Vanilla Alterac Valley And Why Its Remembered - WCmini Facts
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- Why did Alterac Valley use to Last for Days? Why is it remembered so fondly? What was so great about it?
This video could also probably be called the history of AV
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![The Story of Alterac Valley (Alterac Pass) [Lore]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/V4MxtPa3NtM/mqdefault.jpg)
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!
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 😅
>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.
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! 🙂
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
@@UNDEADWXRLORD ofc not... lol
This 2019, people actually know how to play and how to properly finish AV.
@@UNDEADWXRLORD 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!
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
"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
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.
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!
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
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! 😂
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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..
I find it funny that Horde players have been asking for Blizz to flip the maps for rotation for a decade now (IoC and AV) and nothing happens. Not a buff or a nerf, just every other week, flip starting points.
alliance players whine about a single bottleneck, and Blizz changes the game for them.
If there's anything more telling about how bratty alliance players are, it's this
15 years of pain.
This
a new video about this current anniversary event and how AV is horde dominant would be intresting
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.
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".
The horde have an advantage over the alliance on AV.
The alliance advance uphill, while the horde travel downhill.
The horde have three choke points to defend on the way to their base, while the alliance only has the bridge.
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.
I loved vanilla AV because I'm bad at pvp.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 🤷🏻♂️
hahaha thanks for this... I was a horde player in vanilla wow, and was exalted with the frostwolf clan! God i was proud of my wolf i got to prove i spent a lot of my life getting owned by a 1 sided fight i was on the losing end of
Those "advantages" were just Alliance superior thinking and planning... but when they saw Horde's advantage they boycotted it...
Jokes aside this video was really good! I didn't even know most of these AV facts in such detail. In my opinion Blizzard should try to put the PVEVP aspect more, in future. Also I liked your stylish edits towards the end, fancy!
like you said superior thinking and planning, you can't lose if you don't play
Ashran was Blizz's latest attempt at PVPVE and was widely hated. Personally I liked it but i could see why most didn't.
I mean it was ok but I was melee so it kind of sucked for me, I would go anywhere near the front line and get sniped by every ranged class
Next expansion, BFA, "Island scenario" should be like a mini battleground (arena?) you can queue for 3v3 PvP, or 3-man scenario PvE
I'm not sure 12 year olds are THAT great at planning
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!
Please stop saying calvery. It's cavalry cav-al-ry
calvery is where jesus dies. cavalry are horse mounted attackers
@@wildmildew1 It's calvary, not calvery.
Thank god you said this, I was getting anxiety.
@@Furosuchi were you though?
Gotta love how 3 out of 20 npcs which killed most players are from Westfall.
Play classic WoW, then you'll know why.
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.
Back in Vanilla there wasn't any inherent advantage for either side, that's why you could quit AV, go to bed, get up, go to work, come back home, enter AV and it would still be the SAME one!
Yes Alliance had the Bridge of Death, but the Horde had the Two Towers; both choke points were nearly impenetrable, and usually required summoning the raid boss to break through each respective point (The cavalry typically would not be enough for either side). If you won or not depended heavily on controlling the two graveyards closest to the generals. If you didn't the other team could respawn fast enough to reinforce the general and wipe their attempt to win.
So the strengths and weaknesses of the graveyards worked both ways. The positions of the Horde graveyards made them harder to defend; while it meant it was easier to get into the base; it also meant the Horde could take them back just as easily. What had to happen for Alliance to win was to defend the outer graveyard, which was extremely hard to do since it was open on all sides, and the spawn point could be bottle-necked to contain the next spawn wave while the point was recaptured. Additionally the capture point was far off from the bottleneck between the two towers, which made it all the easier to recapture the point because the bulk of the Alliance forces would be no where near it.
On the Alliance side there would be a stalemate at the bridge because it was nearly impossible to take the outside graveyard back once it was capped since you had the Horde team standing on the capture point while trying to cross the bridge. The moment the inner graveyard fell the Alliance would likely lose that match, but getting that inner graveyard of course was nearly impossible.
It's actually commendable that the people who designed AV in the first place was able to create an asymmetric map that was balanced to the point where both sides had a near impossible chance of actually being able to kill the other's general to end the game. All the changes to AV only served to make it more and more imbalanced as time went on.
AV in it's original state would have been far better if the quests also rewarded marks of honor, as well as the general giving out a repeatable quest of kill 100 players for a mark of valor. The only problem with AV in it's original state was the tying the rewards to ending the match as opposed to participating in it.
This /\ END of argument.
I think it's useless trying to explain this considering how horde-biased Hiru is.
I would say you are correct in one assumption.
The changes made the geographical differences more effecting of the gameplay. Meaning it enhanced the alliance advantage.
However, i would say you are very wrong on saying that the Horde ''two towers'' where as strong a defensive point as the bridge. As noted by the ''Kills list''. First off all, it would be natural for horde Archers to be on the list, it would NOT be natural for Drek'thar and his lieutanents to have SO many kills. And for the Alliance boss to have so few kills (Like the alliance archers had more kills than him) comparativly meant that Horde had fewer tries on killing him. Strenghtening the case that the siege of the bridge was a much tougher nut to crack than the two Towers.
Now your argument that ''it was near impossible to kill the boss'' i would say is moot, the reason why the Battles went on for so long was twosided, either the Horde went defensive and tried to hold the alliance back. (Which in the end made them nerf the starting spot of the Horde). Or the alliance had a very strong defense which the horde had to use way too much time to break through. You also need to stop thinking about this as the advantage was devastating, it was just noticeable. Just like how chessplayers knows that starting with white gives an advantage, starting AV on the alliance side gave an advantage. It did not mean it was a obvious or quick alliance win, but it affected the data noticeably as the mentioned ''Kill list'' shows.
