What side was alterac valley or PVP in general biased towards?

[Armourboy]

Generally speaking Iceblood is the single best choke point in the game, but I think Horde players rarely used it because it was much quicker to get marks by losing fast than winning slow. If you got a group that decided they just wanted to win or wrack up HK's they would do it, but mostly by 1.12 it was just a fast race.

In a race Alliance tended to win as you could skip much of the terrain and the archers were not as big of a deal. When I did see Horde win it was because people would screw around and get behind and the Alliance couldn't pull soon enough.

[Teri]

Alliance Bridge and Bunkers were just much harder to take then Horde Towers.

Also very different placement of Elite NPC's, many right in front of the Alliance main fort, while many horde NPC's were to the sides or before the "tunnel".

[Draenox]

AV is the only battleground faction I have at exalted on my main alliance character, which I have played no pvp on whatsoever for a very long time. I also distinctly remember having endless pages of alterac valley marks from victories I couldnt loot because I already had the maximum. AV seemed extremely alliance favored up until WotLK or so, with winrates of ~70-80%.

[tratra]

Pretty sure that was a Wrath spell.

Certainly in TBC they made it so you can't interact with flags while immune. . .

OT: For random ass WPvP then its pretty much up to player skill / gear. For organised PvP Alliance just has a much better toolkit from Paladins than Horde get from Shaman. Right?

i like how sure you are about mass dispel lol... it was introduced in tbc, check your facts .

The poll is awful with awful opinions...

PVP was based on the server and or the BGroup later on. There were equally good hordes and allies in most bgroups and id say servers as well countering each other.

As for AV, well it was just a longlasting battle and id say most of the people didn't even know what they had to do in order to win back then, it was completely random who would win an AV battle.

[Chaelexi]

The Iceblood Tower is right next to the passage, so yeah.



Not really, even now a lot of people on Horde side are willing to defend.

The reason is because no one wanted to defend later on.

A lot of 5-10min losses > 1h+ for a single win in terms of honor, a lot people got mad at you if actually tried to defend because it just prolonged the game.
Horde had almost instant invite for AV anyway, due to serious win / loss imbalance.



And in your mind a 30 / 10 split is achieveable with a pug but Horde is unable to defend at Iceblood because "you need a premade", am i understanding this correctly?



The issue was that a "regular" AV was no longer attractive due the changes made to the honor system.

A fast victory was not seriously achieveable as Horde in AV with a pug, so most people simply took a lot of fast losses over a long stretched victory.



Balinda was far easier because her Frostbolts were interruptable and she did pitiful Melee damage.

With one or two Shaman, Balinda basically posed no threat as any spell would be interrupted or grounded.

Galv at least required someone willing to "Tank".

But you wall jump into the corner and dot/fear people at will while being untargetable from below........

[pinkz]

horde only had a advantage when AV first rolled, their entrance to BG was farther forward giving them a slight head start. that was quickly nerfed and redone. after that alliance had the advantage. i played both factions honestly to win, separate servers

AV it is not balanced and i have noticed the following differences:

alliance
- only a few bunkers have blind spots for to burn flag unaggroed, archers can not be totally circumvented
- DB Keep
-- scrap collector and NPCs are centrally located and prior to the flag, they aggro and fight
-- horde are ranged by bunkers half way across the bridge and all the way to the base flag
-- horde have no safe zone prior to DB bunkers to group up
-- SDB bunker ranges anyone trying to burn DB flag
-- SDB has a defender NPC, in avoiding scrap NPCs above, you may aggro him, or going into SDB non-stealth you have to deal with him and archers
-- once horde burns DB flag and horde guards appear, they run off to a NPC near DB stables leaving flag undefended
-- defender mobs can't be circumvented as in the horde base
- SHGY is closer to balinda, helps on defend strategies
- SFGY location favors alliance since on the way to Drek
- SHB ranges horde on way to Bal, SHGY, robbing HP
- SHB is too far forward, easy for the horde to take, almost closer to horde IBGY
- starter point
-- alliance mine, SPGY, and DB keep is closer, faster to take, or retake


horde
- tower huts/top flags, any class once inside or just standing to the side are no longer targetable and can burn flags
- FW keep
-- alliance can circumvent all but one guard (at huge tower), and in the process of running to the flag,, aggro drops
-- alliance can group in the huge tower building safe zone below FW towers/archers
-- alliance can range, shadowstep, etc. enemy across FW towers
-- alliance can burn FWRH flag and not be ranged by archers
- IBGY is over double the distance to DREK vs SHGY/Bal
- armor scrap quest/gatherer givers are easy to avoid
- starter point
-- horde mine is many times more the distance from start point
-- was moved to far back on blizzards AV nerf
-- FWGY and FW keep is farther from start point


