Vanilla AV is the very definition of ambitious game developers not afraid to take risks and hold nothing back. It felt a lot more like a full on war than just an instanced battleground.
Completely agree @SinerAthin! What I think they should do is revert it to all it’s cool old features with all those side quests, fine- make it long as hell but make the rewards OP (in line with the effort). AV felt like actual Warcraft (1-3). You were just a small cog in a big war and that made it awesome. If a single player did make a difference- then that player was an actual hero (bc it did not happen often). The only thing that I do wish they would change- is make the horde towers + base more fun to defend.. but I was out there smashing towers and raiding gold mines anyways 😅
I loved the old av. I would play a game for an hour, got to work, then come back and get in the same match. It was more about the fun of a full on virtual war than about honor rewards. Its not a battle ground anymore. Its a drag race.
I remember playing AV when it first came out (back when I was a freshman in high school) and I started a match Sunday afternoon and ended up playing til 4 AM just to finish a full match and then leaving for school three hours later at 7AM haha
I remember it well, it was like a real life battle. We had people working behind the lines to provide support for the war effort. We had the grunts fighting and constantly dying in the middle. We had rogues infiltrating the enemy bases. It was frankly a pain in the ass, BUT. It was so fucking cool. Nowadays you just run north/south, blow the bunkers and try to kill the boss the fastest.
Im right there with you. It was fun doing all the roles there. I personally will never forget some of the choke points that the wars would rage in. Example; Before the bridge on the alliance side, there was this twisting mountain pass that had an upper level people often forgot about. As an undead affliction spec Warlock i loved nothing more than getting up there, where i could target behind their lines and load down their healers with all the worst debuffs making them take focus off the front line. Made sneakier because a lot of the debuffs didn't have tracers and just spell effects on the enemy so they often didn't notice where it was coming from. Latter in BC we got stuff like the seed of corruption and unstable affliction. Meaning they either healed through all the DOTs or if they dispelled they'd be silenced, and or set off a chain reaction of big booms. Remember these fights lasting hours and being a real knock down drag out fight. Sorry for the rant. Just hit me in the nostalgia as i quit after when Cata hit.
So, kinda funny story. Back in the vanilla days I was a Game Master. For a good long while we would get reports of either AFK botting or fish botting in Alterac Valley. Now most of the time our ticket times were atrocious so we'd get the report about 3 days too late (some periods while working there the ticket times were in weeks, not hours or days). Anyway, one night when we got the times down I saw a ticket that was only a half an hour or so old that was reporting an AFK. So I went in-game to verify where the reported character was and what they were doing. Now as a GM I spent most of my time in a windows program with little chat windows I could move around. This is where I spent probably 98% of my time, not physically in a game client. Normally we would only get into the client if we really needed to. To do this we would have multiple characters, one an Allied character and one a Horde character. We actually had a third character but that was technically the character we were using to chat with in our communication program and that character never moved off of GM Island. So anyway, these characters used to investigate stuff in-game were special GM characters flagged with certain abilities. Those abilities include a command to instantly level to max level, god mode, being invisible to players, and being able to fly (more like swim) or move at extreme speeds. We were also able to teleport directly to a player with a quick little command, which is exactly what I did to investigate AFKers in AV. But there was a problem on this particular night. Thinking that everything on my computer was set up properly. We all shared rows of computers so we didn't just have the same one every day. I guess there was an issue with the client not being the proper version of our GM client or something ... can't honestly remember. The short of it was that I was able to access our console (and perform console commands like teleport and such), and my GM character was flagged on the server as being allowed to do all the things I previously mentioned. The problem was ... I was not only visible to players, I was also able to be killed. On top of all of that, my characters were essentially naked because most of us only put on our pre-approved GM gear when we had to make ourselves visible (which I did only twice while working there). So there I am ... a visible, floating, naked, level 60 human teleporting to someone who is AFK in AV. Except he isn't AFK. Nope. Instead he's taking part in the forever war of the center of the map. So when I teleport I'm a floating naked dude, clearly labeled as a GM, swimming through the air and darting around like a pixie on crack. Then ... it happens. While I glance and make sure the player reported is the one I teleported to a strange feeling washes over me. A feeling I never felt at work before while in the client. I felt like I was being watched, because I was. In the middle of this battle several players stopped what they were doing and started facing me. Second guessing myself I wondered, "..... wait, they can't see me can then?!" An answer came to me in the form of a hunters mark appearing over my head followed by several shots from a hunter. There I was, naked and afraid ... and swimming in air. Needless to say I hauled my ass straight under a mountain about 3/4ths of the map away from there. Luckily he didn't kill me, otherwise the forums would have been filled with a screen shot of my dumb ass being killed by a player. Still, some select few players in AV that night got to see something few ever have. A naked GM, running in fear.
Ah, back in the day I remember playing AV. Going to sleep. Then work, then the next evening joining the same AV. Sometimes for 3-4 days I would join the same game. That was immersion.
@@WhiteXcellence In todays world, it's not really possible to have an AV to effectively go on for longer than an hour, and that's being generous. If the game didn't finish by about 15 mins, one side turtles for about a half hour and then after that, the losing side just afk's or goes fishing and just let's their opponents win. The only possible way you can have an av go on longer than an hour is if you are intentionally making an effort NOT to end the game.... and no one wants that because it's shitty honor and rep.
I loved those kind of AV's because it felt so massive! And back in the days when it was only the people on the server who you would see and get to know after a while was great. I also remember when you could judge an AV during the first 3-5 minutes of it starting. Like you knew then if it was going to be a steamroll or a turtle!
I was involved in battles that lasted several days, and were truly epic in their scale, like real world battles. I think I had 2000 kills in a single battle once. The entire battlefield was soaked in blood. This was among the best times I ever had playing any video game. The ability to single handedly turn the tide of a massive battle was truly unique.
I still remember 2006 Christmas Eve i went to my buddies house and we spent 22 hours in 1 AV match i went from level 52-60 in less than 5 hours. Back in the day when the raid leader would spam the ventrilo in the raid and depending on your level you were on different objectives i always loved farming the mines for the cavalry.
I joined WOW on day one of retail with the expectation that it would evolve into an epic worldwide-scale thing like AV that played out over months or even years - Warcraft style. I remember in those first few weeks running around the capitols planning defensive strategies with all the other folks there. WOW ended up going in another direction and so I spent a lot of time in AV. When they nerfed it into just another quickie battleground, it was a bad day for me and the beginning of the end of my time in WOW.
You're not kidding about that bridge I once logged into AV before I went to work, played for an hour defending that bridge, went to work for 8 hours got back and qued for av again and got into the same av defending the same bridge
MyViolador a Good excuse to justify alliance zerg rush, no strategy, no running for objectives, just go directly to the horde general room with low to no resistance.
I loved playing my rogue when I was level 54. What made it fun to be a rogue at that level was that you knew you were fucked if you got matched against a well geared 60, so you couldn't be 1v1 badass like you were used to. Instead, I kind of had to play support to the level 60s. This meant doing the quests, but also meant being annoying with guerilla attacks. Is there a furry warrior wrecking shit with a dedicated healer? Well, I'd cheap shot (sap was unlikely) the healer, stun lock them, kick them while trying to cast a spell, blind them, etc. My goal wasn't to kill the healer, it was to stop it from healing the warrior that was mowing us down. That warrior can't take on 3 60s by themselves and win without heals. It worked well. It also saved a game where the main healer couldn't keep the tank up against our general. They wiped. I don't know if we won because I had to quit, but that was an hour after they were about to win. Shit was so fun because I felt like I was just a pawn, but was swinging above my weight. I understand other classes probably couldn't have as big of an impact due to them not having stealth to hide and wait for an opening, but I think AV was a great experience if you didn't treat the battle as a gear /rep grind and instead just treated it as a for fun battle.
"Shit was so fun because I felt like I was just a pawn" That sums up Vanilla you were a pawn not a super hero who can just destroy old gods. The game wasn't about you it was about helping others
WTF, I kind of missed the scale of war Alterac Valley made you feel. I wish they never made the Marks of Honor for Alterac Valley so high on gear, that way the games would've stayed long. I don't mind it being shortened a little, but when the commanders and lieutenants left, the battlefield just felt like another boring map. When they were all in place, it was cool killing lower ranking individuals as you storm your way to their captain and eventually their general. Really unforgettable.
One of the things I loved about old AV was that to me, it was as close a representation as we could get to the RTS roots of WoW. Instead of the unseen hand of a general commanding the armies, we the players were inhabiting to role of the many peons and grunts being commanded. The guard upgrades, the special units, the resource farming, it was an epic thing. Maybe the extreme lengths of the matches didn't make the best show of what WoW has to offer, but people wanted to play AV like that....and still do
6 років тому+21
I loved the old AV, even though I was horde and lost many of them. But that was still one of my most fun times back then. And I will play a lot of them in Classic!
That overall smugness you got when alliance got beaten up was truly priceless and the bc cry posts filled with ally tears was the best salt i ever tasted
One thing you didn't mention about old AV Hiru, was the landmines. They were all over the place and stepping on one, especially at a low level, was an almost guaranteed death. Other than that, great video as always! :)
and being able to mine thorium and other gathering nodes. Along with the harpie caves and the 'all seeing eye' pickup item to see everything in stealth. hilarious for rogue vs rogue sniping and of course the snow balls.
