Agreed. When was the last time you saw Lokholar or Ivus summoned?

It's really sad how they completely ruined AV with the changes. Now it's just zerg galore, noone even bothers to cap towers anymore. If the game isn't over in 10 minutes people start whining "stop defending we need to lose quickly" ...

Gone are the epic 7 hour AV battles that would rage from one side to another, you'd complete PvE objectives and you'd have some fun fights along the way - and mostly you would have to co-op with rest of the 40 people because otherwise nothing would happen.

Hate the AV we have now.

/agree

I actually love the AV we have now. I played the old AV once, and I thought it was probably the least fun I'd had in WoW, short of getting ganked and corpse camped. I'd ever tired. "Hey, everyone, let's get stuck in bottlenecks for the next 2 hours! Yay!"

The new one moves at a decent clip, rewards teamwork, gives a good amount of honor for the time it takes, and, and this one is key, almost never bogs down. In WSG, there's the horrible "same 2 people have the flags for 15 minutes" crap, even with the new debuffs. In AB and EotS, it's usually obvious, very quickly, which side is going to win. The rest of the match is just running down the clock, getting HKs (or getting farmed), and getting irritated at your own team for failing to defend/attack appropriately or skillfully. In addition, time spent in a losing non-AV game is time wasted, with almost no honor and one mark for 20-30 minutes of play.

AV as it stands now is, hands down, the best bg in the game, both for hardcore players and casuals alike. There's always something potentially useful to do, and turtles, while they do happen, are easily broken. It's possible to come from behind, but getting ahead early is rewarded. And, yes, there's really only one or two good strategies (either everyone zerg, or 30 zerg, 10 hold towers long enough to slow enemies), but that's true of the others as well.

I'm sorry, but 7-8 hour AVs sucked. I don't know why there is this faction of people complaining that they went away.

Sitting in Alterac Valley moving 30 feet back and forth for hours is *not* fun to me. I look back on it with a degree of nostalgia, I admit. But, I can ALSO admit that the new AV is superior and complements the other battlegrounds more.

7 hour AVs were tedious and repetitive. I'm sure you're going to say "it's epic" or "it meant something," but I just don't see it that way. To me, it was like neverending tic-tac-toe.

7 hours? That's longer than most raiding guilds raid a night. That's more time than many "hardcore" players play a day.

It doesnt even mention the most recent. Hunters were supposed to get a new anti druid buff, Insta Fear Beast. And then the QQ raged all over the druid forums. The night of the patch the decision was made to leave it the way it is. They still havent changed the tooltip back.