- paladin had mount speed advantage
- i can be at the horde flag way faster than getting to the ally flag on any horde class
- i reach the horde flag with 70%+ hp
- on horde i reach ally flag with 50% or less HP, and sometimes die depending on class
- on ally to get to horde flag outrun 1 NPC drop aggro and kill 4 NPCs and cap flag
- ally base flag, 4 NPCs, many times additional turn in quest mobs, and tower archers ranging even near flag if you aren't in a sweet spot yet
- besides the ally base delay advantage, pathable distance is not equal when tested with friends playing opposing faction in numerous tests when my ally is at horde flag, they are just about to leave the bridge

[mickybrighteyes]

Generally speaking Iceblood is the single best choke point in the game,

I think you're missing a parameter or two on this statement.

almost everything north of Stonehearth is a better chokepoints than iceblood.

edit:

gotta knitpick, shadowstep wasn't introduced to the game till TBC as teh 41 point talent. So no need to worry about it or cloak of shadows in classic era content.

[Fritters154]

What does and does not count as "progress" is pretty debatable so that's already a really awkward thing to compare.

Eh, raid progress for PvE has been a pretty unambiguous thing to compare the entirety of WoW. Boss dead = good is pretty well established.

Onyxia: The Chosen (Horde)
Molten Core: Ascent (Horde)
Blackwing Lair: Drama (Alliance)
AQ40: Nihilum (Horde)
Naxx40: Nihilum (Horde)

So Alliance took 1 out of 4 raids despite what you said about threat issues being true. Of course, this is a world first linked thing and doesn't necessarily correspond to all guild clearing the raid. However, it is factually true that Horde have been better at garnering world firsts throughout WoW. In fact, Nefarian (that BWL one), Halion, and Madness of Deathwing are the only three end bosses in the history of WoW to be killed first by an Alliance guild.

[Armourboy]

I think you're missing a parameter or two on this statement.

almost everything north of Stonehearth is a better chokepoints than iceblood.

edit:

gotta knitpick, shadowstep wasn't introduced to the game till TBC as teh 41 point talent. So no need to worry about it or cloak of shadows in classic era content.

No I'm not. Horde can literally keep the Alliance from gaining every single objective from this point. Alliances best point is two towers and a boss further back.

Now it's less of an advantage in Vanilla without the resources part of the BG, but if the Horde are willing to do it, they can bottle up the entire BG at a point much higher in the BG than Alliance can.

You just didn't see it much before resources because it wasn't optimal for honor or marks.

[Maleficents]

Yeah I guess that's why Horde winrate in AV was never higher than barely 40%, in vanilla it was lower than 35%.

Your arguments are very conflicting. One on end of the spectrum, you're complaining about the bridge and the rain of death from archers, but on the other side, you're saying they're easily killed. Yes, the Horde win rate sucked, because they played stupid. Sending 30 people to Balinda and not leaving defenders in bunkers is dumb. It was made worse when blacklisting was introduced, as real players opted out and bots were left to fill the gap. You'll notice now that despite no changes to the map, the removal of blacklisting and stronger NPCs, the Horde is winning the majority.

This thread has just shown there are players still spouting misconceptions (which other people pick up). One of the later posts is still saying you can't cap a bunker without killing bowmen. That hasn't been the case for over 4 years now. The bridge is not some impenetrable fortress, especially if there is a backdoor that allows you to bypass it entirely.

[Shibito]

horde only had a advantage when AV first rolled, their entrance to BG was farther forward giving them a slight head start. that was quickly nerfed and redone. after that alliance had the advantage. i played both factions honestly to win, separate servers

AV it is not balanced and i have noticed the following differences:

alliance
- only a few bunkers have blind spots for to burn flag unaggroed, archers can not be totally circumvented
- DB Keep
-- scrap collector and NPCs are centrally located and prior to the flag, they aggro and fight
-- horde are ranged by bunkers half way across the bridge and all the way to the base flag
-- horde have no safe zone prior to DB bunkers to group up
-- SDB bunker ranges anyone trying to burn DB flag
-- SDB has a defender NPC, in avoiding scrap NPCs above, you may aggro him, or going into SDB non-stealth you have to deal with him and archers
-- once horde burns DB flag and horde guards appear, they run off to a NPC near DB stables leaving flag undefended
-- defender mobs can't be circumvented as in the horde base
- SHGY is closer to balinda, helps on defend strategies
- SFGY location favors alliance since on the way to Drek
- SHB ranges horde on way to Bal, SHGY, robbing HP
- SHB is too far forward, easy for the horde to take, almost closer to horde IBGY
- starter point
-- alliance mine, SPGY, and DB keep is closer, faster to take, or retake


