I'll chime in and say that I'm saving my time with PvP until I hit 70 on my main. It's a shame I'm going to have to do the PvP grind for S1 welfare epics just so I can try and do PvE endgame instances, but I guess that's all there is to do.

I used to queue for BG's back when the game was new to me... just to do something different. Once I could join AV, I was majorly impressed with how much better a PvP experience I had with that map than any of the others. However, with all good things, they are done in moderation. Realizing I have to do an AV grind in order to get enough honor to buy Arena epics takes all the fun out of it.

Hoping for a more enjoyable experience,
niko

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I'm getting more than a little tired of Alliance deciding that just because they can't pull it together and win BGs, they're going to sit around and boycott them and whine about it. That makes complete sense -- Blizzard will definitely see them and decide to let them auto-win, because apparently they won't suck it up and do it themselves.

At the same point, I'm tired of Horde constantly complaining about this. We know already! Call them as many names as you like, but that won't get them back into BGs if they're set on their "we can't do this, we quit!" attitudes. No point in beating the dead horse -- it's old now. Really old.

But it would seem I'm one of the few who feels this way, as the "boycott" (can you really call it that if it's not going to change anything?) seems to be working and people are going full-out to complain about it.

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I just farm those BG's to get that shiny S1 gear.
don't ever play one for fun

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The only reason I step foot into a battleground these days is to grind the arena season one gear for my alt characters so they can move onto Arena. This pretty much sums up the feelings of the battlegrounds for most people in my guilds as well. Battlegrounds are no longer fun, they're not about PvP, they're simply about maximising your Honor/Hour in an attempt to get enough gear to last longer than two seconds in an Arena match.

There are several reasons for the feelings, and I guess it depends on your battlegroup. As an Alliance in Bloodlust the current win-loss ratio for AV is somewhere around the 7-93% mark in the hordes favour. In the other battlegrounds the win-loss ratio is actually about even between the Alliance and Horde when you're both PUGs. Unfortunately 9/10 games you're facing an extremely over geared organised group and they simply stomp your group into the ground. Recently a guild mate lost 32 EOTS games in a row to organised groups before giving up completely on the battleground.

So what's it like in an organised group? Well it turns out that organised groups [of both factions] don't like to fight other organised groups, it decreases the magical honor/hour. Instead when an organised group enters the battleground they have their leader stay out of the battleground and ask the group members whether or not they're fighting an org or a pug. If it's an org, they simply queue the group up for a different battleground, have everybody switch as soon as it pops up and then repeat the process until they're guaranteed a pug. Meanwhile the poor people queuing for pugs are joining battlegrounds that have already been half-finished because the org group left it. Honestly it feels like cheating playing in most organised groups, with 250-300 resilience organised groups your opponents didn't have a chance to begin with.

So in the end Battleground PvP these days is:

Alterac Valley: 64 honor for a loss, going to loose it; avoid it.
EOTS: 180 honor for a win, 5 minute games; join an org and farm it.
AB: 200 honor for a win, games can take a while; Organise EOTS, fallback to AB if fighting an org.
WSG: 140 honor for a win, games can take a while; Organise EOTS, fallback to WSG if fighting an org.

* Which battlegrounds you queue for is obviously dependant on your battelgroup.

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For some reason, Horde in the Ruin BG have figured out how to win every BG except AV (which we usually cap SH, IW and get stuck capping SP while nobody plays defense = 188-209 honor per game). As a result, I pretty much only run AV's with a premade from Magtheridon. There's usually one going 24/7 and you can't beat 5k honor/hour.

I play other BG's for fun occasionally but for the best honor/hour AV is by far the highest. A premade running any BG can gain good honor/hour but AB, WSG, and EOTS require more teamwork (as you pretty much have to 5-cap AB, hold 4 towers + run flag in EOTS, etc...), not to mention there is very little chance of running into another premade with AV.

As for the holiday weekends, it is disappointing how little extra honor is gained, it's almost not worth it for the honor/hr unless you have a premade to run that BG.

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I have to say that I am a little annoyed by the increase in n00bs to the BGs, but thats something that always has been, and always will be, not only in the battlegrounds, but all over WoW. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they listened to atleast some of the strategy from some of the more experienced bg-ers, but a lot of the people who are just there for the daily don't really do much, and it's pretty easy to notice. they stand around one node or flag (depending where you are) and after about 10-15 minutes they start complaining that everyone else is horrible players and that the match should be over already. Over the holidays i've had to keep my BG chat off because of much stupidity being spat out, and a lot of those people who just wont shut up about how bad everyone else is doing. Honestly, if you're going to be a whiny little ---- like that, stick to your raiding guilds, they dont seem to mind people whining so much.
As for the Honor...meh im not too worried. I do the PvP for the pvp not the products. Sure i do have most of the season one pvp gear, but i do BG quite a bit and that's simply because i enjoy it. I havn't gone into the arena's yet though...just waiting on a friend of mine to ding 70.

