There’s nothing really surprising about this, they’ve been pretty clear they’re using 1.12 for a very long time. As for retail being just like 1.12 no it’s not, adding reinforcements significantly AV. 1.12 just has less NPC’s so you actually spend more time pvping.
Honestly, I always thought it was a long-shot. And it was just wild hope to get 1.5 or 1.6 AV. But…the news is hitting me harder than I expected. I realize just how much I wanted to experience something I never really got the chance to. And never will now.
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Agreed, this can work as seen on P servers. I doubt blizzard even has the old map. The only problem is, that do we think they’ll be going the lazy route for things such as threat generation and so on from here.
Any Alliance team just straight zerging is being intentionally dumb. Unless they are just severely out geared, 10 Alliance on defense can pretty much indefinitely hold off the entire Horde team on the bridge.
Why you would choose a toss up over pretty much a guaranteed win is beyond me.
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Losing quickly offers better rewards than winning slowly.
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I guess I should be glad that at least my thread about it got mentioned, but apparently it fell on ears that just don’t want to hear (eyes?)
Best way to rep farm is to lose, IIRC the plan normally was you’d cap Galv> Iceblood >TP, and if you can get frostwolf towers V.I rogue stealth, then lose since that would give you most honor / rep. Then you’d re que and do it again. It’s how you did it on P servers for quick easy exalted as well.
Get into 7-12 min game, get out reque. I think… It was about 900-1.5k per game.
Edit: The horde will always beat you in the race, unless you can get people to re-call since they’ll just back door, and ignore the bridge completely. Unless they’re silly, or you have 3-6 mages on D for blizzard with a few more.
Okay, forgive my bad memory, I don’t remember exact patch numbers but I do remember the ebb and flow of AV and how that changed over time.
When I first got to AV, there was A LOT of PvP.
- Galv HAD to be killed.
- Skipping towers was a thing sometimes.
- Getting to the Horde base we would “organize” (yell at each other) and begin to pull warmasters one by one and burn them down. Often as not they killed us.
- After warmasters and/or towers were down we zerged Drek.
- Horde would OFTEN turtle outside IB tower, at Galv, or in their base.
- Alliance defense over that bridge was major.
- It was rare to not hit Horde resistance. Map advantage went to Alliance, Horde always lost the zerg race.
- Ivus showed up frequently to break a hellacious turtle.
- If you were new or bad you gathered resources for the summoning(s).
The patch that changed everything (in my memory) is the one that linked Generals to their Warmasters and buffed them. No more pulling them out one by one, we HAD to get the towers down.
AV history has a lot of nuance. I don’t think saying “if it’s not 1.5 it’s trash!” is accurate. Thete’s a lot to every single little change that occured in every single patch.
And finally, AV was how Alliance (on my server) got honor. We always lost AB/WSG. Rapid Q times and map advantage in AV was the only way to real honor gains for the gear grind. Not arguing that this is the correct way, but hey, that was the reality of Vanilla.
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Forgiven:
AV v1.5.0
- Enemy NPC lieutenants and commanders now have a team bonus honor value.
- Enemy NPC lieutenants and commanders no longer respawn.
- Enemy towers are now destroyed rather than captured (a one-time event per tower). The mechanics for destroying a tower are very similar to their previous capture mechanic.
- The enemy NPC mine layer no longer respawns when killed.
- The respawn time for laying mines has been slowed.
- All Alterac Valley quest items (ie: armor scraps) are zone-bound, and will be lost if taken outside the battleground instance.
- Korrak’s respawn time has been increased to 30 minutes.
- NPC’s in the entrance tunnels will no longer fight enemy NPCs, only enemy players.
- Lok’holar the ice lord and Ivus the forest lord are now friendly to Horde and Alliance players (respectively), and will therefore no longer affect friendly players with area-of-effect spells.
- Sound effects have been added to critical battleground events (ie: a graveyard being assaulted).
- Additional items for purchasing have been added to the quartermasters in the entrance tunnels. The types of items you may purchase is based on your reputation with the quartermaster.
- The Alliance and Horde NPC captains now periodically shout a “rallying cry”, granting a powerful effect to all friendly players in the battleground. Killing the enemy’s captain will deny the ability for the enemy to gain a rallying cry.
- Ivus the Forest Lord now uses a winter Ancient Protector model rather than a Keeper of the Grove model
AV v1.6.0
- Each team will now gain additional bonus honor if their towers are not destroyed by the end of the map. The more towers that remained intact, the more honor received.
- If you manage to keep your faction’s Captain alive for the duration of a battle, you will be granted extra points upon victory.
- Several Alterac Valley vendor items are now bind on acquire.
- The respawn time for tower guards (assuming the tower has not been destroyed) has been greatly increased.
- Korrak the Bloodrager has gained immunities to many different spell and ability effects.
- The minimum reputation needed to send a cavalry charge has been reduced to Honored.
- Players of Revered or higher reputation may now call offensive air strikes if they have managed to rescue their respective Wing Commanders.
- Alterac Valley’s guard spawn is now controlled via a more intuitive mechanism. Please check the Officer Supply vendors for your faction to read up on the changes.
- Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the Alliance team from receiving honor for destroying towers.
- Fixed a bug that was not awarding Horde credit for owning a mine at the end of a game.
