Bloodwinter Clan

Another friday at work, and can't surf VN. So I'll just write another of my long babbling posts.

I'll cut straight to the point - I think Battlegrounds are a home run! While not perfect, I do think Battlegrounds are very fun, and if they get tweaked and expanded going forward, this game should have long legs. As a level 59 druid with only 1/2 a set of my rare class gear, I still am able to kick some ass out there. Both the CTF battlegrounds and the Alterac Valley Battlegrounds have been fun. I haven't even done a guild group yet other than running with Tav (or following Tav around while he capped flags is more like it). It will be much more fun running in an organized group.

Which brings me to point # 2 - Super, come back now. This is worth your time. We can have a lot of fun with this if we have a decently skilled guild zerg that can follow instructions.

I made no secret I was down on WoW before battlegrounds came out (but yet continued to play, go figure). I think solo grinding to 60 on a post-honor patch PVP server before battlegrounds came out was much more painful than levelling my first char over on Azgalor. Especially if you take it personally when you die like I do! I think the WoW uber equipment grind and the necessity to do instances over and over and over and frickin-over is like DAOC TOA only worse. The concept of 8-12 hour Onyxia runs sound horrible to me. And then doing it 10 times? Yuck! WoW undeniably has grinding, but it's not all bad. The LBRS 5 man runs I've done have been fun and challenging, but the concept of doing dungeons over and over for a small chance to get the drop you want is not the game I want.

But that's cool, 1/2 level more and I can be full time PVP again! WoW now has legitimate PVP rather than the joke pvp zerging around Kargath & Tarren Mill that people were trying to call PVP before. CTF has been a lot of fun. (Before my 3 years of DAOC, I played Unreal Tournament CTF hardcore, and I love CTF.) Once people figure out all the strategic points on the map so it's not just everyone running around, it's going to be great. Alterac Valley zerg map is fun too. The battlefront remains fluid up and down the valley. The uneven terrain and bottlenecks before strategic points make it more interesting. I again think it was a decent level design.

On the downside, the wait time to get in is lame. They need more instances! Yesterday afternoon I was able to play a bunch of CTF without waits in between, but at night during prime time it was a 37 minute wait to get in. That's ridiculous. Worse than waiting for Drutt to get his shit together and head out. (DAOC Merlinites may understand that reference). I also think CTF needs more than one map. I'm not sick of this one yet, it's a good level design, but variety would be good.

I'd also like to see Battlegrounds have more of a lasting impact on the overall game. DAOC relic runs were cool not just because of bragging rights, but you also were doing something that provided lasting benefit to the whole realm. Both offense and defense of relics actually mattered, not just that night, but until your enemy managed to do the same. Same thing with taking enemy keeps to open the Darkness Falls dungeon. It mattered, it helped your realm and hurt your enemies. I liked the realm call to arms. So I'd like to see the zerg battlegrounds become more, with some really hard central objective that both sides wanted to accomplish and wanted to prevent the enemy from accomplishing.

You know what would be awesome with the CTF map? If they made it so that if you could win 3-0 vs your opponent, you could stay in the instance versus a new set of opponents, except now they outnumbered you! Round 2 would be 10v15, round 3 would be 10v20. If a group can advance and win 10v20, then give them some sort of special reward.
The most fun for me in DAOC was when 2-3 groups of BWC would defeat a huge zerg. I like being outnumbered and winning.

Well thats all, I've wasted enough time at work. See you all out there

I just got home from work so I'm not gonna post 5 paragraphs, but basically...

I have to agree Josh, BGs were a good answer to many of the problems with WoW. So D should come back and make it like it was in DAOC

Hmm...CTF is ok if you can get an instance within 5 mins...

I spent a little time this morning in Alterac Valley, solo. Alterac Valley Battleground is Emain x2, milegates x10, zerg v. zerg pvp with Epic Mobs in frontier (ala summoning lvl 75 baddies to fight towns) decimating towns... I don't know...maybe a bit more time to adjust I think.

Most of the alliance on BH hide in Alterac Valley so they can kill people along with the npcs (as a crutch). Granted, it maybe fun with a small raid group, camping graveyards but it gets old after a while....

Sounds like good news! I must say it's about time too....

Keep us updated on the PvP situation.

