Why AV was fun and Ashran isn't

[Gourmandise]

Kronus and Fangraal and like welfare versions of of Lokholar and Ivus. Definitely not epic to see something for the vast majority of a fight and have its only impact to be a tank to another high hp npc.

[Extremities]

I remember way back in Vanilla when AV was released.

I'd take a flight point out to Hillsbrad and run over to the entrance to queue up an then wait 40+ minutes to get in. But once I was in, I could stay in there literally all day. Sometimes I'd fall asleep, queue up, and get back into the same AV instance still running from before I went to sleep.

Arenas didn't exist, and there were only 2 battlegrounds, including AV. If you wanted PvP, AV was pretty much the best place to be.

The thing is, while AV is often remembered most for its massive zerg battles that pushed back and forth, that was far from the defining aspect of the battleground, and certainly not why I kept going back.

AV was a 40v40 BG, but rarely was the main push ever 40v40. At most you normally saw 20-30 people from each side in the fight. This is important, because it's much easier for 4-5 skilled and coordinated players to feel like they're having a major impact in a 20v20 fight. As you scale much beyond that, everything becomes noise.

The rest of the people there were engaged in any number of other activities that all HAD AN IMPACT ON THE OUTCOME OF THE BATTLE. If you look at the AV map, there are 21 points of interest. Yes, TWENTY-ONE. Here's a breakdown:
2x boss huts (win condition)
8x towers (can be permanently destroyed)
2x mini-boss huts (can be permanently killed)
7x graveyards (fluid, although originally an elite NPC guarded them that once killed did not respawn)
2x mines (fluid)

In addition to those points of interest there were also more PvE oriented collection quests that allowed you to summon an NPC or NPCs to help you (like riders or each sides boss NPC), 6 wing commanders that could be rescued to open up more turn-ins (3 for each side), a neutral boss NPC in the middle of the map, and oh, did I mention the shredder (the original "vehicle")?

You also couldn't just turn in enough resources to summon your boss. You'd have to escort your druids to near the middle of the map and a fairly significant number of people from your side would have to stand there channeling a spell. All the while the opposing faction could attack/kill you or your druids.

In all, there were about 30 different things 40 people could be engaged in.

Some of my personal favorites were solo'ing, or with a small group of rogues taking, a graveyard behind enemy lines that could badly hurt their respawns and allow us to push, or take the GY in their base and hold it while they frantically backtracked to try to recover it. My personal favorite though might be sneaking in to the enemy base with a druid and a warlock, who killed himself on the lower level outside the Horde relief hut. The druid then resurrected him up into the horde base, and we opened a summoning portal and proceeded to summon half the alliance team.

I think most people that fondly remember AV have stories like this, where they or a small group were able to significantly impact the flow of the battle.

Now let's compare that to Ashran.

Ashran is a 150v150 map, although actual participants can vary wildly.

Ashran is also a fairly scripted fight. It has 4 side "objectives" that are only occasionally "active" and that have no impact on the larger battle. It also has the ogre "objective" that has a minor impact on the battle, since he will fight for you if you win, although he tends to die fairly easily (and has a stacking debuff that makes him take more damage over time). There's also some rares across from the ogre and in each of the other 4 objectives that can give you some silly class items or the ability to summon a stampede or frostwyrm.

None of the above "objectives" really impact the flow of the battle much at all.

Some small groups or individuals break off and collect Artifact Fragments, although it takes minimal effort to have most every bonus from them active, and it tends to be done more for reputation than anything else.

Ashran also tries to dictate where the battle should be. So it basically tries to force close to 300 people into an area the size of a base in AV, where things tended to grind to a halt if there were only 50-60 people crowded in to. How often do you see one side pushing in Ashran far faster than the game's script can keep up with, so 1-2 people are left to idle next to a flag until it slowly caps and the next "stage" can begin.

The spawning of NPCs also acts to try to force players into this smaller area, as each side gets NPCs to defend their zone unless the "stage" advances to there, at which point they suddenly just despawn. This is probably most evident with the Gladiators in each base that, unless you're assaulting the other team's boss, 1-2 shot players that get too close, and have nets and everything else given to WoW NPCs to traditionally enforce peaceful neutral ground.

In other words, Ashran has basically been designed to simulate the AV zerg, except much larger, and pretty much NOTHING ELSE. All the aspects of AV that actually made it interesting and allowed people to feel like "heroes" rather than "creeps" has been removed. Even buffed to insane proportions, with the Ancient Artifact, Wand of Lightning Shield, boulder shield, curse, +15% stats, and NPC following you around, you're still pretty much relegated to being nothing more than a big creep.

In AV, I had a chance to be a "hero", even though there were 80 people there.
In Ashran, everyone is a creep.

Alot of things in Vanilla WoW were a lot more fun then they are now. PvP for example is a night and day difference. You actually had WORLD PvP which the game flaunted in those days but now is all arena this, arena that.

