Battlegrounds
October 1st, 2006 by Alice
- Basic Battleground Concepts
- Joining the Battle
- Leaving a Battleground
- Quick word about Cowardice
- Auto /AFK, your new Nemisis
- A different kind of Warcraft
- The BGs: Different Game, Different Goals, Different Rewards
- Honor, Faction & Reputation
- Warsong Gulch
- Arathi Basin
- Alterac Valley
- General Strategies
- Other Resources
- Comments
- Patch changes to Battlegrounds
World of Warcraft is, without question, the most popular online role-playing game in the world. WoW, by design, is not a revolutionary game as much as it is an evolutionary one, perfecting practices found in other online RPGs. The battlegrounds (or BGs, as cool, “in the know” people refer to them) are among the most riveting of these practices. Players who wish to engage in some PvP action against the enemy faction (Hey, that rhymes!) can do so almost instantly, simply by talking to the appropriate NPC. These battle-thirsty players are then shuttled into the battleground of their choosing, in which the action is instant and non-stop.
The overall outcome of these battles results in some accumulated honor, some reputation rewards, and a heck of a good time. The goal of this guide is to spell out for you, dear reader, the dirty little details of how the battlegrounds work, in order to minimize frustration, maximize your enjoyment, and to give you an edge over your enemies. (This is particularly true if you are a Horde player, as those uppity Alliance wussies are in need of a constant beat down to keep them in their place. But more on that later.)
Basic Battleground Concepts
The basic battlegrounds concept was actually pioneered by Mythic Entertainment, in their breakthrough game Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC tried, quite successfully, to overcome what no other online RPG had: the problem of implementing PvP into an online RPG. The issue was that many folks liked PvP, while at the same time, they hated to be constantly ganked. PvP had been, up until the time of DAoC, either been completely non-existent (a la Everquest), or totally unrestricted (as it was in early Ultima Online). If you’ve ever played an MMO on an unrestricted PvP server, you understand the problems of unrestricted PvP very well indeed. Unrestricted PvP is as ruthless as a car salesman at a free lunch. The constant threats to your online happiness and well-being are very real. The problem is that unrestricted PvP gets old fast, and sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the game.
DAoC solved the problem by turning PvP into a mini-game. You could not PvP in the main adventuring areas. You had to enter the battleground to do so. (DAoC had only one battleground, unlike WoW.) There were objectives to be met, obstacles to overcome, and rewards for honor kills; overall, it was a pretty solid execution of the concept. For the first time, online RPG players could have a solid PvE game, and yet engage in some serious PvP at their choosing. Things worked out so well – the PvP was a hugely popular feature – that people kept playing the game, long after its natural life expectancy was over, just for the battlegrounds. It was (and still is) that good.
WoW took the DAoC concept a bit further. Unlike other online RPGs, there are three battlegrounds to choose from when playing WoW. This is a huge improvement over other games in this genre, and contributes significantly to players’ enjoyment of the end game. The three battlegrounds are:
- Alterac Valley (AV)
- Arathi Basin (AB)
- Warsong Gulch (WG)
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| Battlegrounds of Azeroth |
Each battleground is substantially different from the others in terms of objectives, rewards, and tactics. I’ll explain each in detail later on.
The lore behind the battlegrounds is that certain areas of Azeroth are simply rife with strife (Woot! Another rhyme!). These “choke points” are the locations of frequent outbreaks of violence between the two factions. By entering these areas, players are choosing to enter a zone, but not for the normal purposes of questing, grinding, or other normal activities. In entering one of these “conflict” zones, players are choosing to fight for their side against the enemy. The concept, from Blizzard’s mouth (mouths?) to your ears, reads as follows:
“In the battle for Azeroth, certain territories have become focal points for conflict between the Horde and Alliance. Battlegrounds represent key locations where this struggle has escalated into all-out war. Each battleground presents a different challenge and environment, and victory here must be achieved not through sheer numbers, but through strategy, skill, and grit.”
Joining the Battle
To join a Battleground, a player need merely talk to the appropriate “battlemaster”, the NPC that controls access to an individual Battleground. Where are these battlemasters? They are located, appropriately, immediately next to the warrior trainers in each side’s major cities. If you are at all uncertain as to where this is, just ask a guard. They’ll direct you right to them or follow the link below for a list with maps.
List of all Battlemasters >
There are also secondary entrances to each battleground. These are located not in major cities, but in various outdoor zones in several places around Azeroth. Later in the guide I discuss each battleground in detail, at which time maps with the locations of these battlemasters are included.
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| Locate a Battlemaster |
Once you’ve located the battlemaster for, say, Warsong Gulch (assuming that is the battleground you wish to join), a player need merely speak to him briefly, and the battle master places the player in the WG queue. The queue is an important feature of the three battlegrounds. The game does a lot of automatic matching of players, based upon character level and team size, to ensure that the match-ups are ostensibly even. The key word here is ostensibly. The game has used some quirky mechanics to determine fairness (I’ve been put into GW matches with a team of five Horde players, only to find that there are fifteen players on the Alliance team) but in most cases it works out quite well.
Rest assured that, as a player, you are not waiting in the queue for no reason. The game is attempting to place you in a game with appropriate numbers of enemy players your level. If you have a long wait, it means that there are too many, or too few, players on one side or the other, and the game is simply doing its best to sort out the various difficulties this causes.
It’s also important to note that the battlegrounds are instances. They are not normal, static zones on the map. This means that there are an infinite number of battlegrounds going at any given moment, and that the all-knowing Blizzard servers have done their best to provide even match-ups to all players. It also means that whenever a player enters a new battleground, the NPCs, resources, mobs, and other whatnot are all freshly spawned, shiny and new for your bloodthirsty enjoyment. Lucky you.
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| After Queuing click to enter |
If you find yourself stuck in a queue for a while, sometime later a pop-up window will appear on your screen, confirming that you wish to enter the battleground. (In the case of the above example, Warsong Gulch.) While waiting, feel free to check your mail, do some window-shopping at the auction house, or engage in some suggestive emotes with that hot night elf chick standing nearby. Once this window pops up, however, you have two minutes to accept. If you cannot finish up whatever the heck you are doing in 120 seconds, you’ll find yourself summarily bumped out of the queue. The moment you accept, you’ll be transported to your battleground.
It’s also important to note that you can do anything you want while waiting for a BG to open up. There are really no limits. If you are flying halfway across the world on a windrider or griffon, sitting on the boat to Booty Bay, shopping for roasted quail, banana bread, and morning glory dew (mmmm, delish!), waiting for the Deeprun Tram, making thorium hand grenades, browsing the auction house, reading your mail, or simply dancing in the streets, the battleground queue pop-up window will find you. One click of the mouse and you’ll be instantly transported from wherever you are to your chosen battleground. It’s all easy peasy.
You can, if you wish, join all three battleground queues at the same time. This is done, as you might imagine, by talking to all three battlemasters. (In the capital cities, they make this oh so convenient; heck, they’re standing practically right next to one another.) Quite simply, the battlemasters put you into the queues for AV, AB, and WG, and you’ll go to the first one with availability. In yet another quirky game mechanic, you will not be purged from the other two queues when you accept your first battleground invitation. You’ll still be waiting in line for the other two BGs. In other words, if you are really hoping to get into an Alterac Valley fight, but want to jump into a quick Arathi Basin brawl while waiting, your place in the AV line remains secure. In fact, if your spot in the AV queue comes up, you’ll get a pop-up window offering to transport you to AV, even if you are right in the middle of that Arathi Basin fight. It’s a very unusual design decision, but Blizzard, in their wisdom, felt this solution was best and most enjoyable for everyone.
Leaving A Battleground
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| Leave & return to Battlemaster |
While we are on this topic, let’s talk for a moment about exiting the battleground. You’d think this is too small a topic for our consideration, but there are a couple of things you need to know. When you leave a battleground, you go back to the location you signed up, not the location you were at when you entered. Sound confusing? That’s probably because that last sentence was so badly structured, it violated every rule of grammar ever written. I’ll try again.
