I’m actually asking for a summery why you liked a version of AV and which version, go into detail, being someone who started in late Vanilla I don’t have any issues with the 1.12 AV.
How ever Id love stuff like summoning Lokholar and Ivus, building buffs, getting fly by bomb runs etc, that being said I don’t want NPCs so hard as to discourage people from actually PvPing.
I would have liked to have seen the original AV, but I don’t have an issue with any version they use, as long as it’s a version as it existed in Vanilla.
I did like the version prior to 1.12 ( 1.8 maybe?), but its not that big of a deal to me tbh.
I can’t really tell you why I liked that version better, maybe a fee more mobs to deal with ot something. It wasn’t that much different from what I recall.
Contrary to the opinion of some folks who have barely dipped a toe into AV, all the tougher and more numerous NPC’s of original AV forced pvp. You couldn’t just skip past the enemy team and start taking towers and graveyards because the NPC’s defending them were so strong they were very easy to defend. If you wanted to take a GY or a tower, you had to clear out the enemy faction first. No shortcuts, no cheating.
The weakening and pruning of those npcs is what gave birth to both factions zooming past each other and racing for the enemy bosses.
I personally do not remember the original version in Vanilla but I do remember the one that came after, but to be honest any version where you simply CAN NOT just steam roll the whole BG in 5-30 minutes is a version good enough for me. I want the AVs that could last 24+ hours.
Slow and steady fights. It was mostly about checkpoints. Taking bunkers and graveyards, then continuing the push.
Base Races are fun for the first couple of times. But there is hardly any real PVP in that.
AV is a PVPVE battleground, but 1.12 doesn’t really feel like it. Once they got Ashran working decently, Ashran was amazing for quite a long time. I’d honestly take Ashran over 1.12 AV – as sad as that sounds. AVs that lasted for literally the entire week were rare, but those multi-day battles… they were quite literally my favorite part of vanilla.
I’ve been seeing so many threads about this and wanted to give some feedback on my thoughts. This seems like a good enough place to do it.
I don’t want to disparage anyone who passionately wants the original AV back. I’m sure they have their reasons. It has became the stuff of legends. Those stories of 24-48 hour games sound magical. The million different quests and NPCs and ways to contribute were over whelming there were so many ways to contribute. So many choices.
But I feel like people are either remembering it through the fog of nostalgia or never experienced and just think it sounds amazing. Let me tell you something.
IT WAS NOT.
Those 24 hour games that people talk about so fondly actually sort of sucked to be a part of but I think people just aren’t remembering that part. It is like when you remember that time you were driving down to the shore for the weekend with your friends and you got stuck in traffic for 8 hours. 20 years later you all laugh about it but at the time you had to pee really bad and were losing your mind.
The quests were confusing, online help was less available back then, the NPC’s were very hard to kill. Your contribution seemed pointless and when you would try to get people to help you turn quest items in you would often be frustrated because people would ignore you.
Korrak the Bloodrager was the WORST. I played a game where we spent something like 3 hours fighting over that graveyard. I still remember drawing aggro from Korrak and how frustrating it was having him run up and wipe your group just as you were making headway. When they removed Korrak I almost wept tears of joy.
Know what was even worse? The flight masters. The quest was something that really only a druid or rogue could do because you had to sneak all the way behind enemy lines. On my server (before x-realms) only the horde knew how to do the quest. I looked it up and tried to get some alliance rogues to do it but none of them would take me up on it. Frustrating because back then those things were powerful. As if it wasn’t frustrating enough dealing with Korrak or endless fighting at choke points now imagine a Wyvern swooping down, picking you up, and throwing you. Over and over. I can’t remember if the flight masters are in 1.12. I think they may be but without all the other excess stuff from original AV they weren’t as bad.
There are a million other little things that I can think of too because no one really knew how to do the quests or if the other team knew no one on your team knew how to deal with them. If you were lucky some respected guild leader or raid leader would gather a group of people and work together to accomplish something. But it was rather like herding cats. All too often it fell on deaf ears and no one would help.
And at least the PvE stuff gave you goals to accomplish and if you could get something done you had some measure of satisfaction. The mindless PvPing for hours on end? Not fun. It was basically just run at enemy and die over and over and no one making progress. If you were a caster you were standing there AOEing non stop. If you were a healer you were just looking at your raid frames trying desperately to keep people alive. This is not enjoyable for hours and hours and hours when you don’t feel like it is accomplishing anything.
So maybe some of the people who really want original AV had some good experiences because they knew what they were doing and made good use of the NPC’s. Or maybe it is nostalgia and they really just want to recapture that feeling. Or maybe they never experienced it but heard stories and want to live it. I get it.
Now 1.12 was my favorite version. I played A LOT of 1.12. It was the version that everyone complained about as being imbalanced but that was only if you just wanted to rush to the boss fight and get the game over with. To be honest I’m not 100% sure what the honor situation is going to be with Classic and what people are going to do as far as honor/hour is concerned.
But I will tell you that if you want to have fun in AV 1.12 and not zerg rush you can do it. You can do it solo but if you have a small like minded group even better. You can take strategic points, you can wipe the enemy raid, you can contribute in impactful ways that you couldn’t in the original AV and you couldn’t in the version that came later when they added resources and removed most of the elites. Those elites are what make AV 1.12 so fun because you can use them to your advantage.
