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Comment by TheOnyx

The main objective of this Battleground is to make it to the other factions stronghold and kill the NPC leader. However, the Battleground has many secondary objectives that can assist your faction in the main goal. There are also a few quests that are unrelated to the success of your faction in the Battleground but offer experience and rewards.

Comment by Dread

A very, very large 40 vs 40 Battleground that is an enormous amount of fun.

Rather than explaining it all myself, Blizzard did a fine job so here's the link:
http://worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/info-alteracvalley.html

Reputation Rewards:
http://worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/factions/alterac/index.html

Comment by 6101

In TBC, is this supposed to be a 51-70 bg?

Comment by 6460

For those who do not buy the expansion I would assume their enjoyment of the game will decrease.

I know that on BDF server there are usually 1-2 people in the BG who will grind on harpies/yeti for a few levels while they get AV rep and honor. Sort of a 3-for-1 deal.

AV is very very fast for gaining reputation so if you are a new lvl 60 and need an epic or two, devote some time to AV and you will be rewarded.

Comment by evoker

Finally they fixed one of the most irritating parts of AV, according to patch notes:
"Players will no longer be able to jump onto the top of the Dun Baldar Fortress in Alterac Valley and get behind the terrain to attack other players."

Comment by 8029

Hello,

Just a quick note to all alliance players. I know this may sound obvfious, but you wouldn't believe how many get this wrong. Stonehearth Graveyard. When you coem to it, and you are a defender, do teh offense, and the entire alliance team a favour and just leave it well enough alone. You WANT the horde to have it so they spawn there instead of their own base.

Please remember this. Oh, and always have about 10-15 on D, and rest on O.

Comment by 8202

There was another batlleground Blizzard was going to release similar to AV. It would be a 40 man BG called Azhara Crater based in the Forlorn Ridge. More info can be found here: http://www.lostwow.com/AzharaCrater.shtml Have Fun!!!

Comment by 8004

Although this bg can be a lot of fun, it can also cause a lot of irritation and arguing among the faction. it is hard to have 40 people following directions or working together. because of this, you will find many people arguing, and losing. this bg can also turn into a huge turtle game. some of the bgs you experience will become even 2 hours long!

Along with what others said, the mount from this bg is also very cool. a lot of people have it, but who cares, saves 80ish gold.

Also, although rare, I have seen many epics/rare items drop from weird random mobs in Alterac Valley. Good luck =)

Comment by 8253

Alterac Valley can be one of the best and one of the worst battlegrounds in the game.

It has recieved many improvments over time and now it is much more player controlled and now it is a race to see who can kill other general faster.

In some cases AV can get you more honor points than any other bg because of the huge honor gain.

AV can be one of the worst bg's because in my experience people don't really work together and help out each other in AV. Some really good experiences in there were when I had a group of 25+ of people all on vent and we won about 5 AV's in 6 hours which is really good honor.

AV's can drag on forever and it is hard for melee classes to get much action since it is mostly a ranged battle. Hunters this is your place they own here and have a lot of fun.

AV rewards are also something really good to shoot for since they are good quality for casters and melee people.

Comment by 8268

You see I have been in hundreds of AVs and I'm Exalted with them. If you want rep with them you will need to do quests and go into the battle on offense killing the horde NPCs (non player characters) or if you just want honor you should stay back and protect the alliance place (Dun Buldar) the horde will be coming and make sure you are in a group so they wont kill u try to stay hidden and kill as much as you can so you can get honor.

Comment by Sebas

In the new honor system this is easily one of the best ways to get honor to buy items... also it's great if you're alliance because we tend to win every single game : )

(unlike the other two BGs : ( )

Comment by 8712

I think you both are misunderstanding.

Yes this battle ground is for level 51-70 people but it will work excactly like the Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin systems work. You have a bracket that spans 10 levels. So they will be 2 AV brackets now. One will be 51-60 as it is now, and the next will be 61-70.

So getting 1 shot by a level 70 resto druid in their Teir 5 while your level 51 isn't going to be a concern...as long as you stay in AV heh

Comment by 8285

Forget strategy here. It's mostly whoever does more damage wins! So kill 'till you can't kill no more!

Comment by 8455

Most people in AV just zerge the generaal to get it done with. However for more honor points now( because of new patch) you should stay on defense. That way you get more honor kills. However if you wanna grind more rep, you go and kill the npcs like drek thar etc. on offense. Another way to grind rep also is to bring in the medals and the armor scraps you get from npcs as well as players of the opposite faction. ( you get more of each item from players than you do from npcs :)

Comment by 8271

When doing this battleground decide if you are defending or attacking (Most people go attacking) If you are Defending stay with the Leader. Or by the bridge. The attacking force stay together, that is your only win. A group of 17 people is better then a group of 3 agreed?
I hope my information was helpfull.

Comment by bradguy

Well in alterac valley if you wish to farm honor for Orgrimmar in the horde, then simply loot as many players as possible and bring the blood vials to the shaman inside the cave at the main base, she has a blue question mark on her head. If you hand in 5 you get 75 orgrimmar rep and 5 alterac valley rep, yet if you hand in 1 at a time you only get 10 orgrimmar rep per vial and 1 alterac valley rep.

Comment by 8954

I'd say good pvp zone overall but the only thing im really dissapointed in is the rewards now for pvp. The honor is good but the rewards I think are only really for 2 hand weapon classes, aka Unstoppable Force, many people have and a very good weapon no doubt but as a hunter I would just like a little more rewards for one of the hardest pvp zones yet.

Comment by Sware

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=048843CF9F6F3A405B57DD417DF1DDD3?topicId=55975614&sid=1

All honor gained has been reduced by 30%.

Comment by 9591

It is 14 honor not 16. I believe.

Comment by SeriusJones

With the new honor change, you get 14 bonus honor instead of 20 for all gains. AV is now the #1 honor you can get solo, due to blizzard not being able to reduce the 1 Honor HKs any further.

It is clear that this is the best way to honor grind.

- SJ

unless you have a group :o

Comment by 9634

Alterac Valley is a 40 vs. 40 man battleground with several npc's (including Lieutenants, Captians, Commanders, and a general for each team). The basic objective is to kill the opposing teams general. In order to do this you must progress down the map capturing graveyards, in order to make further points easier to capture. Also to make it easier you can kill the opposing factions captian to disable them from receiving buffs. The key strategy to winning is having a strong offense whilst still having a good enough defense to hold off the opposition. If you are unsure of where you should be, keep an eye on your map and look at the speed your team is progressing compared to the opposite team. It also helps a great deal to watch the battleground chat, and listen respectively. Your average wait for a AV game is 30mins to 1 hour, and the game itself can take up to an hour and a half, so dont bother queuing up if your short on time!

Comment by 9430

I've noticed that there's a new strategy in AV thats working quickly through the system and fixing its own flaws.. If its your wining quickly, and marks you're looking for then run strait to the enemies boss ( leader ect.) and down it ASAP.

If it's honor your looking for which you will be one way or another Youll need to either play alot more and win or accomplish things worth honor like kill the sub- bosses on your way there, take more towers, kill more of the enemy son on so forth..

Comment by 9634

Yeah I saw this strategy in play today it was completely absurd, the game ended and the horde had more honor points then the alliance, and the alliance won. AV can be a boat load of honor, the towers and mini-bosses are really worth killing/destroying.

