Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
You needed a lot of everything in those 40 man raids. But tanks were especially rough. I ended up having to carry a tank set for some of the trash pulls. Especially after you killed the first two drakes and had to go up that ramp, there were a lot of those drakanoids that needed tanking, and I remember you'd get a pull of 3 and each one required two tanks because they would shed aggro. So we'd have four tanks and a hunter kit a 3rd to vael's room.
That's how everyone did it. Hunter kiting to vael, feigning death, then chaos.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
2H fury was only better if you could have taken advantage of broken WF totems, I think. (which apparently you didn't, I don't know). The whole thing about fury was it wasn't weapon dependent, so the rage gen from DW was better. YMMV, apparently.
When I stopped raiding I was using Crul'Shorukh and the Bone Sundered Hatchet from Noth. The meters were pretty much a joke. I used to pull aggro at the end of Emps kills, which was supposed to be borderline impossible.
2H fury was only better if you could have taken advantage of broken WF totems, I think.
When I stopped raiding I was using Crul'Shorukh and the Bone Sundered Hatchet from Noth. The meters were pretty much a joke. I used to pull aggro at the end of Emps kills, which was supposed to be borderline impossible.
Stupid bone sundered hatchet never dropped for our guild.
But I was in line for it if it ever did.
Yeah, 2h fury with a big slow weapon and spamstring with a WF totem could make for some insane numbers, but I'm pretty sure that it was still passed by dw fury with the right gear. DW fury vanilla scaled like crazy.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
Again, the trick was that with a 2hander you had to have less hit to max out your white damage. That factor made up for the lost damage done by wielding only one weapon. You had a more consistent rage output, you kept flurry up 100% of the time, and you abused the fuck out of slam when you hit 100 rage (which was often).
DW fury was dependent on your offhand strikes giving you enough rage to keep heroic strike on your mainhand, and having both weapons hit enough that flurry stayed up. Once you got the axe from Nef and any weapon from AQ40 or beyond, DW became vastly superior this is no doubt. I am again saying that when you were geared for BWL from MC, you got vastly more damage from being 2H fury than DW fury.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
To reiterate: low gear levels, 2H is superior because of slamdumps and whitecaps.
High gear levels, DW is superior because it the scaling of the weapons became retarded.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
What I always hated about vanilla was how broken BGs were. My rogue was a mix of 5-10 man blues, a cape from ZG and tier 1 gloves (I was so proud of these). When I eventually got a good weapon (I think it was the quest reward sword from the first boss in AQ20, I used the mara quest reward Thrash Blade till then because after 100s (I wish I was kidding) of UBRS runs, I never got Dal'Rends mainhand), a 1v1 fight would go either 2 ways.
1) I would open on some poor equally geared fool and they would die without getting the chance to take any action.
2) I would open against some raider/high warlord and would plink away at their health for a good 30-60 seconds before they 1shot me.
I remember at one point a full t3 warrior just rp walking across WSG with the flag while about 5-6 of us tried to beat him up. My screen was filled with *Miss, miss, dodge, dodge, dodge, block, dodge, miss, 3, miss*.
It was a lot of fun though (probably because it still felt really new and there wasn't really anything to compare it to for me). Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Yes, it was awesome how Warriors were the best tanks and the best DPS and also had the best PvP spec in Arms, while all of us poor healing hybrids had to stick with our healing specs because our other specs were broken as all fuck. It was just so much fun.
Fuck Kalgan, the cunt. I bet it was his doing.
reVerse on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
Hey reverse, it wasn't all fun and games.
I was kicked out of a guild because my pvp spec was beating the guild leader's warlock in damage.
So there is a downside to being so awesome.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Yes, it was awesome how Warriors were the best tanks and the best DPS and also had the best PvP spec in Arms, while all of us poor healing hybrids had to stick with our healing specs because our other specs were broken as all fuck. It was just so much fun.
Fuck Kalgan, the cunt. I bet it was his doing.
Welcome to WoW, where the warriors are hybrids and the hybrids are delusional healers.
Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
Good times. Good times indeed.