I played on Ravencrest EU in vanilla, as Alliance. On that server, Horde almost always won. My very first, of only a few, win as Alliance, the fight lasted 26 hours before victory. That was insane. I had my brother help when I needed some food and drinks so to not go afk. I still remember that fight now many years later, and can still recall different situations in the battleground. I loved vanilla, and I still do. I havent played since the start of TBC.
Yeah the Horde playerbase on that server were for the most part better at organizing and playing together. That also made a victory as alliance more satisfying. Good times.
I must say i love your attitude Rune. I remember playing AV and always wanting to try and negate any advantage that the Alliance had by being defensive and stopping the capping of graveyards and so. I loved AV because winning felt like such a uphill battle while at the same time it was very satisfying to slow the alliance down, not giving them a 10 min win. Rather dragging it on a hour or 2! ;)
Alterac was one the best memories I have of WoW. The scale of PvP battles combined with capturing points and a bit PvE involved(including taking mines) was simply epic and hasn't seen anything similar good up to today
@@DiMoNico1981Swe They did alright. It was cool to see the lieutenants again. But they skipped the time with Korrak and the trolls, and no Black Lotus either.
Old school AV was legitimately some of the best gaming I have ever done. I was heartbroken when I found out they wouldn't be including it in Classic/SoM. Most people will never know exactly how epic it truly could be.
Played Vanilla WoW until WoD. Now Back in Classic while also binge wathcing ALL your WoW Videos. Makes boring leveling a little bit easier :D Also I'm learning things I didn't knew :D
ThornOfHearts man I was just thinking. Grinding BGs back in the day use to have an objective whereas now you just run them to gear up. Need to bring back marks
I wish they would revamp AV, it definitely has the feel of a big epic BG. Some fixes I would suggest would be: - Make sure the map is perfectly symmetrical, that way neither faction has an advantage when it comes to geography. - No chokepoints, make sure there is at least two paths past an obstacle so neither team can turtle. - Buff the side objectives while reducing their requirements so that they can actually offer an advantage for anyone playing them. - Replace the reinforcements mechanic with a "war effort" progress bar. You can fill the bar by killing enemy players, important enemy NPCs, completing side objectives or acquire an automatic win by killing the enemy general first.
My experience of Vanilla AV mostly consisted of trying to get over that bloody bridge. I played Horde and my experience was that we seemed to win most AV maps, just get bottle necked at the bridge for a very....very long time. Also the snowballs were a blast to fuck around with, especially around that dam bridge.
This video is without a doubt by far the single best video you have made period. When I played and started in burning Crusade I did not understand anything and how to do anything in this Battle Ground. With the restart of vanilla this information you have provided is without a doubt some of the most useful information I have ever gained on World of Warcraft ever. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart cuz now I actually understand what to do when they re-release the game.
The experience my friends and I had going to AV for the first time nothing short of incredible. Balance non-withstanding, it was a gigantic experience that just left the impression that WoW was just so gigantic. I can't wait for WoW classic to roll around so we can pull a classic "Play AV for 5 hours, go to bed, hop on before work/school and end up in the same battle".
I think it should go back to the original system with minor geographical changed to make it more balanced. Playing a thousand small parts in a greater war effort will always be more satisfying than a single minor battle.
Horde players would just ignore it. (In classic horde players might have to endure it for the unstoppable force though.) And if they make a lot of changes to make it okay for the horde, people then would just complain that "its not the same" and it would still be dead.
@@n.s.2017 I mean most real life war fronts are not balanced. I think offering more buffs to horde npcs could have balanced it. It would have made things more interesting in my opinion because it'd put greater emphasis on the side quests.
They should make it queueable- current AV versus classic AV. I remember old AVs taking hours to complete, with the horde turtling various parts of the map and having a slow push. We would summon different elites. Lots of long fights on the alliance bridge going to their base... Now, you're lucky if AV lasts 45 mins, and it's essentially a boss push with everyone waiting on towers to cap before rushing the base.
Dude AV was awesome for Horde. As a former shaman main, my goal was to find the biggest baddest warrior I could find, and follow him everywhere. It's how I became a healbot for numerous Warlords...and it was glorious.
Vanilla AV could have weekend long games, a game would start on Friday afternoon and would still be going Sunday afternoon. Now it was interesting that you mentioned the Horde entrance being moved back. I was lucky enough to be a part of a strategy that guaranteed a Horde win. The strategy was called Rath Strat named after the architect of the strategy "Rathmasus"(I think i spelt his name right), to be a part of this there were some requirements for this to succeed, Access to Vent(ventrilo voip program) Frostwolf trinket/medallion(the instant teleport back to FWK) and willing to do something if asked immediately like trinket back to FWK. All would start and about 10-15 would stay behind Galv's bunker hidden while the rest would advance, now because this came a zerg fest no one really bothered fighting in the field of stryfe. As alliance went in and attacked Galv as soon as he shouted out those 10-15 Horde that hid behind Galv's bunker wiped out the major force of the alliance, and by the time the Alliance respawned all the forward GY had been capped by the horde. Stormpike GY was left not to be capped for the purpose of that would be their only spawn as once you left the cave you would spawn at the nearest GY, and by then the 10-15 Horde that defended Galv has joined the main battle. A group of 10-15 would go in and take Stormpike and as the Generals disappeared when towers/bunkers were capped, the rest would surround Stormpike GY and then farm HK as Alliance had nowhere to go. One of the reasons that you had vent that if some Alliance got passed they still cause damage and they would capp the FWK GY and gave the group a different spawn point, the BG leader or spotter would call out I need about 5 to drop back with the reply I'll trinket the rogue alliance would be dealt with and then rejoin the group. Stormpike would be killed and usually the base honor would be about 1800 with up too 2500 honor. For 20 minute game it was a fast way to get honor and when the reputation got around on Nathrezim server you just have to say Rath Strat and you would have a full horde BG side in under 2 minutes. It was loathed by the Alliance as cross realm BG's had been introduced as they hadn't wised up as they were random PUG's that joined AV and cause they were random they didn't figure out the strategy and come up with a counteract. When Rathmasus stopped leading the AV his record was 300 wins and 1 loss, the only loss was trying the strategy for the 1st time.
@@VirusVanquisher Yes, SD are his initials, but the icon is of Scooby's collar. Does it say anyplace that it's a reference to Samwise? upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Scooby-Doo.png
Just in case people come back to this for any reason, the vanilla mode of AV was released back into the game with a timegated event you could use LFG to join.
I loved Alterac Valley. As a horde player, we rarely won, but there were times in which either our guild or other organized groups would prepare and enter the BG with the sole objective of kicking as much Alliance ass as we could. Those fights are forever in my memory, as the best team battles i've ever had in any kind of videogame. Even if we failed and raged, we did it all together, and it's a feeling of camaraderie that no BG ever managed to replicate.
My best Alterac Valley memory... playing horde side and it glitched on the alliance side....it only let in one player...one alliance player vs 40 horde, got the Alterac Valley Perfection achievement that day.
Oqueue horde AV runs in cata. actually playing the map how it was supposed to(atleast on that expansion). Alliance finally clued on and made their own Oqueue teams. Proper matchups of 35+ coordinated players on each side were some of the best games. When the 2 sides missed each others matches though it wouldve been painful to face.
Alliance have several major advantages for years. Blizz: huh, what? I don't see anything, just deal with it. Horde get a minor advantage for 3 seconds IF every member joins in on it. Blizz: NERF IT TO HELL!!!!!!
if alliance dares to capture IBGY, horde will start spawning 20 at a time from cave. If horde captures SHGY, alliance will spawn 10 at a time from SPGY. Thats the main reason the Horde wins 95% of the games.
Good ol AV. I’m exalted with the frost wolf clan haha. I checked, my win ratio on it is like 42% while all other Bg’s I’m in the 55-65% range on horde. Makes a lot of sense when you analyze all the reasons allies have it easier. It was always something I was aware of, but never aware of all the specifics that make it so much easier for them.
Honestly really sad I missed out on the epic-ness of old AV :( I can do without it lasting days, but I want to see the whole map and all the NPCs returned to their former glory. I'd love to see it for a brawl or rework!
Limitless Beast it wasn’t that it was too hard. It’s that the alliance starting position and fortifications were ALL a HUGE advantage for alliance and it wasn’t even something that could be debated. Alliance cried when it was finally fair because horde players are generally better at PVP
I remember slowly pushing alliance back until the bridge for the first 30 min. Then having a stand of around the bridge for a long time, as the alliance PvE prevented further advancement. At this time its 0100 at night and people start to log off. New people join and refill the ranks until it got to late and the influx of people couldnt fill the ranks anymore - on the Horde side that is. So suddenly you are fighting 35 against 40, then 30 against 40, while slowly getting pushed back. At 0200 you ask yourself why you were stupid enough to sign up for AV... again, as it ended the same way the last time, - and the time before that. Cant say I miss it.
I'll never forget the first time my group made a concerted effort to summon the ice guy. It took a lot of time and effort, during which the Alliance was pushing in hard. We just barely got the turn-in before we were overrun, but once the summon was complete we bulldozed our way to Stormpike's doorstep. From there, the battle wasn't over, and I think we eventually lost, but dang if it isn't one of if not the best WoW memory I have.
All they should have done to solve the length of time problem was increased the rewards. Like with the marks, instead of getting 3 for a win, you get 1 for X amount of enemy deaths, or for capping certain objectives. Make it so that everything had a reward for accomplishing something. This way, you'd get hopefully the same amount of rewards from a 5 hour AV battle as you would have running Warsong the entire time. Wouldn't have solved the advantage issues, but there were/are a lot of people that greatly enjoyed getting to fight in AV for hours on end. I know I did. My longest run was just under 7 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It felt like it was an actual BATTLEground, and not just some short skirmishes.
