battlegrounds (Altarec and Warsong Gulch)

BArra

So i had a crack at some of the new battleground features last night with some guild mates and all i can say is WOW, this actually looks good, and seems to be working very well.

Warsong Gulch (10v10)

It is incredibly fun to have 10v10's on here. Organised guilds will usually steamroll a 10man pick up, but if you manage to get 2 guilds thrashing it out in the best of 3 flagged captured then it gets extremely intense.

This area is dark area with 2 bases and a battlefield filled with huts and some burning mounds, it looks really good and is very well designed.

There is various little "power-up" icons that you can find around in little huts, such as speed up, regrowth and beserking, and some others i havent had time to try out yet.

Hunters actually play a roll here too, as if your flag is taken, chances are somebody is hiding it waiting, apprently they have aspect of the beast which hides all your party members from other faction hunters tracking them, so it might get a bit more difficult when people figure small things out. And more and more tactics come into play.

I was just playing for a few hours but it was excellent stuff, much needed in the game, they only need a fair bit more of new content now to satisfy.

Alterec Valley (40v40)

Alterec Valley was a differant story however... i only stayed on there 15 minutes, as its a 40v40 man battleground, visually its stunning, its MASSIVE. Its set in alterec so as you may be able to tell its a snowy type area set inside a valley, it looks great, all the features and landmarks in there just look right, and you will have to zone in and see it to see for youself.

There is strategic bases with graveyards and watchtowers and mines, roaming NPC's, roaming rider NPC's, and elementals and high ranked NPC protectors to be summoned, the alliance are capable of summoning a Molten Core level protector thats an ancient of war like tree from Darnassis. The only problem is, every base has LOTS of NPC's defending them, and a lot of them hit like trucks, and i mean hard, i have nearly all epic gear and i got mortal struck for over 3,600 damage from one of them, and it wasnt an amazing crit, it was near enough the norm.

So unless you can get in 20+ guildmates who know what they are doing, i can see it getting very frustrating with a ton of randomers not having a clue and just cause a lot of swearing.

Now with both of these you gain faction with a certain faction, the Alterec Valleys one has rewards for reaching honored, revered and exalted, exalted having Epic item rewards. You gain this faction by winning the battleground, and also collecting dead gnome hair/night elf head/dwarf spine/human tooth, and similar enough horde dead flesh.

Gulch i am not too sure about yet in the reward department, i know of some items like bandages and pots, but nobody yet knows what else if any will be available. You gain faction through these by winning the battleground, and once done you receive a little badge that you turn into an NPC outside the zone, which is repeatable.

Other than that, queues were great, my 10 man squad wasnt waiting over 2 minutes to be in game and getting ready to play, although there is some minor tips i can give, you need to have your party all online and ready, you can do and go whereever u want, but if the leader zones into the battleground portal and one of your party members was added after the leader zoned in, you must leave the queue and restart it.

Im on American WoW, but i think you guys have the patch, what does everyone else make of it?

koneko

We're getting the patch today, so it'll be a little while before anyone's posting about it. Maintenance looks like it's extended longer today (as usual) - if the official site is anythign to go by.

BArra

Ah i see, here are the links to the rewards.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/rewards-alterac.html

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/rewards-warsong.html

Caliden

not sure if they have changed this yet but if a rogue has the flag and picks up the boost powerup its stacks with his sprint.
hopefully thats been changed since.

as always shamans are the kings of the CTF, earthbinding totems and all -_-

Kiith

can anyone have a go at battlegrounds? or do you have to be lvl60?

also, can anyone else log on to bladefist? cause i cant.

Dubhthamlacht

nope, can't get on to Bladefist either. Got past the initial login screen which takes forever and then disconnects at the character retrieval screen

Kiith

from the looks of things, the whole thing is down. which doesnt surprise me. it annoys me, but doesnt surprise me.

Kiith

anyway, back to battlegrounds.....

i did warsong gulch twice tonight, and i loved it. got killed 0-3 in the first, but won the second 3-0 and got quite a few hk's. great fun.

