The death spiral that is AV

[Nzx]

because millions of people love that.

Hahaha. Sure they do. I think at this point we can all be adults and say that millions of people did love "Classic", or moreso the idea of Classic, but the proof is in the two-months-later pudding where only a dedicated core of maybe a couple hundred thousand actually love it enough to play it.

[SinR]

Currently in US there's nearly 100 instances of AV with a 30 minute queue time for Horde.

[Kralljin]

And you believe that all of which you just stated is a healthy state for a game with 2 factions that relies on both factions doing the exact same content for there to be any PvP at all?

Healthy, no.
But the Vanilla honor system is anything but "healthy" or well designed.

Would you agree that it is EXTREMELY more likely that Alliance players fed up with this situation will either quit or reroll Horde before there is any major change in how "the factions generally" approach this content?

Some might quit, rerolling however is a rare chosen option tbh.
If you reroll to another faction (which means on another server on top of that if you're on a PvP Server) you basically delete your entire progress.
Gear, Gold, etc. nothing will come with you, leaving aside the fact that people who really want to play Pally are SOL.

Leaving the quit option aside, most will just drop doing PvP for some time until the situation gets less insane or possibly transfer to a PvE / Alliance dominated PvP Server if World PvP becomes an issue again.

If yes, what is your conclusion how this situation will develop further over the next 3-6 months?

I presume that the situation will not be as severe anymore once BWL, ZG or even AQ are out (because i think it's fair to assume that Blizzard will speed up schedule for classic to bridge the gap between 8.3 and Shadowlands).
The general interest in PvP will decline once these are out, some classes / specs still have some very good pieces from PvP, but it's not in the current situation where the PvP Armor is basically leagues ahead of anything that is currently available.

A lot more people will ask themselves whether doing PvP is really worth the trouble compared to just waiting until it is your turn to get a given item.
Because that's kinda the problem of the system, the system rewards people who get the most honor, no matter how, which obviously drives people to extreme ends, especially in an enviroment that lacks any checks to avoid queue dodging or any limitation on your playtime / amount of honor you can gain.

[Kaibhan]

Ironically, before av launched in classic, the consensus was that Alliance had a definite advantage over horde, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So now, horde players played, reviewed what was happening that made them lose, and invented a new meta.

How about the alliance does the same?

I’m an alliance player myself, saying get good, and most of all, get organized and have an actual plan.

Not possible atm. the reason it's not is that alliance premades abusing the queue system. Any pug alliance AV starts at such a huge player disadvantage that it becomes really hard to overcome. Pugging as alliance is fucked so it's either join the premades or get shit on which is basically what OP said.

[munkeyinorbit]

Alliance pugs are losing because of premades. It's not rocket science. Premades take the bulk of good players and probably 50% or more of the people with 100% mounts. On top of that, they're causing pugs to start shorthanded, resulting in even more midfield splits that get wiped. It has zero to do with Horde's skill and adaptation and everything to do with the player pool available for pugs because of the existence of premades. And no, the solution to the premade problem is not "if you can't beat em', join em'." There is a reason that AV is designed not to allow premades. They've got to go.

The problem is premades? But premades are not allowed by design? But premades have to go?

[Annelie]

I thought Alliance always had the benefit in classic A.V...

They did not. It is some weird urban myth spread by players never played AV in vanilla times. Usualy they base it all on the bridge and forget about everything else.

But the situation now is not hard to understand when everyone and their mothers went horde at day one of Classic launch. Most people that i pernaly saw during leveling never made it to level 60 and the Wpvp was a joke, Horde deathsquads everywhere and almost no alliance to be found. (EU)

EDIT: And the fact we have the worst version of AV dont really help either. Or the fact most Alliance seem to be more PvE oriented.

[Nathasil]

...

Thanks for the reply. Again, i agree with your observations.

It's rather hillarious that the PvP in WoW only allowes you to fight the other faction, but the ONE advantage you could possibly have on the underdog faction (Shorter Qs) gets twisted into a disadvantage since in terms of honor gains you only compete with your OWN faction. The people in good Alliance premades with a close to 100% win-ratio may "feel" like the winners of the current situation and may look like them from the outside...but really, they are not, since they - as you already pointed out - are basically "forced" to roll AV non-stop doing nothing else in order to compete with the other Alliance players doing the same.

Even if you are on a very small realm with very few Alliance, just a handful of hardcore Qers are enough to prevent you from ever reaching r14 - which is pretty much the only thing worthwhile to get from PvP.

[GreenJesus]

This is absolutely not common scenario... but i can immagine how its frustrating to be in such a game.. then i suggest just leave with /afk if there is really nothing you can do to make it better...