LOVED THE VIDEO! brings me back. i started late in vanilla and never hit max lvl till TBC. i never got to experience the real AV which i would love to. however i remember a lot of the changes and the stuff you touched on from when i played it till now.
One alliance advantage you overlooked on that bridge (almost nobody specced for it during vanilla) was a survival hunter. For fun once I made a trap specced survival hunter, and tested it in AV. When I zoned in the horde was just about to start crossing the bridge with no alliance players in sight. Using nothing but flares and frost traps I made the horde hate hunters even more than they already did. With entrapment I was able to keep the entire horde offense stuck on the bridge for about 20 minutes. I might have also set a record for deaths per minute in AV.
The question isn't "will you queue up for AV more than just once?" its you will only have to queue up for AV once because by the time you get out of it you'll be retired or on your death bed.
I never played OG Alterac Valley so I definitely am probably vastly overestimating it. But it actually seems quite fun in its original scale, as a very PvE focused battleground. Obviously it was clearly unbalanced, but the sheer grandiose scale of Alterac does make it feel like a very epic battleground.
Old school AV was the absolute fuckin best. I remember playing a single match for HOURS... logging out for the night, and logging in again the next morning to the same battle still going on 😂 god it was amazing
It was great because you could sit one of the chokes and farm honor for an hour or two each go until the baddies stopped giving much, then you can requeue and be up against a whole new set of horde. E: The fastest strat is to have a couple of 2-5 man teams run down to cap the towers while most everyone else zergs base. With the stragglers uncapping our towers and generally harassing the horde.
I would love to play av again as it was ment to be played, longer games with better tactics than just zerging. But as an alliance player since og vanilla on multiple servers, my experience is that horde wins 70% of the games.
Alliance has a map advantage in Battle for Gilneas too. The alliance spawn is a shorter path to the Water Works with no obstacles. And the Horde spawn is slightly further away with a river between the Mine and Waterworks. Alliance can cap WW before the Horde can even get close enough to contest at the start, and then it's just a matter of keeping the Horde off the flag for a short while and they're already ahead in points with more spawn locations. You watch every game at the start of Battle for Gilneas, the WW will turn half blue before the Horde barely make it across that small river.
If the horde takes mountain pass, they can hop over the river and be there roughly at the same time. At least before the alliance stopped tapping, wich is the most important thing. I say that as horde player, who "suffered" since vanilla through AV losses by the dozen. In my experience the horde losses are more accounted to bad match making (1 heal on horde side vs 3 on alliance... hello?) I even had matches without any heal on the horde side versus 2 on the alliance. Sometimes we even won, because we just outgeared that particular alliance group, i think. But i don't believe that is actually factored in to the match making, since i also had the allies with a surplus on heals while also having much better gear. Sometimes i enjoy the idea of some sort of ELO system to evaluate players for random battlegrounds.
found this late but there are several alliance advantages you missed. 1. both galv's and bal's structures' entrances face north making it slightly easier for alliance to defend her and slightly harder for horde to take her. 2. iceblood graveyard is the only graveyard that doesn't force its ressurrectees to move toward the its control point, and if players are playing according to instinct rather than deliberate strategy (as they are wont to do) horde players will head north and not defend it, and alliance players will head south and defend it. 3. vendor NPC placement inside the main base. Vendors are kinda not meant to be legit targets, so while they don't hit especially hard as NPCs go they have such massively disproportionate health that they cannot be soloed. at the horde base they're all located in the outer section and can be run past far enough and easily enough that they deaggro. in the alliance base there are several that are right by the gy flag and they're always inadvertantly engaged by the offense players.
@@Darthrath666 Horde had no advantages, AV was the clearest example of Blizzard Alliance favoritism in the whole game. It was a business decision, there are almost always 1.5-2x more Alliance players on any given server--giving those players advantages keeps the majority of the player base happier and keeps subscriptions active.
@@savadaflava1120 That's... so not true anymore. One of the reasons Alliance gets their ass whupped in the Korrak's Revenge event lately is because the Horde just outpaces and outnumbers the Alliance nowadays. Back then I have no idea how it was, but the bias for PvP has leaned in the Horde's favor for at least a decade I'd wager.
hirumaredx i was in an AV bg for more than 30 hours untill i had to leave and then 20hours later i joined the same AV and had to ask in chat if this was the same as the one started that friday and all wrote back with an YES. And average AV was way more than 8 hours back in vanilla untill blizzard had to step in and sometimes they even just ended the AV because iy went on for days. They tryed to change the faction bosses later on in vanilla and now battles went from days to hours. I miss the old AV that lasted for days as you could farm so mush HP in a single match. Great times 👍
hirumaredx I mean you can call it anything. It's still a great video. I think AV should be put into the game as a special event type of thing as well. But not just any special unique queue but an actual seasonal queue, maybe once a month, once a week, who knows. It'll incentivize even the the people who blacklisted the BG to try it out!
Classic AV and hardcore raids are the only thing that interest me about Wow Classic, I would literally play only AV for like 2 weeks then the occasional raid.
I don't think today's player base would complain about it if their entry experience was Vanilla, like the rest of the Vanilla community. tl;dr post-expansion WoW is like going to a shopping mall and Vanilla WoW was a DIY challenge, and those who accept the DIY challenge are fine with accepting the conditions at the onset, despite w/e problems, when they know they want the goal on the otherside of that wall. Think about it: post-expansion WoW has always been centered around a core prerogative: *Life . Is . Convenient*. If post-expansion WoW had a spokesman it might go something like: "It would be really inconvenient to have to spend hours walking across a boring world, so here's a mount from lvl 1 to help you get through it faster! It would be really frustrating if you had to waste a huge time sink into leveling through a boring world just to have another character available for you to play the new stuff, the fun stuff, so here's heirlooms to help things go faster! It would be really frustrating to have to waste a bunch of time finding a group for a dungeon (or guild for a raid) so here's LFG/LFR! It would be really inconvenient if you thought you couldn't beat a raid, so here's reduced difficulty! With optional higher difficulties, for the convenience of those people who want more of a challenge (even if the difficulty is artificial)! Hell, it would be pretty inconvenient if you didn't like how your character looked, so now you can make your gear look like w/e you want with transmog!" Vanilla WoW's prerogative on the other-hand, was the exact opposite. Vanilla's core mantra might be something like "Nothing is given, every problem is there for you to solve for yourself, but those solutions are there for you to find. You will have to explore the world yourself to complete this quest, you will have to find a group yourself if you want to do a dungeon, you will have to journey there yourself if you actually want to do it." But when you did do these things, it gratified you, and when you got rewarded for your success, you felt like you actually earned it because....well, you did. You wanted something, a problem was in your way, you overcame it and got what you wanted. Some problems were small, some were big, some were tedious and some were down-right unfair, like Alterac Valley....but you did it all the same, and you didn't always win but some problems that you failed to succeed at for days, weeks, or months at a time, were things you eventually earned victory over. It was the kind of game that got people thinking "I'm going to set out to get what I want, no matter what hand I'm dealt", and when you think like that you become tougher to any kind of challenge, and when you start winning at challenges you thought insurmountable before, you become stronger and more confident as a person. It's not that far fetched to say that not only did people's in game character grow in level as they succeeded at each challenge, but that their inner character, their character as a human being, grew as well.
For some reason, Alliance never won AV in our battlegroup: EU Cyclone. As Alliance players, we got really excited when we somehow made it to Horde base which was extremely rare.
I remember getting into a fresh AV back in Vanilla on Lightbringer that I spent hours in and then had to log off for work or sleep, dont remember which, but when I came back sat in the Q for another few hours and when I finally got inside it was the same one 12 hours later. And that is why I love AV. It was hard and involved and got me soooo much honor. When they nerfed all of those battlegrounds to the ground and simplified them I was heartbroken.
I think AV was at its best in early burning crusade. It still took a long time but could reasonably be trusted to end in a couple hours at least, and you COULD win without the side objectives, but they were all very helpful and worth doing and saw frequent use. AV got so depressingly fast in later BC that it was like.. what's the point.
One of my favorite Vanilla experiences was playing AV with my roommate for 3-4 hours, then going to work for 10. I got home, he was playing AV again. Nope, it was still the same match from when I left for work.
Sooooo much fun knocking horde off the bridge with snowballs when they first put them in the game (since nerfed), they had knockback which was also useful for knocking AFK'rs out of the BG, alliance side anyways.
Great video, but you missed one great moment in AV. In mid BC the Horde could pull Van in such a way that despawned all of his guards, allowing the Horde to attack him alone as if all the towers were destroyed.
Summoning Ivar the Forest Lord was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had the pleasure of participating in. Old AV was a masterpiece, was a game within the game.
On a "Normal" server we could have characters of both factions. So I have done both the Forest Lord and the Ice Lord. Getting them up on both sides in the same battleground could be fun watching them fighting each other. Obviously the side with the better "Player" support would win the battle of the 2 lords.
I started playing in BC. We once did almost everything you just mentioned before reinforcements. We choked point, we got all scouts, we had Infantry, Calvary, bombarding bats, then we summoned Lok’Holar the Ice Lord (he got bigger as he killed). Escorted him all the way to the Alliance commander and watch him annihilate them.