Comment by 8993

Playing Alterac valley now a days is like playing Zerg in Starcraft,
If you dont have your Zerglings away and killing the other player within the first minute or so, chances are big you will lose.

Comment by 6569

No more of that 1, 2, 3 que bs needed. A simple script that the raid leader can run will queue everyone up for AV at the same time.

Step 1.
Open up the AV battle grounds list from the battle master

Step 2.
Run this script as raid leader
/script JoinBattlefield(0,1);

Comment by 33080

This is for Alliance lvl 51-60. I'd like to add a comment on the importance of securing and defending forward based graveyards to winning AV. If your goal is to down Drek then taking Frostwolf Graveyard should be your top priority. Forget about taking other graveyards along the way (except maybe Snowfall because it's easy to take). Trying to take every graveyard on your way to Drek results in an offense that gets spread out thin. The thinned out offense ends up getting easily killed by a few Horde players fighting along side Elite NPCs and when our offense, failing to capture any forward based graveyards, respawns back near Dun Baldar Alliance players find themselves on the wrong side of the Horde offense. Next thing you know instead of having a 30man offense/10man defense you have a 10man offense/30man defense with everyone arguing and talking about the good ol’ days when alliance used to own AV.

As a lvl 60 feral Druid it's easy for me to start taking over a graveyard with just one other player. I cast my two HoT spells get into bear form and pull the NPCs from the graveyard banner leaving it open for the other player working with me to assault. Being able to heal myself, and having 11k armor, the NPCs give up chasing me before they kill me.

If you have 5+ people (hopefully one tank and one healer) you should be able to kill the NPCs and the Elite NPC. With 5+ people what you shouldn’t do is have 1 person pull while everyone else runs to the banner. Why? Because the one person pulling gets killed, the NPCs return and your still working on the banner, the banner opens up right after the NPCs gang bang 1 or 2 more of your party members, the last few either die trying to counter attack or run away. Then as your spirit sits waiting to respawn back at Dun Baldar the message pops up letting you know that Horde has defended the graveyard you just assaulted…

Also until the graveyard is won it should be heavily guarded so some Horde doesn't spend 2 seconds undoing all your hard work.

As a side note, if you find yourself as a spirit back at a GY near Dun Baldar and there’s an Alliance GY up where your O is, walk your spirit to that GY and respawn there. It’s slower than riding a mount but unless your destination GY is lost on your walk there it’s a sure thing!

that was longer than I thought it would be

Comment by 17056

"some of the bgs you experience will become even 2 hours long!"
Ah, you've missed out on the good times in AV...full of NPC's, took ~3 days to play a game. You could literally play an hour or two of AV, go to bed, wake up, go to work/school/uni/commitments and log on that night to finish that game.

Good times, no sarcasm.

Comment by 67134

The fun of this battleground has gone down considerably since TBC. Back in "the good old days", as some call them, each side actually used strategies and defense in this BG. Now, all anybody ever does is zerg the opposing side. All of the side quests have been completely forgotten; since TBC I have not seen anybody turning in armor scraps or blood. It's a shame, really. Some of the best times I've had on WoW were in the old days of AV, when each side would summon their elemental lord and have an all-out brawl in the Field of Strife as the giant lords wreaked havoc.

Comment by 67358

Nowadays you will see lots of cavemen here. (The "AFK" people who are leeching honor)

Comment by 76710

Does anyone know how many supplies you need to trigger a ground assault?

Comment by 76591

Personally, I found this to be THE most fun battleground yet.

Comment by Shockna

The problem is, to get the AFK debuff on a player, 30 people need to report him/her.

It's quite likely that more than 10 players in an individual AV match are AFK, making it impossible to get the debuff (Or kick).

And as for the "no honor until in combat" thing, there are ways to get around this as well.

The amount of effort it would take to stop AFKers is immense. And IMO, not worth it.

Comment by 80922

hmm what i actually wanted to know when i looked here is what those 2 mines do and if they r strategicly worth it didnt c an answere so far.
Concerning strats at my server that place is the most stressy hell available at lvl 70 but tons of fun.
Basicly both (horde and alliance) use a destroy all on path strat with a full out 40 on attack at start, as some 70 elites go down or some skirmishes might take some of the offence down before new graveyards r taken some end up all north/south and get stuck on defence.
As i noticed a few horde always try to capture stormpike gy or some bunkers at dun baldar. (they can easilly be held of by a few men on defence) On the alliance side frostwolf towers cant be taken easilly with a smal force since you have to deal with 2ce more archers since the towers r closer together.
Both factions at my server reach warmasters within 20-25 mins mostly horde slightly later since the best point to defend for horde is frostwolf keep (horde have the adantage of only haveing to go a short distance to get in there (bit unfair maybe?)) and for allies stormpike graveyard or the bridge.
As far as ive noticed if you start the warmasters without having hold of a gy close or lose hold on (all) gy's close youve lost.
If this isnt going as a rampaging storm of enourmous power and peops r shattered you lose time everywhere and get there too late.
Finally and most important of this (way to long) comment please have an organized go at the the last showdown if you dont have some peops tanking and some healing at the warmasters ypou might as well go to the black temple and go for a nice drop on youre own.
Hope this helps and that it wasnt to long (witch it prob is)
(to show i know the bg ive won about 200 tokens so far and won about 60-70% i also end up high in amounts of dmg done)

Comment by Epicwire

|HORDE|

Do u want to get 400-500Honor each run when not av weekend? And each run is around 10-15 mins... do this : Rush to sp and take it ofc, then go aid gy and bunkers.
Then u go take Sh gy and bunker, then balinda!
But someone must defend Sp and Aid station to!

Lets say 15Min x 10Rounds = 2 Hours and 30Mins.
450Honor x 10Rounds = 4500 honor on 2Hours and 30Mins!!!
5Hours = 9k Honor
10Hours = 18k Honor
And if u r crazy 15Hours = 27k Honor :)
I got 31k honor once at 13Hours whit instant Av, whit out Av weekend.
So if u need honor, this is the way u should do it and get ppl to do it!

And afkers, this is when u run around whit ppl...!

Comment by Abura

Some say this BG got boring, because people just run South or North and kill the boss. Sure this is true, but in my guess mostly for the lvl 70's out there.

It's fun to actually try and get some other honors going. In my opinion at least.
So dont just run, get rep then kill :)

Comment by Toldry

what about fish?

i'v tried to fish in both the lake neer stormpike and the lake neer frostwolf. wowhead sais that the lake neer stormpike isn't fish able, but the one neer frostwolf is, but i couldn't fish in aether one of them.

Comment by Battleguard

If I remember correctly, fishing in Alterac Valley was removed in a recent patch as people would fish instead of fighting.

Comment by owx1985

Always Alliance won !!! And lots of AFKer, very angry with it .....

70 undead lock www.wowsg.blogspot.com

Comment by 73556

With the new Patch in place, you can now report "Afkers" or as the horde have come to call them tunnel leechers/farmers.

If you see someone in the cave and not doing anything (Havn't Moved) Right-click on the players name and then "Report for AFK"

If enough people report them, they will get a de-buff which stops them from getting honor during the game.

So there will not be many afkers around these days =)

Comment by Spinal78

in 2.3 that comes november 13 (2007) we will see a few changes in AV, this is what blizzard posted.

Strategy can be an important element of any battleground. We want to emphasize this in Alterac Valley more and give players additional meaning to both defending and attacking. To push the strategic element of the battleground to the next level we have changed how players maintain their reinforcements or deprive the other team of theirs.

