Horde forcing turtles in AV? (Long post warning)Follow

I played PvP in AV over most of the weekend. Most of the pugs I played were pretty standard. I'm Alliance so we would generally win in under 1 hour, hopefully a lot less. I know that must be frustrating to Horde players after a while. Believe me I know how that feels after getting steamrolled by Horde premades for about 75 percent of the AB games I played to get 20 marks on Monday.

However in a few games in AV I saw the horde trying a new tactic. Instead of going all out Zerg offence they defend the middle of the valley with the majority of their forces and use the choke points like IB to prevent the alliance from getting any offence with forward graveyards.

Can you guess what happens?

Yup a ton of alliance just end up turtling on defense after giving up on running down the map over and over. This makes for really long long games. A lot of people just end up deserting. Then the poor shmucks that get pulled in from queue come into the BG and see the turtle and go "Ohh no what's happening here?"

I'll admit I left one of these turtles because I was just not in the mood for a really long game. It was AV honor bonus weekend. Short games with honor bonus for objectives ftw right?

But I am stubborn so I stuck some of them out as well. We won all but one of these games. Eventually we overcame the choke point and got a forward graveyard and were able to rally our offense and beat Drek. They were all really long games though with out much extra per hour honor incentive.

In one game the horde actually eventually won because most of the alliance were so bored being stuck in the same AV they just let them. orz. That was the one exception, other than that the turtle did nothing for the horde or the alliance accept waste our mutual honor farming time.

What I'm curious about is the Horde perspective on this. Also is this strategy a protest of some sorts? Maybe it's just my battlegroup where it's happening. I only see it in a couple games a day out of many games played but I'm still curious for community feedback.

hmm... so i am not the only one...

yes, it did happen... towards the latter part of the weekend.

won bout a dozen AV in average of 15-18 mins but last one took a while... bottleneck'd us at IB, we pushed forward but just couldn't get passed FW.

they had a major defensive hold on FW, alliance jsut fed them HK's by going in solo as soon as rezzed w/o any grouping.

i think it was an humbling experience for us alliance folks who are used to a major O push and quick victory...

i think its time alliance come up with contingency plans.

I'm horde but i've seen the exact same thing happening against us. The alliance will sit and camp anyone trying to get near balinda/past iw and just drag the game down into a crawl. Believe me us horde like a fast game with all the bonus honour trimmings on top just like the next guy.

It would appear that the reason for it is people get it in their minds that if they sit at the choke point they can get easy HKs against the people who are trying to ride past. They don't seem to realise that they'd make about 10x the honour in the same time frame if they got the game over with in the normal vein.

The mod itself doesn't do anything illegal. It simply tells you which AV number people get when the window pops up, so if you're in a raid you can keep leaving the queue and rejoining until you all get roughly the same AV and those few who get a different one can force join the game everyone else is in.

I dunno. The last few AV games this weekend, I noticed a heavy Alliance D. If you folks are wiping on Drek because half your team is at Dun Baldar, you're turtling.

Alliance complaining about Horde defense? That's rich! Almost every AV game I've played in, Horde has used zero...ZERO defense, whereas the Alliance seem to enjoy taking Iceblood Graveyard and harassing those poor sots who rez in the Horde tunnel.

Heck, I saw games this weekend with a solid dozen Alliance at Stormpike Graveyard! You don't see that many Horde at Frostwolf. Ever.

Must be a Christmas thing. Earlier in the weekend, folks seemed to understand that it was honor/hour rather than tokens that mattered most (the honor/token costs are not balanced, resulting in many unused tokens for all).

I would be happy if the alliance in my battlegroup would actually win an AV. They never win at any bgs whatsoever :(

Just my random thoughts... (and gripes). No content, lol...

I thought the Allaince teams invented "teh turtle" in WSG... we would get 2 flag returns, and they would huddle in thier FR on Defense. After mabey 30 minutes we would start to /afk out, heh....

I play Horde.

When AV started, we would win against the Allaince more than half, I would guess mabey 80% of the time. The games back then would go on for hours, I love to hear noobs yelling now in AV, "We have been in for 16 minutes! OMG! Just let them win, so we can get to the next~!!!"

When the cross-server BG's started, the matches got shorter. I would say that in my server cluster, we would win still more than half, but by a slight amount... mabey 60% of the time, but it was fair I guess. I remeber saying, "Look, if they (Alliance) did'nt win sometimes, then they would not come back and re-Q..."

Anyways, we have where we are now.

This last Saturday I was in 5 hours worth of AV. I the average game was 25-30 minutes. Out of mabey 10 or 11 games, we won 0.

Thats right, 0.

I like honor as much as the next guy, I am playing in this repetitive enviroment now for ONE reason: gear. It was fun doing the same things 6 months ago, now, not so much.

My own thoughts on why we loose most (if not all) AV games are just a few:

1. Allaince are favored as far as enviroment,that the field, more so in AV than the others, favors the Alliance. Heavily. This has been debated many times. (Why is that 8-10 Alliance can hold off 30 Horde off of SPGY?). While we may get similair honor, or mabey even better, cause we kill NPCs, take bunkers, ect... it would still be nice to win one ever now and then.

2.Perhaps its that the Allinace in my server cluster on average have a better (overall) gear.

3. They lost for so long, the Allaince got mad, got geared, and got good.

4. We do the same tactics over and over

5. Most Horde have no understanding of Defense ( or have ever heard the word..)

6. I know you have honor farmers on the Allaince side also. ((getting free honor without working for it)), but perhaps we have more. We sometimes ((in my cluster)) have 5-12 people "pushing buttons" in the start cave, or blatentley fishing.

I think its a combination of all theese things, but mostley cause the Allaince used to loose most games.

