Alterac Valley Level 58 Classic Testing

[Starym 3,779]

 

Here comes some more targeted testing on the Classic beta, as Alterac Valley is getting the exclusive treatment from June 14th to the 17th! There's a new realm that will be up on those days with pre-made level 58 characters with the appropriate gear, skills etc, ready to test the big battleground. All other realms will be down on the beta during this 3 day testing period and characters will be confined to their capital cities, so it's all AV all the time!

AV (source)

On Friday, June 14 at 2:00 p.m. PDT, we’ll open a new realm in the WoW Classic Beta for dedicated testing of Alterac Valley.

When beta testers log into the WoW Classic Beta at that time, please look for the new Field of Strife realm. Alterac Valley will only be available for testing on this realm, and we will be turning off the other beta realms for the duration of the AV test. You’ll find that test characters on Field of Strife are confined to their capital cities. Don’t worry—even if you could leave the city, there will be no enemies, quest-givers, dungeons, or transports throughout the rest of the world.

On the Field of Strife realm, when you create a character, it will be locked at level 58 for AV testing. These test characters will have appropriate gear, some gold, a mount, and access to class trainers and reagent vendors, but they will not be able to level up past 58.

Please go to your city’s Battlemasters and queue for Alterac Valley as much as you like, and submit your feedback in our dedicated Alterac Valley feedback thread.

We expect to close the realm and this AV test on Monday, June 17 at about 10:00 a.m PDT. At that time, the other beta realms will return.

Thank you!

[Migol 429]

Is...this the Old AV?   That they said could never be rebuilt?    The 3 days long+ possible AV with all the NPCs buff af and korrak, ice lords and treeant bosses running amok?

Or is it the sad, pathetic "RUSH RUSH RUSH" AV that they said couldn't be fixed?

I want to emphasize my disappointment if this is old AV, because Blizzard has said NUMEROUS times that AV is a string of code held together by prayers and chewing gum.   That there's no possible way it can be fixed and we can't ever get old AV back even if that's what players want.   If they can whip out old AV on a whim I call BS.

 

edit: Also keen to know if you can queue with more than 5 players in the "classic" model.    That 5 player limitation forces current BGs into pugland and really killed a lot of the organized mayhem our guild used to run ?

Edited June 12, 2019 by Migol

[Keller 25]

Only 4 days? I have been in many single AV battles that took longer than 1 weekend!

[Hoods 40]

1 hour ago, Migol said:

Or is it the sad, pathetic "RUSH RUSH RUSH" AV

Well, I do belive it will be the longer AV since its, after all, Classic. They didnt change to much about AV during classic so it will prob be the longer Boss Push battles, but since people are more used to the newer ZERG Alterac, players might incorporate that in the Beta version, not by choice but by lack of knowledge of how it was back then, with the towers, bases, bosses and so on.

Edited June 12, 2019 by Hoods

[jinsu2301 273]

2 hours ago, Migol said:

Is...this the Old AV?   That they said could never be rebuilt?

It's the AV from 1.12.1. Nothing more, nothing less. Here is a list of all changes that have taken place over the years, including those from 1.5 to 1.11.

And yes, at least from what Blizz told us, they thought the old vanilla server data to be lost. They were since able to recover a few snapshots but not all stages of developement.

[Migol 429]

24 minutes ago, jinsu2301 said:

It's the AV from 1.12.1. Nothing more, nothing less. Here is a list of all changes that have taken place over the years, including those from 1.5 to 1.11.

And yes, at least from what Blizz told us, they thought the old vanilla server data to be lost. They were since able to recover a few snapshots but not all stages of developement. 

Not seeing a 1.12.1 on the link there, do you mean 1.11.0?   (the last vanilla patch?)

Trying to remember if this is when the zergfest started or if it was later; I know that the notes are already discouraging (most of the NPC guards have been removed, korrak gone, npcs heavily nerfed in various ways, etc etc.).     Also not seeing any point in the patches where the general PvP queue was nerfed to only 5.