Each team will have a starting reinforcement count. Reinforcements can be lost in significant amounts if a tower is destroyed or if Captain Galvangar or Balinda Stonehearth is killed. For each team member death, an additional reinforcement will be lost. On the death of General Drek’Thar or Vanndar Stormpike, all reinforcements are lost and the team is defeated. At any point in time, if a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team will win the battle. Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.

Warmasters can be the boon or the bane of any team. They are an important element for the defense of your general or the defeat of the opposing general. Warlords and their general will be more closely linked in the next patch. Pulling one is a guarantee the other will come as well. Each team begins with four Warmasters. Destroying a tower will eliminate the associated Warmaster. Unlike the current game play, however, destroying the enemy tower will not add a Warmaster to your own side.

We will be changing the pace of the battle slightly with a reduction in the time needed to control a tower or graveyard. Where it currently takes five minutes to gain control, the time will be reduced to four minutes. The honor for capturing a tower will also be increased.

Graveyards can be an important resource for getting your teammates back into the battle more quickly. Currently, players can sometimes be sent to their starting tunnels far from the battlefront. This can often be an inconvenient location to respawn and more out of the way from the action than we would like, to correct this, players will instead respawn at a team-controlled graveyard. Should the team not have a graveyard under their control, they will respawn in the starting tunnel.

Players will only be awarded bonus honor during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Once the battle is concluded, bonus honor will be awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in battle. The bonus honor awarded should be similar to previous totals, but will reward players for taking more active roles in Alterac Valley toward defending or attacking key locations and NPCs.

Lastly, we are changing NPC interactions within Alterac Valley. We have reduced the number of elite NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds as well as sent all Commanders and Lieutenants out of Alterac Valley. They are currently in search of other battle opportunities. This should reduce the amount of NPCs that players will have to fight and place more focus on PvP combat over key locations on the map.

Strategy is the name of the game in Alterac Valley, and these changes will bring out the need for more teamwork and coordination from both the Horde and the Alliance as they vie for domination of this battleground.

Comment by 67358

AV is much different now. Both factions start with 600 reinforcements. You gain more or less 61 honor and they lose some reinforcements if you destroy a tower, kill the captains, etc. You lose 1 reinforcement per member death. All Lieutenants and Commanders are gone. The mines are also for reinforcements. You'll experience more turtling in some games (because some people are now willing to defend the towers, etc.) but "15-20 minutes or less" games are still possible.

Comment by 79931

Actually honorpoints are awarded in multiples of 20.9

1*20.9 for every wingcommander (3) that makes it back
2*20.9 for every tower/bunker you still have in possession
2*20.9 for the surviving captain
3*20.9 for every tower/bunker you destroy
3*20.9 for the captain you killed
4*20.9 for winning

The generals don't give any honor, not for killing and not for surviving.

Comment by 66466

They made a new thing that is called reinforcments, you guys probably know about it but it never hurts to put it in here.

Basicly the horde and the allience has 500 points or "reinforcments" the first faction to run out of them looses.

To decrease the number you have to destroy/capture the apposing teams towers/bunkers etc.

This allso makes the game so that it doesnt take 4-5 hours to finish. (As a comment posted somewhere above me)

This is a really awsome Battleground. You get honor here crazy, and all you have to do is stick to a big group and be smart on when to fight.

Daryth - Frostmane

Comment by VooktaVelen

Please note that all Loot tables shown on cuckhead.com no longer are no longer accurate. Only loot you will receive are for those needed on turn ins.

Fishing as it was also noted above has been removed.

All those green/blue/purple items no longer drop at all.

On a very rare occasion you might get a grey vendor trash item from the animals.

Comment by 110096

Getting tired of losing AV marks in the mail, I got the ram and decided to do the trinket quest "Proving Grounds". Having talked with friends, it sounded simple. Having to kill the flying things in Icewing Cavern and finding the battle standard. Easy right. Well, somewhere in that cavern is an Elite 71 Yeti (one that I know of, maybe more) that I bumped into. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty and I still haven't got that trinket. Just wanted to warn those who had a similar idea to get the trinket to go with a friend or two if you want it.

Comment by 122037

Im wondering how much aprox honor is

Loss (no honor weekend)

Win (no honor weekend)

Loss (During honor weekend)

Win (During honor weekend)

i heared it was roughly 300 per loss

Comment by 111622

Tower Cap = 75 points
Boss = 100 points
Horde/Ally = 1 point
Final Boss = 600 points

Comment by 87278

"(Added 2/20) There is now a Join as Party option." - 2.4

Another BG for the overpopulated alliance in my battlegroup to run premades for... I'm not saying alliance wont have the same problem in some battlegroups but AV was the last place available for good clean Pug-V-Pug.

"Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek'Thar and Frostwolf Keep."

- That's not too bad as even myself playing horde never really understood why we were so dang far up the map compared to my alliance characters.

"Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Belinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek'Thar and Captain Galvangar"

I never even noticed one side was more unbalanced than the other. There are other changes coming in 2.4 which i dont see as significant as these 3. But if balancing it completely brings AV queues below 2-3 hours then im happy for now.

Comment by Ilany

In 2.4, hordes starting tunnel was moved to around the place where the Wildpaw Cavern was located in the south, to the right of Frostwolf Keep at the map. (As seen at the map here on Wowhead.) Hence horde players won't reach the bunkers past midfield faster than the alliance anymore.

Comment by 154530

Well I 4 1 think AV is the best way 2 get honor

Comment by Wariu

I have an tactic wich makes my team win always, unless

- your team is full of slackers

- your team says u to shut up or /care

- Hordies are mostly defending or uses the same tact against alliance and are even faster. here it is, I use it as macro wich i put in when gates opens for BG

Okay here's the deal: I want 6-7 or more ppl for rush to FW so we can cap hut/FW towers meanwhile others goes to galv(skip if heavily deffed) --->IB/TP and all gets destroyed about same time, if they're deffed enough. then after 6minutes we'll have all down and we're ready for Drek, it means 10min bg if worked as usual (95%)

Comment by Crazykill

Is alterac valley bugged, cause it says invalid battlemaster when i try going on it...

Comment by 75756

The funniest bg, in my opinion. The best bg for Honor farming. Stay def and you can farm 500 honor in 10 mins. 2000 honor each AV for me and very easy to get exalted.

EDIT: Completing the quests gives you reputation with Frostwolf and Orgrimmar. Winning AV gives you rep only with Frostwolf.

Comment by Kennit

Hasn't anyone noticed that to get to Vann is easier than getting to Drek?
The Horde base is multi-leveled, with towers above to shoot down on anyone coming into the base. A reasonably Horde defence can easily hold back any major Alliance offensive just by using the elite NPCs to their advantage while the Frostwolf Archers turn any live Alliance into feathery pincushions. Like it wasn't hard enough to kill Drek'thar without this added advantage to the Horde?
This is just another example of Blizzard favouritism of the Horde!...
Its fortunate they changed it to the New AV, though I would've liked to see some old AV battles played out =(

Edit: In reply to danierlsjoberq14, Bloodlust Battlegroup (US) Alliance are always owned by Horde, usually because we don't have enough players.

Comment by 87606

This is clearly alliance favored and i will give reasons why:

1-Horde Towers can be taken more easily then bunkers. With horde towers the marksman can't shoot inside the tower so alliance can easily cap that tower. Bunkers are harder to get since the marksman just turn around and shoot at whoever is getting the flag.