In Classic they made similar changes with the edges of the map being removed but they didn't move the horde starting cave back so horde had a massive advantage being closer to the alliance base and bottle neck at the start of the match.
AV was actually my favorite one of the BGs and I played Horde 🤓 Nothing gave a bigger pleasure than winning AV despite of the alliance advantages 😎 Maybe it was since I played a druid, so if some spec didn't work on some days, you could just switch to another one and play another role in the group 🤷🏻♂️
I just found your channel and video. Maan! You did an excellent job and you are an amazing storyteller. Usually, I leave quite fast from a 20 mins+ video, but I stayed for the entire video captivated. Keep it up! New subscriber here! 🤗
I did Alterac once in Vanilla, and it took up most of that weekend. It was absolutely glorious, one of my favorite vanilla experiences, but I don't have that in me anymore. Being awake and playing a video for 20 hours straight is not where I want to be.
@@Tyrin_Wolfinzar Well it's rigged with bugs, like I saw a tweet saying that the horde nocs had like 900% more health than their alliance counterpart, and also you can freely respawn in the ally general bunker.
i dont see where horde has any adventage in this av when theres basicialy 3000 npcs attacking u whenever u enter the ally base, not to mention the 500 archers on the bunkers, where u can still ride through whole horde base without even aggroing any npc
@@orpheonkatakrosmortarchoft4332 ive played alliance from classic till wotlk and i always could ride through whole horde base without aggroing anything. dunno how it is now
Wintergrasp is the real loss. We need a modern version of it. I remember you would have ALL horde/alliance queueing for WG as it started in one room.. then once they were busy you'd have people arranging to storm their capital cities. not to mention the AWESOME vehicle aspect and the way you won your factions right to spend currency from raid bosses. miss it so much
Wintergrasp is last "new" battleground what I love Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Alterac Valley with Wintergrasp and you not need anything more
I will. The AV turtle was my favor. I still remember by lvl 60 hunter in AV sniping all those noobs at choke points as alliance. It all depends on if you have good gear and are able to slay people. I assume it would be boring for melees.
I remember when AV was first released and the first AV battle lasted for 3 full days on Proudmoore. I had so much fun in there.....play for hours and have nothing at the end of it but it was glorious. The feeling when you actually managed to summon the ice guy and charged in with him...
My Undead Warlock used to stand on the hill outside of the alliance bridge.. place 3-4 seeds of corruption on a crowd and pop it with shadow fury?!? I forget name/... but would come out top dmg every game, was decently geared but the combo just did so much Aoe dmg it was insane...
Seto0019 well he kinda did state it as it was in vanilla. We other are speaking of vanilla here and the he come in and wrote (in before the mark system) i had to assume he meant it was in vanilla as we already where speaking of the old AV in vanilla so its kinda obvious that it is before the mark system..
I was once in an AC match that started on a Friday night and stalemated to last til midday on a Sunday. I stayed for it because it felt like every swing of my weapon was contributing in a meaningful way to a push, and collapsed to bed when it was over.
I used to live in av as horde back in BC. My guild used to laugh at me cause I had the frostwolf howler mount on all my toons before mounts were shared.
Fun fact: Calvary is the location where Jesus was crucified and died. Cavalry are people who performed mounted combat. Be weird for Tracer to say “Cheer’s love! The Calvary is here!” Just thought I’d help you out. :)
Snowfall Graveyard is such a Taboo, ppl who are smart avoids in Completely, cause if there are no graveyards captured by your side and you die a bit away from the base, it will send you back there, instead of an unclaimable graveyard next to your keep. Whoever claims Snowfalls Graveyard is bombarded with insults, and the saltiest of people tend to just flat out leave.
lol I forgot about this. I remember playing AV and just waiting for some noob to cap SFGY and watch chat blow up. It was especially the worst in those longer battles where like 45 minutes in, someone caps, and then you know it's just a slow death/defeat from there.
I remember one battle in AV, where the horde had us all the way back to our General...and they were sooo close to winning it. Im not sure what happened, but somehow they wiped and we pushed forward quickly and were able to take graveyards back so fast, that they got separated and pushed back when they were re spawning. By the time they got it together...we were in their base and took that GY. We then went and killed the General before they got back from whatever GY they had taken. Was a great 4 hours...never seen the like in any game.
what killed WoW was that it was only about the next carrot... people did only things because they wanted a reward... not because things were fun. before there was automated LFG i ran stratholm and scholomance dozens of times.. no because i needed any rewards... but i loved, meeting with new players tha never been there and guiding them through those places. making friends...
and you have pvp around Raid stone meetings We have in Burnig crusade airborne gank team they fly in group of 10 and patrol above famous meeting stones (like Karazan) When horde start gathering for raid, we storm from above In minutes you have battle better then in AV or Warsong Gulch ;)
Vanilla AV is the very definition of ambitious game developers not afraid to take risks and hold nothing back.
It felt a lot more like a full on war than just an instanced battleground.
Completely agree @SinerAthin! What I think they should do is revert it to all it’s cool old features with all those side quests, fine- make it long as hell but make the rewards OP (in line with the effort). AV felt like actual Warcraft (1-3). You were just a small cog in a big war and that made it awesome. If a single player did make a difference- then that player was an actual hero (bc it did not happen often). The only thing that I do wish they would change- is make the horde towers + base more fun to defend.. but I was out there smashing towers and raiding gold mines anyways 😅
I loved the old av. I would play a game for an hour, got to work, then come back and get in the same match. It was more about the fun of a full on virtual war than about honor rewards. Its not a battle ground anymore. Its a drag race.
tankjr84 you are totally correct sir 👍
tankjr84 miss those 2 week AVs
It was amazing. Prob took 1-2 tears before i was part of winning one. I still remember it today...
tankjr84 The Horde has captured the Bunker!
I remember playing AV when it first came out (back when I was a freshman in high school) and I started a match Sunday afternoon and ended up playing til 4 AM just to finish a full match and then leaving for school three hours later at 7AM haha
I remember it well, it was like a real life battle.
We had people working behind the lines to provide support for the war effort.
We had the grunts fighting and constantly dying in the middle.
We had rogues infiltrating the enemy bases.
It was frankly a pain in the ass, BUT. It was so fucking cool.
Nowadays you just run north/south, blow the bunkers and try to kill the boss the fastest.
Im right there with you. It was fun doing all the roles there. I personally will never forget some of the choke points that the wars would rage in.
Example; Before the bridge on the alliance side, there was this twisting mountain pass that had an upper level people often forgot about. As an undead affliction spec Warlock i loved nothing more than getting up there, where i could target behind their lines and load down their healers with all the worst debuffs making them take focus off the front line. Made sneakier because a lot of the debuffs didn't have tracers and just spell effects on the enemy so they often didn't notice where it was coming from.
Latter in BC we got stuff like the seed of corruption and unstable affliction. Meaning they either healed through all the DOTs or if they dispelled they'd be silenced, and or set off a chain reaction of big booms.
Remember these fights lasting hours and being a real knock down drag out fight.
Sorry for the rant. Just hit me in the nostalgia as i quit after when Cata hit.
If ppl defended the objectives and performed the mini missions it would be great once again
Yep, it felt like you were running around in the middle of an ongoing Warcraft 3 match
I'd sign up to a classic 36 hour one in a heart beat. Its where some of my fondest wow memories were made.
Agreed
I third that notion! 🙂
>ice guy and tree guy
These were their names. Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy liar
We called them icy and ivan.
Tree and Golem. ez.
Would you still queue up for 6 hour long AV's?
- Yes
Would you still queue up for 2 day long AV's?
- Yes
only 6 (?
"If this thing lasts ages would you queue for it?" Depends on if the time spent is rewarding. Like all content. Duh.
Yes. For god's sake, YES!
@@Goannadria is fun a reward or are we talking material reward? cause the latter is what ruined AV in the first place
So, kinda funny story. Back in the vanilla days I was a Game Master. For a good long while we would get reports of either AFK botting or fish botting in Alterac Valley. Now most of the time our ticket times were atrocious so we'd get the report about 3 days too late (some periods while working there the ticket times were in weeks, not hours or days). Anyway, one night when we got the times down I saw a ticket that was only a half an hour or so old that was reporting an AFK. So I went in-game to verify where the reported character was and what they were doing.
Now as a GM I spent most of my time in a windows program with little chat windows I could move around. This is where I spent probably 98% of my time, not physically in a game client. Normally we would only get into the client if we really needed to. To do this we would have multiple characters, one an Allied character and one a Horde character. We actually had a third character but that was technically the character we were using to chat with in our communication program and that character never moved off of GM Island. So anyway, these characters used to investigate stuff in-game were special GM characters flagged with certain abilities. Those abilities include a command to instantly level to max level, god mode, being invisible to players, and being able to fly (more like swim) or move at extreme speeds. We were also able to teleport directly to a player with a quick little command, which is exactly what I did to investigate AFKers in AV. But there was a problem on this particular night.
Thinking that everything on my computer was set up properly. We all shared rows of computers so we didn't just have the same one every day. I guess there was an issue with the client not being the proper version of our GM client or something ... can't honestly remember. The short of it was that I was able to access our console (and perform console commands like teleport and such), and my GM character was flagged on the server as being allowed to do all the things I previously mentioned. The problem was ... I was not only visible to players, I was also able to be killed. On top of all of that, my characters were essentially naked because most of us only put on our pre-approved GM gear when we had to make ourselves visible (which I did only twice while working there).