Alliance graveyard was (in my opinion) more easily defendable by 1-2 alliance members as they had quite a few NPCs standing around making it possible to kite and harras any ''would be'' cappers.
Horde graveyard however was only defended by the guards at the graveyard, with no other NPC nearby to run towards. This made it possible for a capable rouge or two to kill a troll hunter (myself) that tried to defend it from their capping claws. If they capped it early, it was GG, whatever the horde did on the offense. Now you say that an organized horde push could retake the Horde base, well yes, an organized group can achieve anything in AV, but we're talking about 40 randoms on both teams. And here based on the thousands of AV battles, it is clear the alliance geographical advantage has had quite a large effect.
this ^
Your server sucked if the horde two towers choked you up, on US ED we would have Ally at the bridge for 6 hours....it was insane, you HAD to get those archers down and they were wassive stab sponges
Great memories and a lot of frustration being Horde and having a disadvantage built into the map, lol.
U still believe that?
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.
It's worth noting that not only there were A LOT more npc soldiers back then, but they were also way stronger and those inside the towers were even elite (and had a lieutenant boss with them)
Ally had huge advantages in AV for YEARS... Blizz did nothing. If horde got a tactic which gave them a chance to win... INSTANT NERF...
Yeah it's really disgusting.
What was not mentioned in this video:
The allys could simply walk over the waterfall at the horde's base, skipping ALL the NPC's there.
It's ridiculous how Blizzard ONLY listens to the crying ally kids.
@@Darthrath666 back in vanilla u could just ride through whole horde base without aggroing any npc
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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! 🤗
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.
Run in to Generals room, fear bomb, heal general. Usually caused a wipe and it was fun to do.
mini-trigger: it's ca"valry" not ca"lavry"
fish bait mayo isn't calvary a hockey team?
And 'impunity'
Not in-Putin-y
These days anyone with recording software and a video game is a RUclipsr. English competency not required.
hiru doesn't really believe in spelling.
kinda hilarious that you correct him on his pronounciation with a wrong spelling of his pronounciation. He's saying calvary, not calavry
weekend war in one battle, never ending for the whole day plus lol. Loved it
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
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.
Now that classic is out I can say that horde actually have an easier time getting to an offensive position, it just takes them forever to break the bottleneck.
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
I feel genuinely saddened by how much this epic battleground has declined
Longest AV I ever played in vanilla was just over 7hrs... loved every second of it
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.
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.
6:40
Old alterac valleys can last only 7 minutes if you are in premade group.
Jump over the wall if you are alliance, or take the backdoor shortcut if you are horde. Have 4 hunters or mages kite the warmasters/marshals while rest of the raid kills the general. Alternative 15-20 min strat is that you first cap enemy base graveyard, and then kill the marshals/warmasters one by one, and then go finish the general.
Remember this always being what was aimed for, but i also remember people writing: when/if our first push wiped below the bridge that we had no chance anymore. It was kind of sad that a battleground was decided in the first few minutes.
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.
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.
If only everyone playing Korrak now watched this...
Huh, neat. Never really been into PvP so it was nice to hear about it from someone who maybe was. I absolutely LOVED Wintergrasp, though. I miss it a lot :)
AV was the only BG I did in Vanilla. It was so much fun to have something like that. It felt like a proper war as opposed to these tiny skirmishes that the other BGs felt like.
As a horde player on a pvp server back when AV was brand new, the disadvantages made the victory even sweeter, and the infantry was the most effective at turning the tide because it didnt need to spend time in a weaker state like the elemental lords did(though if they did manage to survive and reach full power they became OP) and was just a large number of elite npcs in a zerg rush.
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 loved it, as horde we actually won most of the time om aggramar
Horde won on my server most of the time but when cross realm pvp came we starting losing regularly.
It was a good video and it makes me miss the old AV even more. One thing that you should have mentioned was the choke point at the Frostwolf towers. Many many times the Horde has been able to hold off the Alliance because of those two towers blocking the only route into their central keep. Ranged and healers could sit up there and destroy the incoming Alliance, back in Vanilla and BC. When I was on the alliance side I used to organize stealth runs just to take the Frostwolf Graveyard and pull the defenders away from the towers. In the old AV, games could swing hard in one direction then completely reverse in the other. Something that should be mentioned is that in Vanilla and BC AV you had to make a raid group, people were not just thrown into one initially.
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.
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.
Claiming no one noticed these changes until it was changed to be faster is entirely incorrect. All of these issues and more were brought up repeatedly and totally ignored by Blizz.
I also find it amusing that you excluded the biggest Alliance Advantages in AV. Those being The ability to jump over the Frostwall Keep walls and the fact that Alliance in AV during vanilla could also reach objectives faster due to the position of their starting point being closer to the mid on top of them having access to Paladin Crusader Aura
Also the reason Horde began winning AV when resources were introduced was due to Horde implementing a new strategy of actually defending and participating in PvP instead of just allowing the Alliance to Zerg rush across the map untouched.
The AV Zerg was ALWAYS the Alliance Strat because again they could entirely circumvent all of Frostwolf Keep defenses by jumping the wall.
I really enjoyed the old AV... And the turtles were fun for me whether horde turtled or alliance did. Was especially fun going in with guildies. But I used to play for longer periods straight than I do now. Still used to have tons of fun and it's by far my favorite BG and I played both horde and alliance.
All I remember out of classic AV was alliance skipping everything and killing Drek in about 15 mins by taking the shortcut and the graveyard and it was over before the horde could even reach the bridge.
It was painful. I exalted, got my unstoppable force, and that was the last AV I ever did.