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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
No idea why my cut/paste was cut off: AV v1.9.0
No specific changes listed
AV v1.9.3
The default graveyards in Alterac Valley for each side were moved further up the tunnels away from the battleground exit. This should prevent accidentally leaving the battleground.
AV v1.10.0
Flavor items from player loot in Alterac Valley will now stack and can be sold for a small value. These are items like Documents from Boomstick Imports, Worn Running Shoes, etc.
Players in Alterac Valley will no longer drop Darkspear Troll Mojo, Dwarf Spines, Forsaken Hearts, Human Bone Chips, Orc Teeth, etc. and the quests have been removed for these items. Instead when a player is slain in Alterac Valley, any enemies that were in that player’s threat list will gain 1 point of reputation with either the Frostwolf or Stormpike factions.
Frostwolf and Stormpike faction will now be gained by killing players of the opposite faction. Reputation will no longer be split up among the entire raid group.
Tower Banners in Alterac Valley can no longer be used through walls.
Korrak the Bloodrager and his band of trolls have packed up their bags and left Alterac Valley for greener pastures.
AV v1.11.0
Most of the NPC guard units have been removed.
Players now drop more quest items.
Creatures that remain in Alterac Valley have had their hit points reduced.
The buff that is periodically cast by each faction’s Captain has been changed to a flat 20% hit point buff.
Upgrading troops through armor scrap turn-ins will also now result in your team’s General enabling a periodic buff to your melee and spell damage. This buff scales from 10% at the Seasoned unit level, 20% at the Veteran unit level, and 30% at the Champion unit level.
AV v1.12.0
When you join a battleground, you are automatically added to a raid group. You MAY NOT leave that group. To speak in this raid, use /bg instead of /ra.
Leadership of the battleground raid is granted to whomever has the highest PvP rank when the raid is formed (approximately 1 minute before the battleground starts).
People who want to zerg as much as everyone here is implying will find a way regardless. “Zerg mentality” “Zergfest”. Like seriously. It’s as simple as having some people play defense and it stops being a zerg and an actual pvp match, not a raid with pvp elements.
Being worried about people zerging AV isn’t really a good argument for saying we need to have 1.5 considering there are player made ways to stop it from being a zergfest.
To give you guy’s a reference, maybe. If you dumped enough armor scraps into the older versions of AV those normal 55 guy’s would end up becoming 62 elite mobs, that you couldn’t solo. Even those GY guards, those LT’s would give out aura buff’s depending on your rep and so on. Tower archers WILL SHRED ANYONE who’s not a plate user.
Armor scraps made those guy’s into monsters. Also to add in, AV O.G also had that whole black loctus spawn as well, and a ton of herbs, that made everyone want in. I can’t recall when they removed nodes from it (It might of been BC? or 1.12) Also, 1.12 just down play’s the whole Wolf riders and blood hand in’s imho.
Items such as the body parts drop where also a way to farm rep with Gnomer as a human instead of dropping tons of money, into runecloth. Personally i can see why they didn’t do 1.5, but why not just 1.8?
Edit: Also, yes i do agree with you it is as simple as that. But sadly people don’t have that mindset as much anymore. I mean, as you say, a raid with PVP elements, but 1.12 AV removed a lot of those elements. Not all of them mind you but a good chunk.
And all of this is irrelevant to people are just going to zerg as quickly as possible because winning/losing quickly is a “better” option then having long extended battles.
What you’re describing is exactly how AV works now. Well, I can’t speak for right now since I haven’t really pvp’d much since Wrath. But as soon as players figured out they could just ignore the other team, that’s what they did. Almost every AV was just who could rush down the General first. People didn’t play defense, and if you did your team would yell at you for prolonging the match. To say magically this won’t be the case in Classic isn’t based in reality. That mindset exists now. Only the older version of the map would stop that from happening.
![:us:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/us.png?v=6" ":us:")