WoW Battlegrounds - Part 2

Another day, another battleground, and a totally different experience. For this battleground test I used another character, Honey, my gnome warlock, level 28. I logged on at 6 pm in Ironforge. Flew to Menethil, came just in time for the boat to Auberdine, flew to Ashenvale, and ran to the battleground entrance, where I arrived at 6:20 pm. Entered the waiting queue, which mumbled something about a 9 minutes wait. But in fact that wait took a bit over one hour. The battle itself was relatively short, less than half an hour (we won 3:1), and at the end of the battle you get kicked out automatically. I immediately entered the waiting queue again, but again had to wait over 1 hour, and only got another invite at 9:10 pm. I declined that invite, because by that time I was in a group with friends. But nevertheless it means that in my typical 4 hour play sessions from 6 pm to 10 pm I couldn't do more than two half-hour battles. Obviously that is for Alliance, the waiting time for Horde could be much shorter, my Horde character waited only about a minute to get into his battleground the day before. The only good thing is that you don't have to wait in place, you can even go to the other continent and still get teleported to the battleground when the battle starts.

The Warsong battleground was a lot more fun than the Alterac Valley one. With only 10 players per side, there was no noticeable lag. Me using a warlock meant that I had no problems with range, especially since the battleground is a lot smaller. The capture the flag mode provided a lot more feeling of purpose than the endless ebb and tide of the large battles. I first did four honorable kills in the middle of the battleground, and then guarded our flag for the second half of the battle.

The only problem remaining identical to the other battleground was lack of organization. Not knowing how the system worked, I had joined a 10-man raid group in the waiting area outside of the portal. Turns out that the game totally ignores groups, it simply takes the 10 next people in the waiting queue. We ended up with 8 people from the raid group inside, and 2 outside, with 2 non-grouped people inside with us. The raid group leader was a stubborn idiot, and refused to kick out the people left outside, and invite the 2 others in instead. And there was very little communication anyway, even between the people in the raid group, so we wouldn't have needed to bother. After our flag got captured without anyone of us even being around, I decided that at least one person should be guarding the flag, and although I wasn't probably the best class to do so, I didn't think I could have persuaded somebody else to do it. No idea what tactics is the best here, but I think a single mage defending the flag and freezing anybody who sneaks in to steal it in place, while alerting the others, would have been good.

There was a lot more melee combat going on, even 1:1 fights, than on the large battlefields. But running, and preventing people from running, still plays a major role in this battle mode. A hunter with his run speed enhancement, or a shaman as ghost wolf, has a significant advantage when trying to capture the flag. While a mage with his freeze root, or a druid with entangling roots, is highly useful in preventing people from running. With my warrior Raslebol I'd probably get a chance to use my hamstring.

I was lucky that my warlock happened to be level 28. If I had been level 31, I'd been in more trouble. The battlegrounds are divided into slices of 10 levels, from 21 to 30, 31 to 40, and so on. And 10 levels is a lot in WoW, a level 21 doesn't do much against a level 30. But of course if they had split the slices even smaller, the waiting queues would have been even longer. I would have liked to enter the battleground with my friends, but some of them are over level 30, so we'd end up in different battlegrounds. And once we are all level 31 minimum, we will be at the lower end of power, and better wait until we are all level 35-40. Hmmm, I'm getting flashbacks of endless discussions about Magic the Gathering Online here, where the problem of pairing of equal strength opponents and lengths of waiting queues in leagues was discussed for years and years on the forums.

Well, as I said I declined the second battleground invitation. Not that I wouldn't have wanted to do another one, but by that time I was in a group with all of my D&D buddies. Level range 27 to 32 now. So to narrow the gap, and get some elite quests for everybody done, we went all together into the Redridge Mountains, killing the elite orcs of Blackrock Keep. Highest level quest was 26 elite, not much of a problem with two paladins over level 30 in the group. In relatively short time I got 6 quests done, 4 of them elite, and the quest reward xp made me ding 29.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:12 AM Permanent Link