2-Galv's house is facing in the direction of Snowfall GY since horde LET alliance take it on the belief that it will reduce O's hardship. While balinda's house is facing in the direction of the alliance base requireing us to run a little bit further and getting the Alliance gy. Balinda summons a water elemental that can do severe dmg if not controlled properly. Balinda cannot be interupted while casting a spell. While Galv only has to hit people and fear (which lasts 6 seconds) and people keep saying that fears them outside his house, thus making him reset.

3-Horde Base is easier to get into they can take the short cut over the hill as soon as they enter our base and skip the blacksmith and the Bounty Hunters. While for the Alliance base horde dont get any shortcuts we have to get into the bunkers (re-read reason1) and when we get try to get Aid Station we HAVE TO run past the blacksmith and the bounty hunters and in the Southern Bunker there is a elite that repairs for alliance when someone uses a AoE by accident you pull him thus making it even harder for the horde part.

So stop QQing alliance its even harder on our part

Comment by 193701

This used to be my favorite battleground, when the que for it was 2 hours, and the battle itself laster about a whole day, or longer. But when the Cross-realm came, the battleground changed into a giant Zerg-fest. Pity.

But 1 of the most important things to remember, when fighting you're enemy's general : Never walk out of the room when you aggro, this wil reset the general, and you have to start killing him all over again. Seen this a 100 times, really painfull when he is at 2% or somehting.

Comment by 149406

Okay, I guess it just varies from server to server (seeing some of the above comments) but I know that, as a Hordy, we almost always lose AV...is it that my battlegroup sucks at it (Emberstorm...no offense to those in it), my bad luck/skill (since we're usually severly outnumbered and im just trying to get Bloodseeker, so I'm a bit low level), or is it that Bliz balanced it out by making a BG alliance can actually win in :P

Comment by 201933

It sure is funny when both teams meet at a choke point and duke it out 40vs40. Happens every three games or so on my server. (Deathwing)

Comment by 210079

A question: Do you still get honor for capturing and holding a mine?

Comment by 217095

I've only expierienced this from the Frostwolf side, but from what I've seen:
If you are:
-Horde: swarm here at 51-60, it'll be the only break you'll get in PvP, as none of the Alliance tend to come here(12 vs. 40 :D)
-Alliance: wait till 61-70 if you need marks, unless you can stand 1 mark every 30 minutes AND getting stomped on by the Horde
-Dumb: get the F*** out of AV

Comment by 223475

I have played many many avs -only as horde- and after evaluation i concluded that:

Alliance wins a lot more avs than horde, ratio must be about 8:1

From my personal experience, there have been days that horde couldn't win (1) one av bg while i was playing 10+ hours av.

Why ?

Map setup favors alliance both for attack and defence

a) Alliance can reach horde base immediately -they can even avoid door jumping fence- and cap FY Towers and Relief Hut there aren't horde NPCs to pull near so horde can't defend as alliance can

b) Alliance base has a bridge which is the ONLY way for horde to reach the alliance base and alliance can easily do not permit any1 to pass plus DB towers are in range and archers start to fire! a lot of wipes there, DB towers and Aid station has many -maybe 25- ally NPCs near so a horde player usually when he fights ally player he pulls NPCs too, ally know that and try to activate as many NPC as possible making the attack of horde easily to wipe

c) Alliance needs much fewer people to defend their base cause of the above facts so more ally players can assist attack

d) Balinda is closer to SH gy, Galv is a bit more far from IB gy so Balinda can be defended a lot easier.

Alliance players have noticed all these and farm honor, they get 4x the honor and marks at least horde gets, that means inbalance in pvp if an ally gets for example (3) three merciless items when a horde gets only (1) one!

as soon as a horde player joins an av he almost knows beforehand that it is a loss, not very good job from blizzard side

Comment by 157377

As many know, the team looses one reinforcement per member who dies, but I think it is why MANY think, killing the tohers is the fastest way to win. In my PvP gear, I have 345 resiliience, but I still fiend it pretty hard to reach the hordes base thruogh the middle, and most often, then cap Snowfall GY, and hordes hitting north ALLWAYS stop to kill me, when they are hitting north. Many NE rogues farms in the middle aswell. On our battlegroup (Conviction), it is even between alliance and horde in AV, while horde wins way more in AB, WSG and EoTS.

Comment by 200725

Man i still remember the good old days of WoW back when this BG took HOURS to beat and took real strategy, i remember when i just got to 60 and i tried this out...it was amazing, the ways to boost your forces, the strategy for killing generals. Anybody else miss those days? this went from reducing HP to taking away units...and now they took away the leutenants, sheesh it used to take real skill and determination to win this, now its all just Rush, Turtle and Zerging. theres no funleft in this place except for killing the boss. and now they got this reinforcemnt thing that i hate and it makes sure this BG goes by quickly.in my opinion they should have 2 things for this 1 as it is rushign and Zerging then a diff version just like the good old days.

Comment by jhunter0100

how do i play at this map everyone

Comment by 235143

Need 10 on both sides to start
and max of 40 on both sides

Comment by Teldarsterallnes

This is what you are supposed to do:
Alliance:1.Capture Snowfall Graveyard
2. Kill Captain Galvanar
3. Capture all graveyards and towers in this order: Iceblood Tower and Graveyard,Tower Point, Frostwolf Graveyard, West and East Frostwolf Towers,Frostwolf Relief Hut.
4. Kill Drek'Thar
Horde:1. Capture Snowfall Graveyard
2. Kill Captain Balinda Stonehearth
3. Capture all graveyards and bunkers in this order: Stonehearth Bunker and Graveyard, Icewing Bunker, Stormpike Graveyard, Dun Buldar North and South Bunkers.
4.Kill Vanndar Stormpike

Comment by 237938

alliance always wins if u r on emberstorm battlegroup

Comment by 242565

The battle is not comlete fair if you ask me. I could be wrong, but allince is a bit more fortuned, cause their NPC leader stands in better place than horde. That bridge, well, it is a bit dangerous thing, you know, someone can fall down)

Comment by 5057

Play Yakety Sax (Benny Hill theme), while in AV for Maximum effectiveness.

Comment by 103954

R.I.P. Alterac Valley, no more heroes from Wrath of the Lich King.

Comment by Sentrios

Support this awesome idea to make AV as good or even better than it was:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4028093362&sid=1
Not my idea, and I cant post because I dont have an US account :(

Comment by Abomb

DONT STOP BELEIVIN!
BLIZZARDS STUPITITY JUST GOES ON AND ON AND ON AND ON
YA!

Comment by ricekrispieslol

this is the most fun u could have while in a battleground,its so much fun i got 600 marks of honor in it........ alliance has the area advantage on it but hoardies kick more butt so it kinda evens out, i cant w8 4 my alt shammy 2 get 2 lvl 51 so he can be in this.

Comment by Abomb

u need to be 51 at minimum 57-60 recomended

Comment by 336419

Horde Never win in alterac Valley. When i get int alterac valley horde is always outnumbered allys always get 40 people easy while we try hard to get 20

Comment by 127599

Funfact: The troggs/koblolds can take the mines back! I pulled two halls of them on my 57 hunter pulled them to the leader and feigned death and when they killed the leader they took the mine.