So there I am ... a visible, floating, naked, level 60 human teleporting to someone who is AFK in AV. Except he isn't AFK. Nope. Instead he's taking part in the forever war of the center of the map. So when I teleport I'm a floating naked dude, clearly labeled as a GM, swimming through the air and darting around like a pixie on crack. Then ... it happens. While I glance and make sure the player reported is the one I teleported to a strange feeling washes over me. A feeling I never felt at work before while in the client. I felt like I was being watched, because I was. In the middle of this battle several players stopped what they were doing and started facing me. Second guessing myself I wondered, "..... wait, they can't see me can then?!" An answer came to me in the form of a hunters mark appearing over my head followed by several shots from a hunter. There I was, naked and afraid ... and swimming in air.
Needless to say I hauled my ass straight under a mountain about 3/4ths of the map away from there. Luckily he didn't kill me, otherwise the forums would have been filled with a screen shot of my dumb ass being killed by a player. Still, some select few players in AV that night got to see something few ever have. A naked GM, running in fear.
Floating naked dude... Nice.
I think this was more common than you realize..... Or i was extremely fucked playing AV
i always wondered why they never went the diabloe route. and gave GM characters the image of angels.....or demons....you know higher beings.
That’s actually a great story
Thanks for the story!
Ah, back in the day I remember playing AV. Going to sleep. Then work, then the next evening joining the same AV. Sometimes for 3-4 days I would join the same game. That was immersion.
Uzumakis december 10 we can do it again buddy :D
@@WhiteXcellence ofc not... lol
This 2019, people actually know how to play and how to properly finish AV.
@@WhiteXcellence In todays world, it's not really possible to have an AV to effectively go on for longer than an hour, and that's being generous.
If the game didn't finish by about 15 mins, one side turtles for about a half hour and then after that, the losing side just afk's or goes fishing and just let's their opponents win.
The only possible way you can have an av go on longer than an hour is if you are intentionally making an effort NOT to end the game.... and no one wants that because it's shitty honor and rep.
I loved those kind of AV's because it felt so massive! And back in the days when it was only the people on the server who you would see and get to know after a while was great. I also remember when you could judge an AV during the first 3-5 minutes of it starting. Like you knew then if it was going to be a steamroll or a turtle!
I was involved in battles that lasted several days, and were truly epic in their scale, like real world battles. I think I had 2000 kills in a single battle once. The entire battlefield was soaked in blood. This was among the best times I ever had playing any video game. The ability to single handedly turn the tide of a massive battle was truly unique.
I still remember 2006 Christmas Eve i went to my buddies house and we spent 22 hours in 1 AV match i went from level 52-60 in less than 5 hours. Back in the day when the raid leader would spam the ventrilo in the raid and depending on your level you were on different objectives i always loved farming the mines for the cavalry.
AV was so good, it could be it's own MMO
I joined WOW on day one of retail with the expectation that it would evolve into an epic worldwide-scale thing like AV that played out over months or even years - Warcraft style. I remember in those first few weeks running around the capitols planning defensive strategies with all the other folks there. WOW ended up going in another direction and so I spent a lot of time in AV. When they nerfed it into just another quickie battleground, it was a bad day for me and the beginning of the end of my time in WOW.
You're not kidding about that bridge I once logged into AV before I went to work, played for an hour defending that bridge, went to work for 8 hours got back and qued for av again and got into the same av defending the same bridge
And 40 vs 40 in the middle… Vanilla AV was better than crack
@@MrShirial Party with three MM Hunters, pick a squishy, triple aimed shot, rinse and repeat haha!
@@michaelliu1361 I was in the Shadowsong 3 day twice.
2006 it wasn't uncommon for me to play the same AV over 3 and 4 day weekends.
Same here, sunhawk, seems nuts looking back at it.. But like mr moon says, vanilla AV was better than crack
"Would you queue up for old AV more than once?"
Fuck yes, it sounds fun as fuck compared to current AV.
You should play on lights hope server
of course the alliance have terrain advantage, the dwarves know where to build their shit.
MyViolador a Good excuse to justify alliance zerg rush, no strategy, no running for objectives, just go directly to the horde general room with low to no resistance.
Doesn't make sense in a gameplay standpoint.
MyViolador grow up...
Yeah, after alliance got a lil help from the game creators to make changes in the favor of the alliance LOL
@Fianna still better than blood elves(who should be on the alliance) ,reskin races and fox furries
I loved playing my rogue when I was level 54.
What made it fun to be a rogue at that level was that you knew you were fucked if you got matched against a well geared 60, so you couldn't be 1v1 badass like you were used to.
Instead, I kind of had to play support to the level 60s. This meant doing the quests, but also meant being annoying with guerilla attacks.
Is there a furry warrior wrecking shit with a dedicated healer? Well, I'd cheap shot (sap was unlikely) the healer, stun lock them, kick them while trying to cast a spell, blind them, etc. My goal wasn't to kill the healer, it was to stop it from healing the warrior that was mowing us down. That warrior can't take on 3 60s by themselves and win without heals. It worked well.
It also saved a game where the main healer couldn't keep the tank up against our general. They wiped. I don't know if we won because I had to quit, but that was an hour after they were about to win.
Shit was so fun because I felt like I was just a pawn, but was swinging above my weight. I understand other classes probably couldn't have as big of an impact due to them not having stealth to hide and wait for an opening, but I think AV was a great experience if you didn't treat the battle as a gear /rep grind and instead just treated it as a for fun battle.
"Shit was so fun because I felt like I was just a pawn" That sums up Vanilla you were a pawn not a super hero who can just destroy old gods. The game wasn't about you it was about helping others
Furry warrior? Kinky stuff! It's FURY.
Sorry to comment on this,but you say it A LOT in this video
"Calvary" is a hill near Jerusalem
"Cavalry" are mounted combat units
I came to the comments for the same reason haha, I was like wait I can't be the only one bugged by this!
He also says "imputiny" instead of "impunity"
THANK YOU!!!
Maybe he has a speech impediment.
LOL!
WTF, I kind of missed the scale of war Alterac Valley made you feel. I wish they never made the Marks of Honor for Alterac Valley so high on gear, that way the games would've stayed long. I don't mind it being shortened a little, but when the commanders and lieutenants left, the battlefield just felt like another boring map. When they were all in place, it was cool killing lower ranking individuals as you storm your way to their captain and eventually their general. Really unforgettable.
I remember starting an AV (as Horde), playing it for hours, logging off to sleep, logging on the next morning and rejoining the same AV.
Good times.
I played on my friend's character since I didn't have good internet. We both played over 48 hours in various shifts the same AV. Fucking legendary.
when no cross-realms exists
Man... I didn't do much PVP, but what I did was freaking exhilarating! And yeah, no cross-realm. Those were some intense times! 😂
AV was designed to be a huge epic experience. If Blizzard wanted a 20 minute BG they should have just made a new one rather than gutting AV.
One of the things I loved about old AV was that to me, it was as close a representation as we could get to the RTS roots of WoW.
Instead of the unseen hand of a general commanding the armies, we the players were inhabiting to role of the many peons and grunts being commanded. The guard upgrades, the special units, the resource farming, it was an epic thing.
Maybe the extreme lengths of the matches didn't make the best show of what WoW has to offer, but people wanted to play AV like that....and still do
I loved the old AV, even though I was horde and lost many of them. But that was still one of my most fun times back then. And I will play a lot of them in Classic!
That overall smugness you got when alliance got beaten up was truly priceless and the bc cry posts filled with ally tears was the best salt i ever tasted
It was all worth it to summon ICY.
I dont even play this damn game anymore but still watching videos. When am I gonna be free?
it's ok to not play but still have interest and enjoy the game and youtube content
Not even death can save you....
"Give us your moneeeey."
so truee
i played at vanilla.
till cata..quited
now.
still watching content..
my life is over.
Just when i thought i was out... THEY PULL'D ME BACK IN!
One thing you didn't mention about old AV Hiru, was the landmines. They were all over the place and stepping on one, especially at a low level, was an almost guaranteed death. Other than that, great video as always! :)
Kevin5264 it was also a good way to bait enemy players on order to get a cheap kill
Which you were kinda encouraged to do by the quests and the only way to get kills as a low level
and being able to mine thorium and other gathering nodes.
Along with the harpie caves and the 'all seeing eye' pickup item to see everything in stealth. hilarious for rogue vs rogue sniping and of course the snow balls.
I know about that, but where is old AV Strider?
PH OMG I forgot about those.
I played on Ravencrest EU in vanilla, as Alliance. On that server, Horde almost always won. My very first, of only a few, win as Alliance, the fight lasted 26 hours before victory. That was insane. I had my brother help when I needed some food and drinks so to not go afk. I still remember that fight now many years later, and can still recall different situations in the battleground. I loved vanilla, and I still do. I havent played since the start of TBC.
They Won cause they were better.
Thats the only explanation on top of the alliance advantages
Yeah the Horde playerbase on that server were for the most part better at organizing and playing together. That also made a victory as alliance more satisfying. Good times.
I must say i love your attitude Rune. I remember playing AV and always wanting to try and negate any advantage that the Alliance had by being defensive and stopping the capping of graveyards and so. I loved AV because winning felt like such a uphill battle while at the same time it was very satisfying to slow the alliance down, not giving them a 10 min win. Rather dragging it on a hour or 2! ;)
so true.
ive played on 1 character whit my brother one at day one at night.
just to get something in vanilla
I played on Ravencrest EU too.. As Horde! I had a personal grudge against anyone in the "Axemen" guild if you remember that Alliance guild, haha.
