Alterac Valley 2.4

The screaming match over Alterac Valley began the day it opened. Alliance and Horde screaming across the forums, IRC channels and blogs about how this battleground is proof of Blizzards love of the opposing faction. While the Horde has long decried the issues of the Alliance bridge and placement of the NPC's in their base, Alliance has pretty much cried about everything relating to the Horde. And as always, Blizzard made changes. Just to refresh everyone, here is the list of Alterac Valley related changes made in 2.4.

• Captain Balinda Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.


• Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek'thar and Captain Galvangar.


• Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other's maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.


• Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek'Thar and Frostwolf Keep.


• There is now a Join as Party option.

Now, accepting the premise that Alterac Valley is essentially a race to kill the enemy general, these changes can only be seen as a nerf to the Horde. Balinda and her pet were both buffed, thus slowing the Horde down. Van and Bal both had their hit points reduced but only to the levels Galv and Drek were previously, so this only balances the four main targets. Or does it? Consider the fact that Galv has no pet helping him, while Balinda does. Sure, the water elemental isn't that tough but it's still more than Galv has.
The Horde starting location was moved back as well. We now start considerably further back, which had the Alliance salivating in anticipation of this change. Their infamous zerg race to Drek was about to get that much better. But then 2.4 hit, but I'll get to that.
Lastly, the warmasters/marshalls now increase each others health and damage by 25%...each!!! This is a huge nerf to the Horde who often ( at least in my battlegroup ) had to start on Van with at least one marshall still up to hope to snatch a win from the Alliances ever growing domination of Alterac Valley.

And then 2.4 hit and something happened. Being moved back forced the Horde to play a better defense. And that has made all the difference. Since the inclusion of reinforcements, I have come to believe that the focus of AV has complete changed for the Horde. I believe that Blizzard quietly changed their viewpoint as to each factions role in AV and has made changes to broadcast this new philosophy. We Horde should listen to the signs as it points the way to our chance to completely dominate Alterac Valley. At least until the Alliance howls on the official forums become so loud it wakes the dead ( but that just may mean more rerolls to Undead so I'm all for it. )

The last two patches have brought changes that essentially slow down the Horde in the "race" the the General but have left us a way to win as well: reinforcements. By mounting a strong defense, the Horde can dwindle the Alliances reinforcements down very quickly. many players are skeptical of this. They are afraid of getting into long drawn out battles that essentially decrease their honor per hour gain. that being said, using an addon called Honor Kills Counter, I have logged my AV's since 2.4 and taken notes on the strategies used by the Horde in each battle.

In four out of my last five AV's, the Horde has played a strong defense. Some call this the "turtle." The Horde won all four in which they "turtled." However, this turtle did NOT mean we mounted no offense. In fact, by focusing most of our players on defense, were able to stop the Alliance advance and thus allow our offense time to get to Van and kill him. The longest of these AV's lasted just 26 mins. Our single victory without a Van kill lasted 31 minutes. The difference in honor was 50. We got 50 less honor not killing Van, than we would had we killed him. Compare that to the 250 less honor we received for a loss and ask yourself, is it better to extend the match 5 - 10 minutes if it means a chance at 200 more honor?

A long time saying among players is: The Alliance is built for PvE and the Horde is built for PvP. If this is true, then the genius behind Alterac Valley 2.4 is that it pits each side against it's weakness and caters to its strength. With the NPC positioning in the bases, Alliance can skip over much of the PvE that the Horde inevitably faces in each match.

Consider this:

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

The Blizzard built defenses of Frostwolf have huge, gaping holes in them that allow the Alliance to move quickly to their objectives. This design has led to the Alliance tactic of the quick rush to the end and many a Horde defeat. By plugging up those holes with players, we can force the Alliance to engage us or engage our NPC's. Either way, we can slow them down or better yet stop their advance completely. This follows the highest form of generalship.

The Alliance will often send one force to defeat Galv while a smaller ( unusually stealthed ) force moves to take our Relief Hut and Frostwolf Towers , East and West. After the defeat of Galv, the larger force moves to join up with the smaller force. To prevent this "junction of forces" the Horde must "attack the enemy's army in the field" or more to the point, use the IB chokepoint to halt the larger forces advance. Hold them there. Force them to split their forces further through respawns at Winterax. Now their larger force becomes two smaller weaker forces, both of which will be easier to defeat.

The bridge is without a doubt the best chokepoint in the game. It is defended by the archers from the North Tower and thus, can be held by relatively few Alliance players for several precious minutes. When the Horde gets stuck at the bridge, we are besieging the Alliances "walled cities." Players must get across that bridge and to the Aid Station flag at all costs. By taking Stormpike before the Aid Station, the Horde is allowing the Alliance to turtle behind its defenses and that becomes a much harder nut to crack. But, by forcing them to respawn at Stormpike, or better yet, their cave, with our forces within their base, the bridge is turned from an obstacle to an asset. Thus, their walled city becomes ours.

If the Horde can play to it's strength, PvP, and field a strong defense, while it's offense smartly turns the Alliances strengths into our own, the Horde should be able to dominate Alterac Valley.

Note - This article was written by a player with a Horde main character and with a decidedly Pro-Horde bias. Alliance players will just have to be a little understanding about that.