Comment by Ewonhemer

Anyone know if blizzard is ever going to change AV back to its original? I've only played bc+WOLTK so ive nvr had the xperince of a 2-3 day AV and it sounds funner thn the short 7-30 min av's nowadays.

Comment by 332455

I am new to WoW and have only been playing for the past 5 months and just fought my first AV battle and thought it awsome. However after reading these posts have come to the conclusion that it would be Awsomest(G.W.Bush lessons.) if it would last longer so that us noobs could figure out whats going on. I felt like a chicken with my head cut off. I just ran around blindly trying to stay alive and attacking anything that another alliance player was fighting. Couldn't tell if it was friend or foe. Got some scrap something or others off a pvp I killed and before i could figure out what to do with it the darn fight was over. I would really love to play a battle for an hour or two. That would be really cool. Where stealth and strategy where gods and not the " Duh...Huh?" that I just was a part of. LOL... Great idea, going to have to download Benny Hill song. It totally fits to that debotchery of something that sounds was great and wholesome once.

Comment by 166128

I heard that if you're an ally and you cap ibgy early in game, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks you..

..or you get trolled to death.

either one really, i'm not sure.

Comment by Kolvek22

Level Brackets:

51-60
61-70
71-80

Comment by Elarieline

At 80 on my hunter when we lose in this battleground we generally get 10k honor. If we win its almost 25k.

Comment by 159214

All Wing Commanders here are refference to movie 'Top Gun (IMDB link)'

Guse - Goose
Jeztor - Jester
Mulverick - Maverick
Slidore - Slider
Vipore - Viper
Ichman - Iceman

Comment by 358770

This Bg is fun, but it is a little bit easy (at least on my realm).
From the comments before I make up that the former version of AV was more tactical and was a real warfare while this is more a skirmish. They should have kept those 3 hours to 3 days AV's and that you could get to them trough a special battlemaster somewhere, but the new ones should be kept for people who have a reason why they can't play for 3 days and can only play max 1 hour at the time. By my realm is the problem a little bit different. It seems that at least in my realm, Hellfire, there aren't enought alliance players who go into the Bg so the horde (who is honest not because of this my side) can destroy all while the little amount of alliance players who are in the Bg are trying to hold the defeat as long away as possible for 6 -18 against 35-40. I have no idea why there are so few alliance players who play this Bg and I feel very sorry for the alliance players who actually try to play this and get totally pwned because the lack of numbers. Some players are probably not playing because of the lack of numbers, but I don't know why the main group of alliance players rather play other Bg's than AV. If it is because of the numbers, maybe you should go in groups. Can an alliance player from Hellfire realm if he wants to pls tell me why the alliance almost doesn't play AV? Not only do you miss the fun of the Bg, but (I am not accusing you) you are also taking the fun away from the few alliance players who do try to play the Bg and some hord players who rather have fun figthing PvP, than just slaughtering npc's and winning the Bg without much difficulty. the Bg's where created to have free PvP without fearing for higher lvl players and npc's who try to kill you while you are PvPing.
This was much longer than I had intended, but I felt somebody should say this load of stuff I have typed down here.

Comment by 36335

With the change of Patch 3.2 you can now gain experience in Battleground

With my Level 71 Shaman I got:
17.293 XP for destroying a Tower
18.113 XP for defeating Captain Galvangar
23.897 XP for defeating Drek'thar
11.949 XP for winning Battleground

Comment by 423827

where is the actual instance for alterac valley?

Comment by echtaria

Anyone know why you need the reputation in this instance?

Comment by blademage

iv heard that doing a few of these a day can be up to 3x faster than levelling is this true?

Comment by 131638

Well blademage its true but it depends if you win and how fast you do that. From 51-60 AV you can level up 2 or 3 times every 13-18 wins.Depending on level ofcourse.

Comment by 358770

I have never played before the summer before WOTLK but I hate the fact that the game is so short and you can't do anything special like summoning the big guy because the gathering of the stuff takes too much time. It is also annoying that people at the moment have the idea to just with almost everybody go trying to kill the general while I and a few hordies try to prevent from getting everything wrecked by the alliance (they usually wreck it). I think most of the players would like if the old version came back, because that is almost certain more fun with all special things it has.

Comment by 36549

Does anyone know a link to where I can find a list of experience gained per Objective in AV or other Battlegrounds, based on your level? Because I know its different per level but does anyone know if its on a percentage or solely based on which one you capture?
Any information on the experience gains would be awesome. ;)

Comment by 290285

As of patch 3.2.2, Alterac Valley honor and experience have been cut in half, and all 40 people on each side will have to be in the queue for the game to start. Also, the brackets have been changed to that of the other battlegrounds, like 60-69, 70-79, etc.

Edit: Heirloom items work in battlegrounds now as well.

Comment by Agronok

at his time of writing I have been in the queue for AV for over an hour, how long do these things last for!

Comment by Sallad

As of patch 3.2.2 the new level brackets are.

51-59
60-69
70-79
80

Comment by 397318

A few weeks ago, they actually BUFFED the EXP you gain from all BGs. The new amount of EXP you get has been DOUBLED.

Goin' to see alot of competition in Alterac Now...

Comment by Blacane

For those of you current players that never got to experience the classic pvp system in its full glory this was the premier battlground of the day. It is in my opnion, the battleground that needs a revamp the hardest.

A breif explanation of the older contents:

Tokens from killed players or enemy NPC's used to be used for different raid buffs from sending extra elite troops, Air raids, and an epic boss that would assault the opposing base if the right amount of tokens were colleted. I cannot recall but Ive only seen the boss twice in the game myself. One was of elemental type (horde) and the other was a giant trent (allies)
Each time a player was killed by this boss (if i remember correctly) the summonable raid boss would get bigger and heal a little bit. you had to protect the boss till it could survive on its own but after it got big enough it was devastating and a wonder to behold.

What happens nowadays (on nightfall battlegroup)

Allies first cap snowfall (correct me if Im wrong on names of places pls) the neutrel grave in the center of the map. Then they assault the secondary raid boss that provides a group buff to the horde, then they take each tower and grave the rest of the way. If Im right each tower still in place provides an extra elite to defend the respective general so towers are important. Remember that each grave cap reduces travel time to the opposeing gerneral so they cap those as much as possible as well.

Allies useing this tend to win AV alot. Horde tends to try and race them and that often does not work very well.

The horde attempt for the most part to mirrior the allies tatic and they tend to fail for whatever reason. What I have noticed is that when horde tries to defend and recap horde often gets enough time to assualt and defeat the alliance general. Provided that the defence works in coordinated (rarely) groups horde tends to win.

Things that would fix/restore the old AV:

I would like to see the tokens usefulness restored. An inrease to reinforcements through tokens? or maybe just an increase to reinforcements period might make the tokens a valid option agian. Beefing up the bosses to where the tokens are needed to win would be very cool imo. There is never any straight conflict because both sides see it as just a DPS race.

It would be even funnier if they decided to make the generals leave to assault the other base after a given timelimit. Just some random wishing and thoughts

Comment by 381360

Sigh i miss the old Alterac so much, a couple of days ago i was in a typical AV, rush to galv (im alliance) get TP, IBT rush RH then cap fw and wait...so boring so after that game i wanted to try and spice it up a bit, i went on Defence and got enough armor scraps to get us to veteran defenders got all 3 gryphon masters home almost had calvary units come in got two mines and finally was able to get the druids to summon the Tree boss but after all that i looked at reinforcements and saw horde had 6 reinforcments left....sigh all that for nothing AV just isn't fun anymore bosses, tactics, strategy using supplies and items all it is now is rushing.

probably never gonna happen but i wouldn't complain if they brought back classic AV

/end nerd rant

Comment by 293216

I was flagged for being afk in one of these when I was far from it which really set me off since I had to wait a good deal of time to get back into AV. Very handy to get back at players or just to do for fun I suppose.