Alterac was one the best memories I have of WoW. The scale of PvP battles combined with capturing points and a bit PvE involved(including taking mines) was simply epic and hasn't seen anything similar good up to today
What do think about "WoW classic comes back? =)
@@DiMoNico1981Swe They did alright. It was cool to see the lieutenants again. But they skipped the time with Korrak and the trolls, and no Black Lotus either.
Old school AV was legitimately some of the best gaming I have ever done.
I was heartbroken when I found out they wouldn't be including it in Classic/SoM.
Most people will never know exactly how epic it truly could be.
Played Vanilla WoW until WoD. Now Back in Classic while also binge wathcing ALL your WoW Videos. Makes boring leveling a little bit easier :D Also I'm learning things I didn't knew :D
Watching this just renews my pride in my frost wolf mount.
ThornOfHearts man I was just thinking. Grinding BGs back in the day use to have an objective whereas now you just run them to gear up. Need to bring back marks
Pretty much everyone had it in vanilla because it was dirt cheap compared to everything else for horde.
same that was my favorite mount and tabard
I wish they would revamp AV, it definitely has the feel of a big epic BG. Some fixes I would suggest would be:
- Make sure the map is perfectly symmetrical, that way neither faction has an advantage when it comes to geography.
- No chokepoints, make sure there is at least two paths past an obstacle so neither team can turtle.
- Buff the side objectives while reducing their requirements so that they can actually offer an advantage for anyone playing them.
- Replace the reinforcements mechanic with a "war effort" progress bar. You can fill the bar by killing enemy players, important enemy NPCs, completing side objectives or acquire an automatic win by killing the enemy general first.
My experience of Vanilla AV mostly consisted of trying to get over that bloody bridge. I played Horde and my experience was that we seemed to win most AV maps, just get bottle necked at the bridge for a very....very long time.
Also the snowballs were a blast to fuck around with, especially around that dam bridge.
This video is without a doubt by far the single best video you have made period.
When I played and started in burning Crusade I did not understand anything and how to do anything in this Battle Ground.
With the restart of vanilla this information you have provided is without a doubt some of the most useful information I have ever gained on World of Warcraft ever.
I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart cuz now I actually understand what to do when they re-release the game.
My feelings exactly. I assume, like me, you just followed the group.
weekend war in one battle, never ending for the whole day plus lol. Loved it
The experience my friends and I had going to AV for the first time nothing short of incredible. Balance non-withstanding, it was a gigantic experience that just left the impression that WoW was just so gigantic. I can't wait for WoW classic to roll around so we can pull a classic "Play AV for 5 hours, go to bed, hop on before work/school and end up in the same battle".
I think it should go back to the original system with minor geographical changed to make it more balanced. Playing a thousand small parts in a greater war effort will always be more satisfying than a single minor battle.
Horde players would just ignore it.
(In classic horde players might have to endure it for the unstoppable force though.)
And if they make a lot of changes to make it okay for the horde, people then would just complain that "its not the same" and it would still be dead.
It is pretty much what warfronts should be.
unbalanced shitlands? nope
@@n.s.2017 I mean most real life war fronts are not balanced.
I think offering more buffs to horde npcs could have balanced it. It would have made things more interesting in my opinion because it'd put greater emphasis on the side quests.
@@Jkev24 here’s the thing. Wow isn’t real life, so it doesn’t have to be bound to real world logics
@@Foreleus yeah, but it should be bound to logic that makes things more fun
@@Jkev24 true.
They should make it queueable- current AV versus classic AV.
I remember old AVs taking hours to complete, with the horde turtling various parts of the map and having a slow push. We would summon different elites. Lots of long fights on the alliance bridge going to their base...
Now, you're lucky if AV lasts 45 mins, and it's essentially a boss push with everyone waiting on towers to cap before rushing the base.
Dude AV was awesome for Horde.
As a former shaman main, my goal was to find the biggest baddest warrior I could find, and follow him everywhere.
It's how I became a healbot for numerous Warlords...and it was glorious.
Respect
I miss old av, I hope it is returned to it's former glory when classic wow is released.
I want to play the pre-nerf AV... I hope in classic we can vote on this
Of which version of AV do we want
Either way, it's good news.
@@zsoltsiro1310 late vanilla AV is still hardcore and still takes hours
I never played Vanilla AV and will be happy to in Classic, but only if it's balanced. Queing to lose just doesn't sound fun for some reason.
@@Tipgoifaf "BALANCED" wadya mean balanced
Vanilla AV could have weekend long games, a game would start on Friday afternoon and would still be going Sunday afternoon. Now it was interesting that you mentioned the Horde entrance being moved back. I was lucky enough to be a part of a strategy that guaranteed a Horde win. The strategy was called Rath Strat named after the architect of the strategy "Rathmasus"(I think i spelt his name right), to be a part of this there were some requirements for this to succeed, Access to Vent(ventrilo voip program) Frostwolf trinket/medallion(the instant teleport back to FWK) and willing to do something if asked immediately like trinket back to FWK. All would start and about 10-15 would stay behind Galv's bunker hidden while the rest would advance, now because this came a zerg fest no one really bothered fighting in the field of stryfe. As alliance went in and attacked Galv as soon as he shouted out those 10-15 Horde that hid behind Galv's bunker wiped out the major force of the alliance, and by the time the Alliance respawned all the forward GY had been capped by the horde. Stormpike GY was left not to be capped for the purpose of that would be their only spawn as once you left the cave you would spawn at the nearest GY, and by then the 10-15 Horde that defended Galv has joined the main battle. A group of 10-15 would go in and take Stormpike and as the Generals disappeared when towers/bunkers were capped, the rest would surround Stormpike GY and then farm HK as Alliance had nowhere to go. One of the reasons that you had vent that if some Alliance got passed they still cause damage and they would capp the FWK GY and gave the group a different spawn point, the BG leader or spotter would call out I need about 5 to drop back with the reply I'll trinket the rogue alliance would be dealt with and then rejoin the group. Stormpike would be killed and usually the base honor would be about 1800 with up too 2500 honor. For 20 minute game it was a fast way to get honor and when the reputation got around on Nathrezim server you just have to say Rath Strat and you would have a full horde BG side in under 2 minutes. It was loathed by the Alliance as cross realm BG's had been introduced as they hadn't wised up as they were random PUG's that joined AV and cause they were random they didn't figure out the strategy and come up with a counteract. When Rathmasus stopped leading the AV his record was 300 wins and 1 loss, the only loss was trying the strategy for the 1st time.
12:57 - I cannot believe I just noticed this, but the AV Mark of Honor icon is... literally Scooby Doo's collar. Complete with the initials "SD."
holy shit I googled it and I can't say you're wrong...
It actually stands for Samwise Didier , the senior art director. wow.gamepedia.com/Samwise_Didier
@@VirusVanquisher Yes, SD are his initials, but the icon is of Scooby's collar. Does it say anyplace that it's a reference to Samwise? upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Scooby-Doo.png
I think I found a clue, Scoob.
Just in case people come back to this for any reason, the vanilla mode of AV was released back into the game with a timegated event you could use LFG to join.
I loved Alterac Valley. As a horde player, we rarely won, but there were times in which either our guild or other organized groups would prepare and enter the BG with the sole objective of kicking as much Alliance ass as we could. Those fights are forever in my memory, as the best team battles i've ever had in any kind of videogame. Even if we failed and raged, we did it all together, and it's a feeling of camaraderie that no BG ever managed to replicate.
My best Alterac Valley memory... playing horde side and it glitched on the alliance side....it only let in one player...one alliance player vs 40 horde, got the Alterac Valley Perfection achievement that day.
kluna And I bet Horde still couldn't get across the bridge for half an hour.
there were no achievements
Oqueue horde AV runs in cata. actually playing the map how it was supposed to(atleast on that expansion). Alliance finally clued on and made their own Oqueue teams. Proper matchups of 35+ coordinated players on each side were some of the best games. When the 2 sides missed each others matches though it wouldve been painful to face.
kluna there were no achievements in vanilla tho
he didnt say it was in vanilla dumbshit
Alliance have several major advantages for years.
Blizz: huh, what? I don't see anything, just deal with it.
Horde get a minor advantage for 3 seconds IF every member joins in on it.
Blizz: NERF IT TO HELL!!!!!!
if alliance dares to capture IBGY, horde will start spawning 20 at a time from cave. If horde captures SHGY, alliance will spawn 10 at a time from SPGY. Thats the main reason the Horde wins 95% of the games.
Good ol AV. I’m exalted with the frost wolf clan haha. I checked, my win ratio on it is like 42% while all other Bg’s I’m in the 55-65% range on horde. Makes a lot of sense when you analyze all the reasons allies have it easier. It was always something I was aware of, but never aware of all the specifics that make it so much easier for them.
Ah the 15min AV, only interaction with other side was a /wave to familiars crossing the middle when grinding the BG's
Honestly really sad I missed out on the epic-ness of old AV :( I can do without it lasting days, but I want to see the whole map and all the NPCs returned to their former glory. I'd love to see it for a brawl or rework!
a new video about this current anniversary event and how AV is horde dominant would be intresting
alliance wins all the time - "deal with it"
horde starts to win often after changes were made - "BOYKOTT THIS SHIT"
thats alliance for you.
Lol thats what i was thinking
you all complained about it being too hard so they made it too hard for alliance and too easy for the horde that is why it was boycotted.