AV 1.12 is actually the most perfect form of AV as long as just a few players stay back to defend and take points and don’t join the zerg to the enemies base.
I understand why people want the original AV but I also understand that the reality is that people would get burnt out quickly after experiencing it a few times. That is ultimately why they changed it.
But please give AV 1.12 a chance. It really was the most perfect form of AV and is in fact the only reason I resubbed and am coming back for Classic after 9 years away from the game.
I know I wrote a novel but if anyone wants to further discuss what I remember about 1.12 and why I loved it so much feel free to ask.
I enjoyed being able to play the BG the way it was supposed to be ran. You needed to work together to take over points in order to accomplish a win, or even smaller than that take over a crucial part of the map.
The “side” items were needed in order to make any real headway. Summoning the NPCs to help you fight gave you an amazing advantage. Mines helped you gain back your resources, and you could really get into some epic large scale fights.
Those that hate it either are people who want everything right then and there, or those who didnt actually play it. 1.12 is just a zerg fest with 0 real pvp interaction.
Mines forced players to face the enemy faction because you couldn’t go off-road without risk getting blown up. Without mines, players can move/stealth off the road, avoiding any encounters with the enemy faction and go directly to the enemy base. There were also NPCs called minelayers who had to be handled very carefully lol.
The presence of lots of NPCs forced players to stick together and slowed forward movement because the NPCs hit hard and you’d need other players around you to deal with them. Also, they’d encourage some players to stay behind and defend, because with NPCs around to help you, you can more easily defend graveyards and towers and such. Using NPCs to your advantage was just another aspect of gameplay.
Lokh and Ivus are NPCs. What makes PVP fun is the presence of NPCs, so the environment isn’t just a sterile game, but more like an actual battle, where NPCs provide additional elements that can provide an element of surprise or alternatively be used to advantage. To put it another way, they increase the scope for player skill by including use of NPCs as a PVP skill.
For those reasons, I like any version of AV prior to the removal of the large number of NPCs in the Field of Strife.
We already have 2 fast battlegrounds WSG and AB.
Don’t got time and want some quick fun in instanced structured PvP? Those 2 are perfect.
Pre nerf AV was something special, sure it wasn’t efficient but spending hours skirmishing and doing objectives yelling at people in chat etc… it’s something we havent had for a long time outside of private servers.
I liked the versions before 1.12, because I played horde alliance rushed we had tons of parasites because of cross realm I was just unlucky I stopped doing AV until bc pre patch because I had groups with 10-20 afker horde and because of that we had no way of winning.
And AVs usually ended faster then you can do all the summons, the old npcs that were removed and hit harder usually gave you time for the wolf riders and beacons to actually do stuff.
Npcs basically forced pvp because you wouldn’t be as easily overwhelmed if you defended against a zerge.
Either way I think 1.12 nerfs were preparing people for bc new system, and battlegroups mearly punished those on balanced realms who had good que times. Fast que times for those people who wanted only gear just encourage them to lose on purpose. We see that a lot in legion and bfa or I did you get into a group some guys rush in toward enemy base get sniped just quit or say just let them win.
It’s worth noting that original AV didn’t exactly discourage PvP. What it did do, was make it so that you didn’t want to attempt a serious push in most cases without one of the powerful NPC summons to help you break the other team’s line.
The original form of AV was a completely unique experience unlike anything that has ever come after it in WoW.
I’m not sure if 1.5 AV would take us back to the way it used to be given our experience with the game, but it would have been nice to at least give it a try.
Or maybe you’re remembering 1.12 through the fog of nostalgia.
All of the things that you say you disliked about earlier versions of AV are things I liked. And if you really came back for 1.12 AV - well, you can just play retail AV and get essentially the same thing.
you can play it on retail
You can’t play AV 1.12 on retail. AV 2.30 is what REALLY ruined AV. The removal of Elite NPC’s in 2.30, the removal of the Commander’s and Lieutenants, the addition of reinforcements are what really ruined AV as far as I am concerned. The difference in 1.12 and 2.30 is HUGE and forever changed the game for the worse.
Again I am not wanting to disparage anyone who wants the original version back. I think you can still have a lot of fun with 1.12 and hope you will give it a chance.
If they have the resources and assets to recreate a 1.5 or 1.8 AV i would be really happy (since i didnt get to play them back in vanilla). That said, not complaining about 1.12, it is still just fine for me.
Mainly, the original AV commonly had matches that would go for 16-20 hours or more before one side or the other was victorious. Since this was also before cross-realm battlegrounds, this meant that you could log on one day, join AV, participate for a while, and then the next day you could be fighting in the same match with the same people.
It felt like a persistent war that took real coordination and effort to progress in. The changes made to AV later on greatly hastened how quickly the battleground could be finished, and it lost that charm of being a persistent battlefield.
The commanders and lieutenants didn’t make any sense once their associated NPCs were gone.
I’ve already played 1.12 AV and I already know it’s not worth my leveling to 60 for. If they had done BC prepatch, that would be okay because hunters were strong for once, but 1.12, no.
Original AV was something that was nifty to do maybe once in awhile but it was not a good BG for something you want to do a lot of.
Depends on what you enjoyed. I probably spent the majority of my time in Vanilla in AV.