Rant on horde AVFollow

The hordies in my battle group almost never turtle. How many AV's have you done? I have done enough games to reach exalted on two characters. I am not an authority on AV by any stretch, but I have seen a few strategies.

The fastest AV's happen when the Horde General/Warlord/High Warlord semi-premade vent group PWNS us in 13-18 minutes. If we try to do more than take IBGY and two towers, they crush us and leave us with nothing at all.

The longest games usually occur when the Horde defends IB and breaks our initial offense. Many times it is impossible to get our Alliance players to leave turtle mode after this.

Yesterday Horde was playing with a strong (10~15 player) defense. I wouldn't call the strategy a turtle, but playing time went up to over an hour. We had enough defense to slow their weakened offense and eventually win, but the outcome was close.

Though the honor and reputation does not accumulate as quickly in the longer games, I find the experience much more interesting. If you want to just kill Galv and Drek, perhaps you should stick to PvE or get your rewards and go. If you want to get constantly PWNED by warlocks and shammies, then this is your game. ;) Level 52 is also a little low for AV. Obviously you can do it, but you will have more fun at higher levels. I guess that's my two pennies for the moment.

This seems odd. Ironic even.

By turtle, I assume you mean defend. Or do you mean specifically defending the final pull room?

If you mean defend, then Alliance "turtle" far more often than Horde. The difference is that it usually doesn't take nearly the same number to actually accomplish the same thing. Heck, five Alliance can turtle pretty well (sadly), while it seems to take a third to half our raid to accomplish any significant defense.

Personally, I find full zergs completely boring. It becomes nothing but a race. Sure, the results are likely better (faster games, which translates into more tokens, etc). But the actual games are far from "fun".

I like to actually fight Player versus Player, not Player versus NPC Mob. To fight against other players, you've got to throw up defense somewhere... otherwise the only real PvP is incidental in AV, where you happen to run across someone at the very beginning. If anything, I wish both sides would defend more - but I'm just odd that way. I would like to see AV give more rewards for long battles, and fewer for killing the named and ending the game.

(EDIT: I am not offended at all, just a little confused. Maybe it's different in your battlegroup. I also do not mean to offend with my reply. I'm just living in Baffleville at the moment, hehe.)

Edited, Nov 9th 2006 at 8:01am PST by Jantis

Good morning. Actually, on Shadowsong, I tend to see more Alliance teams "turtling" than horde as a general rule. Which is fine, gives me more targets to shoot at. But what I tend to see more horde side, now that we have this "cross server" BG garbage, is a ton of horde players giving up or going /afk after 10 minutes if we are not overwhelming the other side.

It seems that if both sides would take the time to approach AV as a battleground and take objectives and such, the overall experience would attract a lot more people that want to "PvP" instead of "rep grind". Given the sheer numbers of AVs I have been in these past three weeks, I made exalted in AV in 2 weeks and stone guard in 3. And other than the SS premades we run every couple days, the other 95% of them go a little something like this:

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"Are we gonna win this time?"
"When do we ever win, might as well /afk now and get your badge"
Argument about honor and rep starts.
Name calling ensues.

Game starts and 30 people run out and mount up. 15 go to defense, 5 go afk, 5 go after rams, wolves etc. and the remaining 15 go on offense, taking the lower road.

"Who's on D"
random inane jokes about defense and why even bother when we will lose anyways.
random smattering of posts about blood and/or rams

"Offense go topside!"
"Way to go O, you are in the meatgrinder on the bottom. You idiots are noobs!"

nasty expletives about play ability, skill, etc etc following.
response from O - nasty expletives, escalation of argument about who sucks more or why they don't.

Galv downed pretty quick (typically in under 10 minutes)- becomes a grind fest at this point along the lower road that everyone knows they should't go to.

"We need to summon Lok"
"Lok is bugged/broken/won't work/ any other reason to lay blame on someone else"
"Way to go wiping O, you guys suck! lrn2play!"
Argument escalates again
"you all suck, follow me"
"I'm not following you, your rank means s--t. I'm higher rank so you should follow me!"

Meanwhile, Alliance camp graveyards, turtle at Vann or steamroll through and take every single place they hit - GY, towers, mines, all of it.

"Oh s--t! We need FW/SP/SH GY/Bunker etc back"
"Shut up, if you didn't suck so bad, we wouldn't have lost it!"