When you leave a battleground, the game transports you back to the battlemaster. If you joined the battleground queue in Ironforge, it’s back to the Ironforge battlemaster you will go when you leave the BG. The game will not magically restore you to wherever you were when your place in the queue came up. In other words, if you got bored waiting for Warsong Gulch to start, and decided to fly to Gadgetzan while you were waiting, the game isn’t going to place you back in Gadgetzan after your WG match. It puts you back where you joined the queue, right in front of your battlemaster. If you want to go back to Gadgetzan after your battleground, you’ll have to fly there again later.
The same is true when a particular battleground is over. Win or lose, when a battleground ends, you are magically transported right back to wherever you signed up. You cannot stay and hang out. Besides, that would be like staying at a bar after they stopped serving drinks and all the hotties went home. And a bar without booze and hotties is, well, unimaginably boring. Besides, the bouncers kick you out. (It’s the same with the battlegrounds.)
On a side note, the primary mechanic for leaving a battleground in the middle is to use the command /afk. The game is very strict about going /afk (away from keyboard) in a battlefield. The short and sweet of it is that if you type /afk, you’ll find yourself instantly transported back to your battlemaster. Be very careful of this feature though. Blizzard has magically figured out a way to make players abstain from leaving battles prematurely. When you /afk out or leave before the battle is through, you will be given the penalty of a fifteen minute wait until you can be accepted again into another queue. Details follow.
A Quick Word About Cowardice
When the battlegrounds were first introduced, they were fun, they were exciting and, on most servers, they were dominated by a few dedicated guilds. These guilds had the foresight and vision to put together PvP teams that fought in the BGs every day. They did this for hours on end. On my server (Boulderfist) Warsong Gulch was owned, completely and totally, by an Alliance guild named Kaizen. Because they PvPed so much, Kaizen players had scary, purple, PvP epics. Kaizen had a lot of battlefield organization. Kaizen had strong leadership. It seemed that Kaizen never lost a WG match, ever. Kaizen was scary. Scary as crap.
As you can imagine, lots of guilds like Kaizen got to be pretty good at kicking people’s unmentionables in the various BGs. Not wanting to give Kaizen and their ilk another victory — along with a bunch of easy honor kills, and some BG reputation (more on reputation later) — players began to go /afk the moment they saw these guilds in a BG. In fact, as soon as people got into a battleground with one of these uber guilds, there were a lot of conversations that went like this one:
Sneezle: “Woot, finally in! I love Warsong Gulch!”
Boredwithlife: “Who’s inviting?”
Gayasafruittart: “Yeah, who’s inviting?”
Dominatorz: “I’ll invite.”
Heckle: “Lol, nice name, Gayas. I’m surprised the GMs let you keep it.”
Gayasafruittart: “Hehe, no one’s reported it yet. If they make me change it, I’m going to try for ‘Lesbeans.’ I’ll tell them I’m French.”
Heckle: “Lol. Good luck with that.”
Sneezle: “Who’s inviting? Invite me, dammit!”
Dominatorz: “I am, I am, hold your horses, Sneez.”
Browncow: “Invite plz.”
Warsong Gulch Herald: “The battle for Warson Gulch will begin in 30 seconds!”
Dominatorz: “Browncow, it says you’re grouped.”
Browncow: “Ok, try it now.”
Boredwithlife: “Uh, guys, look at the battlefield roster.”
Boredwithlife: “It’s Kaizen.”
Browncow: “Crap. I hate them.”
Boredwithlife: “Everyone just afk out.”
Dominatorz: “Yep, no sense giving them easy honor and rep.”
Gayasafruittart: “Who’s Kaizen?”
Sneezle: “They dominate WG. We better afk out, or gonna get pwned.”Heckle has left the battle.
Browncow has left the battle.
Boredwithlife has left the battle.
Dominatorz has left the battle.Gayasafruittart: “C’mon, how tough could they be? Show some spine…”
Sneezle has left the battle.
Gayasafruittart: “Guys? Guys?”
Gayasafruittart: /rollseyes
Gayasafruittart has left the battle.
When you stop and think about it for a moment, the reaction demonstrated above pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the battlegrounds – hardcore PvP action. /Afking out is, in no uncertain terms, saying “I want to fight in the BGs, but not lose and get my face rubbed in it.” It’s weaksauce, plain and simple.
It also accomplishes little. Common belief is that if everyone on one side goes /afk, the battle will end, and that scary PvP guild on the other side will get no honor, no reputation, and basically make no progress. This is a myth. The fact is that, whether opposing players fight or /afk out, PvP guilds are still getting some serious honor and reputation just by entering the BG.
If players fight guilds like Kaizen, Kaizen players do get a bit more of both honor and reputation, simply because they’re good. But so do the players with the courage to stay and face them, even if these players lose. These courageous players also have a chance of defeating Kaizen-like guilds. By /afking out, opposing players gain zero honor and rep as they simply concede the battle to these uber guilds – and these uber guilds still get honor and rep for free. The battlegrounds are structured in such a way that even if everyone on the other side goes /afk, honor and rep are still awarded. Going /afk and fleeing a BG doesn’t slow down the progress of guilds like this. It doesn’t keep them from gaining honor and rep. It doesn’t deny them a victory. In fact, it hands them one, dipped in easysauce.
In fact, the only people who got zero honor and rep were the people going /afk.
Another problem was that people were going /afk for the most trivial of reasons. Players would enter a battleground, see that the opposing team had one more player than they did, and go /afk. They reasoned that the game was “unbalanced.” These players didn’t try to make a go of it with a small numerical disadvantage, or to wait the 30 seconds it would take for someone else to join on their side. Other players would go /afk in the middle of a hard fought and very competitive BG because it was dinnertime (feel free to insert an alternate random reason here), letting down their teammates and guaranteeing a loss. Others would go /afk because they got into a dispute with their teammates, because no one would listen when they gave orders, because no one wanted to use their favorite strategy, or because so-and-so was “cheating.” In short, because there was no penalty to /afking out of a BG, people did it all the time, for the most trivial of reasons. Because Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch are instances with smaller numbers of players, this /afk epidemic had a bigger impact on them. Alterac Valley involves 40 players per side, and lasts much much longer than either AV or WG, so the impact of players going /afk is less dramatic (I’ll discuss the whys and wherefores of this later).
Blizzard had to do something about this and their response was to introduce the “deserter” penalty. Any time you leave a battleground before it ends, you are flagged as a deserter. This means you cannot enter another BG for 15 minutes. If your battleground ends normally, you are not flagged and can enter another right away.
This system has a number of advantages, as I’m sure you can imagine. For the most part, it has dramatically reduced the epidemic of /afking out of Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch instances. People cannot simply quit and get into another battleground right away, as there is now a “downtime” penalty. Although Blizzard’s fix did, in large part, solve this problem, it has a major disadvantage: the auto-afk feature.
Auto /Afk — Your New Nemesis
Until the deserter penalty, the auto /afk feature wasn’t a big deal. If you went /afk by accident, you could simply log back into a BG. Not any more.
Why is this a problem? Well, it’s really only a problem when fighting in Alterac Valley. You see, Alterac Valley isn’t like WG or AB. Those battlegrounds last, at the maximum, about 30 minutes. I’ve seen AV last for 14 hours. I’ve never, ever seen one take less than 90 minutes, no matter how dominant or powerful the winning team was. AV has forty players per team, and accomplishing anything in that BG is a major undertaking.
In an epic battle of this kind, can you think of any reason someone might go /afk for a few minutes? So can I. I’ve answered the door, gotten something to eat, or gone to the bathroom and found myself auto /afked out when I returned. I had to wait 15 minutes, because I was now a “deserter”, to try to get back in. If the U.S. army labeled every soldier that had to go the bathroom a “deserter”, Sadaam Hussein would have not only won the war, he’d be burning Washington and looting every WalMart and Tesco in sight by now.