[Seksi 208]

Look, AV is not about the battleground itself but how players want to play it.

If players dedicate more than 50% of their forces to defense, neither side will ever win, if they dedicate 100% of their forces to attack (RUSH, as stated), either you lose fast or win fast, everyone gets more honor!

So I'd venture that, a more knowledgeable and optimization-oriented player base will favor RUSH over twiddling their thumbs for nothing but we shall see soon enough ?

[Migol 429]

2 hours ago, Seksi said:

Look, AV is not about the battleground itself but how players want to play it.

If players dedicate more than 50% of their forces to defense, neither side will ever win, if they dedicate 100% of their forces to attack (RUSH, as stated), either you lose fast or win fast, everyone gets more honor!

So I'd venture that, a more knowledgeable and optimization-oriented player base will favor RUSH over twiddling their thumbs for nothing but we shall see soon enough ?

That wasn't true in old AV.    It was all about breaking the NPC barriers slowly over time, "Rushing" wasn't viable.    Probably before your time but back in my day (gets out old man voice) we had to do a blood ritual with the remains of our enemies to summon a giant monster, and rally around it as it slowly gained in strength and finally pushed in the enemy base, with our summoned wolfriders and upgraded armor helping us!      Taking graveyards needed either good strategy or overwhelming force.

[Seksi 208]

Don't worry, I'm 33 myself and was 18 when WoW came out, good times ? I do recall those unending battles, and it was a big reason of why I thought AV was sort of tedious at the time, but can't quite remember the details on why,was it because NPCs were super strong?

[jinsu2301 273]

15 hours ago, Migol said:

Not seeing a 1.12.1 on the link there, do you mean 1.11.0?   (the last vanilla patch?)

The last vanilla patch was 1.12.1, but the last change to AV before TBC was with 1.11.

1.11 AV = 1.12.1 AV

I think the big change that turned AV into a zergfest was the introduction of reinforcements with 2.3, but they did try to make it faster throughout all of Vanilla. People like to forget that there have been glaring issues with AV before they took out some of the bosses and made it a bit more streamlined. Players joined the BG, waited for hours for a boss to spawn, and then just left. Of course the BG will last days if no one plays the objectives. 

[Migol 429]

17 hours ago, Seksi said:

Don't worry, I'm 33 myself and was 18 when WoW came out, good times ? I do recall those unending battles, and it was a big reason of why I thought AV was sort of tedious at the time, but can't quite remember the details on why,was it because NPCs were super strong?

NPCs were super strong but the main slow down was how the objectives were hard to take with the enemy players respawning close by.    IE you have a tower, Iceblood for example, and you have to keep it while the horde forces are respawning rapidly nearby and trying to retake it (the graveyard guards were no joke at the time).    

That's where (for once) strategy came into play.   Our guild was pretty organized on that front; just as an example on the graveyard just east of the final alliance base we'd send hunters and a few other ranged up on the cliffs above the respawn point (the point they res'd, not the actual capturable graveyard), and have myself and our other tanks stand right where they res'd and aoe/slow spam/fear spam when they spawned, so our other guys at the actual graveyard could cap it.    

We also organized a stealth group to take back towers (punishing people who only had one or two defending one) and had a few more casual people collecting bits and whatnot for the quest turnins.    We also had tricks like emphasizing to NOT take snowfall GY back (it would force alliance to turtle as they respawned way back in their base), a few stealthers who would trip gy/tower flags and force some alliance to run back to try to retake (just one person would be killed), our general win condition was to summon the elemental and carefully escort/heal him as he made his way to the other side of the map.   

As I said, it's sad to see all of that gone today while everyone just mounts of and zergs the enemy base ?

[Seksi 208]

Damn that sounds super epic tbh, but I was a filthy clueless casual at this point so don't have memories of such organization in AV, mostly the slow slog through until ppl decided to all-in and it would finally end ?