This is absolutly not true... at all
But i know why it seems for you like that.

The problem is:
AV is the most honor profitable activity -> most of the ranking players go to av
But then horde start to defend like madman's and make av inefficient...
This drag all ranking people ( not a rule, but they are often good in pvp and have knowledge how AV works in details...) from pugs to premade groups.
So most of the pug players aren't pvp players with deep knowledge of AV mechanics.
Often they are people who dont give a ..pineapple... and often afk, don't listen guy who try to lead if there is such a guy or they are not willing to use pots or granates.
So yea, pug group is often just pile of junk from alliance players ( not everytime, there are for sure good players as well, but they are in minority, just drop in the ocean of noobs)




Exactly... horde and they stupid defending cause only longer queu and more often face premades.. and it will be worst and worst... have fun



This is the same for Alliance...
For example look at firemaw... 500k+ first day after reset for higher brackets. You can't reach that playing less then 18h per day...



And that is exactly what is wrong with retail...



Everybody know that it will be like this...
But its not goal of everybody to reach rank14 ... at least if they know how honor/ranking/brackets works in vanilla.



Hope for TBC seems like solution for you?



I agree that its a shame that wsg and AB aren't even close in efficiency of AV.

Maybe Horde players play pvp to win the battleground instead of flailing around trying to farm honor points? Seems like Horde is the one probably having more fun doing you know.. pvp in a pvp battleground. Crazy I know right? Alliance wants to just be able to rush to the boss and not PVP.

[Thunderball]

Thanks for the reply. Again, i agree with your observations.

It's rather hillarious that the PvP in WoW only allowes you to fight the other faction, but the ONE advantage you could possibly have on the underdog faction (Shorter Qs) gets twisted into a disadvantage since in terms of honor gains you only compete with your OWN faction. The people in good Alliance premades with a close to 100% win-ratio may "feel" like the winners of the current situation and may look like them from the outside...but really, they are not, since they - as you already pointed out - are basically "forced" to roll AV non-stop doing nothing else in order to compete with the other Alliance players doing the same.

Even if you are on a very small realm with very few Alliance, just a handful of hardcore Qers are enough to prevent you from ever reaching r14 - which is pretty much the only thing worthwhile to get from PvP.

This is how the system is designed, regardless of which BG was the priority due to higher honor gain. This has nothing to do with AV. Wanna rank? Join a premade.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe Horde players play pvp to win the battleground instead of flailing around trying to farm honor points? Seems like Horde is the one probably having more fun doing you know.. pvp in a pvp battleground. Crazy I know right? Alliance wants to just be able to rush to the boss and not PVP.

Dont be delusional, please. Horde players are the same exact people as alliance players. The only difference are the circumstances, those being queue times mostly.

[Nathasil]

This is how the system is designed, regardless of which BG was the priority due to higher honor gain. This has nothing to do with AV. Wanna rank? Join a premade.

You did not understand the point i - and i assume Kralljin - was trying to make. Joining a premade is completely irrelevant. If you are part of the best premade of the world on Alliance right now you can make ~7 wins an hour. But you are not "fighting" the countless Horde that you are squashing under your heels, no, you are fighting the people on your own team. Beating the Horde better/faster whatever...does not matter at all, because the people on your team also get more honor/hour, just like you do. Which may be fine in a small group for WSG where you can actually talk with each other and know everyone and can discuss who gets r14 first and whatever...but in AV? No way. Especially since the premades right now do not really join together but go into the same discord after joining the BG.

I remember the old days 15 years ago. I played on a very small realm back then and Alliance was the dominating faction by far. We had ~3 premades running WSG pretty much 24/7...the Horde had one. The Horde premade demolished every single Alliance PUG they met - and most of the time left the game when meeting one of the three Alliance premades. It simply was not worth their time fighting us. Why waste 30-60mins in a game when you can instantly reQ and demolish your opposition? We Alliance had to wait 5-6 hours for a single game (this was before X-Server Qs, obviously).

In this particuar situation, the Horde held all the positives. They had instant-Q and everybody who wanted to rank on our server Horde-Side HAD to be a part of this one group. They would take a relaxed approach and Q up for 3-4 hours a day. Tops. They did not need to Q more. Nobody else on the Horde faction could possibly make more honor in the week than this one premade.
On the Alliance side, it was very different. With having more premades Qing up you were competing with THEM. Which meant you had to play (or better: wait) more hours than them. That was the only way. Sure, we "won" almost every single game we ever played...but at 1 game / 5-6 hours that is not really all that great.
Av opened one time a week on my server back then. Maybe 2-3 times during holidays. It was a nice little extra-honor, but completely meaningless next to the WSG portion.