There was a High Warlord warrior on my realm who I would sometimes see going around with his pocket healer. Guy was unstoppable, I used to love stealthing near him and trying to pick off anyone running away. He was one of the few rank 14s you actually saw in BGs regularly, most got too burned out on the grind to rank 14 that they didn't pvp too much afterwards.
What I always hated about vanilla was how broken BGs were. My rogue was a mix of 5-10 man blues, a cape from ZG and tier 1 gloves (I was so proud of these). When I eventually got a good weapon (I think it was the quest reward sword from the first boss in AQ20, I used the mara quest reward Thrash Blade till then because after 100s (I wish I was kidding) of UBRS runs, I never got Dal'Rends mainhand), a 1v1 fight would go either 2 ways.
1) I would open on some poor equally geared fool and they would die without getting the chance to take any action.
2) I would open against some raider/high warlord and would plink away at their health for a good 30-60 seconds before they 1shot me.
I remember at one point a full t3 warrior just rp walking across WSG with the flag while about 5-6 of us tried to beat him up. My screen was filled with *Miss, miss, dodge, dodge, dodge, block, dodge, miss, 3, miss*.
It was a lot of fun though (probably because it still felt really new and there wasn't really anything to compare it to for me). Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
I always really liked vanilla PVP and battlegrounds. But like you said, the gear discrepancy got out of control.
But before that happened, it was a lot of fun. Back in vanilla I started fresh characters on new servers 3 times just to get them to 60 so I could go into battlegrounds before people started hardcore raiding and throwing the balance off. Those were the days when AVs used to last like 12 hours.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
Good times. Good times indeed.
There was a High Warlord warrior on my realm who I would sometimes see going around with his pocket healer. Guy was unstoppable, I used to love stealthing near him and trying to pick off anyone running away. He was one of the few rank 14s you actually saw in BGs regularly, most got too burned out on the grind to rank 14 that they didn't pvp too much afterwards.
If they had left pvp gear and pve gear relatively equal the way they were back in those days, but made getting HWL gear a lot less mindnumbingly painful, it could have been pretty great.
I'm a huge anti-resilience person. I hate it. Once I started seeing the effects of it, I effectively stopped pvping, which is too bad because up until then it was one of my favorite things to do.
What I always hated about vanilla was how broken BGs were. My rogue was a mix of 5-10 man blues, a cape from ZG and tier 1 gloves (I was so proud of these). When I eventually got a good weapon (I think it was the quest reward sword from the first boss in AQ20, I used the mara quest reward Thrash Blade till then because after 100s (I wish I was kidding) of UBRS runs, I never got Dal'Rends mainhand), a 1v1 fight would go either 2 ways.
1) I would open on some poor equally geared fool and they would die without getting the chance to take any action.
2) I would open against some raider/high warlord and would plink away at their health for a good 30-60 seconds before they 1shot me.
I remember at one point a full t3 warrior just rp walking across WSG with the flag while about 5-6 of us tried to beat him up. My screen was filled with *Miss, miss, dodge, dodge, dodge, block, dodge, miss, 3, miss*.
It was a lot of fun though (probably because it still felt really new and there wasn't really anything to compare it to for me). Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
I always really liked vanilla PVP and battlegrounds. But like you said, the gear discrepancy got out of control.
But before that happened, it was a lot of fun. Back in vanilla I started fresh characters on new servers 3 times just to get them to 60 so I could go into battlegrounds before people started hardcore raiding and throwing the balance off. Those were the days when AVs used to last like 12 hours.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
AV was so epic. Giant bottlenecks getting 1000s of kills. Would look like a stalemate then all of a sudden you would hear cries of jubilation as the riders were released, allowing that final push forward.
I do however love resilience. It effectively increases the time it takes for a pvp encounter to finish. The best fights are the ones that last a good while, not the ones that end in 3 seconds.
I do however love resilience. It effectively increases the time it takes for a pvp encounter to finish. The best fights are the ones that last a good while, not the ones that end in 3 seconds.
Yes, this is a good point. When I had only 400 resilience, it took the Rogues 5 seconds to kill me. Now that I have 600 resilience, it takes them 6 seconds to kill me. These epic, long fights are indeed the very soul of PvP.
