Preference: New AV or Old AV

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.

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Considering that we are not close to getting any BGs atm, the answer to the question of old AV vs new AV, is a resounding yes.

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1.12 av on weekdays. 1.08 av on bonus honor weekends.

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Old AV is the best.

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at this point i dont care. i just want a freaking BG already. questing and grinding is boring.

How about both? If you want Old AV, you walk to the instance portal, and new AV you queue up in the capital cities? Would that be the end of the world bad?

I’d prefer a more content complete version of AV but don’t pretend the guards being 20-30% stronger is going to make any difference. The results of the first month of Classic should prove that.

If people want to zerg it, it’s gonna get zerged. Doesn’t matter which version it is.

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Old AV with the minefield, archers that will tear you up and the goblin shredder.

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I don’t care to be honest, as all I want to do is camp a chokepoint with my ele shaman and rack up killing blows for hours on end with chain lightning.

To this end old AV would benefit me more, however I do also want to get rank 12, where “new” AV is far better for honor grinding via objectives and there is more focus on fighting the other faction, than the other faction’s NPCs.

So, neutral.

You make an interesting point. With how people are blowing past content in Classic - relatively speaking vs vanilla. The nerf and removal of NPCs in AV might not be necessary - might even make things “too easy”.

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I would like the old AV tbh. Unfortunately I think we’re getting stuck with the watered down AV. Bad move.

I just want to play AV in the Classic world. It was an essential part of my vanilla experience and pretty much my favorite BG ever. I don’t do PVE end content raids. I only go up to 5 mans in that direction. So some place like AV with lots of people and plenty of different types of chaos going on at once is really fun for me.

Ideally I’d want the version that goes on for a super long stretches of time, but I’ll take what I can get.

So you want the most watered down version also the most easily accessed and safe from WPVP?

Your bias is showing.

v1.7 AV was the high water mark. Everything after was a slide into mediocrity. Much like the game itself over 15 years.

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Not even a question. Original AV is the best and was one of my absolute favorite features of the game, hands down.

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This 100 times over.

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Old, without cross-realm garbage.

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1.12+ AV is absolute garbage. It’s basically every modern MMO - tries to satisfy everyone and in return satisfies no one instead. The people who are only there for gear won’t use it for honor(because it’s trash for honor) and the people who want epic long BG’s won’t be happy and won’t play it because it’s just 15 minute boring rushes.

Using 1.12 AV shows how out of touch Blizzard is with all their games in the past 15 years and why they have ruined every single game in the past 15 years and do not make good games anymore.

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No, bonus honor weekends are trash. I should be able to play whatever I want whenever I want. Keep your mobile-korean trash game design as far away from my 2004 game as possible.

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I believe vanilla had bonus honor weekends.

Not to mention the cross-realm BGs which brought nothing but issues while siphoning away fun.
Being entirely clueless about their own products and playerbase is Blizzard’s forte nowadays.

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