I’d like everyone to post wether or not you’d prefer the PvP zerg AV of retail, or the longer but well received PvPvE AV of vanilla.
The new AV is a zerg to the finish, guards are weak, and basically everything on the map meaningless, a shell of its original self/intention. Not to mention heavily favors alliance, and most retail players just avoid it
In classic however, it had its downsides, fights were harder, and every inch was fought for. Along your path of destruction you could loot corpses for quest items scrap and the occasional fun item. Av was a fun, and mildly profitable battleground.
If you got frustrated at the standstill, you could quest in the battleground, retake mines, save and escort lost flight crew, or even summon a raid boss to push the enemy back.
Players could upgrade guards, send in reinforcements in ground assaults, air raids, and mounted offencives. It was a whole zone in itself, where the quests you completed, and people you killed actually helped your raid members.
The downside to this was the time it took, an AV match would usually take about 3-4 hours to complete start to finish, with a few record games going up to 20+ hours.
But the reason people played, and the reason people stalled the game out as long as they could, was because rep and honor were gained based on time played.
Back in vanilla before the changes, and “fixes” that stripped away it’s glory, it was a mostly balanced battleground. Before the map size was changed, and NPC’s nerfed, before ppl stoped caring about everything but rushing the boss, because everything else was soloable trash. AV was fun.
In classic I was able to grind to exalted, and genuinely had fun while doing it. I don’t think that will happen this time around, and I won’t be able to grind my way to the AV mount.
What I would like to see is a limited time event, to allow players to experience AV as it was originally released. Give us a phase to experience a real PvPvE battleground, in all its glory.