Firstly as I have pointed out in the past, the staff managed to make the bulk of nerfs to AV over a span of a few patches. If the current staff cannot manage to undo said nerfs in a much longer period of time, I would be embarrassed for them.
Secondly, the content that was utilized the least, raids, were not dumbed down so that more people could run them. You either did or didn’t. AV should not have been dumbed down.
I was not one to stand idle at a BM waiting for AV to pop (it was nearly always up on our server so you had to wait to get in a spot when someone left). I went out and actually did stuff. When AV DID pop, it was cause for celebration and excitement. The fact that it did not pop on a whim made it special.
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I personally played old AV just for fun, as did many friends of mine. There is nothing else like it in the game and there really hasn’t been since it was removed. It was a VERY unique battle that the game really misses as far as a type of content that WoW doesn’t provide.
The people that focused on hardcore honor farming did so in AB/WSG, which will always be available. AV was meant to be a huge, epic battle from the beginning and not a quick little PvE race.
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If Blizzard does not have the exact patch date from version 1.5, it would be pretty simple to edit the battleground to more reflect that version. You would need to copy/paste extra NPCs spawns while editing their stats in a spreadsheet. The whole process would probably be doable in a few hours. Heck, I’d do it for them for free if they’d let me.
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There is a fix for this…and it’s pre-made AVs.
The best experience I’ve had in WOW, from Vanilla - BFA…was pre-made AVs that happened around the time of TBC. There is no better designed Battleground map that provides opportunities for a faction to leverage terrain to gain an advantage on your opponent.
AV has several VERY effective choke points & mechanics throughout the map that prevent the opposing faction from rushing to the final boss.
There is no better choke point in the game than the Alliance’s entrance to their base, Ice Blood GY is another great defensive location, back capping towers / bunkers & defending your champion will keep your final boss from being rushed.
The trick here is being able to get an organized group of people into the same AV match. During the time of pre-made AV groups, there was an add-on that attempted to queue all of the groups in the raid at the same time, in effort to increase the chances that everyone was able to get in the same match…not sure if this will be available for classic.
What might be a more simple fix is to allow raids to queue for AV, in the same way they allow for premade groups.
Strategic positioning of each group at the available choke points on the map is the best defense against rushing the end-boss.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to organize a random raid of people in the few minutes before the match starts, after entering the BG. Allowing groups to pre-form before the BG starts helps tremendously…particularly with getting people into voice chat to help with comms
While premade raids would be cool, AV as it was truly embodied (without the level disparity) the utter chaos of SS v TM. What is great about the pre-auto invite prriod is that you could get 5 or so mates together in a small group and do HUGE things in the BG. The side things like turtle breaker NPCs, capping towers and mines, upgrading guards via turnins, all could be done in a small group. Coordinating the entire raid was only really valuable for zerging.
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You mean turned AV into a PVE race with zero actual PVP , as the 40 man raid groups wave to each other on the way to the enemy general.
I get it, you want free fast honor which the zerg AV provides. Nothing wrong with that, I like free fast stuff myself. However that AV exists in retail atm. Since Blizzard is actually doing Classic, why give us the version of AV that for the most part currently exists? You will still have AB and WSG for quick honor and PVP, granted it’s not as lucrative as a zerg AV in terms of honor.
I for one loved a good solid defensive/turtle fight, It always felt awesome stopping a zerg dead in its tracks at the IB graveyard ![:turtle:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/turtle.png?v=6" ":turtle:")
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Sorry, but premades farming pugs is not my idea of fun.
If I read it correctly there would be a separate option of AV for premades. (Or a group of smaller premades playing together)
IB GY is the superior defensive position when used appropriately. The only reason the bridge is everyone’s first thought is that alliance get’s pushed there all the time. Tactically speaking, all the great choke points skew in the hordes favor.
Bridge - Horde GY twice as close, only 1 effective tower, and alliance hurt themselves, whether health or time, to bypass and flank. No knock backs in vanilla.
Stormpike GY canyon - Horde have all the high ground and 2 bypass routes
Stone Hearth - the GY and towers are on the horde side of the choke… GY is easily flanked. Horde have the high ground.
Ice Blood - GY is right there for super quick reinforcements, Flanking from the GY itself with a cliff that alliance can’t climb, and you have the high ground.
Horde base path to RH - high ground, no blocked visibility, 2 effective towers, GY is much closer, and the wall lets you LoS.
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Lol seeing as A/V today has no PvP I would say the opposite.
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1.7 would do the trick for me. If you remember, there was that stupid bug where you’d stand up EVERY TIME SOMEONE TURNED SOMETHING IN. No fun when you’re drinking for mana.
1.8 messes around with the map and lowers the strength of various mobs. This is where the nerfing starts.
Thanks for making this!
From what I can see, 1.8 had some good changes and moving Korrak to the graveyard sounds cool, but when they started to remove things is where I get a bit annoyed. So, 1.7 does sound like AV in its purist form. However, there are some changes I did like in later patches.
Not sure how possible it is, but if they undid only the bolded changes would that be considered the best form of AV?
Why are you constantly whining about what AV will be? AV isn’t Wow, it’s a part of it. Get used to 1.12 AV. If you think they’re going to give the AV snowflakes like the OP a special version of AV you’re sadly mistaken and don’t understand what this “Classic Vanilla” offering is about.
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The hardest thing I imagine would be repairing the map from when part was blocked off with the winterax stuff. You’d likely not get the shredder/mines but maybe those elements would truly be a bit more complex to replicate.
The bulk of the revert would be reinstating the mobs/NPCs that were removed and unnerfing their stats.
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Which is probably the best we can hope for.
“Coordinating the entire raid was only really valuable for zerging.”
That wasn’t my experience when running pre-made AVs…
You can’t steam roll the end boss with all the generals up, so you have to at least take the time to cap the champion and each tower / bunker along the way. If you vacate the towers / bunkers you capped to rush the end boss, you open yourself up those getting taken back by the opposing faction.
In addition, you’ve left your champion and towers / bunkers completely unguarded and open for capping as well.
Rushing only works if the otherside is doing it too…you trade off towers / bunkers and see who can kill the final boss first. Even if you loose, you get some conciliatory honor thrown your way and jump in the next queue. However, if the other side is organized and resets the board…the zerging team is completely out of position and has a harder time getting the job done.
Again, that was just my experience though
Yea, it’s not fun to be on the side that isn’t organized…that usually leads to people stepping up and addressing the situation by getting organized too.
If a fun & competitive PvP match is the objective…and not min / maxing low effort honor grind…#1 top experience for me in WOW, throughout ALL expansions, was being in an AV that was a premade raid vs another premade raid. It was 100x more fun than any PUG PvP experience I’ve ever had.
It would be ludicrous to compare premade to pubbie raid. Obviously a premade can communicate different objectives concurrently.
I should have clarified that I was speaking of non premade raids. It would take a miracle to coordinate a pubbie raid to accomplish anything but zerging.
Yes, premade vs premade is fun, but let’s face facts…that almost never happens and the usual result is a premade stomping a pug, which isn’t fun at all.
The best old AV games I had were when both sides were totally even in a pug, and it took coordinated turn ins for the ultimate units, ground assault and cavalry to break the stalemates.