Compare this with the current situation:
On the Horde side, you have longer wait times (not nearly as bad as mine 15 years ago, but still) and if you want to get to r14 you will still have to pretty much Q up 24hours / day. But you get long breaks thanks to Qtimes.
On the Alliance side you need to play 24/7 AND be part of the best premade you can possibly find as well, which in the case of AV means constant Discord hopping. Being thrown in different teams all the time means there is no way to coordinate your honor gains at all. You are only competing with the players who you are not allowed to fight by the game.

Not every realm was as dead as mine, obviously, but back then the smaller faction had an EASIER time ranking up. Right now, the smaller faction has a much, much harder time ranking up.

That does not sound like the same situation to me at all.

[Thunderball]

You did not understand the point i - and i assume Kralljin - was trying to make. Joining a premade is completely irrelevant. If you are part of the best premade of the world on Alliance right now you can make ~7 wins an hour. But you are not "fighting" the countless Horde that you are squashing under your heels, no, you are fighting the people on your own team. Beating the Horde better/faster whatever...does not matter at all, because the people on your team also get more honor/hour, just like you do. Which may be fine in a small group for WSG where you can actually talk with each other and know everyone and can discuss who gets r14 first and whatever...but in AV? No way. Especially since the premades right now do not really join together but go into the same discord after joining the BG.

You dont really understand how AV premades work dont you? Also, there is no difference from which BG it is - brackets work exactly the same.

I remember the old days 15 years ago. I played on a very small realm back then and Alliance was the dominating faction by far. We had ~3 premades running WSG pretty much 24/7...the Horde had one. The Horde premade demolished every single Alliance PUG they met - and most of the time left the game when meeting one of the three Alliance premades. It simply was not worth their time fighting us. Why waste 30-60mins in a game when you can instantly reQ and demolish your opposition? We Alliance had to wait 5-6 hours for a single game (this was before X-Server Qs, obviously).

Never gonna understand why would you consider playing on a dominating faction "good old times". 40 min Qs especially.

In this particuar situation, the Horde held all the positives. They had instant-Q and everybody who wanted to rank on our server Horde-Side HAD to be a part of this one group. They would take a relaxed approach and Q up for 3-4 hours a day. Tops. They did not need to Q more. Nobody else on the Horde faction could possibly make more honor in the week than this one premade.
On the Alliance side, it was very different. With having more premades Qing up you were competing with THEM. Which meant you had to play (or better: wait) more hours than them. That was the only way. Sure, we "won" almost every single game we ever played...but at 1 game / 5-6 hours that is not really all that great.
Av opened one time a week on my server back then. Maybe 2-3 times during holidays. It was a nice little extra-honor, but completely meaningless next to the WSG portion.

That's exactly how it works now, except WSG is now AV and Horde is now Alliance. It has nothing to do with factions and BGs, it's just how the system is designed.

On the Alliance side you need to play 24/7 AND be part of the best premade you can possibly find as well, which in the case of AV means constant Discord hopping. Being thrown in different teams all the time means there is no way to coordinate your honor gains at all. You are only competing with the players who you are not allowed to fight by the game.

This only applies to servers that have no brackets or have bracket breakers. On most servers you just cap in 3 days and you can do whatever you want after. There are easy ways to coordinate honor gains. There is absolutely no reason to compete with people you're premading with to make all of you play more. Ultimately if you're the best premade AND you play enough hours you will have the authority to set those rules. Noone wants to push 24/7 knowing that they could play 3 times less for the same RP.

Not every realm was as dead as mine, obviously, but back then the smaller faction had an EASIER time ranking up. Right now, the smaller faction has a much, much harder time ranking up.

That does not sound like the same situation to me at all.

Alliance absolutely has easier time ranking. Even if you have no brackets on your server you just queue bgs instead of being FORCED to look for wpvp between Qs.

[Kralljin]

Even if you are on a very small realm with very few Alliance, just a handful of hardcore Qers are enough to prevent you from ever reaching r14 - which is pretty much the only thing worthwhile to get from PvP.

Rank 14 is a dream that most people should bury rather quickly.
In order to advance from Rank 13 to Rank 14, you need to have like a Standing of 1-6 (depending on your total player pool) for 5 weeks straight.

So, even if Rank 14 is still your dream, you should wait until people move on, barely anyone is willing to put themselves through this a second time on an alt (afaik, it requires at least three months going from Rank 1 to Rank 14 regardless of your Standing), so the same person doing it twice is unlikely.

