1.12 AV is a huge, huge mistake

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
594

Bout time for a refresher of the various patches.

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.

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).
6 Likes
595

But 1.12 av was to fit into the cross realms version of the honor system were if you didn’t pvp all day, every day you weren’t going to get any where. If you want to play 3-4 hours a day and have that mean something for your progression, then you really shouldn’t want 1.12 av. Yes the games will be faster but the honor you get will mean soooooooooooooo much less. Older version av it was the norm to play a few hours and come back tomorrow and other people on your server would take your spot and fight in av for a while until you came back. That was not a problem until marks were added to the game. Then you had to be there at the end. People asking for 1.12 need to understand you are basically asking for cross realms, marks, and a much larger commitment of your time. Old av took longer. But you didn’t have to be there the whole time and you will still get alot out of it.

1 Like
596

Maybe if they make marks of honor a thing, simply award one for being in AV for X amount of time, say 2 hours. (Only one total per match for the loser, max of 3 per match for the winner)

1 Like
597

Whelp nothing is right in AV when you spend so much time gathering regents for shaman or druids to have av end. Same with wolf riders, they take soo long to recruit.

598

you’ve never taken a statistic course pal, and if you did you sat at the back and downed whiskey and wore your walkman

2 Likes
599

All the better they shouldn’t be playing wow if all they do is complain about having kids and a wife.

4 Likes
600

More quests , more mobs, more fun!

7 Likes
601

I could talk modes, medians, means and coefficients of dispersion until both of our heads explode but that wouldn’t really matter because that wasn’t the point of the post you’re replying to which was to poke fun at someone who crafted a stupid generalization.

602

Earlier AV is better AV.

3 Likes
603

There has to be a good compromise here. Maybe they can revisit the rewards for AV so that longer matches are more worthwhile?

1 Like
604

Make MoHs time based, and reincorporate the NPCs and their strength. There is your compromise. People could (for example) spend 2 hours in the BG and earn a MoH regardless of whether they are there at the end.

605

It’s a fundamental flaw in the PvP system that you’d almost have to rework the whole thing in order to fix.

In general even losing quickly in a BG is better than winning slowly when trying to rank up. The only reason we didn’t zerg AV 1.5 is because we either didn’t think of it, or we couldn’t do it at the time.

AV is especially bad because “winning slowly” tends to mean multiple days of the BG per match.

Though I would say that having an earlier version of AV is in itself the compromise here. The people who want to spam BGs for quick honour ranking have WSG and AB.

The people who want a slow and epic BG currently have nothing.

8 Likes
607

No, there is a decent version that makes the game min 2hrs of grinding, that would address the people wanting to grind for hours, and make the game change from ‘turtling’ to ‘offense.’ The Npc’s where still strong enough that you couldn’t solo, but weak enough that you didn’t need 40 people rushing just to slowly push forwards.
this also makes farming MoH in AV easier then 1.5, but doesn’t relegate it to weekend grind only either.

the issue of time based is, people would complain that you get more MoH just afking and no one’s trying to progress the game. If you make it where you still need to finish the game for get 3 (like you stated before) it would make either side give up assuming one was closer to winning.
That’s just the most basic and easy to see flaw, but if they removed MoH it wouldn’t effect pvp to much but without MoH then AV (assuming it’s 1.5) is the only BG people will play, thus there is no sure ‘win.’

the best alternative is the patch where Korrak spawns 2hrs after the game starts so you know it’ll take around 2 1/2 hrs maybe 3hrs to finish a game, thus it addresses many issues/concerns.

608

Been considering playing again when Classic comes out. Was looking forward to AV battles that actually made use of the summons and were hard fought. Thanks for the heads-up.

Wow - 0
RL - 1

4 Likes
609

You dont speak for me.

1 Like
610

That’s nice, because he clearly didn’t.

4 Likes
611

Marks of honor were not in the game in 1.5. I’m pretty sure they were added in 1.8 at the same time the nerf bat came out. This sped up matches as getting marks was now the goal. Rewards shape player behavoir. It wasn’t just the extra npcs being removed, marks made speed running av the way to go. Thats why people are asking for 1.5-1.7 av pre nerfs/no marks.

612

MoH were cancer and got even worse when you HAD to turn specific ones in for loot.

3 Likes
613

I was really looking forward to experiencing old AV, shame.

8 Likes
614

Yup. I never understood the desire of the devs to make AV more like the other 2. WSG and AB are minigames in boxes. AV was as close to an open world zone as it could be with all the cool game world elements.

5 Likes