I mention this because it can be really infuriating. Log into the game, then wait 20 minutes in the queue (Boulderfist is often full these days) just to get my character into the game itself. Then run to the battlemaster and sign up for Alterac Valley. The wait time to get in to AV is often 15 minutes or more. After waiting a total of 35 minutes (20 to get into the game itself, then 15 more to get into AV = 35), I’m finally in AV. I PvP for a while, smiting the evil goody-goodies of the Alliance (Is the term “evil goody-goodies” a contradiction? Oh, never mind) and generally have a good time. Suddenly, my neighbor rings my doorbell to discuss my howling chihuahua. After a few minutes of friendly chit-chat, in which I assure her that Midge will be quieter from now on, I sit back down at my computer and….I’m back in Orgrimmar. The game had auto /afked me.
So I wait my 15 minutes to clear my deserter status, then sign back up with the AV battlemaster. The average wait time for AV is now 28 minutes. Sheesh. I hate auto /afk.
A Different Kind of Warcraft
Now that you understand the basics of the battlegrounds, let me discuss another concept with you, my battle-hardened little comrade. The battleground zones are more than just another in-game adventuring zone. Entering a battleground for some PvP isn’t like running an instance, nor is it like doing some raid content. Running Dire Maul, or even Molten Core, is nothing like running a battleground. Heading into the battlegrounds is, for the most part, like playing an entirely different game.
Here’s what I mean. When playing World of Warcraft normally, even on a PvP server, any combat between you and enemy players is minimal. It’s the exception, not the rule. You’ll spend 99% of your time playing the PvE aspects of the game, fighting monsters and collecting loot. The tactics, strategies, and overall character abilities you successfully employ while playing WoW are really geared toward this “me versus the world” style of play.
For this reason, players will often begin playing in one of the battlegrounds instances and come, quite quickly, to the conclusion that they suck. And they’d be absolutely right in that assessment.
As anyone who’s ever played an online PvP game of any kind will tell you, PvP is tough. It’s much, much harder to kill a real human player than some dumb computerized AI. Personally, I learned this lesson playing one of the Unreal Tournament games. I loved that game, and played it like mad. I played daily. And I ruled.
The problem was, I almost always played against the computer’s artificially intelligent ‘bots, and never really bothered to log into any live games. Those bots were quick and they had skills, but the truth was that I came to rule them. If bots could have emotions, these bots would have known fear. If they put a name to their terror, that name was Pig. I was, in their world, a great and terrible god of destruction.
However hard-earned that dominance was, it eventually bored me. Oh, how droll the life of the god of destruction became! Bored, I decided to demonstrate my godly skills to the masses of other UT players by playing online. It was a new experience for me, and it took me a while to figure out how to join online games, but after a few short minutes, I was in-game, and ready to show off a little.
And I promptly found myself on the receiving end of a lethal head shot.
Bad luck, I assumed. I respawned, sought out my enemies, and … promptly got perforated. I respawned again, and was blown to wet, bloody bits a moment later. I respawned again, and managed to crank off a few rounds with my chain gun (at basically nothing and nobody) before I was electrocuted. Then I was blown up again, then melted by plasma, then had my limbs hacked off with flying razor disks of death. Again, and again, and again. Man, how the god of destruction sucked!
Why did this happen? Because human beings have been endowed by their creator with a whole lot of intrinsic creativity, craftiness, sneakiness, and deadly cunning. The AI of computer-controlled enemies, no matter how well-designed, cannot match up to this in the least. Humans rule.
The BGs: Different Game, Different Goals, Different Rewards
So the battlegrounds are much more challenging than regular PvE play. They are different in a number of other ways as well. Despite the fact that PvP is so challenging, you don’t get any drops, any loot, any money, or any treasure from fighting in the battlegrounds. Further, you don’t get any experience from killing other players.
I can almost hear you asking, “If I don’t get any drops, or money, or experience, why would I waste my time in the freaking battlegrounds?” Hang on there, little Conan, and I’ll tell you. As the whole purpose and intent of these conflict-laden zones is different from normal zones, so are the rewards and objectives. No, it’s not about killing mobs, completing quests, collecting herbs, or doing some fishing. The purpose in entering a battleground zone is to kill your enemies, and in so doing, gain both reputation and honor. Achieve enough honor, enough reputation, or both, and you can purchase epic-quality gear at bargain-basement prices.
It’s important that you understand the previously-stated concept very clearly: you won’t make money, get drops, or anything of the sort while in the BGs. (In fact, although the game allows you to loot enemy corpses of trivial amounts of cash, the BGs will probably cost you some money in repairs, potions, bandages, and other whatnot. It’s a small price to pay.) The rules of the game are simply different.
Honor, Faction, and Reputation
You hear players blather on about honor, faction, and reputation quite a bit, and they often use these terms interchangeably. It can be a bit confusing. Let me clarify what these folks are trying to say. (For a detailed analysis of reputation and faction in WoW, I’d recommend reading Elvyra’s Guide for the Reputationally Challenged, found at WorldofWar.net. Elvyra goes into great detail, discussing at length every faction in the game.).
Faction
A faction is a group of NPCs in the game. These NPCs can come to love or hate you, depending, basically, on what you do for them. If you complete quests for them, kill their enemies, or give them certain items (like cloth or herbs), they become friendlier and friendlier.
Reputation
Reputation is your standing with one of the above-mentioned factions. One of the factions in World of Warcraft is the Timbermaw Furbolgs. If you want to improve your reputation with the Timbermaw, they’ll want some enemy furbolgs (from a different tribe) killed, and they’ll want some quests completed. Each enemy you kill gains you a bit of reputation with the Timbermaw, as does completing each quest. If you gain enough reputation, the Timbermaw will let you pass through their territory unmolested. If you continue to gain reputation, you’ll eventually be able to buy some highly prized items (mostly tradecraft recipes) from them. Gain even more reputation with the Timbermaw faction, and they’ll sell you some of the most rare and sought after trade recipes in the game. Basically, you’ll be able to make some very nice (and very profitable) stuff.
Similarly, fighting in an individual battleground earns you reputation with specific battleground factions. The Horde factions are as follows: The Warsong Outriders (for Warsong Gulch), the Defilers (for Arathi Basin), and the Frostwolf (for Alterac Valley). The Alliance factions are: The Silverwing Sentinels (for Warsong Gulch), the League of Arathor (for Arathi Basin), and the Stormpike (for Alterac Valley).
Gaining reputation is a slow process. For each of the battleground factions, players start out as neutral. Gaining reputation elevates them to friendly status, which allows players to buy some moderately useful items from faction vendors. If, for example, you become friendly with Silverwing Sentinels, they’ll sell you some bric-a-brac commensurate with your reputation.
Additional reputation elevates players to honored status, at which level a faction will sell them some truly good items. At revered status players can buy some powerful and useful knickknacks, and at exalted, the items a player can purchase from a battlegrounds faction are truly epic. Getting to exalted status with a single battleground is really quite difficult, and takes a lot of dedicated fighting over many weeks. However, most people consider the purchasable rewards (which are linked later in this guide) worth the effort. Of course, there are the rare individuals that are so dedicated that they’ve achieved exalted status with all three battlegrounds. The technical term for people with this much free time and devotion is ubergeek extreme fanboys.
Honor
Honor is completely unrelated to the above two concepts. This can be confusing, because people tend to mix it into any discussion involving faction and reputation. Honor is what you get by killing members of the opposing faction anywhere in the world. (These enemy players have to be suitably close to you in level. You gain no honor by ganking newbs). You gain honor in direct relation to how much damage you do to them. If you kill an enemy player by yourself, you gain all the honor. If you and a friend gang up and kill him, you get a portion of the honor based on how much damage you did to him; your friend gets a similar portion based on his damage.The amount of honor you gain in a given week results in your honor rank. The ranks for the Horde and the Alliance are called different names, but they are equivalents. You accumulate honor for killing the enemy anywhere in Azeroth, not just in the BGs. There are still hotspot locations around the world where people gang up to ruthlessly gank one another. Prior to the implementation of the battlegrounds, the hottest of these hotspots was Tarren Mill-Southshore corridor. The Alliance raided TM every day, and if they didn’t, the Horde raided Southshore. The area basically served as a big, informal battleground. If you wanted to accumulate some honor, TM was the place to go. Even today, if you try to get into Upper Black Rock Spire, for example, there will be a gaggle of angry, overdressed, homicidal Alliance dandies waiting to gank the living crap out of you. Best of luck getting past them.
