This pretty much sums up everything wrong with this thread. 1.12AV was in-fact part of Vanilla, even if people don’t like it. It was not nerfed or changed, the AV in Classic is what players actually had at one point in Vanilla.
Claiming its a “cop out” is just plain ignorant.
Here’s the issue, when you say nerfed, what does that even mean? The amount of changes that happened to AV over the course of Vanilla was massive. The “nerfs” that you are referring to could of happened anywhere between patches 1.6 to 1.12. The changes did not happen overnight. Half of the patches in vanilla had wildly different AVs.
So what are we suppose to do? Blizzard stated going into Classic that they wanted to create the Vanilla or Classic experience. But that experience is different for everybody. Somebody that started playing Vanilla in patch 1.8 never would of experienced the original 1.5 AV. But is their “classic experience” any less than somebody who did play in 1.5?
Patch 1.12 is the most completed version of Vanilla. It has not been nerfed or changed, if anything the beta has shown that our memory of vanilla is incorrect and things were wildly different than how we thought they were.
Blizzard has done a phenomenal job with Classic. The developers actively listen to the community, and even interact with them on the beta. They have done their best to make it as accurate as they can.
Just because you are angry about a very specific part of Classic doesn’t make the rest of it bad.
I mean TBH the nerfs primarily happened in 1.11, when vast quantities of NPCs in the bases and roads were completely removed.
Any version prior to 1.11 was honestly closer to the average available version of Vanilla AV than the 169 days of 1.11’s version of AV was in the game, because prior to 1.11 there were a large quantity of guards on the map, and 1.5 - 1.10 AV lasted for 377 days.
AV with guards and patrols: 69.05% of Vanilla’s lifespan.
AV without guards and patrols: 30.95% of Vanilla’s lifespan.
Anything pre-1.8 would be fine. I would just like the whole map to be available.
Classic is about restoring the missing “World” of Warcraft that got wiped away with the Cataclysm. Why draw the line at the eastern and western portions of Alterac Valley?
Since you need it spoon fed to know what was in 1.12.
[Patch 1.5.0]
Added.
[Patch 1.6.0]
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.
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.
[Patch 1.7.0]
Fixed a bug that would cause players to stand up when a turnin was made in Alterac Valley.
[Patch 1.8.0]
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.
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.
[Patch 1.10]
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.
[Patch 1.11]
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.
If it was 1.12 Vanilla then BWL, ZG, AQ, and Naxx would be there at launch. But they’re not.
Eventually it’ll end up in that state, yes. But who’s to say Blizz couldn’t have used an earlier iteration? It’s possibly 1.12 was the earliest data they had. But the Blue post when they made the announcement indicated it was a design design (they said they thought npcs were too powerful in earlier versions). If it was a design decision…that’s very sad.
In any event, this ‘debate’ was over long ago. So it is what it is. I’ve already said I have no interest in AV after they made the decision, then repeated it a few times in subsequent posts. And watching these streams I’m glad I already made that decision.
While getting a proper patch progression would be really cool and missing out on older AV is a real shame. There is a reason from a development standpoint that they are making everything 1.12. The wow classic team is probably more of a skeleton crew more than anything else, so given that they “have” a complete 1.12 reference client, I really doubt anyone is going to fund development of some older patches (especially when the are still putting out fires in BFA rather than letting it burn to the ground).
In the end they are just developing a server that will require minimal maintenance and development, making it easier to launch new realms. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the classic project is also to streamline process of converting other expansions (TBC and WotLK) onto modern server architecture as well.
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).
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”.
Several terrain changes were made to fix some geometry exploits.
Iceblood Graveyard has been fortified.
The Frostwolf Relief Hut now has appropriate guards.
![:wink:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")