Alterac Valley, the Battle-less Battleground
by Zach Yonzon 
Aug 4th 2008 at 9:00AM
Alterac Valley is the Battleground to join if you want to avoid PvP. I've been part of countless Alterac Valley races before, but these past few days have been ridiculous. Not only do players ride past each other -- that's expected in races -- but in the times I have engaged, players even run away. If they had Achievements already in the game, I would have unlocked The Sickly Gazelle over and over.
The trouble is, Alterac Valley still gives the highest Honor-per-hour which makes it the ideal farming ground. Ironically, you can get high Honor returns without ever having to kill a single opponent. That's just fundamentally wrong. The size of the Battleground is such that it allows players to achieve the map's goals (capture of towers, graveyards, etc.) while bypassing one another completely. It has become a flaw of the game design that high Honor is gained with expediency.
Disturbingly, Zarhym over at the forums has stated that Blizzard feels that Alterac Valley is "well-tuned at the moment". This means we're unlikely to see a fix soon, if ever. While I'm conceptually against players killing for the sake of killing, such as fighting on the roads in Arathi Basin, Honorable Kills need to be more integrated with the map's goal. Perhaps towers can be scaled with the number of player deaths. What's important is to actually bring the 'battle' back into the Battleground.
I have a feeling Blizzard is relying on PvP Achievements to fix the situation. Unfortunately, it's an external fix and doesn't address the problems with the map itself. That also means that the fix will be months away. Until then, Alterac Valley will ironically be a largely PvP-sparse zone where you can and will end up with less Honorable Kills than, say, Arathi Basin. I just hope that despite their thoughts of it being "well-tuned", developers are aware of how combat needs to be intergrated into zone goals. Otherwise, a zone like Lake Wintergrasp might see no PvP at all. And that would be a tragedy. So... how was your Battleground Holiday?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Battlegrounds, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
poPixel Aug 4th 2008 9:06AM
I had one AV where there were 6 horde up until the near end of the battle. Alliance saw a huge amount of honor, but it was ultimately disappointing.
The next, we were steamrolled by a full premade. Lots of fighting, but very frustrating, as the Alliance splintered and quit almost on sight.
But I've never really noticed one where people ignored the fight around them the way you're describing. That doesn't sound like much fun either.
Fireflash38 Aug 4th 2008 11:32AM
I imagine AV as a control point map in TF2. Specifically, CP_well.
It is linear, you cannot cap the point unless you control the preceeding point. Each team starts w/ 2 points, and there is one neutral point. Capping a point takes less time the more points you control. Win by capping all 5 points.
To prevent stalls like old AV and WSG, keep the reinforcements in. Towers just act as a defensive perimeter, you can destroy them or cap them for your own team.
In TF2, they don't have reinforcements, but they do have timers. Time gets added if you cap a point. If you run out of time, it goes to sudden death, where there are no respawns. This is not ideal for WoW, so the reinforcements must suffice.
gbeb Aug 4th 2008 9:30AM
Welcome to 2008.
Offhand Aug 4th 2008 9:14AM
Blizzard needs to do two things to make battlegrounds actually fun.
1) Balence the damn things.
2) Force actual PvP as part of the best plan to beat the other team.
That being said, WSG is the most "balenced" map, it's just plagued by other problems like being longwinded, pointless and gives minimal returns for honor. So I guess there needs to be a third catagory:
3) Worthwhile investment of time.
jerzz80 Aug 4th 2008 9:56AM
I could go on for days about how to improve the battlegrounds but your points are good starts.
WSG - basically becomes a "mark" only BG. nobody runs it for Honor and thus you get alot more AFKs. Nobobdy communicates in WSG either i find. It also hinges too much on who has more/better healers.
AB - my favorite BG. good combination of communication combined with strat makes for fun battles.
EOTS - sorta like AB only i find that a lot of people dont understand what it takes to win.
AV - this could potentially be the best but its the worst. Everyone seems to have all or nothing mentality here. On bloodlust the alliance finally is getting beyond the IBGY/GALV black hole that has plagued us since the patch. Fianlly people understand the Towers are more important. But nobody really plays defense in AV. its all heads down running forward.
Personally, I think the BG should be more World PVP like. If you die, you shouldnt be able to res so fast. Or at all....I would love to see a 1 death BG 40 on 40 FTW.
Why cant BG leader mark up the raids maps? Not the mini map, but the real map. The scrolling BG text just isnt enough for effective Communication.
Can I ask this....Why doesnt anyone use the in game voice chat? I use it in instances and what not, and dotn understand why people arent using it in the BG. I could see it getting abused but Bilzz should update its functionality. be able to ignor certain people for example.