Your honor rank allows you to purchase items from special vendors in your capital city. These items range from very good to truly epic, depending on your rank. Unlike reputation (which is permanent) honor is very temporary. If you PvP a lot, you’ll go up in rank. If you don’t PvP much at all, you’ll go down in rank.
In addition to killing enemy players, you can also gain bonus honor by accomplishing some objectives in the various battlegrounds. In Alterac Valley, for example, you gain bonus honor by killing various NPC commanders and leaders, and by destroying towers or capturing graveyards. In Arathi Basin, you gain bonus honor according to how many resources your team gathers. Generally speaking, the relative value of bonus honor varies. Remember, the most consistent method of gaining honor is to kick the living crap out of your enemies.
Just as each of the battlegrounds has a different system of accumulating bonus honor, each has a radically different set of objectives. These require some in-depth explanation, as there are numerous nuances. In each of the below sections, I’ll do my best to lay out the various subtleties, some suggested strategies, and the rewards for gaining reputation with each of the three battleground factions.
Please also note that Blizzard’s honor and reputation systems are so poorly documented, and so subject to change, that researching them was a nightmare. It is obvious to anyone who’s spent some time in the battlegrounds that, at various points in time, bonus honor and bonus reputation was being gained. These same veterans are often at an utter loss to explain exactly why this was happening, however. In the sections below I’ve done my absolute best to document what is known about accumulating both honor and reputation in each battleground.
Warsong Gulch
Overview: Warsong Gulch is, both literally and figuratively, a game of capture the flag. There are 10 players on each team. The Horde team must work their way into the Alliance base and grab the Alliance flag. The Alliance team must do likewise to the Horde. Each team must then return the enemy flag to their own base to score a point. The first team to score three points wins the match.
Length: Usually under 30 minutes. 15 to 20 minutes is common.
Battlemasters: As always, there is a Warsong Gulch battlemaster in each faction’s major cities. There are also entrances in the field (see the map below). NPCs near the field entrances give quests that yield bonus honor and reputation.
Insight: Sounds simple, right? There are several complications.The moment you grab the enemy flag, you become a shining beacon – almost literally – running across the battlefield. The flag itself is a bright red or blue banner on a long pole, and carrying it makes you stand out. You also have a colored tail behind you, and it follows you as you run. In short, you are the most obvious thing on the entire field.
Of course, if you are killed by an enemy, you drop the flag. If they pick it up, it’s summarily returned to their base, and you’ve accomplished nothing. Since you are the most prominent moving object in the entire game while carrying the flag, everyone on the opposing team will be doing their utmost to kill you. Generally speaking, they succeed.
Further, you cannot score if the opposing team has possession of your flag. The significance of this rule is not to be overlooked. Unless your team’s flag is sitting securely in its sconce, you gain nothing by stealing your opponents’ flag. Thus the very design of Warsong Gulch requires you to practice offence and defense simultaneously.
Strategies: In every battleground, there are numerous strategies that have proven successful. Below are listed a few that I’ve seen work.The “Stick Together” Strategy. This is the strategy that made Kaizen famous. In WG, Kaizen stuck to each other like glue. They traveled in a big, scary, unkillable mob. This mob marched right down the middle of the gulch, and they chewed up anyone they met along the way. Then they marched right into your base, and stomped on any defenders. Then the mob marched out of your base, with your flag, and back to the middle of the field. There they usually met some hastily gathered defenders. Kaizen summarily ground these stragglers to powder. If any Hordies had the audacity to take Kaizen’s flag while they were out, this is where the deadly Kaizen mob of death met them, too. Kaizen then stomped them and took their flag back. The mob then continued onward to their base, where they scored a point. They then repeated the above stomping, mashing, grinding, marching, chewing, killing rampage two more times. Game over.
The “Five Rogue” Strategy. This is a good strategy as well. The idea is that all your team’s rogues and druids go out on offense. Everyone else stays back on defense and protects the flag.
If you find yourself asking how this baby works, let me explain. Ideally, five rogues or druids head off to the enemy base, leaving 5 defenders at home. You see, rogues and druids have the only method of instantly turning their opponents into useless, immobile statues, incapable of doing anything. It’s called Sap, and it’s the freaking bomb. Generally speaking, the rogues stealth into the enemy flag room, sap everyone, and take the flag. Then they run as a group back home. If anyone attacks the flag carrier, that attacker is immediately sapped, gouged, stun locked, garroted, spit on, and had his pimply face ground into the dirt. If the carrier gets into any real trouble, he sprints. Rouges get 15 seconds of sprint, and that’s enough to take them most of the way home. This team of stun-locking sprinters is usually quite successful at getting the flag where it needs to be.
In the meantime, the defenders should not be simply standing around. Casters should be keeping busy casting level 1 AE spells in the flag room while the rogues are out. Why? Because it will unstealth the group of rogues the enemy is sending to your flag room, that’s why. (Did you think your team was the only one to try this? Sheeesh.) Generally speaking, having the mage, hunter, etc firing off some low-level AE attacks is enough to give approaching team of rogues a bit of a challenge. The key to success is to keep up the AE constantly; any break in the low level AE barrage will give the enemy rogues a chance to sap-and-steal, so keep it up.
Note: Stealth prevents players from picking up a flag. It also causes players to drop a flag if they already have one. (The same is true of invulnerability spells and mounts).
The “Meet in the Middle” Strategy. I’m hesitant to actually call this a “strategy”, but people love it. I’m also still pretty unclear as to why it works, but it does. The whole idea is to keep your team in the middle of the field, killing any enemy it sees. If anyone on your side dies, they need to rush back to the group in the middle of the field ASAP. This tends to give the enemy fits, since getting to your flag, or getting that flag back home to their base, is like trying to outrun a swarm of angry killer bees. Of course, someone on your team has to occasionally run up to the enemy base and try to steal their flag from time to time, but that always seems an afterthought to the folks that live by this strategy. There is no subtlety to this one; this strategy is exactly as simple as it sounds.
Gaining Honor: You gain honor in WG by killing your enemies, as usual. You also gain bonus honor by capturing the enemy flag, returning your flag to its base, and by winning the match. The amount of bonus honor you gain by winning the match is equivalent to soloing a maximum level enemy player. (If you are in a match with level 60 players, the bonus is the same amount of honor you’d get by solo killing a level 60. If you are in a lower level WG match – the WG match for level 10-19 players, for example – you’d get a bonus equivalent to soloing a level 19 player.) The amount of bonus honor you receive for capturing a flag is three times this amount. These bonuses are given to everyone on your side. The screen below shows an end game score screen with bonus honor.
Gaining Reputation: You gain reputation with the Warsong Outriders (the Horde faction) or the Silverwing Sentinels (the Alliance faction) each time your team captures a flag, and also at the end of every match. You also gain reputation by turning in honor tokens, which you receive at the end of each match. You gain one token when you lose a match, and three when you win. (Turning these in also gives you an honor bonus). You turn in these tokens to a quest giver near the battlemaster, or a duplicate quest giver near to the exterior entrance to the battleground.
Reputation Rewards: Good reputation with the Outriders or the Sentinels yields identical rewards for both Alliance and Horde. You start out as neutral with the Outriders (if you are Horde) or Sentinels (if you are Alliance), but you can rather quickly achieve friendly or honored status. Gaining revered takes more work, and getting to exalted status is extremely difficult to do. The rewards, however, are commensurate with the level of difficulty.
