Zoomer spotted!
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the honor grinder version where you rush the boss.
Old AV. For sure.
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Before I even read this, old PvPvE AV of course. No hesitation.
The fights were harder? Good. That’s what it was supposed to be full scale war. There was a lot of interesting side quests to do in there to help the war effort. The devs back then had a lot more dreams than now of course.
Alliance has the powerful bottleneck bridge death zone where it takes days for Horde to move through… or never.
New, I hated the old av and was happy when it was changed.
Following is the change log I copied from Wowpedia. Pick your poison.
Patch 1.11.0 (2006-06-20):
- 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.
Patch 1.10.0 (2006-03-28):
- Flavor items from player loot in Alterac Valley will now stack and can be sold for a small value. These are items like [Document 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 1.9.3 (2006-02-07): 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.
Patch 1.8.0 (2005-10-10):
- 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 1.7.0 (2005-09-22): Fixed a bug that would cause players to stand up when a turnin was made in Alterac Valley.
Patch 1.6.0 (2005-07-12):
- 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.
- Bosses no longer have unique loot tables.
- 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 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Added.
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Did you just imply that the horde don’t have a bottleneck around their keep?
Old AV is best AV.
What I liked most about old AV is you had:
- NPC guards - tons of them and they were weak
- Players
- Elite NPC champions
- Bosses
Compared to new AV, old AV:
- Felt much more epic. Instead of just the players and a few npcs, you also had all the extra npc guards. There was much more of a sense of being a part of a battle between large armies. The battle felt much bigger since there were so many more bodies moving around on the battlefield.
- You felt like a champion. In old AV, the NPC guards were the lowest powered unit on the battlefield. As a player you felt like a champion, since you were stronger than them. In new AV, the NPC guards are gone. Result is the Players are now the lowest powered unit on the battlefield. You feel like a foot-soldier not a champion.
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Man i remember old AV. Go to sleep mad af because youve been in a turtle for 5 hours, only to wake up the next morning, log on. And boom, inside that same AV with the same turtle. Great times.
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Great news for you! You can play the new AV, and have been able to for over 13 years!
Your active classic account even lets you do it - simply download and log into retail.
Old AV by far. I feel like the dev team just doesn’t understand its playerbase with the whole pushing the 1.12 version on us.
Old. AV used to be fun. Now you have to back cap graveyards just for a bit of action.
I mostly quit after bc, I skipped wrath of the lich King and completely quit shortly into cataclysm.
I did log into my previous main when I resubscribed for classic, but could not figure out my skills. As everything is completely different now. So while I may technically be able to play av, it is not what I want to play.
I was exalted in vanilla with the old av, I am not sure why people are looking on it fondly. I loved the change the changes that made it a 1 hour match instead of a multi-day affair.
This is my highest level classic character, I barely have time to play video games anymore, but still looking forward to av.
Old AV but with increased honor so you don’t have to win to get honor. AV should be for epic battles, you got the other BGs for your honor/win farming. AV should have lots of guards, quests etc. I loved farming for quests to buff guards etc.
Also prefer it with cross realm as fighting the same people over and over is boring, especially if you’re on a server that has heavy Horde/Alliance population.
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