Battlegrounds - first impressions

[seanwin]

Is the lag reasonable?

[Fendryl]

Originally posted by seanwin
Is the lag reasonable?

Warsong Gulch is quite smooth, the population for 'full' is really small. I didn't get into an Alterac Valley one for more than 5 mins, so couldn't tell. The only thing I did noticed that was slightly off about Alterac Valley was that the NPC's seemed to not come into view until you were almost right on top of them.

[Bizanich]

No, it sucks complete ass currently. I'll be running and suddenly 3 elite level 58 mobs will phase in on me and beat the shit out of me.

Buuuut, that could be because 80+ Warcraft servers have people zerging the Test Server .

Found the blue link, btw, for raids.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1#post2930839

You will have the option of going into the first available one, or designate which instance you would like to enter.

You can form a raid group and then create a battleground, and I believe the members of your raid group will be given priority to enter the instance you created.

[Ravensign]

Again, thats all fine and dandy if there aren't a bunch of empty instances that are doing a bad job matching players.

[Bizanich]

Originally posted by Ravensign
Again, thats all fine and dandy if there aren't a bunch of empty instances that are doing a bad job matching players.

I'm ok with that, it's like public servers for BF1942/Counterstrike, etc.

The pops won't be perfect.

What the raids allow, though, is being able to set up "clan matches" or tourneys or.....well, y'get the idea.

As has been said, next I want cross-server instances.

[Itzena]

Originally posted by Dyscord
The good: Winning is now more important than killing for honor acrueal. At 1660 honor per win in Warsong, who cares about kills? Group up, take those non ranged suport classes and roll!

Ah, excellent. Exactly the sort of thing I wanted to hear.

I sympathize with both sides, but once these BG's go live, the alliance are gonna get totally boned.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Besides, as I've said many times before, I fully expect a bunch of Alliance people/guilds to reroll en masse as Horde once BGs go in.

[beepbeepbeep]

So I woke up around 8 AM EST and logged in to play on the BGs. My corpse was in the instance and unreachable from when I quit in disgust at the lag the night before, so I had to grab a spirit rez.

Overall the Alterac battleground is really exiciting and an enjoyable break from PvE.

I spent about five hours playing, and I experienced a good deal of fighting.

There was no lag early in the morning, and that lasted for about three hours, it was wonderful. The game was playing very smoothly and the experience was really cool, taking bunkers with groups, joining in on a zerg now and then, assaulting a graveyard, etc.

An organized group can accomplish a lot in the instance assuming there isn't much lag.

Collections:

You can collect armor scraps, heads, flesh, and blood from enemies, both PCs and NPCs. Players spawn a "lootable" corpse after they die, but I'm not entirely sure how the game decides who gets to loot it, I had quite a few dissapear on me mid loot.

Blood can be gathered to summon an elemental, which is basically a raid boss that fights for you.

Armor can upgrade your troops. I'm not sure if it upgrades their actual armor values, or just replaces them with higher levels (I seemed to notice a trend over time of Seasoned -> Veteran -> Champion guards).

Flesh supposedly is used to call in airstrikes, which I did not get to experience much of.

Body parts can be turned in for faction to various NPCs.

Rezzing:

The rez system is basically when you die, you can get a rez unless someone skins you, or you can press release and it will drop you at a graveyard. If you stay at the GY and your side controls it, it will rez people in 30 second "waves".

This raises players with full health every 30 seconds, and possibly full mana (not sure on that one).

Bunkers can be captured which provide fallback positions, reinforcements can be called in with supplies gathered from the mines.

Mines are assaulted by Kobolds and such, if you kill the taskmaster in there then a lot of horde / alliance NPCs will spawn and run in and take over. You can ferry supplies to the quarter master, peon style, and when they get enough they will send a wave of troops to attack.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to capture the "center" stronghold. I could be wrong, but as horde we had complete control of the map for about an hour except for their town, but we couldn't take over the Stonehold (or whatever the name is) bunker in the middle of the map. Eventually their troops kept spawning and hitting us from behind. We had the bunker completely empty and clear but there was nothing to click on to really take it over.