Depending on their reputation with the Outriders or Sentinels, players have more than 50 rewards available to them. The complete list of rewards for each tier of reputation can be found here or you can again refer to Elvyra’s Guide for the Reputationally Challenged. Suffice to say, there are epics to be had. If WG is your battleground of choice, the purchasable reputation rewards are really pretty great.
Arathi Basin
Overview: Arathi Basin is the classic game of “domination.” There are 15 players on each team. There are 5 “resource nodes” and the goal of both sides is to capture and control as many of them as possible. If your team controls a node, the node gives you resources. Accumulate 2000 resources and your side wins.
The five nodes are the farm, the blacksmith, the mine, the lumber mill, and the stable. The farm is closest to the Horde entrance, and is usually controlled by them. The stable is the node closest to the Alliance starting point, and is usually controlled by them. The other three nodes are in a perpetual state of dispute. The blacksmith is right in the middle of the map, and usually is the most hotly contested node.
Controlling three nodes will guarantee your team a victory, but it will take a while. If you control three nodes, the resources dribble in, albeit somewhat slowly. If you control four, you’ll win more quickly. If you achieve the near-impossible feat of controlling all five resources, your team can score 2000 points inside of 5 minutes. (Best of luck with that.)
Length: A hotly contested match lasts about 30 minutes. Depending on how dominant one team is, a match can be much shorter. I’ve seen matches as short as 5 minutes, but that was when almost everyone on the losing side /afked out.
Battlemasters: As with every other battleground, there is an AB battlemaster in each faction’s major cities. There are also entrances in the field (see the map). NPCs near the field entrances give quests that yield honor and reputation.
Insight: This game is arguably the most popular of the three battlegrounds. It combines a seemingly simple concept – control the nodes – but is full of subtleties. Many players feel the reputation rewards given by the Defilers (the Horde faction) and the League of Arathor (the Alliance faction) are among the best in the game.
Strategies: Four strategies are commonly used when fighting in Arathi Basin.The “Zerg” strategy: A Blizzard game (Starcraft) gave rise to the concept of zerging. Let me assure you, that concept is alive and well in Arathi Basin. For those unfamiliar with the term, “zerging” is nothing more than the mindless throwing of troops at your enemy.
In AB, it simply involves everyone on your team running from node, to node, to node, capturing each one as you go. No effort whatsoever is made to defend these captured nodes. If your enemy is confused or disorganized or easily intimidated, this strategy can win. An enemy with the IQ of a paladin (I’m sorry, did I say that?), however, can easily come up with a strategy to overcome these tactics (see below).
The “Capture and Hold” strategy. Again, this one is obvious. The idea is to break your team up into three groups of five players each. Each group goes out and captures one node. After capturing the node, the players stay and defend it.
Although this isn’t rocket science – heck, it couldn’t be more simple – this strategy generally works pretty well. It’s not a pretty victory, nor is it a fast one, but it wins AB matches.
I’ve seen some pretty interesting matches take place between zergers and capture-and-holders. The holders cannot defend against the zerg, so they’ll lose their node. But the zerg can only be in one place at a time, giving the holders ample opportunity to grab another node. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and can be fun to watch and play.
The “Floater” strategy. This strategy is almost exactly like the Capture and Hold strategy above, but with a twist. The deal is that you divide your team into four groups. The first three groups go out, grab a node, and hold it. The fourth group is the floater, whose job is to assist whatever group needs it at the moment.
In order for this to work, communication is really important. After capturing a node, the capture and hold teams – generally a team of three or four people – must start screaming the moment they are threatened. This gives the floaters time to get there. If the floaters are slow, or if the defenders didn’t say anything as the enemy approached, this won’t work. The defenders must also shout out when a threat evaporates. It generally looks like this:
Panickyshaman: “Help at the mine!”
Invisirogue: “8 inc at mine!”
Bgleader: “On our way”
Several seconds pass.
Panickyshaman: “Mine ok. They took off.”
Bgleader: “ok.”
Skinnymage: “Smith needs help. Incoming!”
Bgleader: “On our way”
Anyway, you get the idea. It’s not complicated, but communication is the key. The floater group is also critical, and must be flexible and responsive to emerging threats.
The “Run Around Like Headless Chickens” strategy. Ok, so this isn’t really a strategy, but it sometimes wins AB matches. It basically works by luck, or because a handful of players actually know what they are doing while the rest just do pretty much whatever.
If your AB group doesn’t have a cohesive strategy, you just might be able to pull the match out anyway. Do one of the following effective things, according to your class and ability:
- Defend a node. With a good combination of panicky screaming and delaying tactics, you might be able to get your mindless comrades to help you defend a single resource node whenever it’s threatened. This alone can win matches. Well, sometimes.
- Ninja a node. A lot of teams leave nodes unattended. Run (or stealth) in there, capture it, and take off. Even if you can’t hold the node, you can keep them from having it. If they can’t hold it, they cannot score points. Repeat this as often as possible.
- Group up. Even if the leadership sucks and no one has a plan, you might find a few like-minded individuals to hang with. While everyone else is running around, fighting in random places, capturing and losing various nodes, your ad hoc group can effectively zerg and capture a node or two.
- Follow your zerg. Sometimes the “chickens” strategy will automatically evolve into a nice zerg. Contribute your fair share.
Gaining Honor: Honor is gained by killing enemy players, as usual. Bonus honor is gained according to the amount of resources your side has gathered. In a nutshell, even if you are losing a match, it’s important to score as many resource points as possible. The more points you have at the end, even if you’ve lost, gives you a greater honor bonus.
As with Warsong Gulch, each player gets an honor token for a loss in Arathi Basin, and three tokens for a win. Turning these in gives both honor and reputation gains.
Gaining Reputation: Gaining reputation in AB is something of a mystery. The official WoW site gives out the following, uh, useful information:
As players compete, they will improve their reputation with the Defilers or League of Arathor, thereby earning many new and powerful rewards.
Gee, thanks for the specifics, Blizzard! Anyway, it is known that you gain rep when you win (or lose) a match. To be sure, you also gain reputation at various times when the resources reach certain points. As with every battleground, you gain reputation when you complete quests for the quest giver, who can be found at the exterior entrance to AB. There is also some speculation that you gain reputation with each honor kill, or for each killing blow, but this information is nothing short of rumor.
Although many of the specifics of gaining reputation in AB are not well understood, it is known that playing more ABs results in greater reputation gains. In fact, each match results in noticeable (if not exactly quantifiable) reputation gains. AB reputation gain is not considered extremely difficult (as is the case with Alterac Valley).
Reputation Rewards: Just like in WG, the reputation rewards for both Alliance and Horde are virtually identical. Although all players start out with neutral reputation with the Defilers (for Horde players) or the League of Arathor (for the Alliance), building up to friendly or honored isn’t too difficult. As you’d expect, getting to revered or exalted status is far more challenging. As with WG, exalted status enables players to purchase epic quality rewards from the Arathi Basin vendor.
Depending on their reputation with the Defilers or the LoA, players have 60 rewards that they can purchase. The vast majority of these are armor, though a few weapons can be found. The complete list of rewards for each tier of reputation can be found here. Noteworthy is the trinket that can be purchased upon achieving “friendly” reputation. Considering how easy friendly status is to achieve, it is extremely popular. It absorbs 550 physical damage on average, and as such is useful in both PvE and PvP. As mentioned earlier, many consider the AB rewards the most desirable of the three battlegrounds, so the trinket is only one of many sought after rewards.
Alterac Valley
Overview: Alterac Valley is very different, on many levels, from either Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin. In short, WG and AB are shorter, on smaller battlefields, and have a game-like quality to them. AV is war.
The goal in AV is nothing short of total conquest. Players form large, 40 man raids. The goal is to destroy the enemy’s forts and forces in the field, then to force your way into the main fortress. Once inside, players must kill the enemy general. Killing him results in victory.