Caliden

alterac is 51 + i think
havent a clue how warsong is done. apparently with different level intervals

Woden

had to runs through warsong tonight. first time we destroyed the alliance. druid take > cat > sprint > shift > travel form ftw.

second time around one of the major alliance guilds on our server where playing and it was heavy defense boring as fuck. group we had at the time only consisted of half our guild and another guild of which most of the members didn't seem to speak english. communication and coordination sucked and as a result the BG sucked and we lost 3-1.

look forward to doing it again with a full guild complement using teamspeak and with some decent tactics. otherwise i can just see myself getting pissed off.

on another note was good to eventually be on a level playing field on our server where the horde alliance ratio is about 30:70. with even numbers seemed we could drop em fairly well.

data

Dubhthamlacht

How on earth do you get to join as a group in Warsong Battleground? We had a raid group together before hand and then when we went to Warsong things got confusing. Party Leader clicked on Join as a group but we didn't get into together. I seen a pop up saying I've been choosen for next battle but only one other guildy from Raid group was in the ensuing battleground with me. The rest were left outside and said they seen no pop up.

Anybody who did manage to get in as a pre -organised raid group let me know how it's done?

It was a tremendous balst though. my team lost 3 -2 but they were a pretty disorganised rabble. the times we did take the flag succesfully were organised in the loosest sense but after for the most part they just went at it suicidly.

koneko

Laggy, unorganised, no fun. Hopefully some of that will change over time (and when I can log on with guildies on Vent it should be better), but I predict I'll be spending more time in MC this week than I had initially thought.

So far, it's like being stuck in TM with the annoying people no one likes, barking orders at everyone over /1 - and everyone ignoring them.

Dr_Teeth

For me it just shone a spotlight on the population imbalance on Bladefist. Overall Bladefist is pretty balanced, but at the high-end there are a lot more Horde than Alliance, and the Horde seem to be a lot more hardcore.

I spent most of last night waiting in queues - there simply weren't enough allies to go 'round. I managed to get two CTF games total, both lasted 5 minutes because we destroyed the pick-up teams we were pitted against and then it was back in the queue for another hour.

At the end of the night there were only two WSG instances running, and about 40 Horde waiting outside to join in. So it seems there were about 20 allies and 60 horde wanting to play.

LoBo

Dubh- I was Pestis in that warsong run with you last night.

Yes it was very fun, looking forward to a 10-man game with all <bored of ie> members. Can anyone explain exactly how you get a raid group to all go in as one team? We couldn't manage it.

Seifer

Dubhthamlacht wrote:

How on earth do you get to join as a group in Warsong Battleground?

Its probably due to level differences between your groups members. From what I could tell, its about a 10 level difference. Im level 30 and that was the highest I saw in there but went down to about 23.
Tis good fun. Was just doing it with random people, I'd say it'd be lots more fun with guildies.
Remember queues are waits for enough people of the correct level to join on each side. Then a new instance is set up.

DeVore

Whats the lowest level you can play in WSG with?

I'm considering starting another alt (Troll Shamen, cos I'm sick of being owned by them ) and wouldnt mind grouping with some of the people here on Deathfist.

I dont want to face the pain of leveling up to the 40's-60's again but wouldnt mind playing as a 20-30something if thats allowed in WSG...

DeV.

Jim

Played Altarec last night and I have to say it was fantastic fun. Wasn't that organised or anything but everyone seemed to move together and there was some strategy.

We were constantly on the push for the whole session, it was slow and the alliance pushed us back sometimes but mostly we pwnd. Data managed to keep me healed some of the time....I found that heals lagged an awful lot. The green effect would be cast around me but it would take a couple of seconds for my health to go up.

All in all I can't really see myself every questing again. Raid dungeons and BG for me from now on.

Zith

DeVore wrote:

Whats the lowest level you can play in WSG with?

I'm considering starting another alt (Troll Shamen, cos I'm sick of being owned by them ) and wouldnt mind grouping with some of the people here on Deathfist.

