OP on official forums: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t ... sic/128908Blizzard Entertainment
This is a subject that has been asked about several times recently, and we want to clarify some of the details surrounding it. Like many aspects of the game, Alterac Valley was tuned and adjusted in different ways from patch to patch in 2005-2006.
First and foremost, we’re planning to use the 1.12 version of Alterac Valley. For many parts of the game like this, we’re picking an original WoW patch that gives us the most clarity for WoW: Classic, and 1.12 is that patch.
In Alterac Valley, that puts us before the introduction of reinforcements. It puts us before the removal of all of the Commanders and Lieutenants. The only win conditions are the killing of Drek’thar in Frostwolf Keep or Vanndar Stormpike in Dun Baldar.
It gives us several early improvements to the BG that we’re glad to have in place. Early on in AV, there were too many NPCs and they were too hard to kill. By 1.12, many had been removed and NPC health was brought down to a reasonable level. Turning in armor scraps is an encouraged, supportive activity by this point. Many capture points (mostly graveyards) had been moved away from their initial placements to gain better balance across the map. Korak the Bloodrager was removed, and killing opposing players no longer drops items like Dwarf Spines, Orc Teeth, or Human Bone Chips. Gross.
In our content plan update, we mentioned that we’re still working out exactly how and when PvP elements of Classic will roll out. We’ll update you on that here very soon.
Keep those blues rolling in Blizzard!
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Syturio • Herrington • ArkantosBarrens • Linguine • Pixstar
Yeah a lot of people will be disappointed by this one but I'm glad we're seeing frequent updates. I was never a big fan of AV so I would've accepted either decision.
I'm a little disappointed, but still hyped AF for some old school AV. Glad to see blues talking about Classic lately.
Would someone mind summarizing the differences between the following versions of AV?
Patch 1.5
Patch 1.12
Live/Retail
I remember AV always being a rush with any combat with players being an inconvenience, but I also remember reinforcements, NPC pickups, and summons.
From Blizz forum
1.8
-A great avalanche has closed off both the eastern and western segments of Alterac Valley. This has displaced the Syndicate Wildpaw Gnolls, and many of the Winterax Trolls.
-Due to the avalanche, Korrak the Bloodrager and a small band of surviving Trolls have made the Snowfall Graveyard their new home. Players will find that Snowfall is now under Korrak’s control and they must defeat Korrak and his Troll guards if they wish to take Snowfall.
-NPC difficulty has been scaled down. All NPCs have had their power reduced by 15-30%.
1.10
-Korrak the Bloodrager and his band of trolls have packed up their bags and left Alterac Valley for greener pastures.
1.11
-Most of the NPC guard units have been removed.
-Creatures that remain in Alterac Valley have had their hit points reduced.
1.12
-Cross Realm BGs
Wait wat? Cross realm BGs? #pitchforks
I imagine that would really short-circuit the #nochanges crowd
Pretty sure 1.12 is the patch that released cross realm bg's. So having cross-realm bg's would be no changes.
They already confirmed no cross-realm grouping a while back guys at the Classic panel Blizzcon 2018.
Oh most definitely. My point is that a large part of the classic demographic is opposed to sharding and phasing and thus by extent, cross realm BG's. So I imagined that the implementation of the old patch 1.12 change would cause some conflicted feelings with this group.
That's settled then.
On an incredibly optimistic note, maybe this is the start of frequent updates as we get closer to release.
I'm kinda okay with this.
At the end of the day, AV as it first came out was a bit of a shit show where dudes would be off farming NPC's solo instead of doing the BG.
True. No x-realm grouping. However, x-realm bg's are different than x-realm grouping. X-realm bg's were a way to drastically lower queue times by essentially getting rid of battlegroups and opening the flood gates so that battle groups with significant Horde/Alliance population imbalances would even each other out. This does not mean that players from different realms were able to form groups and then queue for such events (x-realm grouping).
I enjoyed PVP way more back in the day when it was server centric. I was a part of a group of guys that did a ton of nornal BG PVP back during ththe vanilla days. In addition to just HK farming with Cletus during our hour long ques. (Mal'Ganis was Horde heavy)
I personally dont want X-realm or a Battlegroup. I want a server community of PVP, I want to know my enemy, and I want to have them lose morale when they see Dolamite on the other side!!!
Council Chairman
US-Horde
Blaumeux
I've heard that the x-realm bg's were a prep for arenas/honor as a currency. Even if not true, it is definitely the first thing done where it makes me think WoW began to go off-track.
All in all, what they did by grouping RP servers with premier PvE and PvP servers was horrible (RP players working their way up in the rankings got annihilated because their raid/gear progression was so much slower). They clearly had not planned for such an event from the beginning of vanilla.