Along those lines, why dont more people use Battle Ground defender? Its a great mod that by th epush of button calls out Inc. Personally Blizz should be making mods like this built into the game and making it more advanced.
Why does Blizz suck at getting people to communicate? Vent, a 3rd party provider, has the monopoly? come on.
slimj091 Aug 4th 2008 10:01AM
"Blizzard needs to do two things to make battlegrounds actually fun.
1) Balence the damn things.
2) Force actual PvP as part of the best plan to beat the other team.
That being said, WSG is the most "balenced" map, it's just plagued by other problems like being longwinded, pointless and gives minimal returns for honor. So I guess there needs to be a third catagory:
3) Worthwhile investment of time"
there are some holes in your argument..
first off AV is a PVE battleground with PVP elements. the point of the map is to kill the opposing forces NPC general.. yes you could sit in the middle of the map and play assgrab with your enemy. but the point is to kill the general.
secondly you don't know much about battle tactics do you? why bang heads with the opposing forces front lines when you can outflank them, and attack deep into their territory.
as for balance.. the only things that needs to be "balanced" is the range of the archers in the alliance bunkers, and the frostwolf base entrance chokepoint.
Silverrealm Aug 4th 2008 10:24AM
This is true! Right now it's a PVE encounter with a few opposition running around and making things messy.
I avoided AV this weekend like the plague. I'm not a huge PVPer, and the epics from PVP don't 'do' anything for me... I'm a raider and geared that way, and trying to succeed in PVP is ridiculous. I am also not that bored with my toon that I would 'build up' a PVP set.
When I feel like ganking someone (as a tree it's hard) then I go a few rounds of PVP... but nothing like back in the day I was trying to get my epic mount.
Sometimes you just want to get the heart racing and see how many times you can get turned into lumber. Crazy, I know!
tehvoid Aug 4th 2008 10:25AM
"Blizzard needs to do two things to make battlegrounds actually fun.
1) Balence the damn things.
2) Force actual PvP as part of the best plan to beat the other team.
That being said, WSG is the most "balenced" map, it's just plagued by other problems like being longwinded, pointless and gives minimal returns for honor. So I guess there needs to be a third catagory:
3) Worthwhile investment of time"
wow! Nice generic ideas with no actual ideas behind it.
Offhand Aug 4th 2008 10:31AM
Because you don't go "deep into enemy lines" to strike where it hurts, you go there to grab a flag or something.
The point of this article wasn't to point out BG strats but the fact that the "best" way to play most BG's involves doing as little PvP as possible.
The easiest AV win is to race.
The easiest WSG win is to ninja the flag and destroy the EFC on the way back.
Both AB and Eye support actual fighting of players to win. The fail comes in when all that fighting takes place on the roads and nothing is actually being contested.
There's been alot of proposed fixes to battlegrounds but you can't stop human stupidity. I'm fearing a Lake Wintergrasp that becomes "OMG SEIGE ENGINE PEW PEW" but it's pretty much hopeless at this point. I can't remember the last time my faction controlled Halaa so the only way to balence things like that is by forcing the teams to switch sides after so long.
Offhand Aug 4th 2008 11:08AM
It also worth pointing out that my generic ideas were more of an overveiw of whats wrong with battlegrounds. As opposed to your troll, we had a pretty good discussion going here.
We've all seen a thousand different answers to the battleground system. Some make sense, some are rediculous, and some are too complicated to implement elegantly. All I did was point out what needed to be solved, not attempt to do Blizzard's job.
slimj091 Aug 4th 2008 9:41PM
"The point of this article wasn't to point out BG strats but the fact that the "best" way to play most BG's involves doing as little PvP as possible."
see that right there is the problem with your issue.. your refering to it as a PVP battleground when it is a PVE/pvp battleground. your seeing it as you want to see it instead of how it's supposed to be seen. the thing is here.. no one is forcing "you" to race.. you can sit midfield and engage enemy players all day long, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. it's your choice how to play the map.
the problem is you trying to force everyone to play the map your way by making the suggestion "everyone should be forced to pvp to win the map". guess what buddy there are three other (soon to be four) pure pvp battlegrounds. if thats what you want i suggest spending a majority of your honor grind time playing in one of those. and leave AV to the people that enjoy it for what it is. a dynamic battleground that has more than just one winning strategy (yes contrary to popular belief the race strat isn't the only one.. just the easiest to get everyone to follow).
Offhand Aug 5th 2008 10:34AM
I will continue farming honor there as will the rest of the raid community until Blizzard gives us a better time-wasting gimmick to get decent gear.
BG PvP is to gear up for other things. I'm glad you enjoy it.