So, once the storm has subsided, organize yourself with the people that also aim at Rank 14, if ~10 people fight consistently over getting into Bracket 14, these people will by default make it harder for everybody by not organizing and at worst delay eachother from getting Rank 14 until enough of them throw the towel or simply get outgrinded.

Alliance absolutely has easier time ranking. Even if you have no brackets on your server you just queue bgs instead of being FORCED to look for wpvp between Qs.

If Alliance is barely existant on your sever (which isn't exactly uncommon), the worth of that diminishes also heavily.
Because, depending on where you do World PvP, getting back to that place takes a bit, if you want to farm honor on the Wetlands boat, you have like 5-10min travel time in getting to Menethil even if your HS is in Hammerfall and always ready after one game finishes.

[Tekkommo]

Cross realm premades are the issue.

The amount of instances they abandon is massive. This just makes it impossible for pugs, with pug AVS starting games with under 20. Only option is to find a premade discord.

[spdr]

Simply put, the Alliance doesn't know how to win a turtle, and the Horde does. That's because that's the Horde's best strategy, and the one they employ far more often.

It doesnt benefit alliance to turtle. The only effective place we can is the horde cave. Every other spot gives an advantage for the horde to turtle.

[Machismo]

It doesnt benefit alliance to turtle. The only effective place we can is the horde cave. Every other spot gives an advantage for the horde to turtle.

I agree, which is why the alliance does everything it can to avoid a turtle. If the horde manage to cause one, they will win it almost every single time. Even knocking out a few people at IBGY and TP can ruin the alliance.

[pinkz]

watching streamer Swiftee on twitch a bit today, as alliance he was at 14 wins - 0 losses when i quit watching and he is still AVing. his group is predom doing rush strat and winning, having to drudge thru some turtle games and STILL WINNING.

of course he is premading with a focused group

he explains alliance drek strat they are using and horde strat on how losing can still rack up more honor doing objectives, elites, etc. than alliance winning drek focused games

[Ariktu]

Wait what????

If horde was smart they would let alliance get more honnor is what you are saying?

Why would they let you get more honnor? And how does that make them smart?

Just stop queing when you get your rep dude! You are not going to be the first nor the last.... that's what horde is doing already. AV bgs will still pop without you and them. The game is already "not that good", so if we start agreeing with the other faction for that kind of stuff then it become completely mindless... I swear, all those wanabee R14 are ruining all the fun with reasoning like this. And most of them will stop bothering with it once they reach their goal! So what's the fucking point of this "game"

I certainly am not a wannabe r14. I am at best a wannabe r5 or 6 maybe. I am just saying that once they have crushed the alliance if they want people to keep queuing Horde needs to let up a small amount so that the Alliance gets some Honor and they still get huge honor. The point for Horde is to reduce queue times while maintaining Honor gains.

I was in an Av last night where this was evident. Horde had wiped Alliance around Bal when they tried to ride past to get to Galv. They kept the pressure up but let some alliance past and did not crush them. So Alliance actually turtled less since the few players that wanted to do something farmed LT's and capped a couple of towers.

We knew we had lost but got some honor so the game went pretty fast and Horde won with the usual 4500+ honor. We however got around 2500 honor which was far better than the usual 300-500 lately.

If the games were more like that each time I would be more likely to play every now and then versus stopping once my rep capped.

[stomination]

Ironically, before av launched in classic, the consensus was that Alliance had a definite advantage over horde, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So now, horde players played, reviewed what was happening that made them lose, and invented a new meta.

How about the alliance does the same?

I’m an alliance player myself, saying get good, and most of all, get organized and have an actual plan.

The meta is not running into a premade.

[varren]

pugging alliance AV on classic might be the most miserable experience in any iteration of WoW I have taken part in

[Thunderball]

If Alliance is barely existant on your sever (which isn't exactly uncommon), the worth of that diminishes also heavily.
Because, depending on where you do World PvP, getting back to that place takes a bit, if you want to farm honor on the Wetlands boat, you have like 5-10min travel time in getting to Menethil even if your HS is in Hammerfall and always ready after one game finishes.

On the contrary, it makes it that much more important.

- - - Updated - - -

Cross realm premades are the issue.

The amount of instances they abandon is massive. This just makes it impossible for pugs, with pug AVS starting games with under 20. Only option is to find a premade discord.

Just dont play AV. Xrealm premades are the direct result of the decisions Blizzard made. While AV is the best honor and is easily rushable like that there's going to be ways people trying to maximize their honor will employ to make pugs lives miserable.