What I always hated about vanilla was how broken BGs were. My rogue was a mix of 5-10 man blues, a cape from ZG and tier 1 gloves (I was so proud of these). When I eventually got a good weapon (I think it was the quest reward sword from the first boss in AQ20, I used the mara quest reward Thrash Blade till then because after 100s (I wish I was kidding) of UBRS runs, I never got Dal'Rends mainhand), a 1v1 fight would go either 2 ways.
1) I would open on some poor equally geared fool and they would die without getting the chance to take any action.
2) I would open against some raider/high warlord and would plink away at their health for a good 30-60 seconds before they 1shot me.
I remember at one point a full t3 warrior just rp walking across WSG with the flag while about 5-6 of us tried to beat him up. My screen was filled with *Miss, miss, dodge, dodge, dodge, block, dodge, miss, 3, miss*.
It was a lot of fun though (probably because it still felt really new and there wasn't really anything to compare it to for me). Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
I always really liked vanilla PVP and battlegrounds. But like you said, the gear discrepancy got out of control.
But before that happened, it was a lot of fun. Back in vanilla I started fresh characters on new servers 3 times just to get them to 60 so I could go into battlegrounds before people started hardcore raiding and throwing the balance off. Those were the days when AVs used to last like 12 hours.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
AV was so epic. Giant bottlenecks getting 1000s of kills. Would look like a stalemate then all of a sudden you would hear cries of jubilation as the riders were released, allowing that final push forward.
I do however love resilience. It effectively increases the time it takes for a pvp encounter to finish. The best fights are the ones that last a good while, not the ones that end in 3 seconds.
I haven't been in a high resilience vs high resilience fight, I can see that being good, but I would have rather they just vastly increased HP (but then you run into the problem of rebalancing raids, not only for damage done by bosses, but how much healing needs to compensate for that increased damage, it's a quagmire!).
My poor opinion comes from being the guy without the resil not being able to put a dent in the guy with high resil. I just liked how in the old days someone in pvp gear could jump into a pve environment and still be effective, and a person in pve gear could jump into pvp and be effective too (the grind to get that pvp gear sucked though and it's much friendlier now), but now if you don't have resil, you're going to get rolled over and over by people who do.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
I do however love resilience. It effectively increases the time it takes for a pvp encounter to finish. The best fights are the ones that last a good while, not the ones that end in 3 seconds.
Yes, this is a good point. When I had only 400 resilience, it took the Rogues 5 seconds to kill me. Now that I have 600 resilience, it takes them 6 seconds to kill me. These epic, long fights are indeed the very soul of PvP.
Not sure about these days (haven't pvped for a good while, only just getting back into it), but in TBC my priest has 300-400 resilience and could hold out against a rogue for a good few minutes.
Of course, being the poor sap with pve gear and no resilience would be terrible. When we were doing arenas our top 2 targest were people in pve gear and shadow priests (because lol, they died so easily).
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
They weren't, it really wasn't any fun going to sleep after trying to play AV, getting home from work the next day, and joining the same AV that you were stalemated in the night before. It was like groundhog's day from hell.
That makes me think back to when Arcane Power used to stack additively with the old Power Infusion...
I logged onto the PTR and popped Arcane Power, the Zandalar trinket, had a priest PI me, and proceeded to boom headshot a paladin for 6,000 dmg. He was just running up to me and POW dead.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
They weren't, it really wasn't any fun going to sleep after trying to play AV, getting home from work the next day, and joining the same AV that you were stalemated in the night before. It was like groundhog's day from hell.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
They weren't, it really wasn't any fun going to sleep after trying to play AV, getting home from work the next day, and joining the same AV that you were stalemated in the night before. It was like groundhog's day from hell.
They were awesome.
I'm inclined to agree. At least you got to kill players, make pushes, try and recover from being pushed back yourself, take scalps off of enemies, turn them in, initiate lok'alar (or whatever his name was) attacks, send in the riders, etc.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
Feathermoon had at least on AV that ran reset to reset.