None of this is easy. In AV, you will fight, and fight hard, for every step leading up to the general. The game is designed to give your side an advantage whenever you take a tower, fortress, or graveyard. Capturing even one of these takes time and considerable, concentrated effort. Because of the time and effort involved at every step, winning in AV usually takes hours. An AV match can easily take an entire day to complete.
Length: Let me put it this way: you could start an AV match, play for an hour, log out, go to work, go out for drinks with the guys, go home, have dinner, take your wife to the movies, take her for dessert afterwards, come back home, log on, and find that the exact same AV match is still going strong.
Battlemasters: As with the other BGs, there is an AV battlemaster in each major city, as well as in the other major cities for your faction. There is also a battlemaster, as well as a quest giver and a reputation rewards vendor at the field entrance to AV (see the map).
Insight: AV has a heck of a dedicated following. Some folks just love AV, despite its many difficulties. Often you’ll log in to see the same folks fighting in AV day after day. Personally, I enjoy AV much more than either of the other two battlegrounds. I find that I fight for at least a little while in AV every day.
Unlike the other battlegrounds, which cater to all levels, you have to be level 51 or higher to enter Alterac Valley. Sorry, no newbs allowed!
Another difference from the other battlegrounds is that AV has NPCs. These NPCs are not pushovers, and are formidable adversaries. There are a series of generic guards at various points on the battlefield, and aggroing them can cause you some difficulty. These generic NPC guards respawn and, most often, end up being defensive in nature. I.e., these NPCs end up doing a lot of the work protecting your bases, towers, forts, and whatnot.
More serious are the NPC elite officers. There are six lieutenants (staged at various points on the battlefield), four commanders (in charge of towers), a captain (who commands a mid-field fortress), and a general. The general is so tough that it will take most of the raid to take him down, and only if there is some dedicated effort. He is truly epic.
Another big difference between AV and, say, Arathi Basin is the time required to capture a tower or graveyard. In AB, capturing a spawn point means controlling its flag for a mere one minute. In Alterac Valley, your side must maintain control of a graveyard’s or tower’s flag for five long minutes for it to be considered “captured.” A lot can happen in five minutes, including a lucky push by the other side to keep you from holding onto that banner. It is because of this feature – one that makes it extremely difficult to capture anything – that making progress in AV often takes so long.
Strategies: Remember, fighting in AV isn’t an event, it’s a process. Each of the strategies below is effective, but you’ve got to use them wisely. The first three are closely related, but particular details require that each receive some individual attention.
The “Fight for Control Points” strategy. This is one of the basics. If you are going to accomplish anything in AV, you must realize that fighting in the Field of Strife is a complete waste of time. Sure, the Field of Strife is tempting, since your enemies are probably gathering there, but it accomplishes nothing to fight there. Instead, you must focus, and choose to fight at a control point (a tower or graveyard). If you wipe out some snotty Alliance players in the field of strife, what have you gained? Nada. If you wipe them out at the Stonehearth Bunker, you are now in a position to rush the bunker, kill the NPC guards, and capture the banner inside. Taking out that bunker is the first step to defeating them utterly. The same holds true for Alliance players; fighting at Iceblood Tower not only wipes out the Horde forces gathered there, but grants you the opportunity to capture it.
The “Piece by Piece” strategy. This is the next logical step derived from the previous strategy. After capturing their first tower, move on and capture your enemy’s closest graveyard. After capturing that, move on to the next tower, then the next, then the next. It’s all very sequential, but capturing each control point on the map is a strategy lost on most players. However, without doing this, it is nearly impossible to win in AV.
The “Graveyard Zerg” strategy. Capturing a tower doesn’t do all that much in AV; it merely eliminates a spawn point for enemy NPCs, and gets everyone some bonus honor and bonus rep. Capturing a graveyard, however, gives your side a new spawn point. This spawn point is closer to your next objective, so it’s actually critically important.
Consider that every time you die, you’ll normally have to run a considerable distance to return to the action. If your side has captured a graveyard nearby, however, you’ll spawn only a few steps away. In effect, by capturing a local graveyard, you’ve created a constant zerg – your troops keep flowing from the graveyard and right at your enemy. This is a major advantage, so use it whenever possible. It is for this reason that graveyard fights are so hotly contested; if you control one, it’s much easier to win. Lose one, and the enemy has a significant edge over you.
The “Skip Snowfall” strategy. Some have postulated that capturing the only neutral graveyard in the game, Snowfall, is important to overall victory. I don’t agree; I think in most cases it’s a significant waste of time. Here’s why.
Snowfall is really somewhat out of the way, so holding it gives your side little advantage. The whole point in controlling a GY is to spawn closer to the action, and effectively zerg, your enemy. Snowfall just doesn’t really do that. In addition, there is an NPC at that graveyard – Korrak the Ravager – who, unlike most NPCs, totally lives up to his name. This guy is a freakin’ killer, folks. It will take most of your 40 man raid group to kill him. In short, Snowfall just isn’t worth your time.
The “Planes, Rams, and Shreddermobiles” strategy. There are a series of quests that can be completed during the course of an AV matchup. The quests generally involve gathering something, and turning that something in to an NPC. After enough of that critical something has been gathered, you get your reward. The reward is a powerful NPC or gaggle of NPCs that are somewhat controllable, and will fight for your side.
- Upgraded NPCs. You can upgrade the generic NPC guards that already exist at various points on the battlefield, making them higher level, by turning in 20 armor scraps to an NPC in your fortress. You’ll have to repeat this quest many times to qualify for each upgrade, but several upgrades are available. You pick up armor scraps from dead players, so killing a lot of the enemy faction helps here. This counts as a ‘turn in’ quest, so it also gives you a reputation increase (but more on that later).
- The Portable Shredder: By rescuing Engineer Zinfizzlex at the Snowfall Graveyard and escorting him back to your fort, you earn the right to operate one of his shredder units. Well, after you bring him a bunch of other valuable and expensive supplies, of course! (This is one quirky quest.) When Zinfizzlex gets the supplies you’ll get a portable shredder unit, an item that, when you click on it, turns into a level 60 shredder. The shredder is a death-dealing machine, lasts until killed (not easy), and can turn the tide of a battle by itself. It’s fun to operate too, but you have to realize that you actually channel the darned thing. Your character stands around, zombified and helpless, while you control the shredder. Obviously, it’s best to hide somewhere safe, then activate the shredder.
- Deadly Foot Soldiers: By capturing a mine, gathering the supplies found inside, and turning them in (over and over again) to the NPC in your base, you’ll be able to launch an assault of elite ground troops at your enemies. The troops take general commands from you, but aren’t exactly controllable. The big downfall to their use is user stupidity. Most people simply send these guys as far up field as possible, which results in their early destruction. Conserve them, and use them only as reinforcements to players trying to take a particular objective.
- Deadly Ram Riders: This is a very similar concept to the previous one. First, gather wild rams (if you are Alliance) or wolves (if you are Horde) using a special harness, and return them to the appropriate NPC. Then go out and gather hides from enemy mounts. (Hordies must gather ram hides, and Allies must gather wolf hides.) After enough of everything has been turned in, you gain control over some cavalry. Again, use as you would the infantry, above. Throwing them at your enemy is wasting them.
- Deadly Flyboys: This is a two-step quest. First, you must rescue one of several wing commanders. These are held in your enemy’s towers or in other dangerous locations. After you free them, you have to escort them back to your base. Not satisfied with being rescued, these ingrates want you to turn in items you gather from dead player characters. The Alliance must turn in medals of various kinds, while the horde must turn in actual chunks of flesh. (Wow, the Horde sure are icky, aren’t they?). After you’ve turned in enough medals or chunks of flesh, you’ll be given an item that creates a flying wing commander. Basically, these dudes are not controllable, but instead hover over a section of the battlefield, dropping firebombs on everyone’s heads.
