Vanilla AV Patch Notes

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Someone in another thread requested a patch list of AV changes from inception through v1.12. These have been copied over from the WoW Wiki Timeline
http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_(World_of_Warcraft)
January 15, 2019

AV v1.5.0

  • Enemy NPC lieutenants and commanders now have a team bonus honor value.
  • Enemy NPC lieutenants and commanders no longer respawn.
  • Enemy towers are now destroyed rather than captured (a one-time event per tower). The mechanics for destroying a tower are very similar to their previous capture mechanic.
  • The enemy NPC mine layer no longer respawns when killed.
  • The respawn time for laying mines has been slowed.
  • All Alterac Valley quest items (ie: armor scraps) are zone-bound, and will be lost if taken outside the battleground instance.
  • Korrak’s respawn time has been increased to 30 minutes.
  • NPC’s in the entrance tunnels will no longer fight enemy NPCs, only enemy players.
  • Lok’holar the ice lord and Ivus the forest lord are now friendly to Horde and Alliance players (respectively), and will therefore no longer affect friendly players with area-of-effect spells.
  • Sound effects have been added to critical battleground events (ie: a graveyard being assaulted).
  • Additional items for purchasing have been added to the quartermasters in the entrance tunnels. The types of items you may purchase is based on your reputation with the quartermaster.
  • The Alliance and Horde NPC captains now periodically shout a “rallying cry”, granting a powerful effect to all friendly players in the battleground. Killing the enemy’s captain will deny the ability for the enemy to gain a rallying cry.
  • Ivus the Forest Lord now uses a winter Ancient Protector model rather than a Keeper of the Grove model

AV v1.6.0

  • 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.
  • Korrak the Bloodrager has gained immunities to many different spell and ability effects.
  • 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.

AV 1.7.0 (general BG changes)

  • Battleground “holidays” have been added to Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin. Holidays occur during most weekends, starting on Thursday night at midnight and continuing until Tuesday morning. During a holiday, emissaries from that Battleground will be found in the major cities, and honor/faction rewards for performing objectives in that battleground are increased.
  • Alterac Valley now correctly rewards honor for owning graveyards at the end of the game.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause players to stand up when a turnin was made in Alterac Valley.
  • Players will no longer be able to gain health by repeatedly entering and leaving the effect of a Battle Standard.
  • Entering a battleground now resets the timer for the AFK flag. This should prevent players being kicked by the AFK timer moments after they enter the Battleground instance.

BGs in general v 1.8.0:

  • Each Battleground has an individual turn-in quest associated with its related victory/loss condition. Upon completion of a Battleground, the winning side will be awarded three Marks of Honor while the losing side will be awarded one Mark of Honor. Three Marks of Honor may be turned in to the associated questgiver for Honor points and faction increase. Should players complete this turn-in quest, they will find that the bonus Honor Points for completion are twice that of normal turn-in conditions (individual).

AV v1.8.0:

  • 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.
  • The quests Korrak the Bloodrager (Alliance), Korrak the Everliving (Alliance), The Legend of Korrak (Horde), and The Return of Korrak (Horde) have been removed from the game. The rewards for the initial quest involving Korrak have been moved and can be acquired by completing the quest associated with winning a match in Alterac Valley. We realize that some players may have had the Korrak quest and never completed it. These players may have already completed the quest for killing the General and thus might not be able to benefit from the rewards from the previous quest line. We have opted to add an extra quest step at the end of the General kill quests to reward players that fall under such conditions.
  • A new item has been added as one of the reward choices for the quests Hero of the Stormpike and Hero of the Frostwolf.
  • 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.

AV v1.9.0

  • No specific changes listed

AV v1.9.3

  • 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.

AV v1.10.0

  • 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.

AV v1.11.0

  • 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. This buff scales from 10% at the Seasoned unit level, 20% at the Veteran unit level, and 30% at the Champion unit level.

AV v1.12.0

  • When you join a battleground, you are automatically added to a raid group. You MAY NOT leave that group. To speak in this raid, use /bg instead of /ra.
  • Leadership of the battleground raid is granted to whomever has the highest PvP rank when the raid is formed (approximately 1 minute before the battleground starts).
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SUMMON IVUS.