Larry-Steve Aug 4th 2008 9:16AM
I personally was OOT, but generally, AV seems always like the PvE kill race for Honor, as you've put it. I usually get most of my HK's from grinding marks, then only hit up AV when I need the quick honor.
Ironically enough, the faction that usually wins AV on Ruin, gets CRUSHED in the other three BG's. Pattern? You actually have to KILL people in EotS, AB, and WSG...
I do realize Blizz wants to emphasize teamwork, but it wouldn't hurt to add a little more weight in honor to HK's to make actually attacking the other team done by more that just myself in that inital 'race' to the other team's head NPC. (earthbind, ss, frost s, shield macro, wait for dirtnap)
jefeweiss Aug 4th 2008 9:15AM
To me the irony of your little whine is that it doesn't really take that many people to turn AV into a full-fledged PvP fest, regardless of what the rest of your team wants.
It can be done well with as few as five people, although the results are spectacular with 10 or so. So grab a group and play with some strategy. Typically 5 or 10 people playing defense in the right way can force the issue quite nicely and get in some pretty spectacular PvP and HKs. Sure you can't usually do it alone, but if you aren't on defense you're not really looking for PvP.
I play Horde and on my server the Alliance almost always gets Snowfall graveyard then promptly leaves it undefended. So even if I'm by myself, I can go cap that and this will give another minute or two that any Alliance that die will spawn on defense instead of offense. This prolongs the game by at least 5 minutes and forces the offense to PvP a bit on the way to Stormpike.
Sure you might get yelled at a lot by your team, if they are just out for honor. But with a little moxie and a little luck you can make your whole team PvP all by your lonesome.
zappo Aug 4th 2008 10:20AM
Please don't do this on AV weekend. I like PvP (on my healer anyway) and I had a total blast on some turtles this weekend, but the way Blizzard set up a few things, many people end up doing AV for honor and then want to get the hell out. I can respect this, and AV weekend is an honor grind, nothing more - even if you like PvP. If you want to get your honor the old fashioned way, do it another time. If you want maximum honor, then that's what most people are gunning for on AV weekend.
Forcing people into PvP anarchy is not really any better strategy then picking good defensible spots and trying to smash their offense. If you want good PvP, help out on Balinda then take a ninja strike team back around. Even if you don't find people at first, they'll start coming back. Over the course of a day you can get some cool battles in.
jefeweiss Aug 4th 2008 12:21PM
The comment above is a perfect example of people not wanting others to make AV about PvP.
BTW, rereading my first comment it sounded snarkier to me then I really intended it to be.
I guess I was just trying to make the point that AV is what you make of it, to a much greater extent then any of the other BGs. A small band of dedicated PvPers (or I suppose they would be trolls to the above commenter) can turn AV into a complete bloodbath without too much difficulty.
Doyce Aug 4th 2008 9:31AM
I don't run AV anymore. My battlegroup (both sides) does exactly what you described 19 times out of 20. (I can sometimes 'force' some D by bribing people with the promise of healing to anyone who goes on defense at the known chokepoints.)
I dunno what I'll do when I actually need some AV badges for a PvP item.
Riwerwind Aug 4th 2008 9:17AM
i have tried avoiding the pvp combat of AV this Weekend, while i have done loads of AV through out the weekend my battlegroup has been infested with some seriuos lag (and no my computer runs the game just fine my MS was good aswell (12 fps (which is my usual. comps turning 5 soon) and 300 MS))
so engaging in any form of combat with the opponent was a hope for him to be at a place on the map from which i could properly hit him, and then see him "blink to me a sec later. PVP combat in AV has thus been almost impossible
jumb Aug 4th 2008 9:18AM
You play a shit battleground. The AV I experience is all about the PvP.
I love it!
yiNXs Aug 4th 2008 9:19AM
I'm the runner, basically because I like the instance aspect of AV. I usually either tank or heal there. It's rare that I'm killing, unless I decide to defend, because it's useless and something I rather leave to the "thugs". It doesn't give as much honor as getting the objectives also, and makes the battle last for an eternity. If I wanted to battle I'd go do AB (which I also like a lot), which is much more suitable for it. I like AV the way it is and I hope it can stay that way. It is a race, and fighting is there to obstruct and slow the other side.
I really like AV the way it is right now, it should not become just like the others. If you just want to show off your imbaomgwtf pvp skills and gear, there's 3 other BG's and the arena to do that. AV is a nice change from that. Yes, it is a mostly race, where you must defend if you want to fight. Just another way to compete than the regular "just bring their HP down" battles. Don't change it, it's nice and(!!) suitable for all builds compared to the other BG's.