I did think they were epic for the sheer ridiculous amounts of honor you could get fighting in them, but as soon as they made marks mean something other than just rep turnins, it was a bit excessive and something had to be changed, sadly - I'd played probably 80 hours in AV on my rogue and never actually seen a game end. With so many battlegrounds now, I wouldn't mind seeing a return to the old epic AVs, but switch everything that's purchased with AV marks over to Eye or Strand marks, and sell honor tokens with AV marks like you can get in Wintergrasp.
I would much rather have a long stalemate than the 5 minute 'wait what just happened?' we have now.
Granted, battles lasting days is a bit much and is a design issue with the area, but I got no problems with a fight lasting several hours.
The end result was that people complained that it never ended, and once again min-maxing pushed its way into that aspect of the game, and people found out you got better honor per hour by just skipping any actual pvp. Apparently it was eventually considered a failure, which is why they scrapped the azshara battleground, which was also going to be large scale.
But if wintergrasp proved anything, it's that large scale pvp CAN work, you've just got to give each side different goals that make them clash somewhere. If the horde's goal is to kill NPC A, and the alliance's goal is to kill NPC B, they'll just skip past eachother to get to the goal. But if the Horde's goal is to kill NPC A, and the alliance's only goal is to protect NPC A for say...30 minutes. Then you'll have a good battle.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
Feathermoon had at least on AV that ran reset to reset.
I did think they were epic for the sheer ridiculous amounts of honor you could get fighting in them, but as soon as they made marks mean something other than just rep turnins, it was a bit excessive and something had to be changed, sadly - I'd played probably 80 hours in AV on my rogue and never actually seen a game end. With so many battlegrounds now, I wouldn't mind seeing a return to the old epic AVs, but switch everything that's purchased with AV marks over to Eye or Strand marks, and sell honor tokens with AV marks like you can get in Wintergrasp.
That's a good point, I remember seeing an item that you could buy that needed like 30 av tokens and I just groaned and said fuck that. It was made especially worse since the horde on my server very rarely actually won an AV, even when things started turning into 10 minute games where you'd just bypass the other team. So we had to gain AV tokens one game at a time. What a pain.
All of this and we never even really mentioned about how there'd sometimes be between 5 and 20 people who just stood afk in the cave and waited to collect their token.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
Here's what would happen:
You'd get maxed out rep with your AV faction then you'd almost never go back except to kill off the lieutenants and then get queued for a real battleground.
Old AV sucked. It was a 40 man PUG. You had a 100% chance to be teaming with retards unless your entire guild got into an AV.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
You'd get maxed out rep with your AV faction then you'd almost never go back except to kill off the lieutenants and then get queued for a real battleground.
Old AV sucked. It was a 40 man PUG. You had a 100% chance to be teaming with retards unless your entire guild got into an AV.
Until I got into a guild that did serious pvp premades, I preferred AV by far. Alliance has won AV since the very beginning, except when we ran into those 40 man premades.
Also, they fixed the 12-15 hour issue pretty quickly and turned them into several hour affairs, which is when the battleground was at its best state. It still had elite NPCs, Korrak, and whatnot, but the number was toned down. The original, original state was ok, but certainly not the best version.
You'd get maxed out rep with your AV faction then you'd almost never go back except to kill off the lieutenants and then get queued for a real battleground.
Old AV sucked. It was a 40 man PUG. You had a 100% chance to be teaming with retards unless your entire guild got into an AV.
Until I got into a guild that did serious pvp premades, I preferred AV by far. Alliance has won AV since the very beginning, except when we ran into those 40 man premades.
Also, they fixed the 12-15 hour issue pretty quickly and turned them into several hour affairs, which is when the battleground was at its best state. It still had elite NPCs, Korrak, and whatnot, but the number was toned down. The original, original state was ok, but certainly not the best version.
I didn't get into AV until after they changed it so that it was several hours rather then a few days. Knowing I could lose at AB and WSG for an hour or two before getting into AV was a bit annoying, but AV tended to be enjoyable. I was one of the people who enjoyed trying to do the quests, like taming Rams.
Has anyone mentioned the gnome warrior who was somehow mailed a developer shirt, Martin Fury, that when used kills anything within 30 yards? He grinded through Ulduar and I'm not sure how far but his entire guild was banned. Kind of weird to closely coincide with the event of that other guild hacking kills through Ulduar. I wonder what kind of shitstorm is happening at Blizzard knowing that he was mailed that kind of item from a GM.