Comment by 415121

As of patch 3.3 the new level brackets are.

51-60
61-70
71-79
80

People who had a separate, non-BC/non-WotLK account complained to Blizzard, and they reverted all changes but the 80 bracket.

Take care, AV is still full of "twinks".

Comment by blademage

what are the purpose of tokens recieved from looting?

Comment by blademage

how are the mines taken i looked for a flag but couldnt find one :(

Comment by 489945

Remember when the queue was so long you could go to a fancy resturant then when you went back it was still in queue and the battles were so long you could almost think you could go from neutral to exalted in one av match.

Comment by Silmafarion

Isn't AV available at lvl 70 anymore? According to the realm I play on, it is not.

Comment by 344795

I had a very amazing experiance in AV recntly in the 51-60 bracket. Both teams had around 200 reinforcements left with 2 towers captured each. Large fronts of advancing armies met at the middle right around Tower Point. We then proceded to beat the opposing team silly in what i can only describe as the most fun and interesting 15 minutes of my entire career of WoW playing. I have an 80 Warrior and an 80 Shaman who i leveled all the way from 51-80 in AV and never NEVER had this occured. I would be extremely pleased if Blizzard made a BG that was extremely similar to this experiance. Maybe something similar to WSG in size but with some towers and strategic holdings THAT ARE NOT CAPTURABLE! the only goal of the Battleground will be to eliminate the other team's set amount of reinforcements (200)?
I appologize for poor spelling on my part but i need to get back to my leveling of my Hunter to see if this happens again.
Halfelven-80 Night Elf Warrior
Saxong-80 Dreanai Shaman
Kaleanon-80 Night Elf Hunter
Scilla

Edit-Hunter is 80 now :D

Comment by blademage

sooo any1 able to tell me how to capture mines?

Comment by 494538

In all my experience in AV, Alli lose. Why? Cuz they want to get every single tower. And that gives us horde time to go kill the top boss. THANKS! Towers just leave you less elites to kill at the boss. FUN TIMES!

Comment by linkhyrule

It is said in the Cataclysm expansion guide. That AV will go from a 40 man to 25man! Not too sure if its a good idea or not.

Comment by megakiller312

The most important thing here is to leave a team to defend, and another team to attack the enemy boss.
I see players don't defend and all go to Offense. They lost a couple of times then still they thought Offense is good.
I played Defense here so it was OK.
And leave at least 5 healers, 5 DPS and some DoT, CC Classes here so that it makes harder for enemy team to kill the boss.

Comment by Mutilado

Join this battleground if you would like to play with around 25 idiots.

Comment by 219762

with voice software,you can communicate players from different realms,which means you can play AV with well geared players,and at least 30 organized army man vs other 40 unorganized ones,especially better for the short queue time faction which makes most of the organized ones can get in the exact battleground as you want.So this is AV pre-made team.Also works for isle of conquest.

Comment by 412940

Do any Alterac Valley quests count toward Loremaster? Because Proving Grounds isn’t marked as a PvP quest.

Comment by Ketho

Captain Galvangar - Whirlwind (*), Mortal Strike, Cleave, Frightening Shout (*)
Drek'Thar - Whirlwind (*), Knockdown, Frenzy
- East Frostwolf Warmaster (Aura) - Whirlwind (*), Charge, Cleave, Demoralizing Shout, Enrage
- West Frostwolf Warmaster (Aura) - same
- Tower Point Warmaster (Aura) - same
- Iceblood Warmaster (Aura) - same
- Duros & Drakan - Enrage

Captain Balinda Stonehearth - Arcane Explosion, Cone of Cold, Fireball, Frostbolt, Ice Block, Summon Water Elemental
- Greater Water Elemental - Water Bolt
Vanndar Stormpike - Thunderclap, Stormbolt, Avatar
- Dun Baldar North Marshal (Aura) - Whirlwind (*), Charge, Cleave, Demoralizing Shout, Enrage
- Dun Baldar South Marshal (Aura) - same
- Icewing Marshal (Aura) - same
- Stonehearth Marshal (Aura) - same

Comment by 202502

Even though they're probably never going to change AV back to what it was, a good option would then be to make another AV, like, Alterac Valley(A) (# of Queue) - the current one, and then Alterac Valley(B) (# Queue) - the pre-TBC, proper, and most WARcraftish instance/zone in the game. And maybe reactivate the old entrance, so that players that wanted the old one, entered through that portal, and doesn't get mixed up with the other BG in their battleground menu.

Thats just my opinion, i think it would be great for all of us that prefer the original one than the current fast/slow and right out of the original plot of AV. And those who doesn't want to have it, could just join the current one...

Please don't downrate or flame me, it's just an opinion...

-----------
by the way, did blizzard change AV xp in 3.3.3? At the 51-60 brackets, i got half a level (10/20 xp bars) for each time my side won, i got it on each lvl from 55 to 58 yesterday, haven't joined another one again too see if it's the same for 58, was getting late. Anyway, at each of those winning rounds, we had usually only max 1-2 towers destroyed, no graveyards lost and our captain were also alive in about 75% of those rounds, we had 1 Wing Commander returned, and we had captured about 1 or two of their towers, both mines and killed their captain.. The result each round was 0 reinforcements to the enemy faction, but we were also pretty close, we usually went down to 40-100 before they reached 0. Anyone else got this in the current patch at higher lvl BG queues? Seems to me that the xp in BGs are boosted alittle again, and yes i have the chest and shoulder heirloom.

Sorry for all the text though.

Edit: Just noticed, i only receive around 10-40% exp each winning round now at most, no matter what many assets we have, this is though in the 61-70 brackets, but i do think i got the same value in the 51-60 bracket one or two times at lvl 52, when it was not Call to Arms, i think i might have been a little blind to not realize that Call to Arms that week had any experience effect, i have always thougt that CtA only gave more honor. Correct me if im wrong here.

Comment by Mhid

Does this and some other battlegrounds have a quest chain u must complete to enter it now because i have a level 71 hunter and he cant enter most of the higher battlegrounds but my level 80 DK can go in and i dont know why. Have i missed a patch note somewhere or do i need to contact a GM?

Comment by Tro44

OH NOESSS

blizzard wants to change AV from 40man to 25 man.

Comment by Anathelia

To those of you complaining you can't seem to queue for AV:

#1 - What level are you?
#2 - Is it currently the Call to Arms?

In the 51-60 bracket, you'll get AVs pretty easily for two reasons. First, it's the first bracket that AV becomes available, and at that level range the XP gain is extremely good, so a lot of people swap to AV at L51, level to 60 in it and use the honor to buy a few pieces of Marshal gear to hit up Outland in style. Secondly, Death Knights. People make 'em just to trash AV, and so on. It means a lot more people available to get the battle going.

From 61 to 79, it can be very iffy. XP really slows down in AV if you're losing, especially if it's outside of the Call to Arms weekend. Because of that, and because the DK rush gets on more and more equal footing to other classes in terms of gear as they level up, the number of people who try to level from AV drops off. If you're not currently in a Call to Arms weekend, don't be surprised that it takes a long time to queue, if you can even get a match at all. This of course also varies from battlegroup to battlegroup and how inclined your group is to actually do PvP in the first place.

