Everybody is queueing AV because you get a disproportionate amount of honor per hour. I wish the other bgs were getting more love. Maybe boost the amount of honor you get from warsong and AB so that we get some queue pops?
People are going to afk to GM without ever learning how to fight well, and I just wanna have some fun warsong and ab games!
I like the pvp changes, but it seems like an oversight to so heavily incentivize everyone to AV spam for honor per hour. Because of this perhaps unforeseen element of the game, I think the PVP changes have negatively affected the otherwise vibrant scene people have worked hard to build.
I’d be curious to hear what other people think!
Cheers,
Delactaloid, The Business Mage (Beloved and Feared!)
Lets be very fair here, blizzard did not change that aspect of the PvP system.
Something I noticed tho today doing AV on my paladin who is now exalted, I suspect that because there are so many fresh new character in AV that they are there for rep gear.
Did an WSG on my rogue after because I felt like murdering some FC’s, and low and behold some of my favorites of the horde were there, players who were there months before Era was popular, horde who made me work for it… thankfully not today tho, all the allies I was in gulch with fought like demons, their CC was actually good, they played impressively.
So now I know what its like to play with the Good allies, the offensive dispells of FAP, the freedoms and cleanses, the BOP, it seriously spoils you.
Sadly it has been like this since the pre-TBC patch way back in '06 when folks learned that spamming AV and rushing Drek/Vann was the fastest honor per hour when you are trying to buy welfare epics.
I did a huge number of BGs from Vanilla through Cataclysm and this never changed once it became the meta. I think Blizzard even made it easier to do at one point which is kind of mind boggling. When AV had actual PVP and the games lasted for hours people griped and moaned about it, and Blizzard listened. Folks can’t be pleased.
The issue with WSG in the original implementation is that you can get into games where one side is just farming the other and refusing the finish the 3/3 cap. With no game timer this is a big loss to both honor per hour and BG rep if you care about that. The game mode needs a max timer so it ends at some point regardless of the score. AB is a superior design because the games will end at some point even if 18/20 are fighting on the road like dummies.
Strictly speaking, when ranking, it doesn’t make sense to play AB/WSG unless it’s their respective weekend. The way AV works, it just is generally better honor per hour… Not always, but most of the time. I could be totally wrong here, but I just farmed 125k honor yesterday doing some AVs
This is inevitable regardless if they’re doing AV or WSG. Ranking is simply a time sink for gear, nothing more. Every Rank 14 in TBC/Wrath I inspected were hard stuck 1400, if I saw even one above 2k I was impressed.
There is plenty of pvp in AV. If you’re doing objectives you will get resistance and kills in the process. And usually not too much diminishing returns kills. AB and Wsg are mostly mismatches of Premades vs pugs. This is not and never has been pvp. It is also why pvp was very unpopular prior to the pvp changes. So unpopular in fact that some people were even willing to run sand from one side of Silithus to the other for hours on end instead of q’ing for wsg and ab. When pvp thrives in classic it is always AV. Now I know the bracket mafia and the King maker pre-mades are frustrated by their lack of control over the new system. Change can be difficult and I’ve heard blizzard does have a free support group for those in need.
I put a like on this because how could I not, I’ve made a thread just like yours.
The one thing I can say here is that at least there seem to be 2-3 WSG games going all day so that choice is still there. On top of that, WSG looks pretty competitive/fun because the people who actually want to PVP are queuing for it. AB doesn’t seem to be too active though, which is too bad for the people who enjoy AB.
The meta might shift after the people who really don’t like PVP either get their AV rep or get bored of grinding and stop.
With NA Classic and SoM it played out like this:
Classic ally premaded AV with their fast pally pull rush Drek meta. Blizzard took out the AV numbers and there were too many people to queue sync easily. The better ally started premading AB/WSG, the rep grinders stayed in AV and ended up getting farmed enough that the ally participation went way down and horde got up to 3.5 hour queues.
SoM horde premaded that from day 1. Horde who did not got farmed badly by ally. No WSG or AB games were running for 60s anyway. Once the horde premade Discord got “broken” the other BGs started to pop much more. I can’t speak for more of SoMs run though because I didn’t play it and stopped paying attention, but all of this was true at the start.
Anyway, I also know what meta I like and it’s not the AV spam one although I’ve done it to rank before. AV can be fun with backcapping and defending, although a lot of the people who seem to love it the most seem to go on about having fun while being entirely useless in every way to their team.
Yup. I played last week vs some decent ally premades
The people who wanna pvp are still queing wsg and ab and having fun
The people who don’t wanna pvp are afking in av
The first group is making more honor, the second is making less
Not that it matters, as there are no server wide brackets. Just stating the observation
Also, there aren’t a ton of “full premades” going on.
It’s mostly 3-5 mans, maybe a 7 man max. That’s what I ran all week, a 6-7 man with a suboptimal make up. Sometimes 4 man. People crying about premade are just capping
If you’re producing more honor per hour in WSG/AB over AV you’re farming pugs which isn’t pvp. Spent a little time grinding WSG/AB on Monday saving up tokens for the following week. Now it isn’t as bad as it was before the pvp patch but 9 out of 10 games are still decided before the gates open. I look at your comments and some of the others above and I go back to a suggestion I made years ago. Time to create a new battleground. A giant closed arena 40vs40 and first team to 10,000 kills wins. That would help to keep the mind numbingly stupid hk farming turtle simpletons out of AV too. So its a win win!
A perfect example of the Cro Magnon wow pvp demographic that I was speaking to above. A closed 40vs40 closed Arena first to 10k kills wins would be perfect for you. You all can chest thump grab your crouch spit on the ground on your way to that glorious achievement of 10,000 kills. After drink a pint and compare double digit IQ’s!