Posts
That's how everyone did it. Hunter kiting to vael, feigning death, then chaos.
When I stopped raiding I was using Crul'Shorukh and the Bone Sundered Hatchet from Noth. The meters were pretty much a joke. I used to pull aggro at the end of Emps kills, which was supposed to be borderline impossible.
Stupid bone sundered hatchet never dropped for our guild.
But I was in line for it if it ever did.
Yeah, 2h fury with a big slow weapon and spamstring with a WF totem could make for some insane numbers, but I'm pretty sure that it was still passed by dw fury with the right gear. DW fury vanilla scaled like crazy.
DW fury was dependent on your offhand strikes giving you enough rage to keep heroic strike on your mainhand, and having both weapons hit enough that flurry stayed up. Once you got the axe from Nef and any weapon from AQ40 or beyond, DW became vastly superior this is no doubt. I am again saying that when you were geared for BWL from MC, you got vastly more damage from being 2H fury than DW fury.
High gear levels, DW is superior because it the scaling of the weapons became retarded.
1) I would open on some poor equally geared fool and they would die without getting the chance to take any action.
2) I would open against some raider/high warlord and would plink away at their health for a good 30-60 seconds before they 1shot me.
I remember at one point a full t3 warrior just rp walking across WSG with the flag while about 5-6 of us tried to beat him up. My screen was filled with *Miss, miss, dodge, dodge, dodge, block, dodge, miss, 3, miss*.
It was a lot of fun though (probably because it still felt really new and there wasn't really anything to compare it to for me). Whenever you had *Honourable Kill: Grand Marshal* pop up on screen you always felt so proud.
Yeah, before their first run at rage normalization fury became super broken at the top end. It was fun.
I was kicked out of a guild because my pvp spec was beating the guild leader's warlock in damage.
So there is a downside to being so awesome.
I've been pretty lucky with guilds.
Good times. Good times indeed.
Welcome to WoW, where the warriors are hybrids and the hybrids are delusional healers.
There was a High Warlord warrior on my realm who I would sometimes see going around with his pocket healer. Guy was unstoppable, I used to love stealthing near him and trying to pick off anyone running away. He was one of the few rank 14s you actually saw in BGs regularly, most got too burned out on the grind to rank 14 that they didn't pvp too much afterwards.
I always really liked vanilla PVP and battlegrounds. But like you said, the gear discrepancy got out of control.
But before that happened, it was a lot of fun. Back in vanilla I started fresh characters on new servers 3 times just to get them to 60 so I could go into battlegrounds before people started hardcore raiding and throwing the balance off. Those were the days when AVs used to last like 12 hours.
I don't care what people say, those 5-10 hour AVs were EPIC.
If they had left pvp gear and pve gear relatively equal the way they were back in those days, but made getting HWL gear a lot less mindnumbingly painful, it could have been pretty great.
I'm a huge anti-resilience person. I hate it. Once I started seeing the effects of it, I effectively stopped pvping, which is too bad because up until then it was one of my favorite things to do.
AV was so epic. Giant bottlenecks getting 1000s of kills. Would look like a stalemate then all of a sudden you would hear cries of jubilation as the riders were released, allowing that final push forward.
I do however love resilience. It effectively increases the time it takes for a pvp encounter to finish. The best fights are the ones that last a good while, not the ones that end in 3 seconds.
What about the 24-96 hour AV's. Were those epic?
Yes, this is a good point. When I had only 400 resilience, it took the Rogues 5 seconds to kill me. Now that I have 600 resilience, it takes them 6 seconds to kill me. These epic, long fights are indeed the very soul of PvP.
I haven't been in a high resilience vs high resilience fight, I can see that being good, but I would have rather they just vastly increased HP (but then you run into the problem of rebalancing raids, not only for damage done by bosses, but how much healing needs to compensate for that increased damage, it's a quagmire!).
