 players will d-up a node for the entire match, even if, at the very end, it's the only node capped. My opinion is that when your side is losing in a somewhat close fight, and resources hit around 1,700 or 1,800 for the winning side, the losing side's defense must be abandoned immediately and without prejudice. The losing side has *ahem* nothing to lose at this point. Of course, I've never been able to convince anyone to try it effectively, so I have no idea if it's a viable strategy.
larsiezwei Jul 9th 2008 7:25PM
As a person who does probably 50 to 60 premade Av's a week our outcome is usually very successful. We give out assignments ie 3 for SH bunker, 3 for IWB, 8 for Bal ect and then respond by having the most southern players recap TowerPoint and IceBlood. Our strategy is very successful when people do their jobs We are close to 98% win. However, there are the PUGs out there that we go up against and somehow know what to take before we do and we lose the premade. It all happens fast but Id say that if people know a good strategy and DO exactly what there assigned/volunteer for its usually a great quick game full of honor.
Malyfactian Jul 10th 2008 9:34AM
Are you in Whirlwind? That sounds exactly like the strategy I saw Horde implementing all last AV weekend. We were having to keep 3-4 defenders minimum at IBT and TP every match, and still sometimes got overrun. We suffered through too many turtles with ~ 200 honor from failing to cap all the towers.
Clevins Jul 9th 2008 7:27PM
"How do you convince people to do the less-glamorous jobs -- defense, distraction, crowd-control -- more likely to result in a victory?"
In a PUG you can't. Either you get enough people who do that stuff or you don't.
There's nothing hard about the strategies needed to win and even some of the tactics (call incs, leave a couple to defend a node but not more, move as a group so you have a chance to take a node, etc) but some PUGs do these and some don't. I can usually tell when I'm going to lose... either you get whiny talk at the start or no one says anything. The groups where we usually win see people saying little, but it's all relevant... incoming calls, letting people know a node is clear, etc.
That is, of course, the problem with PUGs.... you don't have clear lines of authority that everyone accepts. That and some people are idiots who go fight in the middle, in the road etc even when everyone knows that in EOTS nodes > flag and that in AB you can win if you simply grab 3 nodes and keep them.
Mort Jul 9th 2008 7:44PM
Doh!
you gave away my favorite AB/EOTS strat! we call it torpedoing. Basically a rogue or two and a druid or two go together towards a base, send only one of the many out to go for the flag, and then depending on success either back away and either cap said location or send like 80% of the reinforcements back in that direction.
nav Jul 9th 2008 7:46PM
Generally speaking, if I'm defending a location and everyone else there leaves me to defend it on my own, then I quit the battleground. Better to have fifteen minutes checking email, having a cup of tea and so on than be a holy priest going
/bg incoming draenai ruins
and then dying, watching the rest of the raid group fight over the flag in the middle while in improved death form.
Yeah, I could leave the node undefended, but I prefer to give them a chance to respond to the incoming call before I quit, and if the team likes leaving nodes undefended in an EotS/AB then it's game over already.
cdb2000 Jul 10th 2008 3:58PM
As a noob resto druid in terrible gear, I experienced this for the first time last night in EoTS. I was left alone at FR and nobody responded to my incoming call. The worst part about it was the insults and the whining which ensued after we lost the node. Reminding them that I was a terribly geared resto druid left alone to defend against an incoming of 3 dps and a healer garnered no sympathy. Suffice it to say, there were more than a couple douchebags who got no heals from me for the rest of that match.
WeirdoKitty Jul 9th 2008 7:48PM
You know you've lost for sure when your outnumbered 12 to 8 in WSG or 18-12 in AB. When those "Let's just let them win" whiners start up the mantra, it's like they've switched over to help the other side.
It used to be that a battle could turn around. Many time our side won after being down, and those were the most memorable victories. Now, it's a self fulfilling prophecy when the "Let them win" crowd starts up. We can't come from behind if enough people quit trying. That's my biggest complaint about BGs. I don't expect to win everytime, but I do expect people to keep trying.
JDM Jul 10th 2008 2:15AM
12 in WSG? :p
"Let them win" is a viable solution, but it must be planned and unanimous from the start. I and some other players on my realm have been doing AB and WSG premades in which we just let the other side clean up and we get a free mark in 3-5 minutes. This is essentially a win (3 marks) in 10-15 minutes, which is how long a match would have lasted if we had tried, assuming we had won. If we lost, it becomes a long grind for AB/WSG marks. With this new "Made to Lose" premade, we can easily and quickly get as many marks from those two battlegrounds as we need.
The main reason for this is that even if you win, the honor for those battlegrounds is not that significant. It is best to simply grind honor in AV once you have the marks you need from the other battlegrounds. This strategy would also likely work with EotS (which also has horrid honor gains), but we have yet to try it in there.
nav Jul 10th 2008 6:34AM
That's his point JDM. Two of your side hoping the opposition will win, makes it 12-8.
Namus Jul 9th 2008 7:53PM
Usually a silent chat during the beggining of the BG is a bad sign for me, no strategies and nobody stepping up for the BG leader job (including myself, if i'm not there with some guildies its kinda hard to get other people to follow a strategy) so we end up in the usually "alliance loses" strat, rushing for the flag or falling for the tower distraction.
But from time to time you don't know if you're gonna lose until the very, very last second http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5493/wowscrnshot070508014422oh1.jpg
Markainion Jul 9th 2008 7:53PM
BG needs a new battleground were people who just want to fight, meaning not trying to win, just to try out new gear or a new spec or alt. Probable endless fights with only kill honor and no penalty for leaving it when done. I admit I have done it for that reason a few time, even though I hate it when I see so many people just doing that while I am trying to win, which is usually the case.
Other than that I don’t like premades, I know the grind suck, but pug shouldn’t be forced to endure fights with teams that decided the outcome before we enter. I know blizzard could simple remove teams and BG entrance selection to end the premade loophole. But I do sometime play with teammates, and that take away some of the fun.
So why would people pre organize premades anyway. If you can get two teams to set the outcome of match, you should be able to do 25 man raids, which are basically the same thing, as your doing with assignments in BG, so what even the fun in it. Is the gear so much better? If so then blizzard should make sure that raid gear is so much better than BG gear or even arena gear.
Gary Jul 9th 2008 7:59PM
I know I'm going to lose when I open the Battleground window and see that everyone in the opposite team is all from the same server whereas I don't see a single person from my own server on the list.
Random: "omfg premade, just let them win k"
Me: /afk
Ikarus Jul 10th 2008 2:34PM
Not always a good idea. I've seen plenty of premades fail. Just because a group of people go into a BG together doesn't mean they're good. Beating a premade is the best kind of victory
Thorium Jul 22nd 2008 7:31PM
My vendor pvp blue - fury/arm's sole contribution to BG is wailing on healers to distract them enough to hopefully miss a heal or two and help out those that actually have the gear to play it right... that and hamstring so melee can get in and DPS.