Limitless Beast it wasn’t that it was too hard. It’s that the alliance starting position and fortifications were ALL a HUGE advantage for alliance and it wasn’t even something that could be debated. Alliance cried when it was finally fair because horde players are generally better at PVP
Have you looked at AV recently?
I remember slowly pushing alliance back until the bridge for the first 30 min. Then having a stand of around the bridge for a long time, as the alliance PvE prevented further advancement. At this time its 0100 at night and people start to log off. New people join and refill the ranks until it got to late and the influx of people couldnt fill the ranks anymore - on the Horde side that is. So suddenly you are fighting 35 against 40, then 30 against 40, while slowly getting pushed back. At 0200 you ask yourself why you were stupid enough to sign up for AV... again, as it ended the same way the last time, - and the time before that. Cant say I miss it.
I'll never forget the first time my group made a concerted effort to summon the ice guy. It took a lot of time and effort, during which the Alliance was pushing in hard. We just barely got the turn-in before we were overrun, but once the summon was complete we bulldozed our way to Stormpike's doorstep. From there, the battle wasn't over, and I think we eventually lost, but dang if it isn't one of if not the best WoW memory I have.
I feel genuinely saddened by how much this epic battleground has declined
All they should have done to solve the length of time problem was increased the rewards. Like with the marks, instead of getting 3 for a win, you get 1 for X amount of enemy deaths, or for capping certain objectives. Make it so that everything had a reward for accomplishing something. This way, you'd get hopefully the same amount of rewards from a 5 hour AV battle as you would have running Warsong the entire time.
Wouldn't have solved the advantage issues, but there were/are a lot of people that greatly enjoyed getting to fight in AV for hours on end. I know I did. My longest run was just under 7 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It felt like it was an actual BATTLEground, and not just some short skirmishes.
Run in to Generals room, fear bomb, heal general. Usually caused a wipe and it was fun to do.
LOVED THE VIDEO! brings me back. i started late in vanilla and never hit max lvl till TBC. i never got to experience the real AV which i would love to. however i remember a lot of the changes and the stuff you touched on from when i played it till now.
One alliance advantage you overlooked on that bridge (almost nobody specced for it during vanilla) was a survival hunter. For fun once I made a trap specced survival hunter, and tested it in AV. When I zoned in the horde was just about to start crossing the bridge with no alliance players in sight. Using nothing but flares and frost traps I made the horde hate hunters even more than they already did. With entrapment I was able to keep the entire horde offense stuck on the bridge for about 20 minutes. I might have also set a record for deaths per minute in AV.
The question isn't "will you queue up for AV more than just once?" its you will only have to queue up for AV once because by the time you get out of it you'll be retired or on your death bed.
I never played OG Alterac Valley so I definitely am probably vastly overestimating it. But it actually seems quite fun in its original scale, as a very PvE focused battleground. Obviously it was clearly unbalanced, but the sheer grandiose scale of Alterac does make it feel like a very epic battleground.
CA VAL RY The L comes after the V, not before!
*insert thank you gif
Looked for this
Most important comment. I thought I was gonna have an aneurysm on the 4th "calvary".
Thank fuck someone said it
fuck me this was annoying xD
Old school AV was the absolute fuckin best. I remember playing a single match for HOURS... logging out for the night, and logging in again the next morning to the same battle still going on 😂 god it was amazing
It was great because you could sit one of the chokes and farm honor for an hour or two each go until the baddies stopped giving much, then you can requeue and be up against a whole new set of horde.
E: The fastest strat is to have a couple of 2-5 man teams run down to cap the towers while most everyone else zergs base. With the stragglers uncapping our towers and generally harassing the horde.
I would love to play av again as it was ment to be played, longer games with better tactics than just zerging. But as an alliance player since og vanilla on multiple servers, my experience is that horde wins 70% of the games.
Alliance has a map advantage in Battle for Gilneas too. The alliance spawn is a shorter path to the Water Works with no obstacles. And the Horde spawn is slightly further away with a river between the Mine and Waterworks. Alliance can cap WW before the Horde can even get close enough to contest at the start, and then it's just a matter of keeping the Horde off the flag for a short while and they're already ahead in points with more spawn locations.
You watch every game at the start of Battle for Gilneas, the WW will turn half blue before the Horde barely make it across that small river.
If the horde takes mountain pass, they can hop over the river and be there roughly at the same time. At least before the alliance stopped tapping, wich is the most important thing.
I say that as horde player, who "suffered" since vanilla through AV losses by the dozen. In my experience the horde losses are more accounted to bad match making (1 heal on horde side vs 3 on alliance... hello?)
I even had matches without any heal on the horde side versus 2 on the alliance. Sometimes we even won, because we just outgeared that particular alliance group, i think.
But i don't believe that is actually factored in to the match making, since i also had the allies with a surplus on heals while also having much better gear.
Sometimes i enjoy the idea of some sort of ELO system to evaluate players for random battlegrounds.
the horde spawn uphill though, which is a bit of an advantage taking the alliance's first point next to the house.
There was nothing like it. Perpetually in combat, perpetually learning how to better play your class in various engagements. It was awesome
found this late but there are several alliance advantages you missed. 1. both galv's and bal's structures' entrances face north making it slightly easier for alliance to defend her and slightly harder for horde to take her. 2. iceblood graveyard is the only graveyard that doesn't force its ressurrectees to move toward the its control point, and if players are playing according to instinct rather than deliberate strategy (as they are wont to do) horde players will head north and not defend it, and alliance players will head south and defend it. 3. vendor NPC placement inside the main base. Vendors are kinda not meant to be legit targets, so while they don't hit especially hard as NPCs go they have such massively disproportionate health that they cannot be soloed. at the horde base they're all located in the outer section and can be run past far enough and easily enough that they deaggro. in the alliance base there are several that are right by the gy flag and they're always inadvertantly engaged by the offense players.
I played as Horde and we won a fair amount on this map on our server back in the day. It was really satisfying when you did finally pull it off.
AV: **exists**
Alliance Players: “Its free real estate”
Until the Horde players started to use their brains and get an advantage, then the entire bg gets nerfed on the horde's side.
Can someone explain this, I do not get it. :/
@@Darthrath666 Horde had no advantages, AV was the clearest example of Blizzard Alliance favoritism in the whole game. It was a business decision, there are almost always 1.5-2x more Alliance players on any given server--giving those players advantages keeps the majority of the player base happier and keeps subscriptions active.
@@savadaflava1120 That's... so not true anymore. One of the reasons Alliance gets their ass whupped in the Korrak's Revenge event lately is because the Horde just outpaces and outnumbers the Alliance nowadays. Back then I have no idea how it was, but the bias for PvP has leaned in the Horde's favor for at least a decade I'd wager.
@@Lucifronz Blizzard devs admitted on their own twitter feed that Horde NPC has 900k more HP and deals significantly higher dmg.
Can I really call this a "mini" fact if its the video is over 20 minutes long?
hirumaredx it all works out man.
hirumaredx i was in an AV bg for more than 30 hours untill i had to leave and then 20hours later i joined the same AV and had to ask in chat if this was the same as the one started that friday and all wrote back with an YES. And average AV was way more than 8 hours back in vanilla untill blizzard had to step in and sometimes they even just ended the AV because iy went on for days. They tryed to change the faction bosses later on in vanilla and now battles went from days to hours. I miss the old AV that lasted for days as you could farm so mush HP in a single match. Great times 👍
hirumaredx I mean you can call it anything. It's still a great video.
I think AV should be put into the game as a special event type of thing as well. But not just any special unique queue but an actual seasonal queue, maybe once a month, once a week, who knows. It'll incentivize even the the people who blacklisted the BG to try it out!
Classic AV and hardcore raids are the only thing that interest me about Wow Classic, I would literally play only AV for like 2 weeks then the occasional raid.
Take the scale effect into consideration, 20 minutes is still mini by AV standards.
I don't think today's player base would complain about it if their entry experience was Vanilla, like the rest of the Vanilla community. tl;dr post-expansion WoW is like going to a shopping mall and Vanilla WoW was a DIY challenge, and those who accept the DIY challenge are fine with accepting the conditions at the onset, despite w/e problems, when they know they want the goal on the otherside of that wall.
Think about it: post-expansion WoW has always been centered around a core prerogative: *Life . Is . Convenient*. If post-expansion WoW had a spokesman it might go something like: "It would be really inconvenient to have to spend hours walking across a boring world, so here's a mount from lvl 1 to help you get through it faster! It would be really frustrating if you had to waste a huge time sink into leveling through a boring world just to have another character available for you to play the new stuff, the fun stuff, so here's heirlooms to help things go faster! It would be really frustrating to have to waste a bunch of time finding a group for a dungeon (or guild for a raid) so here's LFG/LFR! It would be really inconvenient if you thought you couldn't beat a raid, so here's reduced difficulty! With optional higher difficulties, for the convenience of those people who want more of a challenge (even if the difficulty is artificial)! Hell, it would be pretty inconvenient if you didn't like how your character looked, so now you can make your gear look like w/e you want with transmog!"