- The Big Dude: Each side can create a huge elemental to fight for them. Ivus the Forest Lord fights for the tree hugging, bunny kissing Alliance, and Lokholar the Ice Lord fights for the Hordies. The Allies obtain Ivus by turning in Storm Crystals, which they loot from dead Horde players. The Horde, once again demonstrating their ickiness, turn in blood that they gather from dead Alliance players. After copious quantities of both are turned in to the appropriate NPC in your main fortress, druids saunter out to the Field of Strife and begin a summoning ritual. Players must participate, both by assisting them in summoning the Big Guy and by keeping the druids alive while they summon. After a few minutes of summoning have passed, the appropriate elemental appears. He is pretty small at first, but marches around the Field of Strife like an angry PCP addict. Each time he kills an enemy, he grows. After he is full size he marches up field toward your enemy base.
Note: Keeping your giant elemental alive is a really, really good idea. I’m not sure why I have to say this, except that some people – especially healers – just don’t seem to understand the concept. Heal him, buff him, kill anyone that attacks him. He is the second most powerful thing in all of AV, and can totally turn the tide of the battle.
If your opponent spawns the Big Guy, try really really hard to train him to the toughest thing in AV, your general. As big as he is, your elemental isn’t smart, and will follow the first player to whack him until that player is dead. So whack the Big Guy hard, then run like the dickens to your general. Your general will make short work of the enemy elemental, ridding you of a really large problem.
If you are good enough to get an elemental, prevent the above from happening to you. How? Simply by killing any enemy players near him. The Big Guy will help you, no questions asked, so this isn’t hard to do. In particular, a timely root, snare, frostbolt, etc will generally hold the player in question right in place, and Ivus or Lok will finish the job. Again, most players don’t understand the need for this and simply allow their hard earned elemental to be trained and killed the moment he is created. Bad idea; protect him, and he’ll carry your team right into the enemy fortress.
In choosing to generate the above units – each of which takes a lot of work – you are doing your side a LOT of good. As indicated, however, this can go to waste if you and your teammates don’t play things smart. Don’t throw them at your enemy mindlessly, heal them, and protect them a bit, and you’ll be giving your side a very big advantage. I’ve seen a single shredder turn the tide of a losing battle, simply because the player was skilled and she got a fair amount of support. You should do likewise, my young padawan.
Gaining Honor: You gain honor in AV just like anywhere else – by killing enemy players. The kicker to AV is that since there are 40 players per team the honor from every kill is divided with numerous other people. This means that even if you manage to kill that irritating gnome rogue or slippery dwarf hunter, you may only get 15 honor points. Contrast this to WG or AB, where the amount of honor per kill is divided by 10 or 15 other people at most, and you get the idea. You also get bonus honor according to Blizzard’s formula, reproduced below:
- Killing the enemy General - 6 Bonus Kills
- Killing the enemy Captain - 3 Bonus Kills
- Killing enemy Lieutenants/Commanders - 1 Bonus Kill each
- Destroying an enemy tower - 2 Bonus Kills each
- Keeping your captain alive (until game end) - 2 Bonus Kills
- Owning an intact tower (at game end) - 1 Bonus Kill each
- Owning a graveyard (at game end) - 1 Bonus Kill each
- Owning a Mine (at game end) - 1 Bonus Kill each
As you can see, although many of the bonuses are awarded mid-game, many others are only awarded at the end of a particular AV match. Thus to maximize the amount of honor you receive from fighting in AV, you’ll just have to fight until the end.
Gaining Reputation: Alliance players are attempting to build reputation with the Stormpike; Horde players are attempting to build rep with the Frostwolf. For both, reputation in AV is gained primarily from turn-ins. Turn-ins are items you receive from dead enemy players. Humans, for example drop bone chips. Gnomes drop tufts of hair, trolls drop mojo, orcs drop teeth, etc. Players also drop some of the quest turn-in items mentioned earlier: armor scraps, medals (dead Horde only), chunks of flesh (dead Alliance only), and some pocket change. Every time you turn in an item, everyone in the zone gains one reputation with either the Stormpike or the Frostwolf. Small amounts of bonus reputation can be earned by slaying the named elite NPC officers.
Reputation Rewards: The rewards given for the various levels of Frostwolf or Stormpike reputation are various. There is some armor, some weapons, and some jewelry. Most of it is actually quite good, and some of the items available at exalted rep are deep and purply epic. The pig-headed hammer (no, really, it’s a pig) known as The Unstoppable Force is one of the more popular items, as is a dagger named The Lobotomizer. You can find the great big list of uber reward items here.
The Reputation Farming Controversy: AV is so different from the other battlegrounds that it has given rise to it’s own unique phenomenon: reputation farming. Rep farming is a fact of life in AV. In fact, it is common to find half your forces functionally doing nothing during an AV battle. That’s because those folks are farming. The following is a very honest discussion of rep farming, including the specific ins and outs of how it’s commonly done. In the below paragraphs, I’m neither advocating nor condemning rep farming, but I do discuss the problems that have given rise to the phenomenon. Feel free to make your own assessments.
The first problem is that it takes an eternity to gain exalted status in AV, and people get tired of waiting for the reputation to trickle in. Initially, it may appear that you’re gaining a lot of reputation when you see someone turn in half a dozen elf heads or tauren hooves. That’s a total of +6 to your AV rep, scrolling up impressively on your screen. Soon, however, many players realize that reaching exalted status means gaining a total of, oh, 40,000 reputation points and, at this rate, it’s going to take forever. The slow trickle of reputation in AV – seemingly much slower than in the other BGs – is the first reason many people farm for reputation.
Another reason people farm for rep is because the auto-afk feature is such a royal pain in the arse (in a short time, you too will come to hate this hellish “feature”). On top of this, the deserter penalty is quite the lovely kick in the nards, and these two go hand-in-hand. Real life sometimes gets in the way for a few minutes and you simply have to deal with the dogs, your mom, my mom, your girlfriend, a phone call, or some other temporary distraction. Getting kicked from an AV match because of the /afk feature, especially after waiting in a long queue to get in, is infuriating. Then getting stung with the deserter penalty to top it off will make the anti-afk techniques listed below look a lot more like a “reasonable workaround” than “cheating” to many people.
Some folks go a bit further in their thinking on this subject, especially considering that AV matches take hours to finish. Consider the following: You’ve played in AV for three hours, but the match is nowhere near ending. You’ve killed several of the elite NPCs, you’ve defended your towers and graveyards, but you simply cannot play any longer. All the bonus honor and reputation you’ve worked for, because it will only be awarded at the end of the game, will not be credited to your account. You will not get any honor tokens. Other players will reap the benefits of all your hard work – the bonus rep, the bonus honor, and the honor tokens – simply because they log in after you’ve had to log out. Many players, experiencing the above situation one-too-many times, consider rep farming techniques legitimate solutions.
Considering the above problems with AV, some have gone so far as to voice the idea that reputation farming in AV is Blizzard’s fault, simply because the system they’ve set up in AV is intrinsically unfair. Although people still enjoy AV – the combat is great fun – many folks feel that the AV systems for both rep and honor are just plain broken.
As a result of the above difficulties, some folks have taken to using a variety of techniques to “even the odds” and get the reputation they feel they deserve. Some of these techniques ensure a steady flow of rep to the player, while others – specifically macro programs – may even be used not for reputation farming per se, but as a preventative workaround to subvert the auto-afk feature during hours-long AV match ups. Below I’ve listed some specific techniques.
- Getting in just as an AV starts, if you can manage it, is a solid way to get rep. People tend to turn in items right at the beginning of a match, so this is a good time to gain a bit of favor with your AV faction. After being in the match for 5 or 10 minutes, these farmers then log out.
- Getting into an AV match that is about to end is equally good. You’ll gain some bonus reputation when the match ends whether you win or lose, as well as at least one honor token, so signing up for the end of the battle has its benefits.