AV 1.7.0 (general BG changes)
- Battleground “holidays” have been added to Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin. Holidays occur during most weekends, starting on Thursday night at midnight and continuing until Tuesday morning. During a holiday, emissaries from that Battleground will be found in the major cities, and honor/faction rewards for performing objectives in that battleground are increased.
- Alterac Valley now correctly rewards honor for owning graveyards at the end of the game.
- Fixed a bug that would cause players to stand up when a turnin was made in Alterac Valley.
- Players will no longer be able to gain health by repeatedly entering and leaving the effect of a Battle Standard.
- Entering a battleground now resets the timer for the AFK flag. This should prevent players being kicked by the AFK timer moments after they enter the Battleground instance.
BGs in general v 1.8.0:
- Each Battleground has an individual turn-in quest associated with its related victory/loss condition. Upon completion of a Battleground, the winning side will be awarded three Marks of Honor while the losing side will be awarded one Mark of Honor. Three Marks of Honor may be turned in to the associated questgiver for Honor points and faction increase. Should players complete this turn-in quest, they will find that the bonus Honor Points for completion are twice that of normal turn-in conditions (individual).
AV v1.8.0:
- In order to keep teams in Alterac Valley more numerically balanced, players will now enter Alterac Valley on a one-for-one basis (i.e. if there are 30 players in the battleground for each side with 10 players in the Alliance queue and 2 players in the Horde queue, only two players from each team will be added, bringing the total to 32 per side).
- The minimum number of players required to start a battle in Alterac Valley has been lowered to 20 (the maximum is still 40).
- Points for completing the map and winning have been slightly decreased.
- Graveyards and graveyard capture points are now at different locations. The banners players must interact with in order to capture a graveyard have been distanced from each other somewhat in order to alleviate “graveyard zerging” and make graveyards more meaningful to both defense and offense.
- Several terrain changes were made to fix some geometry exploits as well as to adjust for the new graveyard mechanic.
- Iceblood Graveyard has been fortified.
- The Frostwolf Relief Hut now has appropriate guards.
- A great avalanche has closed off both the eastern and western segments of Alterac Valley. This has displaced the Syndicate, the Wildpaw Gnolls, and many of the Winterax Trolls.
- Due to the avalanche, Korrak the Bloodrager and a small band of surviving Trolls have made the Snowfall Graveyard their new home. Players will find that Snowfall is now under Korrak’s control and they must defeat Korrak and his Troll guards if they wish to take Snowfall.
- The quests Korrak the Bloodrager (Alliance), Korrak the Everliving (Alliance), The Legend of Korrak (Horde), and The Return of Korrak (Horde) have been removed from the game. The rewards for the initial quest involving Korrak have been moved and can be acquired by completing the quest associated with winning a match in Alterac Valley. We realize that some players may have had the Korrak quest and never completed it. These players may have already completed the quest for killing the General and thus might not be able to benefit from the rewards from the previous quest line. We have opted to add an extra quest step at the end of the General kill quests to reward players that fall under such conditions.
- A new item has been added as one of the reward choices for the quests Hero of the Stormpike and Hero of the Frostwolf.
- NPC difficulty has been scaled down. All NPCs have had their power reduced by 15-30%.
- There is now a portcullis at the end of each of the entrance tunnels inside Alterac Valley. They will rise two minutes into the battle.
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Well, if people today really want a zergfest, 1.5… 1.12… not really going to make a difference. Seems like people really need to stop complaining about the version and start focusing on getting people to not want to zerg.
Because at the end of the day that seems to be the thing people are complaining about the most. “People today are just going to zerg because it’s faster, so use the earlier version because it’s going to be harder to zerg.” Harder doesn’t mean it’s going to stop them from zerging.
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No, sorry to say 1.12 is not going to be the real experience people have heard.
I outrank you Lieutenant Commander, I am giving you an order to support 1.5
Semper Fi! ![:us:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/us.png?v=6" ":us:")
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Epic man lol
*wi-five
This is what people really need to understand, you want AV to not be a zerg play some defense. This is something that’s 100% controllable by the player base, what really turned AV into a zerg was adding reinforcements, which won’t be in 1.12.
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Ziryus, that we agree on something amazes me.
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This is as dumb a comment as saying “if you do not want a quick AV, just RP walk, lol”.
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Actually 1.5 is MUCH MUCH more anti zerg, due to minefields alone, i’m not to sure as horde. But i know as Alliance Iceblood GY and TP choke ponint with mines HURT like hell, you’re gonna die there and you NEED that GY at least in OG vanilla so. You sorta had to camp the GY out, while you’re underfire from the Archers who back then HURT even without upgrades.
1.5 -1.8 just has much much much more anti zerging checks set in place compared to 1.12
Would 1.5 Av’s be shorter then they where in Vanilla? Probably so, but there’s no way they’d be done in 6-15 minuites. To many mobs to pull, warmasters alone where a nightmare back then…
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Given the degree to which NPCs were actually nerfed, 1.5 would actually stop most groups from being able to zerg it.
Plus, the fact that 1.5 isn’t technically perfect isn’t a real argument for accepting 1.12.
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Wait, we have the option to accept or not accept 1.12? Like, a toggle or something?
You forgot the 1.11 nerfs.
I’d be totally in favor of blizzard offering 1.5 and 1.12 AV, let the community decide which one they prefer.