Vanilla WoW's prerogative on the other-hand, was the exact opposite. Vanilla's core mantra might be something like "Nothing is given, every problem is there for you to solve for yourself, but those solutions are there for you to find. You will have to explore the world yourself to complete this quest, you will have to find a group yourself if you want to do a dungeon, you will have to journey there yourself if you actually want to do it." But when you did do these things, it gratified you, and when you got rewarded for your success, you felt like you actually earned it because....well, you did. You wanted something, a problem was in your way, you overcame it and got what you wanted. Some problems were small, some were big, some were tedious and some were down-right unfair, like Alterac Valley....but you did it all the same, and you didn't always win but some problems that you failed to succeed at for days, weeks, or months at a time, were things you eventually earned victory over. It was the kind of game that got people thinking "I'm going to set out to get what I want, no matter what hand I'm dealt", and when you think like that you become tougher to any kind of challenge, and when you start winning at challenges you thought insurmountable before, you become stronger and more confident as a person. It's not that far fetched to say that not only did people's in game character grow in level as they succeeded at each challenge, but that their inner character, their character as a human being, grew as well.
Very well put.
For some reason, Alliance never won AV in our battlegroup: EU Cyclone. As Alliance players, we got really excited when we somehow made it to Horde base which was extremely rare.
I remember getting into a fresh AV back in Vanilla on Lightbringer that I spent hours in and then had to log off for work or sleep, dont remember which, but when I came back sat in the Q for another few hours and when I finally got inside it was the same one 12 hours later. And that is why I love AV. It was hard and involved and got me soooo much honor. When they nerfed all of those battlegrounds to the ground and simplified them I was heartbroken.
I think AV was at its best in early burning crusade. It still took a long time but could reasonably be trusted to end in a couple hours at least, and you COULD win without the side objectives, but they were all very helpful and worth doing and saw frequent use.
AV got so depressingly fast in later BC that it was like.. what's the point.
I loved vanilla AV because I'm bad at pvp.
Gotta love how 3 out of 20 npcs which killed most players are from Westfall.
Play classic WoW, then you'll know why.
One of my favorite Vanilla experiences was playing AV with my roommate for 3-4 hours, then going to work for 10. I got home, he was playing AV again.
Nope, it was still the same match from when I left for work.
Sooooo much fun knocking horde off the bridge with snowballs when they first put them in the game (since nerfed), they had knockback which was also useful for knocking AFK'rs out of the BG, alliance side anyways.
Great video, but you missed one great moment in AV. In mid BC the Horde could pull Van in such a way that despawned all of his guards, allowing the Horde to attack him alone as if all the towers were destroyed.
But that was a bug and not intended.
Therefore, it doesn't count.
@@akhsdenlew1861 so are all of the alliance players but you dont hear us saying they dont count...
@@kasper7574 what?
20 hours ? AH :D I remember some AV that would last the WHOLE WEEK xD
Summoning Ivar the Forest Lord was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had the pleasure of participating in. Old AV was a masterpiece, was a game within the game.
On a "Normal" server we could have characters of both factions. So I have done both the Forest Lord and the Ice Lord.
Getting them up on both sides in the same battleground could be fun watching them fighting each other. Obviously the side with the better "Player" support would win the battle of the 2 lords.
Yes, an alliance player would say that I suppose.
I think you mean ice guy and tree guy.
I started playing in BC. We once did almost everything you just mentioned before reinforcements. We choked point, we got all scouts, we had Infantry, Calvary, bombarding bats, then we summoned Lok’Holar the Ice Lord (he got bigger as he killed). Escorted him all the way to the Alliance commander and watch him annihilate them.
In Classic they made similar changes with the edges of the map being removed but they didn't move the horde starting cave back so horde had a massive advantage being closer to the alliance base and bottle neck at the start of the match.
AV was one of my favorite Battle Ground in Vanilla, i was so disappointed when it went away :(
I'm horde but I still find it funny that people in this comment section act like it's the alliance players fault for AV not being fair.
with Blizzard themselves loving Horde more than Alliance
How's that, Axel?
+Cave Dog
I'm assuming you don't know what went down at blizzcon 2011.
What happened at Blizzcon 2011?
what happened on 2011 blizzcon stay in 2011 blizzcon
AV was actually my favorite one of the BGs and I played Horde 🤓 Nothing gave a bigger pleasure than winning AV despite of the alliance advantages 😎 Maybe it was since I played a druid, so if some spec didn't work on some days, you could just switch to another one and play another role in the group 🤷🏻♂️
I just found your channel and video. Maan! You did an excellent job and you are an amazing storyteller. Usually, I leave quite fast from a 20 mins+ video, but I stayed for the entire video captivated.
Keep it up! New subscriber here! 🤗
I did Alterac once in Vanilla, and it took up most of that weekend. It was absolutely glorious, one of my favorite vanilla experiences, but I don't have that in me anymore. Being awake and playing a video for 20 hours straight is not where I want to be.
Funny how Korrak's revenge, the anniversary event AV, is so imbalanced but to the Horde benefit this time.
Yeah I think I've won some 95-98% of the time as horde due to this event. It's nuts.
@@Tyrin_Wolfinzar Well it's rigged with bugs, like I saw a tweet saying that the horde nocs had like 900% more health than their alliance counterpart, and also you can freely respawn in the ally general bunker.
i dont see where horde has any adventage in this av when theres basicialy 3000 npcs attacking u whenever u enter the ally base, not to mention the 500 archers on the bunkers, where u can still ride through whole horde base without even aggroing any npc
@@Max-qu7pr Ride through the horde base without aggroing anything ? LOL
Also capping a bunker flag dispwans the archers
@@orpheonkatakrosmortarchoft4332 ive played alliance from classic till wotlk and i always could ride through whole horde base without aggroing anything. dunno how it is now
Wintergrasp is the real loss. We need a modern version of it. I remember you would have ALL horde/alliance queueing for WG as it started in one room.. then once they were busy you'd have people arranging to storm their capital cities. not to mention the AWESOME vehicle aspect and the way you won your factions right to spend currency from raid bosses. miss it so much
Wintergrasp is last "new" battleground what I love
Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Alterac Valley with Wintergrasp and you not need anything more
I will. The AV turtle was my favor. I still remember by lvl 60 hunter in AV sniping all those noobs at choke points as alliance. It all depends on if you have good gear and are able to slay people. I assume it would be boring for melees.
I fucking love old AV. I would still queue up and get into it for hours!
I remember when AV was first released and the first AV battle lasted for 3 full days on Proudmoore. I had so much fun in there.....play for hours and have nothing at the end of it but it was glorious. The feeling when you actually managed to summon the ice guy and charged in with him...
My Undead Warlock used to stand on the hill outside of the alliance bridge.. place 3-4 seeds of corruption on a crowd and pop it with shadow fury?!? I forget name/... but would come out top dmg every game, was decently geared but the combo just did so much Aoe dmg it was insane...
i did that too man, it was super fun looking at my kill count go up as the victims trailed off radar ... lol.. they all died
AV was the best BG back in vanilla 👍 battles lasted for days 😊👍
FoxyRaven-TV agreed
in before the mark system which made everyone try to rush it
mdb45424 dude i wrote vanilla wow. The rush started much later than vanilla wow. Cmon did you even play wow back in vanilla? Dosnt sound like it
Seto0019 well he kinda did state it as it was in vanilla.
We other are speaking of vanilla here and the he come in and wrote (in before the mark system) i had to assume he meant it was in vanilla as we already where speaking of the old AV in vanilla so its kinda obvious that it is before the mark system..
If only everyone playing Korrak now watched this...
I was once in an AC match that started on a Friday night and stalemated to last til midday on a Sunday. I stayed for it because it felt like every swing of my weapon was contributing in a meaningful way to a push, and collapsed to bed when it was over.
I used to live in av as horde back in BC. My guild used to laugh at me cause I had the frostwolf howler mount on all my toons before mounts were shared.
Fun fact: Calvary is the location where Jesus was crucified and died.
Cavalry are people who performed mounted combat. Be weird for Tracer to say “Cheer’s love! The Calvary is here!”
Just thought I’d help you out. :)
I had no idea there was a difference until today. I'll make sure to be extra careful with that word from now on
hirumaredx not many people do but it’s not your fault. Just wanted to be helpful. No flame here.
*chokes* Tracer you dumb bish
My longest AV in 2004/05 was about 32h.... epic!
Snowfall Graveyard is such a Taboo, ppl who are smart avoids in Completely, cause if there are no graveyards captured by your side and you die a bit away from the base, it will send you back there, instead of an unclaimable graveyard next to your keep.
Whoever claims Snowfalls Graveyard is bombarded with insults, and the saltiest of people tend to just flat out leave.
lol I forgot about this. I remember playing AV and just waiting for some noob to cap SFGY and watch chat blow up. It was especially the worst in those longer battles where like 45 minutes in, someone caps, and then you know it's just a slow death/defeat from there.
That was after AV had been gutted several times.
I remember one battle in AV, where the horde had us all the way back to our General...and they were sooo close to winning it. Im not sure what happened, but somehow they wiped and we pushed forward quickly and were able to take graveyards back so fast, that they got separated and pushed back when they were re spawning. By the time they got it together...we were in their base and took that GY. We then went and killed the General before they got back from whatever GY they had taken. Was a great 4 hours...never seen the like in any game.
what killed WoW was that it was only about the next carrot... people did only things because they wanted a reward... not because things were fun. before there was automated LFG i ran stratholm and scholomance dozens of times.. no because i needed any rewards... but i loved, meeting with new players tha never been there and guiding them through those places. making friends...
strat was a mission to get through especially if you were clearing both sides
and you have pvp around Raid stone meetings
We have in Burnig crusade airborne gank team
they fly in group of 10 and patrol above famous meeting stones (like Karazan)
When horde start gathering for raid, we storm from above
In minutes you have battle better then in AV or Warsong Gulch ;)
What if people's fun was getting rewards? Stop prattling subjectivity.