Arathi Basin

Testing the new 1.7 patch, I played some PvP in Arathi Basin. Two complete battles, both won, although the second one was close. The principle of Arathi Basin is simple enough: On a smallish map there are 5 buildings, farm, mine, stables, lumber mill and blacksmith. Each building has a flag, which can be claimed by Alliance or Horde, going through a "contested" phase of about 1 minute. Every building which is controlled by one side produces resources. The side that has reached 2000 resources first wins.

So basically it is a game of territorial control, you need to control more buildings than the other side most of the time to win. Taking control takes a couple of seconds, and can be interrupted, so any defender first has to be eliminated. The 5 buildings are arranged with several paths between them, with 1 building close to each starting point, and 3 buildings on a line of equal distance from both in the middle. So unlike Alterac Valley neither side can just put all players together and move forward, the other side would just walk around you and take all the buildings where the big army isn't present right now. You need both some sort of attack force, and some people to defend what was already gained.

Territorial control makes gameplay to resemble a bit to that of Alterac Valley. Only its a lot faster, buildings change hands more often than AV graveyards, and with 15 players on each side there is less lag. Battles form quickly, last maybe half an hour, and resolves with both side having won a good amount of extra honor, plus a resource crate to hand in for the winners. It is hard to imagine who would still want to play Alterac Valley when Arathi Basin is around. AV will probably only open rarely, on holiday weekends or such, at least on the server I'm on, where AV already only happened on weekends before the patch.

In comparison to Warsong Gulch it is hard to say which will be the more popular, as the play style is different. There is no territorial control in WSG, the whole battle is about the two flags, which are moving. A single player can rush in, grab the flag, and run away, even if there is one or two defenders present, as long as he has some movement speed advantage. This isn't possible in AB, just running or sneaking in to grab a flag will only work if the flag is totally undefended. As a warrior, I like AB better than WSG, because being able to defend a spot without dying is more valuable in the new battleground.

Last night on Runetotem, we had up to 4 instances of Arathi Basin up, but that was because it was new and shiny. I don't know how the long-term interest will work out. I doubt the new battleground will be open all the time, every day, although it could well be up every evening. WoW's localized servers cause the population to vary strongly with the time of day. Few players are online at 3 am in the morning, because it is 3 am in the morning for all of them, with little time zone variations. And whatever the new battleground does, it will still have more Alliance people waiting in a queue than Horde players, because there are so many more Alliance players.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:56 PM Permanent Link