Sorry, just had to. Those AV fights are some of my best memories from Vanilla.

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A ton of PVP happened at the summoning points of the gods. Once a few people are spotted at those locations with the summoning NPCs, you just KNOW you are about to get a bum rush to try to prevent it.

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Oh man. The last time I summoned Ivus was on my 64 DK twink during Cataclysm. Such an epic event.

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I would add this to the OP but this wonderful forum software will not allow me to go back and edit posts that I have inserted a date in. The original BG announcement web page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041223182307/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds.html

The original AV map:
http://worldofwarcraft.com:80/pvp/images/battlegrounds/ss02.jpg

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Yep. Either fending off hordelettes from our summons at mid or trying to wreck theirs was frantic, desperate fighting. Kamikaze stuff, no holds barred.

The first time I saw Ivus and followed him as he smashed through the horde turtle? I think I cheered out loud the whole time.

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Lok > Imus

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It still burns my blood to read through those huge nerfs.

Hey Blizzard, we want AV v1.5.0 please.

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Was it the bold? I would have colored them if I were able.
Note that the removal of shredder and mines did not even make it into the notes.

I see 1.7 as the high water mark of good AV (despite the removal of mines and shredder) as after that patch came the true nerfs as well as MoHs.

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Enemy towers are now destroyed rather than captured

I knew I wasn’t crazy. I had a debate with somebody a while ago who said that towers were never captured, always destroyed. I couldn’t find the specific patch note to prove it.

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1.12 version of AV=10 minute Zergs with no actual pvp

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Good bunch of changes that changed it from primarily a pve instance to an actual BG.

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Actually, it changed it from a PvP battle with NPCs to racing past real players to engage in a PvE race to see who could PvE the fastest.

I want an epic battle. I don’t want a quickie PvE race like you do.

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Obviously making it so you can completely avoid pvp and just Zerg the end boss and totally avoid the other raid… yea man. Totally made that a more engaging battle ground.

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I remember the first time I was in an AV that was like 4 days old and I was running around with NO idea wtf I was doing and then this giant THING was coming at me.

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Yes. Only in vanilla was it fun to die from something.

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Blood for the blood god.

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As I said before I think the original AV was great and many have fond memories of it, however I don’t see it being a very played BG in its original state this time around. I do think some and good handful will for the novelty of the old AV but most people do BGs for the honor farming and old AV just wasn’t a efficient means to even back then before the changes it started to become longer and longer to queue for as people were skipping it till they started changing it so the time taken to complete it was less consuming.

Regardless if your coming from a pserver or retail most have played the shorter version of AV for a long awhile and have grown accustom to it. I think people will play for omg I remember this old AV and the glory of it but I think once that wear offs it will go back to be the BG that is usually overlooked specially when it comes to gather honor.

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I fully acknowledge that many players played AV for that purpose. Understand however that I personally could give an ogre’s sack o’nuts for the perspective of players like that. Do not incorporate MoHs and let people play early AV for the enjoyment of the play itself. Want to honor farm? You have 2/3rds of the BGs to do that in.

The same will happen when tourists stop playing Classic entirely. AV should be the early version for the same reason Classic is being made.

AV itself is akin to the history of the entire game. What was done to it is a representation of what was done to the game over time.

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I don’t disagree personal if it was possible I would say place both in and when you queue up you can select old AV. However on the stand point of resources and time from blizzard It safe to assume they don’t have the old backup of 1.8 or older AV. They probably got the 1.12 version and maybe the last backup of either 1.11 or 1.10. If they are even having an internal debate about which version I would assume that is one of debates would it be worth it. To some who want this version the answer would be yes but on a grand scale what is the worth if your struggling to get the battle started because not enough people are queuing for it now at bare they have to 1.8 version to lower the required people down to 20 to start also for the balance issues fixed. Point I am making as great as it is it only great if you get to actually play it not so great if your spending most time in queue waiting to play.