I dont want to face the pain of leveling up to the 40's-60's again but wouldnt mind playing as a 20-30something if thats allowed in WSG...

DeV.

21 is minimum level for WSG. Instances are grouped by level ranges 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60.

Dustaz

DeVore wrote:

(Troll Shamen, cos I'm sick of being owned by them )

Why would anyone roll a troll? oh the luxuries of a pve server

DeVore

pve server? is Deathfist PvE? Why would that bother a troll anyway... whats wrong with trolls... plenty of them on Twilight's Hammer (pvp server).

DeV.

quozl

nah bladefist is very much PvP I think dustaz was joking that it's unusual to go troll shaman as the tauren racials are a bit better. Warstomp and the extra 5%hp are nice.

Go troll, we need more trolls. Except on the WoW forums

DapperGent

DeVore wrote:

(Troll Shamen, cos I'm sick of being owned by them )

ffs. learn to play your class. noob.

Dustaz

Yeh, as teeth said, Warstomp is better than that joke of a troll racial.

Oh and trolls look stupid and the dance is silly

Woden

Jimeatsmenu wrote:

Data managed to keep me healed some of the time....

stuck healing in pvp now also .

played some WSG with my guild last night and a few randomers and it was much more fun. we where up against some fairly respectable alliance players/guilds and each time came out on top and usually with a 3-0 victory. haven't seen anyone come up with something better than a druid flag take yet. druid ftw!

DeVore

But dey sound cooool mon! Definitely Bob Marley, friend....


I already have a Tauren Warrior and wanted to try a Shamen, so it was Orc, Undead or Troll and I kinda liked the Rasta thing they have going on. I dunno yet, I'm tempted by Undead too. Anyone got any suggestions for a shammy?

DeV.

CodeMonkey

DeVore wrote:

But dey sound cooool mon! Definitely Bob Marley, friend....


I already have a Tauren Warrior and wanted to try a Shamen, so it was Orc, Undead or Troll and I kinda liked the Rasta thing they have going on. I dunno yet, I'm tempted by Undead too. Anyone got any suggestions for a shammy?

DeV.

You can only do tauren or troll shammy. I like tauren, the big cow looks cooler than the troll. I don't see anything wrong with being a troll shaman. So take your pick.

amp

DeVore wrote:

But dey sound cooool mon! Definitely Bob Marley, friend....

I always suspected you of being a troll.

hehehehe

BKtje

I got a troll shaman.

Berserker can give a very respectable increase to your dps (im talking about 50+dps at lvl 60) for 20(?) seconds. When that and flurry goes off and i got rockbiter on my base melee damage (with a shield!) is about 197dps.

ykt0di9url7bc3

Been playing WarSong like a madman for the last few days... in my games we won all but 3 against the alliance...

Hunters laying Ice traping on flags, Druids picking up on rebounds, annoying priests healing FC, nasty warlocks and their minions in defense...

We were stalemated a couple of times until new characters changed things up... You see the same guys\gals playing the whole time and we got a good system down...

druids\shamans\priests on attack... about 4 attack and the other six roam and control the middle... a very agressive way of doing things but it works....

Lol i spent some time sapping people that respawned by the graveyard... oh I was hunted down like a maingy dog for that kind of play

Dubhthamlacht

last few times i've been on warsong horde won 3 -0 each time. Shamans and Druids rule in CTF situations. Travel Form and Ghost Wolf are the deciders. One tactic I've seen is for Mages/Warlocks/Hunters to go up to roof above the flag room and AoE the place. In the confusion / panic priest will fear the lot of them and it's a simple grab and away with the flag. alliance I seen in the last 4 games were terrible. A big amount of palas in each team and we all know they take forever to get anywhere on foot. amazingly they always let the Pala's carry the flag if they had no druid. It was a simple matter of just attacking them on mass as they couldn't out run us.

Drakar

Someone mentioned in one of the pickup teams that they received 36k cps on Saturday playing Warsong.