AV old school was flatout amazing. Were fight long? Hell yes they were but they were EPIC, especially when you summoned your "guardian" npc and could potentially push the opposite faction back a large amount. Guards were actually daunting and challenging. You actually HAD to coordinate attacks and what to attack with x amount of ppl, etc, etc. There were so many fun factors of old school AV that made it stand out way above anything else nowadays. Battlegrounds today are boring as watching paint dry. ZERO world pvp.

Ashran while fun isnt anything spectacular. It gets old quick. Basically a bone farming place.

[Deleted]

ashran is a smaller AV with quests/events. And worse.

[Deleted]

I liked early TBC AV, where there were still elites in towers and the odd summon of ice lord/drake riders but it wasn't always a zerg fest.

[Deleted]

Bonus Objectives in Ashran now restart every 30-40 minutes after completion (up from 20-30 minutes).

Did they just made it even worse for horde in Ashran?

[xpose]

I never understood how the designers thought it was a good idea to implement pve as the main objective in what I would assume they though would be a pvp environment. In the end it will always come down to "how can we beat the main objective the fastest" skipping pvp entirely or engaging in it as little as possible was the answer.


I think a simple change such as requiring factions to kill xxx number of the other faction (non npc) to "unlock" certain aspects of the map would be a good start in revamping it.

PVE in general should have little to no place in what would be assumed as a pvp dominate environment.

[Deleted]

They could make the pve objectives part of the zerg to force both sides to fight each other, by moving the objectives to be near the main road like in AV.

I don't know, their behavior is so irrational that it makes me think they are trying to milk as much money out of the frustration the imbalance creates, making people reroll, faction change, and so on, before people stop subbing. The hotfixes are such an obvious indication that they simply doesn't care enough or don't understand even the simplest problems. The racials are such a provocative problem and everything they say about it just adds to the frustration, don't they get that? They must... everyone else does, so again, either they don't care or the frustration is by design.

Holinka has become the biggest idiot in the gaming industri, ghostcrawler before him, obviously this is not a coincidence and they are not to blame, they are scapegoats and bound to be idiots since someone wont let them act rational. There is too much money in the addiction and frustration gaming creates so next time you talk or listen to Holinka know this - he is paid to be an idiot and irrational, he is a target dummy for you to fight all day long and he won't give in no matter how much you throw at him or rational your opinions might be.

[Bigbazz]

Ashran is not as well balanced numbers wise, I've been in there many times when there was an absolute massive difference in faction balance. With AV it depends what you're talking about, I'm guessing oldschool AV with endless games.. To be honest if we had that now it probably wouldn't be very fun.

[xpose]

Ashran is not as well balanced numbers wise, I've been in there many times when there was an absolute massive difference in faction balance. With AV it depends what you're talking about, I'm guessing oldschool AV with endless games.. To be honest if we had that now it probably wouldn't be very fun.

AV with endless games was before they figured out ways to get around the choke points and just zerg the boss. Blame it on ignorance for both sides.


Once Alliance found out they could jump the spikes and skip the big choke point they would just run past any horde wanting to fight. This led to Horde just rushing over the bridge to respond


They should make all the side events link directly to the main road instead of it all branching out where you don't even need to be on the road to get to it. Forcing players to confront each other will always incite pvp

[Mentia]

Had some free time this morning at work so I decided to get my 200 ashran points. Whole experiance took about 1 hour (including queue) to complete. Thank goodness I don't have to go back in there for another week. It's sad how bad that place is.

[Ciddy]

Ashran is pretty much just a massive mindless zerg. Alterac Valley, while featuring 'zergs' was so much more than that.

Agreed. In classic AV, the "side objectives" actually meant something. I loved how I could break off from the group, do my own thing, and actually contribute to the battle in a meaningful way. Like, I could go off and do those repeatable quests (gather supplies to start ground/cavalry assaults, etc).

[rorian]

Nostalgia is why AV was fun when comparing it to Ashran. There were just as many complaints about things in AV back then as there are for Ashran now. People choose to look back at the fun times they had (which I know I had as well) but also have to realize there were plenty of bad experiences too (queues, lag, design...etc same types of complaints we all have for Ashran).

The best other example I can come up with is Wintergrasp. I tend to see mostly positive views on Wintergrasp, yet when it was first implemented there was probably more negative reaction to it than even Ashran is getting.

Long story short, give it some time and some perspective when doing comparisons like this...remember that we are only ~2 months into a 2 year (based on Blizzard's history) expansion.

[Headayke]

Loved AV, don't know why some say it wasn't as good as people think it was. Grinding the reputation was easy, you had multiple ways to control the flow of the game, creating extra resources for your team, summoning the winter elemental to fight against the enemy team giving you a huge boost or just zerging the towers and winning. The queue for Ashran is crazy and I'm not into pvp as I used to.

[xpose]

Loved AV, don't know why some say it wasn't as good as people think it was. Grinding the reputation was easy, you had multiple ways to control the flow of the game, creating extra resources for your team, summoning the winter elemental to fight against the enemy team giving you a huge boost or just zerging the towers and winning. The queue for Ashran is crazy and I'm not into pvp as I used to.

This ended when people found ways around the choke points. You cant summons anything if no one is fighting.