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Yes there are lots of new people in BG's. I think its great. You have to be on top of things all the time now if you want to win. Thankfully I still have my old PvP rank over my head, Knight-Captain, so I can attest I NEVER WANT OLD HONOR GRIND TO RETURN.

Eventually these new player will learn to defend, and not pull before the Warmasters are dead, I hope the next patch reinforces this notion when they have the stacking buff.

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The battleground honor system is broken and all attempts to fix it just make it worse. There are a couple of obvious flaws to the "IDEA" of battlegrounds and their rewards.

Flaw one - Learning curve... PvP is not a requirement for leveling, yet with NO PvP skills you can queue for BG... And then face off against PvP pros (With much better gear) and have a horrible experience... Strategy is a huge thing and there is no in game mechanism to help with strategy (I dont know how this would work but all we got is chat and a map)

Flaw two - Welfare Items (IE why most people BG)... Not just epics, but at every level there is some item for most classes (Physical DPS espcially) that "seem" so easy to get by BGing... Why is there no level 19 twink items from questing, crafting(BOP) or Rep? True there are rewards and drops from instancing, but in all level brackets there are many items for most classes that have no equivilant(low level jewelery).

Flaw three - Season one items now buyable with honor makes most tier 4 equivilant seem too expensive - most players would rather Farm AV for 8 hours than spend 1000g (more or less) on a similar BOE item or run heroics for Primal nether etc...

Flaw four - BG's are the one of the only place Gold Buyers cannot corrupt... Blizzard likes this...

Flaw five - There is no down side. They dont cost money. (Except arrows and reagants etc) Honor and marks only cost time and in AV at least even lossing makes it worth it.

As for the battlegrounds, AV never worked right - It wanted to be too many things. I like the "game" of WSG and AB better but I AV for the honor...

Blizzard favors raiders and PvPers over all others... I dont play Arena and I quit raiding, so Tier 4 equivilants are the most I will see... The real fix for BG's is to make them less manditory... This is done buy making compareable rewards that are attainable for a compareable amount of work... Crafting is one big way to fix this, and not just at level 70... Why are there no BOP rare items while leveling crafting? BOP tailoring should be seen as a template for all other crafting - a three piece set that is EQUAL OR SUPERIOR to tier 4... Engineers get one helm each that needs a primal nether, LW BOP is sets are not as good as our new easy to get Season one gear... The best quest rewards require long chains and/or groups and they still are not good enough... Rep rewards require a huge amount of Time - way more that Bging... Badge of Justice Reward system is a good anti-PVP...

In the spring 2007, my old guild started raiding kara 2 nights a week... The other 5 nights were spent usually in BG's or Arena teams for welfare epics... This was STANDARD RAID GEARING for most guilds... I hope I dont need to explain how backwards this is!

How many people would queue if THERE WERE NO REWARDS? IE play for fun. Maybe 10%

As for me, new server and new faction... And when my level 60 rogue hits 70 - I am sad that the most best casual gear is from comes from Battlegrounds. I will probably be there!


Thank you Blizzard..


PS - I like the 20-29 bracket still, the last 6 toons I have leveled I have "soft twinked" at 29(Best boe greens and no enchants) and been competative in both WSG and AB. While there are Twinks at 29 they are only 15-25% most of time.

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Blizzard really needs to get far more aggressive on dealing with AFKers. Even with the new reporting system, there's typically over 1/3 of the players AFK. There's just no significant consequence to getting reported.

The new system shouldn't only rely on players...if you're busy spamming your attacks, you don't have time to see who's AFK...find them in the list of raid icons...and report each.

A better system would be:
- Automatically report a player that's done zero damage or healing for four minutes. (that gets the cave dwellers)
- Since there's no consequence to being caught AFKing, make it REALLY hurt. Not only give them a deserter debuff for a couple of hours...also SUBTRACT honor from the player. Make it -300 Honor so they feel the pain.
- Dealing with AFKers that sleep in a defensive positions so as to appear to be active is much more difficult. Without dealing with this, you only shift cave dwellers to another place. For these losers, you'll need to rely on players to report them....but at least they'll be in places where others will see them.

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Nobody does bg's cause they crave pvp action. We want marks/honor because it's the ONLY way to get decent gear once you hit 70 in order to prep for heroic or high end raids. I only play AV, as its the only bg where an alliance can consistently get decent honor. When I need marks from other bg's I go in and hope we lose as quickly as possible so I can get my mark. i have no interest in PVP action and most other players dont as well.

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