Then they learned how to "race". When we have almost capped SPGY and gotten mabey one of the North Towers, they are already on Warmaster's, or Drek by then.
After getting whupped so long, they obviously are going to use the same tactic over and over again.... we loose as a faction because we cannot, or choose not to adapt to this. No ones fault but our own.

Hey, may the most competent team win I say. We cannot blame Alliance for us losing all the time now. I am mostly frustrated at the guy watching a movie, hitting the space bar and jumping in the cave every minute or so.

I got really frustered this last weekend and sent one a tell. He replied, in short "Eat sh*t dood." I said he sucked and was a disgrace, he responded "Lick my b@lls, go get out there and get me more honor b!thch!.. go go go now..."

I reported this in detail to a GM. The GM said he would contact the player about the launguage.... however he stressed: "People participate in BG's to different degrees, pushing the space bar or fishing is not against the rules, so I cannot say anything about that. If he was not AFK , or using a third party bot program, its ok with Blizzard, and not against the TOS...."

:(

Now I am pissed and discouraged. Thankfully we (horde) still win about half of the AB's and half of the WSG's. Also, thankfully alot of the gear I now need requires AB marks more than the others....

But I dont think we "trurtle" in protest, lol.
But Mabey we should start... :P

Me and wife have played since release... I am glad the BC is about to be out. If it was more than a couple weeks away,I think we would have moved on by now... beside helping Guildies, we have not had much "fun" playing WoW in a few months, but thats for another thread intirely...





Edited, Dec 26th 2006 6:05pm by TruthSeeker

Most Horde members who have done AV more than twice know how to win, and that often requires mounting a defense at the IBGY chokepoint. Unfortunately this leads to games that last over an hour. In alot of the battlegroups Horde have an instant to near instant queue time to enter AV. If you're grinding honor it makes more sense to take your quick loss and re-queue because you get back in instantly. There is simply no incentive for Horde to try and win AV.

As far as pointing the finger at Horde and saying a defense at IBGY equals a turtle, yeah okay. I grinded many ranks in AV pre-patch as I ranked without a premade, and I can't remember a single time Alliance just let us waltz in and have SPGY. So yeah, if the occasional times that Horde defends their field chokepoint is a turtle, I guess the Alliance turtles theirs every single game.

Turtles are very easy to counter.

Send two rogues and a druid to the graveyard behind the turtle. Kill the NPCs BEFORE capping the flag, cap the flag and kill any horde that try to retake it. Once the GY is taken, have alliance spirit rush the GY and spawn there anyway. This effectively skips any turtle. The rest of the force can just grunt by and grab the remaining graveyards, forcing the horde behind you and in a losing race.

I don't see why people ***** about turtles, it's really not that hard to beat -_- It's more fun that way too.

Its not my personality to get all "personal" with PvP and Forum stuff, but how much can I take?

/vent

Look, stop bullsh*ting with one BG, you have control of 2. I have seen AB's that end in 10 minutes flat. Guess what? Its not even a premade. Most AV's are 17-20 minutes.

"But Justdistaint! AV's give more honor!"

Not when you f*ckin' turtle.

/vent off


Feel free to flame the sh*t out of me, I for my sanity won't read this thread.

None of my chars do AV, but my Rogue has, ove the last 6 days, done about 57 Warsong Gulch matches and about 38 Arathi Basin matches. Yes i am crazy, but I have the time off.

Alliance won 2 AB and 7 WSG. If Alliance can win most of the AV games we play, then good for us. At least we can do something right in PvP. Justdistant, you just
sapped the nail (rogue joke).

Can all allis just take a look at the av map for a second.....
Horde turtle because we have to to stand a chance. You allis, the path to Stormpike GY is almost impossible to take. You dont need to turtle coz for a massive strip we have to fight our way through bottleneck, after bottleneck after bottleneck. Allis can get into FW without even going through the main gate, over a massive plain. IB is our only hope to stopping you guys. Blizzard really need to even out the AV map, if that was so and it was abit more freeflowing for horde attackers i dont think horde would turtle.

After a few days of intense AVing horde wins about 25% of the games.
(i too want some extra purplez before expansion)
Then yesterday after a few rounds of AB, me and 20 guildies signed up for av and won in a dozen 20 minute games.
5 man defense does wonders, first keep fw as long as possible then turtle in the towers, buys enough time. While the other 15 go straight to sp (helps to have a resser :P) and you let the pugs take care of belinda.

I dont know when they changed the group queue bc i always thought you couldnt sign up as group, well through the other bg queue you can.
You must watch the battleground # though since sometimes people get different ones.



QFT, (in PuG's) i always go on till the bitter end.
I dont want to promote the horde, but im very nationalistic about them, so sure as hell am going to: ;)
Its one thing ive noticed as pug vs pug and premade vs premade's in AB / WSG, most of the times the alli's just "give up" after 3 cap been held for 2 minutes into the game or 1 flag has been capped. It happens a LOT. While if horde is behind with 2 nodes to 3 or 1 flag behind, we always go regroup and give it another zerg. Ive won plenty of games from such small disadvantage, although ill admit, lost more.
It might take slightly longer but if you do win you feel inviiiiincible, isnt that worth it giving it another go? Deny the filthy Horde easy honor?
So in conclusion of this, alliance losing a lot in AB/WSG is for a BIG part a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe bc its bc alliance has gnomes, and the prospects of killing gnomes is enough to keep youre average hordie for going on forever :)
(running gag in my bg group, "well at least youll kill some gnomes")



Hmmm ive never seen this happen, and im always at the point, please dont tell "the secret" to the EU guys. :)

Edited, Dec 27th 2006 3:28am by Sjans