X-realms were not the prep although arenas/ honor for currency was the beginning of the end for PvP. X-realm bg's were meant to keep BG queues from being 1+ hour. Once AV became a PvE zerg, that was the end of BG's being a place for mass PvP. Prior to changes like this, body count was the currency and it should remain that way. X-realm BG's just make it more efficient to stack bodies. Without the BG que times getting low it forces players to go hunt for kills which is not all bad until you end up on a server where the outnumbered faction turtles in their respective main cities, leaving only the leveling 50's out and about to suffer as fodder for HK's or bored PvPers.Linguine wrote: ↑5 years agoI've heard that the x-realm bg's were a prep for arenas/honor as a currency. Even if not true, it is definitely the first thing done where it makes me think WoW began to go off-track.
All in all, what they did by grouping RP servers with premier PvE and PvP servers was horrible (RP players working their way up in the rankings got annihilated because their raid/gear progression was so much slower). They clearly had not planned for such an event from the beginning of vanilla.
I don't disagree with X-realm bg's because that has little effect on realm identity. In fact, what it can do is identify strong realms that I have seen work to strike fear into people from other realms. A good example of this was when I was PvPing many years ago when X-realm bg's were new and people from other servers would begin typing all sorts of fearful remarks ("oh no, 5 guys from Tichondrious. We are screwed").
X-realm grouping on the, on the other hand, does. When people can group across the cosmos you no longer need to reach out to those who are already on your server for dungeons, raids, or bg's. Instant death of realm identity and the way for less-desired players to stay on good servers. X-realm grouping was the beginning of the end for WoW as we the Classic/Vanilla enthusiasts see it. It was the grandfather of sharding. Daily quests, arena, dungeon queues, and every "improvement" after that made it so people did not have to interact with each other as much and made PvP less about killing the opposing faction, which is something BFA should have remedied, but that is a whole other thread.
While pre-1.12 was a blast in creating rivalries with opposing faction players, the cross-realm queuing was a great thing for the game. Considering a lot of returning Classic players are now grown with families, kids, etc. It's nice to have shorter queues with such limited play time. I don't care how pure you are, nobody wants to wait 45 minutes for a BG queue...
The Footpad
I agree with your point, but as the same time I still have worries.Cletus wrote: ↑5 years agoX-realms were not the prep although arenas/ honor for currency was the beginning of the end for PvP. X-realm bg's were meant to keep BG queues from being 1+ hour. Once AV became a PvE zerg, that was the end of BG's being a place for mass PvP. Prior to changes like this, body count was the currency and it should remain that way. X-realm BG's just make it more efficient to stack bodies. Without the BG que times getting low it forces players to go hunt for kills which is not all bad until you end up on a server where the outnumbered faction turtles in their respective main cities, leaving only the leveling 50's out and about to suffer as fodder for HK's or bored PvPers.Linguine wrote: ↑5 years agoI've heard that the x-realm bg's were a prep for arenas/honor as a currency. Even if not true, it is definitely the first thing done where it makes me think WoW began to go off-track.
All in all, what they did by grouping RP servers with premier PvE and PvP servers was horrible (RP players working their way up in the rankings got annihilated because their raid/gear progression was so much slower). They clearly had not planned for such an event from the beginning of vanilla.
I don't disagree with X-realm bg's because that has little effect on realm identity. In fact, what it can do is identify strong realms that I have seen work to strike fear into people from other realms. A good example of this was when I was PvPing many years ago when X-realm bg's were new and people from other servers would begin typing all sorts of fearful remarks ("oh no, 5 guys from Tichondrious. We are screwed").
X-realm grouping on the, on the other hand, does. When people can group across the cosmos you no longer need to reach out to those who are already on your server for dungeons, raids, or bg's. Instant death of realm identity and the way for less-desired players to stay on good servers. X-realm grouping was the beginning of the end for WoW as we the Classic/Vanilla enthusiasts see it. It was the grandfather of sharding. Daily quests, arena, dungeon queues, and every "improvement" after that made it so people did not have to interact with each other as much and made PvP less about killing the opposing faction, which is something BFA should have remedied, but that is a whole other thread.
I hope if they are implemented they don't make the mistake of placing RP, PVE, and PVP servers within the same battlegroup. The differences in the types of gear generally available and the players likely to join is very different. If there is a faction imbalance across every single server type in the exact same way, Blizzard has a different problem they need to address.
Having checked out some videos regarding this, and the WoW Classic subreddit specifically, there seems to be quite the mixed bag with regards to feedback on this one.
Naturally it'll be a far less buggy iteration, and what they eventually intended with the battleground; however, we'd be losing the early PvP skirmish aspect of players rather than a straight out rush for the faction boss.
Personally, I'm mostly ok with this. I didn't experience the early versions of Alterac originally, so I don't really know any better.
<Pertento> [EU-PvP]
I experienced some mid patch AV and it could get very tiresome. I am not sure how I feel about this. It has its pro's and cons, but ultimately I am not vexed by the decision.
Lvl 60
Lvl 35
I agree and to be honest, Korak would have been the only change I would have noticed. Other than that I am fine.
Sadly, AV is not considered by the PvP community as an accurate representation of personal/team experience.