Comment by 301506

We had a great AV a day ago. It was over an hour and we were tied up until the last when we (i play alliance) summoned Ivus. The horde we were fighting didnt know who he was and tried soloing him and died and he took about 100 resources out of them and then charged Drek. We also had champion soldiers and sent out two airstrikes.

Comment by Aletrooper

The Horde and Alliance now have a limited number of reinforcements available in the battle for Alterac Valley. The number of reinforcements available is reduced upon player death, loss of towers, and death of Captain Galvangar or Balinda Stonehearth. In addition, all available reinforcements are lost upon the death of General Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike. If a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team wins the battle.

this is a note from patch 2.3.0 or so in that patch number and it shows how the AV battles were reduced to only 20 mins instead of the good day when AV used to go on for 3 hours where u could leave and join and people will still be playing :D

Comment by Saltytoes

A classic.

Comment by moxpearl

Why did they have to ruin AV ?

It was a amazing complex BG that sometimes lasted for days.. now there is even the achivement The Alterac Blitz .. 6 minutes ffs ..

Why not return AV to its roots ? 90% of people have not even seen all that AV has to offer..

I am sure there is someway they could keep the honor maths in tact (So that everyone would not just goto another BG)

Comment by themguyman

this is one of my favorite battlegrounds i remember hitting 50 or 51 (i cant remember what 1 it was) and immediately going to orgrimar to quea for it and then spending about 2 or 3 hours in it (mind you that this was at the end of burning crusade and there was a full 40 ppl on both sides and no1 left) i was never good at pvp and still am not good but the first time i went i got like 30 HKs and got enough honor to get a mount to save for 60. ne way this is still one of the best BGs in game but im sad to see it go to a 20 man cuz that just ruins it part of the fun was having the entire opposite faction hold up in their base and just AoEing them to death. i mean its some times fun to destroy a helpless enemy to blow off some steam and that fun came from killing every1 at the same time it was fun as hell to keep the other team held up in their bases GY just w8ing for them to respawn so they can be killed again

Comment by Dimonslayer

I think that this is the best Battleground created so far because to me it has a real "war" like feeling that some Battlegrounds lack.

Just throwing in my 2 cents

Comment by saud

i dont know if u think im crazy or not but i have an ally pala in grim batol and a rogue in kazzack but thats not the point ahhm... yeah there was this 1 time in BC i entered with my pala AV then when i got out of the leechers tunnel the battle was in progress and the horde were winning when i saw this gaint elemental (who looks like an earth elemental) kick our ally *&$es in the ally base who the hell was that boss and where did he come from?

Comment by 262906

ok.
im only going to say this once.

BLITZ DOES NOT, REPEAT, NOT WORK 80% OF THE TIME

seriously, i've lost EVERY GAME this weekend because some little idiot wants to blitz

Comment by Moodknight

there r 4 MUSTs for a quicky with allnuke tacs.

1) It does ONLY work with most ppl r toplvl (60-70-80)

2) Ppl have to be sure that every1 got the same aim,not like "r we rdy to nuke?" one guys says "YEA LETS PWN" and thats it. Make sure every1 made it to the boss(90-95% of the group).

3) U got a tank, fancy shmancy geared. U got 3-4(!) good healers which will be spamhealing the tank so he can live.

4) Ur dps is holy kickass.

Comment by Ethlin

I wish all the extra effort in this BG from back in the day (Summon boss, elite troops, etc.) would be useful and worth fulfilling now, I am by no means asking for a 3 day AV, but it would be nice to see the bosses/troops/etc. not be huge pushovers.

Comment by karijne

If you like to PvP while levelling, you'd better get to like this BG since it pops a lot when using the random option. Presumably the matchmaking system favours larger BGs when the queue population is high, which it usually is at normal play times due to the amalgamation of battlegroups. This is the only 40v40 until Isle of Conquest at 75.

Brackets are now: 45 - 49, 50 - 54, 55 - 59, 60 - 64, 65 - 69, 70 - 74, 75 - 79, 80 - 84, and 85, same format as other BGs. (AV used to be special in that level-capped players and lower levels could fight together.)

MMO-Champion did a study of players' armory statistics to determine win ratios for each BG, and AV was the only one which Alliance won more often than Horde.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2187-Battleground-Horde-Alliance-Win-Ratio-Setup-of-the-Month.

Comment by prophetsaid

Blitzing can work, but its a double edged sword as always. People need to realize when it comes to PVP its never a definite either way. But i can tell from personal experience zerging works, and well.This is also an AWESOME bg to farm both honor and level up if your bored of dungeons. If your a DPS class the que is shorter and to be honest i love to kill peeps more than mobs. Personal preference though

Comment by 683425

i love this battleground but it takes sooo long

Comment by Digit

since nobody brings this up, I will. I'm just abit confused how this huge valley is not shown on map? sure it says "hidden" on wowwiki.com.. but at the same time this should be possible to be seen with flying mount as it's not underground.

Comment by Longhorns

@BleuRobe : Yeah i miss thus days lol

@Digit maybe oid reply to you, ITS a Battle Ground and is not visible like Wintergrasp

Comment by 662327

As this weekend was an AV weekend I'd like to expand on what worked and what didn't for the Alliance.

In every "quick" game, the entire group headed to Galv. About 10 people continued past him and began grabbing towers on the way towards the Boss. Some individuals headed to other objectives...typically stealth classes looking to make life hard for Horde cappers.

In the fastest games, a team of 4 DPS and a Healer back-capped Stone Hearth bunker after Drek was killed. Basically this group goes back and takes SHB back from the Hordlings who took it.

Passing any towers that had ample troops capping we headed to the Drek'thar. Our main objective until two towers dropped was to prevent Horde "reinforcements" from going into where Drek was, otherwise keep an eye on chat to see if any towers close to cap are having any problems. The back-cap team continued to retake as many objectives as they could before the Horde wised up and hunted them down.

Some games that went bad involved the serious mistake of getting dragged into a full-scale battle with the other side. The worst ones involved all the GY getting taken by the Horde and pushing the Alliance all the way back to the bridge. Most of these I joined "in progress" so I never saw how they went bad in the first place.

Drek will one-shot even the most ably geared tanks if there are no towers down. Don't expect everyone to run in and beat on him until at least two towers are down.

Comment by StealthyAssassin

Miss old AV:)

Comment by StealthyAssassin

Cuz it could last forevah!:)

Comment by BigBoots

pretty much my definition of this just dont play it

Comment by Stanleyman87

Old happy timez

Comment by Stanleyman87

if u know what i'm saying..

Comment by 885261

Even though you can join this BG at lvl 45 now, you still need to be lvl 51 to obtain the quests.

Comment by Thorngral

Always capture Mines as soon as possibile, You never know when this will turn into a glorious turtle (and it only takes like 30 seconds tops), Had both mines controlled all game and it was 0 to 396 by the end with all towers up (Sadly lost our Captain at last push.. Alliance Dogs!)

Ice Lord was up, And he smashed them all the way to Vann by the time we'd capped a single bunker

Comment by Thorngral

Still can get a Calvary Charge up easy, Heres how to do it. Requires a PuG group that listens or a premade.

