I have played WoW off and on since Vanilla and have many max level Alliance and Horde characters. I have played AV in Vanilla and every expansion for both factions.
When Classic AV was released Horde was literally losing about 90% of all AV.s. This is coming from someone who got over 800k honor that first week from exclusively AV play. Then after many Alliance players hit Exalted in AV the Horde Q times began to increase from instant to 10, 20, & eventually 30 minutes. As Horde Q times increased our winning percentage began to increase as well.
Then around the time Horde Qs were approaching 20 minutes Alliance premades began showing up. Premades beat Horde pugs 99% of the time in about 6 or 7 minutes, but we still were getting 2k to 3k bonus honor for those losses. At this point most AVs seemed to be premades vs. pugs giving me the impression most Alliance players in Classic that were still playing AV were playing in premades.
Then Blizzard patched AV and the effects were immediately felt, as a Horde player in Classic our Qs jumped to 40 minutes then 50, 60, and up to 1h 20m yesterday. However, our win % in AV jumped up to 99% and WSG was suddenly all Alliance premades. It was clear most Alliance AV premaders just switched to WSG after the patch.
This is where I don’t quite understand what happened. Sure the Horde Q times make sense based on what has and is happening but the Alliance loss % doesn’t make sense. Why does the Alliance need to premade to win AV? This isn’t how I remember AV in Vanilla.
I played Horde exclusively in Vanilla and we maybe won 30 to 40% of the time. Sure there was no cross server or battlegroups back then, so it may have differed on other servers. In TBC and other xpacs including current Retail I can’t recall Horde being so dominant in AV other than when reinforcements were first introduced and Horde just solely defended at IBGY until the Alliance ran out of reinforcements. This lead to a 99% win rate for Horde and forced Blizzard to patch AV and move the Horde starting cave further south. The rest of the time the Alliance almost always just zerged to the Horde base and they still zerg AV in retail today.
So what has changed in Classic that makes Alliance unable to win AV without a premade team? Why does it take a premade to get everyone to run to the Horde base and Pally pull the Warmasters so the Alliance can solo kill Drek? Even if Horde intercepts the zerg we seldom wipe out the whole team, usually just a hand full of people get killed. Why does it require Discord and Voice Commands to get everyone to run to the Horde base at the start? Horde manages to get their pugs to intercept zergs, focus SHGY, recap graveyards, backcap towers, defend graveyards, and Recall all thru the in game battleground chat. Why can’t the Alliance do the same?
All that being said, I prefer the way it was before the patch. Sure losing most games sucks but 1hr 20m Qs is way way worse. I just don’t understand what changed other than the Alliance premaders switched to WSG. Were they legitimately the best Alliance PVPers and all that is left in Alliance AVs are the noobs and lowbies? I do see a lot more players below level 60 on Alliance teams compared to Horde.
This post is not about Faction pride, I hold no allegiance to a specific faction. I chose Horde in Classic to recreate my Vanilla character, but my main retail is currently Alliance. I am just curious why the Alliance can’t win AV now, but managed fine in the original 1.12 AV and almost every other version since without needing premades to do it.
For the record I think Blizzard should just let everyone Q for AV as a 40 man raid if they want. If people want premade let them.