Argument escalates.
Drek under attack

Game over - 17 minutes average in the 47 some odd AVs I have been in.
Final response from random horde players - "you all suck so bad, no wonder we lose! You effing noobs (or other spectacularly intelligent character attack)"

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Umm, maybe ally does this too but THIS is why we lose and why people want to turtle. The infighting, failure to work as a team and overall nasty, childish behavior defeats horde teams LONG before the alliance gank teams do. Oh, and the "your gear sucks so you shouldn't be here until it gets better" is a bunch of crap as well. A LOT of players are not able to raid for the big stuff so this is another option for them to acquire enough rep to get some decent gear. Leave em the hell alone. You didn't have it at one point either so have a nice hot cup of stfu kthxbye.

You know, it's funny, but I do substitute teaching for the school district here and tutor people in computers people where I live and in all my years of doing this kind of work I have NEVER seen this kind of childish attitude from the 10 to 15 year olds I work with or even my own son, who happens to be 14.

Matter of fact, the majority of the whining and name calling comes from the "adults" who can't seem to grasp the simple concept of working together. The "kids" I have played the game with are a hell of a lot more mature about losing, struggling or playing than most of these adults who play. Hell, if kids (who are supposedly so immature and all) can do it, I fail to understand why the "adults" can't. It's a game, there's an objective to win it so quit being a damned tool and focus on the damned objective and work with your team for once, k?

Anyways, /rant off. And greetings to the OP, ally though you may be :)

LOL - great narrative. :) Alliance does this too. I thought that you Hordies had better teamwork, but I guess that's a myth in AV. Interesting point about the kids. I'm now curious about the ages of the real a$$hats in the game.

I wish horde would turtle a bit more lol. The last 5 AVs I've done there haven't been more than 5 defenders in total. Then the offense can't get anywhere and allies win before we take a second graveyard. So most of the time I see horde not doing enough defense, I think I've only seen horde with too much defense once, ever.

Horde turtle? First time I heard of that. Horde is either all offense or token defense. It's seldom we get 10-15 people to play defense.

The Alliance turtle usually happens when the Horde stops them at IB. And then the 2 hour BG gets going.

I'm glad that I didn't "discover" PvP until after the change. :) How many players would actually stay for the entire battle? I rarely have a 6~10 hour time block available for WoW.

Horde rarely turtle. To turtle means committing half or more of our resources to fending off alliance. To say Horde turtle alot is to say Alliance turtle all the time. By far Alliance is found with 5 or more at SP. Ten alliance at SP can hold back horde for easily for 30 min or more. Horder aren't known for complex organization either. Most plans are simple and are just counter measures to some new Alliance scheme. The score on my BG group give us a 50/50 chance on a win. My other toon on another server is less fortunate. Alliance strats and Horde strats are similar. I do believe Alliance has an easier path to our last gy. They have numerous elites patrolling the last bunkers. There archers are in betters positions to attack. It's way easier to catch aggro at there Keep. That is why Horder needs more on D then Alliance. So I guess it looks like a turtle. Face the facts. Alliance have an easier ride to the finish line. Our "token defense" is a must have.

I loled so true!

Nothing different alliance side.

The most annoying by far are the single rogues who stealth all the way to FW GY and start saying "/bg MOVE FORWARD YOU NOOBS I M ALONE HERE".
I guess they miss the part where 30 horde are in Stonehearth, IB tower or the middle even.

Ah the Horde has probably never heard of the other extremely annoying AV quote "DONT LOOT THE DOGS". I'm 2k from exalted with AV and will not miss these two quotes.

Did a 5 hour AV stint this past Sunday.
Not good for the ol' peepers i can tell you,although thankfully we won.

AV weekend brings out the best in the Horde. Race all the way and don't even think about D. It's all about the honor points.

Until Blizz adjusts the honor generated from AV, I expect more of the races. Oddly enough, even though Horde lost the BG we earned more honor than the allies.

You can bet over 1/3 of the Alliance on any server is at least in their rank 7+ BG gear. Most of that comes from the honor they gain in AV. That's why it's so important to play defense. I'd rather play a 6 hour AV and win than twelve 30min games and lose each one.

To damn with the honor points and to damn with those who want quick games. Bring AV back to the Horde. It's where it belongs.

I've read it all :P
very interesting insights, I am not at AV viable level yet so I have yet to learn how it works, I hope it does not take me too many losses to find out.
What I have finding however in AB and WG lately on level's 10-39 is that there are too many smart-*** honor-killers in the horde, ranking from the dumb-*** who never helps defend no Ab flag but always just runs to stables till he is almost always pwned the hell to the way-too-sure-of-himself half-twink who has the alliance flags and runs after the enemy flag carrier like only he can get the job donde, getting zerged all over by half the allys in the BG... funny thing is half the time you say anything they are like "hey I come here to kill & have fun so stfu n00b", and I have to reply, "well, some of us like to gain reputation while were at it, if you want kills go gank people at goldshire stupid".