Scammer pwn'd by Blizzard

For all those who say that Blizzard doesn't know whats going on in their game, I submit the following:

A poster, Kiranth, on the official WoW forums posted a thread. Here is the text:

i at last was able to get my flying skill, i got it on a monday used it til the server went down for updates on tuesday morning, when i got back on the skill wasnt there, but i still have my epic flying mount ? but can no longer use it, i talked to gms they said they cant find my history, so they dont know why i have the epic mount but no skill, all they said is i have to buy the skill again, i talked to many gms every day for a month, then after that the gms said i waited too long , what else can i do? i talked to gms i sent emails to Blizz at this point im getting to i dont even fell like playing anymore and thinking of quiting my 3 accounts and cancelling them, the lack of help is very frustrating, one of the GMs said that it sucks to be me! what else can i do, blizz is ignore n me and will not help me so im posting this maybe someone in blizz will do something to help

Based on the grammar, spelling, lack of proper capitalization, we can assume this poster is either young, English is not their first language or a complete idiot. Personally, I'm going with the last choice.

Several posters responded, all trying to figure out what happened to this poor soul. Isn't it amazing how everyone who plays a video game seems to think they understand all the code and infrastructure behind it?

Then in pops Auryk, fearless blue poster to shed some light on the subject. Here's the text:

Alright, Kiranth, sorry for the delay I had a lot of information to look through. Seeing as how this took place about two months ago, the logs were a little harder to look up. Let me go though, step by step, and detail the turn of events as I see them:

You first petition in on Saturday, 02/16/2008 at approximately 02:09:10(GMT) asking that we look into your missing flight skill that you claim to have purchased five days prior. In that petition you declare that you purchased the epic riding skill on Sunday with the money you had been saving up for two months and were playing “till the servers went down for maintenance on Monday morning.”

According to my records you were offline when the Game Master attempted to contact you. So as you said, they sent you an e-mail.

I see that you re-petition in that same day, almost nine hours later at 11:10:44(GMT). Here you mention that you are missing the riding skill that you just leaned on Monday, and that you played all night until you were kicked off Tuesday morning.

Again, I see that you were not online when the Game Master received your petition, so they send you a second e-mail stating that they were unable to verify the loss of the gold on this skill.

The very next day 02/17/2008 you petition in twice more; once at 03:33:01(GMT), which (as you have even stated here in this post) mentioning that you borrowed most of the gold to be able to purchase this skill. Unfortunately this was also received while you were offline; e-mail sent asking you for more information on the issue – specifically a timeframe of when this happened. The second being, at 15:39:25, where you actually got to speak to a Game Master, who informs you that they are unable to verify that you ever purchased this skill.

After that I see no contact being made with anyone from our In-Game Customer Support Department until 03/06/2008 at 20:04:07(GMT). At this point it has already been over three and a half weeks since you said you have purchased the epic flying riding skill. Again you get in contact with a Game Master while online, and they inform you that they are unable to verify you purchasing the skill and apologize, letting you know that they are not going to be able to reimburse you for the skill.

Since then I see no further contact with us until this post, which ambiguously mentions that on “a Monday” you got the skill and no longer have it, and would like it to be looked into.

I understand that you were unable to petition in via the in-game client, whether it was because your account’s billing cycle had lapsed, as you say in your third petition – due to the fact that you were away on a trip, as you claim in your fifth petition – or because you had to get a new computer (including a “fairly good graphics card” and double the ram of your old computer) as you told your guildmates – however in the future, I would recommend that you take the time to send an e-mail into WoWGM@Blizzard.com if you ever experience an issue that is fairly important to you. This way we can look into it as soon as it takes place.

I have a feeling, however, that in this specific case would not have done much good, if any at all. The reason I say this is because upon doing a few searches of my own, I see that at 2/11/08 at approximately 20:48:45(GMT) you zone into the Outlands with 149 gold 98 silver and 42 copper. I see that at 21:38:05(GMT) you purchase your Red Riding Nether Ray (which at Exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard costs 160 gold). Following that, you log out with about 14g99s42c, congratulations on your Primal Waters selling. :0)

A search within a few days of this purchase shows that at no time did you have the 5000(ish) gold that is required for purchasing the riding skill itself.

I also find it a bit confusing when you mention on 03/01/2008 between 20:12:20 and 20:12:51 that you, “cant wait for the faster mount” because you “just need the skill [cause you] already have Red Riding Nether Ray”

I hope this clears up any confusion or frustration you may have about this situation, the only thing I have left is that I would like to take this time to remind you of our stance on Defrauding or Attempting to Defraud a GM, Kiranth. Whenever possible, we try to give players the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. We honestly hope players do not attempt to take advantage of this trust, and provide their full cooperation. However, if we later find that an attempt was made to defraud a GM, the offending player may have action taken against them. Attempts to defraud a GM include, but are not limited to, misdirecting a GM's attention, withholding information, providing false information, and any attempt to "trick" a GM.

Now, THAT is some research, huh? The fact that all of this information ( I especially like the primal waters comment ) is logged and somewhere for Blizzard to look over gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling. Call me a fanboy if you like, but I just LOVE it when Blizzard lays the smackdown on some idiot. Ever notice it's always the dumbest person in the room who thinks they're the smartest? Well, hopefully this is one moron who learned his lesson. Kudos to Auryk on one of the funniest smackdowns I have seen in a long time.

What do you think?

NOTE: I accidentally edited out the initial credit for this article. WoW Insider had an article on this subject which prompted me to comment on it as well.