My poor opinion comes from being the guy without the resil not being able to put a dent in the guy with high resil. I just liked how in the old days someone in pvp gear could jump into a pve environment and still be effective, and a person in pve gear could jump into pvp and be effective too (the grind to get that pvp gear sucked though and it's much friendlier now), but now if you don't have resil, you're going to get rolled over and over by people who do.
Probably? I was never in one of those, but they sound more fun than the AVs where everyone just skips eachother and plows through all the NPCs and kills a mini-raid boss in under 10 minutes without seeing so much as a hair of the enemy.
Not sure about these days (haven't pvped for a good while, only just getting back into it), but in TBC my priest has 300-400 resilience and could hold out against a rogue for a good few minutes.
Of course, being the poor sap with pve gear and no resilience would be terrible. When we were doing arenas our top 2 targest were people in pve gear and shadow priests (because lol, they died so easily).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLhnedQLvWE&feature=related
They weren't, it really wasn't any fun going to sleep after trying to play AV, getting home from work the next day, and joining the same AV that you were stalemated in the night before. It was like groundhog's day from hell.
I always liked this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCsq1zszf_U
I logged onto the PTR and popped Arcane Power, the Zandalar trinket, had a priest PI me, and proceeded to boom headshot a paladin for 6,000 dmg. He was just running up to me and POW dead.
At level 60.
The crying I had to endure when I specced out of it was epic.
They were awesome.
I'm inclined to agree. At least you got to kill players, make pushes, try and recover from being pushed back yourself, take scalps off of enemies, turn them in, initiate lok'alar (or whatever his name was) attacks, send in the riders, etc.
Granted, battles lasting days is a bit much and is a design issue with the area, but I got no problems with a fight lasting several hours.
Feathermoon had at least on AV that ran reset to reset.
I did think they were epic for the sheer ridiculous amounts of honor you could get fighting in them, but as soon as they made marks mean something other than just rep turnins, it was a bit excessive and something had to be changed, sadly - I'd played probably 80 hours in AV on my rogue and never actually seen a game end. With so many battlegrounds now, I wouldn't mind seeing a return to the old epic AVs, but switch everything that's purchased with AV marks over to Eye or Strand marks, and sell honor tokens with AV marks like you can get in Wintergrasp.
The end result was that people complained that it never ended, and once again min-maxing pushed its way into that aspect of the game, and people found out you got better honor per hour by just skipping any actual pvp. Apparently it was eventually considered a failure, which is why they scrapped the azshara battleground, which was also going to be large scale.
But if wintergrasp proved anything, it's that large scale pvp CAN work, you've just got to give each side different goals that make them clash somewhere. If the horde's goal is to kill NPC A, and the alliance's goal is to kill NPC B, they'll just skip past eachother to get to the goal. But if the Horde's goal is to kill NPC A, and the alliance's only goal is to protect NPC A for say...30 minutes. Then you'll have a good battle.
That's a good point, I remember seeing an item that you could buy that needed like 30 av tokens and I just groaned and said fuck that. It was made especially worse since the horde on my server very rarely actually won an AV, even when things started turning into 10 minute games where you'd just bypass the other team. So we had to gain AV tokens one game at a time. What a pain.
All of this and we never even really mentioned about how there'd sometimes be between 5 and 20 people who just stood afk in the cave and waited to collect their token.
You'd get maxed out rep with your AV faction then you'd almost never go back except to kill off the lieutenants and then get queued for a real battleground.
Old AV sucked. It was a 40 man PUG. You had a 100% chance to be teaming with retards unless your entire guild got into an AV.
Until I got into a guild that did serious pvp premades, I preferred AV by far. Alliance has won AV since the very beginning, except when we ran into those 40 man premades.
Also, they fixed the 12-15 hour issue pretty quickly and turned them into several hour affairs, which is when the battleground was at its best state. It still had elite NPCs, Korrak, and whatnot, but the number was toned down. The original, original state was ok, but certainly not the best version.
I didn't get into AV until after they changed it so that it was several hours rather then a few days. Knowing I could lose at AB and WSG for an hour or two before getting into AV was a bit annoying, but AV tended to be enjoyable. I was one of the people who enjoyed trying to do the quests, like taming Rams.
Actually that guild is the one someone linked earlier when talking about that group hacking through Ulduar.