- “Keyboard tapping” is as common as dirt. The idea is to sit at your computer, get into Alterac Valley, and then watch TV or read a book or do your homework. Every couple of minutes or so, tap a key on your keyboard to keep from going /afk. (Blizzard’s auto-afk feature is built around detecting key presses. As long as keystrokes are detected, you won’t go /afk.) In short, if you press a key, any key, this simple action subverts the mechanism of the hated auto-afk. This is probably not a violation of Blizzard’s rules in regard to going afk, at least technically. However, if a GM contacts you about being /afk, you may not be paying enough attention to respond. As a result, you’ll be kicked and possibly punished.
- Macro programs are also common, but you can get in trouble for these. Macro programs can be found easily on the web. They simulate keystrokes. Thus you can use a macro program to press your spacebar 10,000 times, once every 30 seconds. If you are logged into WoW while a macro program is running, it will cause the spacebar to be pressed, and your character to jump in the air. This prevents you from going /afk, and allows you to remain in the field without the need to tap your keyboard every few minutes. Get caught using one of these, and you’ll be kicked and possibly punished.
- While not a macro program per se, there are numerous mice and other peripherals on the market that can be programmed to circumvent the auto-afk feature of the game. These work in functionally the same way as the above example.
While I am not advocating the above, I am passing it on to you as it is. Bottom line is that no matter what your reasons, if you get caught using a macro program, or even engaging in some absent minded keytapping, or you come up with some other workaround to remain in AV and subvert Blizzard’s strict kick-em-out mechanisms, you’ll get the following little love note, full of run-on sentences, from the WoW GMs:
Greetings, Pig-
This email is to inform you of our policy in regards to going away from keyboard in Battlegrounds in an attempt to gain honor points while not interacting in battle. Such actions may be considered exploitation; in order to preserve a fair and fun Player vs. Player environment, we have decided to prohibit such actions. While we understand that there are
sometimes situations that will require you to leave your computer during a battle, you should not be doing so for an extended period of time in Battlegrounds and you should not be using any third party applications to prevent your character from being automatically logged off after the preset duration. Please be aware that automated unintended play is against our Terms of Use agreement. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we assure you that this is necessary to preserve the enjoyment of Battleground environments as a whole.Please note that this email is simply a notification of our policy. While your character has been viewed away from keyboard in a Battleground environment, your account will not be negatively affected at this time. However, future violations of this new policy may result in disciplinary action. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
For any game play questions, please refer to our site at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/
Regards,
Terisendor
Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com
I was naughty. So sue me 
Again, I am not recommending rep farming. I am, however, realistic about it, and I’m presenting it to you as it is. Like it or not, agree with it, embrace it, or hate it, rep farming is currently a fact of life in AV. It will only change when Blizzard changes some of the rather harsh kick-out mechanisms they’ve put into place; these impact AV far more than any other BG, and make this particular battleground seem less than fair to the average player. If you do choose to do a bit of rep farming, even as a workaround of the above-mentioned problems, I can only remind you of the aforementioned risks.
General Strategies
When discussing the battlegrounds, it’s important to include some general PvP tips. The battlegrounds are unbelievably tough, and new players will generally get pwned. In an effort to keep that from happening, I’ve included the following suggested tactics.
- Do NOT over-penetrate. This is listed first because it is, without any question, the first rule of PvP. PvP generally evolves into two unorganized groups of enemy players facing off on the battlefield. The principle is a basic one: if you get too close to their lines, and too far from your own, you’ll get dog piled. Be disciplined. Don’t chase runners too far to get the kill; don’t charge forward to get someone on their front line; always be aware of where your front line is, and don’t get in front of it.
- Kill the enemy penetrators. This is the counterpart to the above tactic: when an enemy over-penetrates, pounce on them. Practice this a bit and you’ll be able to read what the enemy is going to do, and anticipate who is going to over-penetrate.
- Have an exit strategy. No matter where you are, or who you are fighting, have a safe place to run to. Generally speaking, these are guards or your fellow players. Don’t get too far away from these guys, either. Having a safe place to run doesn’t do you any good if you can’t actually get there.
- PvP is generally about burst offense. Put your best moves together, so that they can be used in rapid succession. This will do you a lot more good than you think. In the battlegrounds, a good offense IS the best defense.
- Any spell or maneuver that requires a long casting time is of very limited usefulness. The naked truth is that you probably won’t be able to get your Uber Fireball of Instant Death to actually launch before your target is dead or out of range, or before you get interrupted twelve times. Use instacast abilities instead, even if they are of lower power.
- Snare and snare again. If you have an ability that limits enemy movement, use it. This is surprisingly effective – probably more than any offensive ability you have – because snared/frozen players tend to get dog piled.
Aside from the above individual strategies, I’ve included a few for you burgeoning leaders out there. Here goes:
- Use your paladins (Alliance only): Paladins are famous for several things: whining about how underpowered they are, tirelessly posting on the official boards about how rogues, shaman, warriors, warlocks, hunters, etc need to be nerfed, and for being a dominant force in PvP. Here’s the deal: two paladins can hold a node in Arathi Basin as well as any group of four or five, if they play reasonably well. This would include using their shields wisely, healing themselves and each other, using their ‘lay on hands’ spell when things get desperate, stunning, interrupting spellcasts, and generally meleeing any interlopers to death. While it is true that many paladins lack the aforementioned skills, a skilled (and patient) paladin can defeat any other class in the game, and quite easily too.
I’ve also seen a single paladin hold off four of us veteran Hordies in the middle of nowhere simply by playing to his defensive strengths. We even had a couple of near-death experiences at his hands, and several of us would have died but for our experience. Even badly outnumbered, pallies can be impressive.
In short, place a pair of skilled paladins at a node (non-whiney ones are preferable, if you can find any) or any other defensive location, and this frees up a few other players to go out on offense.
- Use your NEs (Alliance only). Night elves have one of the best racial skills in the game: shadowmeld. This can be a tremendous PvP tool, if several NEs gather around a defensive point and meld. Horde players walk up for an easy flag capture and bammo!, they’re perforated with arrows, daggers, and maces (Um, I meant bludgeoned with maces. Yeah.).
- CC the Pallies (Horde only). Every Horde player knows what a nightmare paladins are. They cannot be snared, they cannot be rooted, and it takes about 10 freaking minutes to kill one. They are able to stay in the field longer than anyone else, and they’ll be harassing your efforts the entire time. The only effective strategy to deal with them is to utilize, as much as possible, crowd control. Sheep them, fear them, mind control them if possible. It is often advisable to dedicate an appropriate caster to this task. After the other threats have been eliminated it’s possible to dog pile and, eventually, kill the pallie.
- Use the warrior-healer combo. This is surprisingly effective, probably because no one seems to notice the healer. A warrior can be a force to be reckoned with, but they are surprisingly fragile. Having a healer nearby transforms a warrior from a momentary danger into an unkillable monster.
- Have a defensive team in AV. While the temptation is to put every single player on the front line (and this does work), consider putting together a small team of rogues and druids to simply harass the enemy. Any time the enemy force is trying to capture a graveyard or tower, don’t simply ignore them. Instead, have the rogues (other characters can do this as well) sap, gouge, or otherwise try every trick in the book to interfere with their progress.
Of course, there are numerous other survival tactics that are useful and effective in the BGs. The above tricks and tips are only my suggestions. Feel free to use these, and to develop your own techniques as you gain experience.
Ok, friends, that’s pretty much it. I hope you’ve found this guide useful and helpful. I look forward to your feedback, and will update this guide as the game necessitates.
Good hunting!
Copyright 2006 by a battle-hardened pig named Pig. All rights, no matter how bruised and bloodied, are reserved. Unauthorized use or duplication of this material without the express written permission of the author is prohibited, and will result in my dragging my beat up old carcass over to your house, limping up to your room, and giving you a beatdown with either my Giant Spear of Uber Puncturing, or with a broken table leg. Oh, and my lawyer (a clever, if Forsaken, old zombie) will sue you for your lunch money.
By The Pig
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Posted in World of Warcraft Guides |