In the current state, based on the game I played, I think it is going to be VERY difficult for anyone to win. Between players rezzing at full hp every 30 seconds and waves of hard hitting (150-300, and some elites sometimes), high HP mobs, it is almost impossible to take over the town.

That also brings around the point of landmines. Some places there are landmines, like the enemy town and some bunkers. This led to quite a few hunters standing on top of, literally, 30+ mines, and sniping melee that couldn't hit them without blowing up. The mines are proximity and explode on enemies for 1200-1500 dmg. I'm not sure if this is fire damage or of it is resistable, but I do seem to remember one hitting me for 700ish at one point.

So many landmines, guards, and players, in combination with two bunkers of arrow snipers, etc, made it impossible for our side to break into their base and end it, even though we had everything else on the map (except the dead center bunker that kept respawning mobs that I mentioned).

Eventually little packs of alliance snuck out and started capturing a GY here, a bunker there, until finally it was half and half again, and they summoned their elemental, and ours died because of 20+ upgraded guards, 20+ players, and it was in the middle of their town, which sadly we could not reach due to aforementioned defenses.

Finally the lag got so bad I had to log off, even after trying for about an hour to play with it, and since I didn't see either side winning anytime soon.

Basically my problems are guards and NPCs spawning far too often and in too great of a number, PCs spawning too fast, PC corpses being very difficult to loot sometimes, and the horrid, horrid lag at any time from noon to two AM EST (which I hope will settle down eventually).

Besides those problems which can easily be corrected via some fine tuning, I think the Alterac BG is very very enjoyable, and I can't wait to try it with my guild as an organized group.

[Sodami]

On pvp servers it is pretty common place for horde to out number alliance (with UD rogues being the reason).

[Ravensign]

Originally posted by Bizanich
I'm ok with that, it's like public servers for BF1942/Counterstrike, etc.

The pops won't be perfect.

Thats the problem. It doesnt allow imperfect pops to proceed in Warsong Gulch. It just kills the instance in 5 min, making you go to the back of the queue for nothing.

And one may say you want to go to instance X, but right now, it doesnt seem to be filling it with any care to whether 1 or or 9 of your group/raid get in.

[ChewieTobbacca]

Id like them to set it so one can see the population within each instance (or at least Gulch) so that you know if you're joining an empty one that needs to be filled or if you'll actually get into an instance that needs players

And NPCS need a nerf in Alterac Valley... or at least take out durability loss. Durability loss in PvP is stupid.

[beepbeepbeep]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, I knew I was forgetting some things.

I had to spend about 10 gold in the five hours I was PvPing from durability deaths by the NPCs.

Very uncool.

[beepbeepbeep]

What else.

Guards CAN drop normal loot based on what I've heard. I have heard of both an eternium lockbox and one guy was yelling quite a bit that he found Skullflame Shield on one of the guard corpses, who knows if it was true.

[Kodylan]

They can drop normal loot, yes. Friend of mine got a serpentine sash off one. Let's hope that remains the case if the mobs continue to give durability hits on death.

[Malse]

There definitely needs to be a way to tell who is in the damn instance with you, or better yet, and auto-grouping system. Half the pre-verbal morons can't get grouped up until the CTF one is half-lost.

[Ravensign]

Originally posted by Malse
There definitely needs to be a way to tell who is in the damn instance with you, or better yet, and auto-grouping system. Half the pre-verbal morons can't get grouped up until the CTF one is half-lost.

Ha! Aint that the truth. First time through, we stormed back from behind when people started to stick together.

I dont know what is with these people that rush at 2-3 enemies solo, and just get waxed. Someone needs to tell them its not a single player game, and they aint "the One"

OTOH, there is always the "Self Appointend Leader" shouting tactics constantly. Yelling at people like he was actually voted by God to be our commander.