Alterac cannot be played with dial-up, but ctf is alot of fun. Seems to be twice as many horde trying to get into warsong than alliance, though.

my problems with alterac is that it is so biased towards alliance.

the last bridge you need to battle across with a tower off to the side full of npcs and PCs shooting you is just so much better than the horde defense (which is a wall circling the town which has 1 door and at least 2 other places where teh wall can be jumped by anyone on a horse AND the wall doesnt block LOS so if you are inside behind it they are still hitting you) it sucks that the horde needs a ton of rogues to take those last 2 towers since there is no way to straight up fight across a choke point bridge (even with the icelord, he gets pulled back into town and owned)

all that aside, 1200 kills last night. not bad for a damn healer

oh and btw i think leading alterac valley raids would be the kind of thing that gets dwayne a chubby

I've only had one full day of pvp so far.

I have to say the best thing is at least the sides are pretty much even.
So it's 40v40 ---- 30v30 --- or 10v10 so no more whoever has the most wins.

Alterac needs a tweak for Horde to win More often - but I kinda like the graveyard thing, since they are not exactly easy to hold. And the reward to having them is you can better you battle lines.
Alterac rewards are sweet - seems like you can actually get an epic wep in a reasonable amount of time.

It would be nice for 10v10 to get more guild groups going. Pugs as everyone else said are Pugs........

No way this beats old Daoc for those of you who played before there were even level 50's, but it beats the shit out of being assjammed by radar trying to run a group.
It is also not about the CC war or even who has the uberest gear
(Though it does help) it comes down Skillzzzzzzzzzzz/makeuppppppp...................

CTF is much more of a Honor farm actually.

The other day (Friday) I did about 9 CTF runs (with the pathetic timer), had 527 kills and made 30,000 honor.

Yesterday (Saturday) I didn't intend to play long so I went to Alterac Valley and made 200 kills and made 3200 honor. Unless you are a mage or stealth class, probably excel more in AV.

In CTF, people are worth full Honor every kill or so. I think Alterac people are worth a % of the Honor. Most of the people in Alterac were worth 10 honor pts, than in CTF most were worth btw 60-100 honor pts, (love my UI telling me who was worth how much points). Plus the bonus of capturing the flags are great...1660 ever time.

after having gotten farther into the alliance base last night i would lilke to revise my opinion. i think the alliance and horde bases are even. the alliance has a huge stop the bridge/tower combo but after that one tower goes down the shows over. for horde they are a couple of choke points inside the fort that can be used, not as tough but more of them

I enjoy both BGs personally, but I get way more pissed off in AV because I take so much more damage from so many random people in the alliance zerg and die before I get heals. Once that happens a few times I start yelling in Vent ><

That seems to be a warriors way of life Sirion. Unless of course you're someone like Manglurr who has no less than 2 paladins, a druid, and more than one priest healing him. Even then he still goes down like a dwarf sized bag of bricks.

My new game in AV has been pretty fun. I call it, "Kill the Paladin before he can shield." Doesn't always happen but when it you get a 1.9k shadowbolt off followed by a 2.2k+ shadowbolt, you know that paladin is spamming his sheild button as he dies.

Rhuac wrote:That seems to be a warriors way of life Sirion. Unless of course you're someone like Manglurr who has no less than 2 paladins, a druid, and more than one priest healing him. Even then he still goes down like a dwarf sized bag of bricks.

My new game in AV has been pretty fun. I call it, "Kill the Paladin before he can shield." Doesn't always happen but when it you get a 1.9k shadowbolt off followed by a 2.2k+ shadowbolt, you know that paladin is spamming his sheild button as he dies.

You know what's funnier than that? Having a pally wait to stun you so he can heal himself only to have him die to deep wounds. It happened like 5 different times in BS before BGs came out.

Either way, I only currently go to AV for one reason, to farm faction for the nice gear. If we could maybe get a sweet little raid group going with like 30x people and could get some tactics going, I think it would be more enjoyable, but going with a horde PUG is just meh.

i snuck into the warsong enterance for alliance and died there. however when i came back as ghost and rezzed in a corner no one saw me. i mind controlled an afk pally and made his own guards kill him and managed to run out without dieing.

Now Amit that is sweet. I hate Pally's with all my cold heart.

I think that WoW PVP is really good and fun at same time, its the reward system that sucks balls. Work on your rank let say for a whole year, you stop playing 1or2 week and you come back and found that all that time you spend getting a good rank was for nothing cus you lost your ranks over time.... If your a casual gamer you'll never get a chance to get any good rewards out of it... To get a good rank you need to be playing 7 days a week and never stop cus if you do you'll lose all that you earned...