horde
- tower huts/top flags, any class once inside or just standing to the side are no longer targetable and can burn flags
- FW keep
-- alliance can circumvent all but one guard (at huge tower), and in the process of running to the flag,, aggro drops
-- alliance can group in the huge tower building safe zone below FW towers/archers
-- alliance can range, shadowstep, etc. enemy across FW towers
-- alliance can burn FWRH flag and not be ranged by archers
- IBGY is over double the distance to DREK vs SHGY/Bal
- armor scrap quest/gatherer givers are easy to avoid
- starter point
-- horde mine is many times more the distance from start point
-- was moved to far back on blizzards AV nerf
-- FWGY and FW keep is farther from start point


- paladin had mount speed advantage
- i can be at the horde flag way faster than getting to the ally flag on any horde class
- i reach the horde flag with 70%+ hp
- on horde i reach ally flag with 50% or less HP, and sometimes die depending on class
- on ally to get to horde flag outrun 1 NPC drop aggro and kill 4 NPCs and cap flag
- ally base flag, 4 NPCs, many times additional turn in quest mobs, and tower archers ranging even near flag if you aren't in a sweet spot yet
- besides the ally base delay advantage, pathable distance is not equal when tested with friends playing opposing faction in numerous tests when my ally is at horde flag, they are just about to leave the bridge

you got it the wrong way horde entrance was in the back originally, it was moved forward later on

[anon5123]

Eh, raid progress for PvE

"world first" is more about the players than the faction. They didn't get world first because of being horde, they got world first due to no-lifing harder than anyone else.

[mickybrighteyes]

No I'm not. Horde can literally keep the Alliance from gaining every single objective from this point. Alliances best point is two towers and a boss further back.

Now it's less of an advantage in Vanilla without the resources part of the BG, but if the Horde are willing to do it, they can bottle up the entire BG at a point much higher in the BG than Alliance can.

You just didn't see it much before resources because it wasn't optimal for honor or marks.

the circles identify some of the best chokes in the map.

if you're referring to point 1.... you're not referring the the best 'choke' unless you have some additional parameters to showcase you're position.

point 4 and hell point 3 are far better positions to full on STOP players.

point 1, it's not bad, but if you're trying to compare it to point one you're basically looking at a class triple S and a class B.... but horde get hosed on this map so it's the best they get to use for defense.


edit:

misread points as 1-4 from north to south.

[Soeroah]

As I recall, in Classic, Alliance had a lot of geographical advantages. Horde started slightly closer to Alliance structures, but the Alliance base only had one choke point on their bridge, and the Horde had a "bridge" that was barely necessary, a hill you could use to jump over their wall and bypass the front door, and you could run around the gate between their two towers to slip by if you were careful.

[Maleficents]

the circles identify some of the best chokes in the map.

if you're referring to point 4.... you're not referring the the best 'choke' unless you have some additional parameters to showcase you're position.

point 1 and hell point 2 are far better positions to full on STOP players.

point 4, it's not bad, but if you're trying to compare it to point one you're basically looking at a class triple S and a class B.... but horde get hosed on this map so it's the best they get to use for defense.

I wouldn't even consider point 2 a choke because to use it you give up the graveyard, Balinda and SHB. I've seen point 2 used more as a choke for the Horde to prevent Alliance from getting south rather than the other way around. I've played thousands of AVs.

Point 3 has 3 ways around it (up, down, through) and Point 4 has a backdoor. That map also doesn't add 1, 2, 3 chokes for Frostwolf Village (gates, hut, twin towers).

[RobertMugabe]

It's a real easy thing to compare xD. Look at top guilds of vanilla, tbc or even wotlk. Vast majority are horde. Not saying I know why, but that's just the truth.

Know exactly what the benefits are of salvation, but point is it being alliance only didn't stop horde from outperforming them in all raids.

Every single of your comments so far has been about you fanboying the Horde. We get it, you play Horde. No one thinks that you're a special player for choosing this faction

[mickybrighteyes]

I wouldn't even consider point 2 a choke because to use it you give up the graveyard, Balinda and SHB. I've seen point 2 used more as a choke for the Horde to prevent Alliance from getting south rather than the other way around. I've played thousands of AVs.

Point 3 has 3 ways around it (up, down, through) and Point 4 has a backdoor. That map also doesn't add 1, 2, 3 chokes for Frostwolf Village (gates, hut, twin towers).

i'm not aware of any legit (keyword here) backdoor to dun baldar that isn't some idiot sitting to low to the ground or an exploit to begin with. the terrain aroudn teh south is too steep, granted a warrior CAN charge up to the foot of the bunker's wall if someone is there (who patrols the foot of those walls though). There are no gliding mechanics. not enough speed effects available. No leaps either. not in the 1.12 days.

point 3's alternative routes are obvious as fuck and why I don't normally consider it unless someone is being stupid and refusing to go around to teh mine, as for going up from below.... yes go under teh bridge and and spend an extra 2 minutes running off the road from point 2.

as for teh frost wolf base... the gate can be circumvented by jumping a hill from teh east. the central building los's the frost wolf towers... as does teh second gate AFTER the central building so alliance can just walk in and j-hook into the towers never getting shot. I also remember issues with some spells targetting on the slope making it almost shorter to run thruogh the effects or making it 'awkward' to target due to shifting range on the slope (you're beyond max cast range from teh tower tops for the lower end of the slope).

in general south of TP was an open area mess with shit spread out

[Maleficents]

i'm not aware of any legit (keyword here) backdoor to dun baldar that isn't some idiot sitting to low to the ground or an exploit to begin with. the terrain aroudn teh south is too steep, granted a warrior CAN charge up to the foot of the bunker's wall if someone is there (who patrols the foot of those walls though). There are no gliding mechanics. not enough speed effects available. No leaps either. not in the 1.12 days.

point 3's alternative routes are obvious as fuck and why I don't normally consider it unless someone is being stupid and refusing to go around to teh mine, as for going up from below.... yes go under teh bridge and and spend an extra 2 minutes running off the road from point 2.

as for teh frost wolf base... the gate can be circumvented by jumping a hill from teh east. the central building los's the frost wolf towers... as does teh second gate AFTER the central building so alliance can just walk in and j-hook into the towers never getting shot. I also remember issues with some spells targetting on the slope making it almost shorter to run thruogh the effects or making it 'awkward' to target due to shifting range on the slope (you're beyond max cast range from teh tower tops for the lower end of the slope).

in general south of TP was an open area mess with shit spread out

It's walking up the hill and hasn't been fixed yet.

The snow mounds that allowed Alliance to jump over the Frostwolf fence were fixed years ago, so can no longer be jumped over (unless you are a demon hunter, probably).

Yes, the hut prevents players from getting shot at but it doesn't make it any less of a choke - if you place enough players there, no one else will get through. Same with the twin towers - it's high ground (shooting down into the hut), archers will hit anyone that exits the hut, and it's a small narrow path.

[mickybrighteyes]

It's walking up the hill and hasn't been fixed yet.

So an even narrower side path that is as exposed might be used... yet still has to deal with the same things making the bridge a shitty run. The elites are still defending, the archers are still going to shoot as you enter the range to take teh points in the area. and you're running up a soon to be known obvious open area...

as for more modern variations... the amoutn of slowfalls, glides, leaps, etc make it a moot point since everyone can access such things, but this is a classic forum where much of that isn't available.

The snow mounds that allowed Alliance to jump over the Frostwolf fence were fixed years ago, so can no longer be jumped over (unless you are a demon hunter, probably).

I'm not sure all the ways into the frostwolf keep were irons out by the time 1.12 was at it's end. Nvm that the layout makes it stupid easy to run through from the gate unhindered

Yes, the hut prevents players from getting shot at but it doesn't make it any less of a choke - if you place enough players there, no one else will get through. Same with the twin towers - it's high ground (shooting down into the hut), archers will hit anyone that exits the hut, and it's a small narrow path.

That narrow path still has range issues to the ground due to the height difference and a LoS issue as you pass the gate at the hill's crest. People standing on the gate have no issue targeting people rushing out of the hut, but you have maybe 6 of the archers total able to fire off one or two shots before the targets are about to hit the gate and j-hook into one of the towers.

elevation differences in wow don't matter unless you're talking about terrain pathing to a target, you're total distance from the target is still a limiter and the foot of the hill is beyond max target range for whoever is on top of the tower.

[Vilendor]

AV often lasted for DAYS
Considering this simple fact anyone claiming it was biased for a faction is a m**on