Get 5 on Rams
Get 5 on Taming
Get 25 on Defense At Icewing
Get 5 on Recapping Towers

Alliance should panic and try to "run-by" cap towers, Recappers will get those. Make sure the guys on Hides have trinkets of any rank, Or are stealth classes.
Keep Snowfall as it aids in defense, Try to ~~Massacre~~ Defend at Icewing Bunker, Ranged and healers inside bunker.
Add Ice Lord to taste, Serves 40.

Comment by Thorngral

Alliance i beg you... When horde turtles at Iceblood GY, Summon the Forest Lord? Breaks that turtle in minutes. I wouldn't post, But turtle losses are boring for horde and alliance alike... If i'ma die i wanna die by a hulking tree zapping my cowhide into the nether.

Comment by Thodeg

Wildpaw Cavern and the Horde Banner. Exit Horde tunnel, turn left and look up the frozen waterfall. Go up the side to the right to get to the cavern. The Horde Banner is at the rear @ 50.74, 93.48

Comment by Kanariya

Though you can queue for Alterac Valley at level 45, passing through the old portal before level 51 will give you an error message - "You are too low level to enter this instance."

Comment by Stonehearth

Reinforcements within Alterac Valley have been reduced from 600 to 500, making fast games even faster.

Way to beat a decomposing corpse. AV really is one of the few things that gets worse with every update Blizzard makes to it.

Comment by Thorngral

It's been at least two expansions, Yet this site still incorrectly lists the quests as being removed- They aren't and never were. Not even hard to do, Ice Lord takes 200 Blood. I can get that in less then three minutes of killing. Have him up by around 8 minutes into the game even today. Games last 10-12 minutes (puke) these days.

Main point can we have this incorrect info that's been here for two expansions and was never right then either, Removed?

Comment by Lordplatypus

As soon as your team impacts the horde forces (As usual, Sigh) turn on "Hell March 3" And slaughter those orc-following dirtbags! As arthas put it "SLAY THE ORCS! SLAY THEM ALL!"

Comment by 456528

Before the expansion PC's weren't dropping the quest loot. Now they are but the quests are all greyed out...I'm sad

Comment by Thorngral

Just had a Lovely thought here, What if you got 10 Conquest for each of your OWN towers still up at the end and 10 for killing the enemy general?
You'd still have to take down enemys towers to be able to kill the enemy general, And would make all those point-sucking scum actually play the (deep breath) "darn" battleground how it is supposed to be played.

Comment by Alwaysmiles

I don't mean to be the one that brings everyone down, but I've seen a lot of people complain about how Alliance and Horde are unbalanced, as Alliance always seem to win.

I just want to be proven wrong here, so here I go:
1. The Horde Towers are much easier to cap, as during the initial zerg the Alliance cap, and since there are so many ramps to go up, it can be almost impossible to kill the defending Alliance. While the Alliance Bunkers at worst, get you knocked down 2 flights of stairs, much easier to recover from.

2. The entry to the Alliance keep is much harder to get to if there is little defense, the alliance get a bridge that is the only entry? While the horde get a few crappy gates which have 2 mounds of snow allowing mounted entry.

3. Overall the map is unbalanced, the Alliance are going down hill, while the Horde are going up hill, which is always a disadvantage.

Side Note: I win 1/10 AV's and if my blacklist ever decides to work AV will be the first on my list.

Comment by 1074390

At Patch 5.1, as a level 90 Alliance, i ended up in being one of those AV games that was a "resource battle" with constant pushing and retreating taking place at Dun Baldar between the Stormpike Graveyard and Stonehearth Bunker.

Instead of jumping into the fray of battle, i decided to well, dip in once in a while and remove insignias to get the various "AV materials" required for the hand-ins and move out if things got intense. After 10 mins or so i had filled up 30 bag slots with AV mats and greys, and headed back to Dun Baldar to hand in stuff.

First of, i had around 1,200 armour scraps and could (after a long time of handing stuff in) upgrade the Stormpike Troops to the veteran level (500 scraps per level up) - this gave significant increases to the HP (and damage) to the mobs found protecting the mines and graveyards. Why this was useful is that, especially in terms of the mines, it made it difficult for Hordes to run in and simply kill the guards and take the mine/graveyard. This in a way helped turn the tables of the battle.

And as a note, the hand-in for this quest still gives a +10% armour buff at level 90.

Secondly, i managed to just get together 200 storm crystals to trigger off the Druids at Dun Baldar to move out into battle and start the summoning ritual for Ivus. Sadly these mobs only had 3000-5000k HP and were nothing but temporary meat shields versus all the Horde at Dun Baldar and they hit like noodles (doing 20k per hit), end up getting taunted by pets and just die really. No Ivus sadly. Though like i said, they were meat shields, and they helped us push the Horde back for a moment.

Thirdly, i had all the stuff required to set off all 3 of the Wing Commanders on their patrol routes (as i was lead to believe?) and it was lucky that they were all in the base as well. I never saw them again, but i'd like to think that in the Battle Field they were doing something useful!

Getting the reins/furs/mine supplies were much harder to "farm" so i didn't get round to completing any of those. However i would like to remark that the troop upgrades and the summoning Druids did help to turn the battle dramatically, it was however only by the combined effort of the teammates who worked hard to defend the Dun Baldar bunkers and the team in the never-ending push and pull battle in the middle that we ended up winning (overcoming a ~150 resource disadvantage in the end).

The main message i want to leave here however is; you can BY YOURSELF farm the materials by removing insignias from dead Horde to more or less trigger all the events and upgrades for your team. This will also ONLY work in a resource-battle, if zerg tactics prevail then doing any of this is a waste of time. However in the event of a resource-battle, getting the upgrades and starting the events for your team may well lead you to victory.

Comment by Talonstrike

For Rogues your tatics are quite simple. Don't hit anything unless you really have too. Your mission is to stealth, retake towers and graveyards, avoid trouble. If you see a large confrontation, ignore it. You will be amazed at the number of the opposition you can tie up just by retaking the towers at FWK.
That's my 2 cents worth

Comment by unholydriver

Useful Tip: Never listen to the battle-plan of someone that brags about how high they are.

Any hordie who has done this one on random knows what exactly what I'm talking about.

Comment by StrifeOr

Noob Hill? More like "Pro Plateau"!

Comment by 1379188

I wish they would make another BG the size of Alterac Valley, this is by far my most favorite one. I think they should increase the honor pts earned for playing and extend it as well. That's just my opinion though.

Comment by Simonmon

It looks like with the upcoming WoDchanges, level 20 trial account players will be eligible to queue up for this battleground. Although I only find references to this change in secondary sites like wowhead and twinkinfo. I can't seem to find anything saying so in the official patch notes.

But if this IS going to be the case, I would look forward to seeing some new creative strategies arise from this development, that hopefully might make their way into the higher level brackets, rather than the stale old zerg to the end, and the predictable complaints that alliance always win.

Comment by LoreAddict

Blizzard, now that AV is available from level 20, you guys should adjust the Turn-in level requirements.

Comment by Orkinman

Ive noticed that as of the latest patch, the question marks and exclamation points are missing from the npcs. Are AV quests officially obsolete? I couldn't turn anything in: marks, blood, nada.

Comment by tavoAQP

old school rocks!

Comment by Manioss

Oh there it is: famous battleground that horde always losing.

Comment by Kanariya

Reinforcements have been brought back up to 600.

Comment by vindurza

for a brief but fleeting moment legions prepatch has made this bg fun again with recalls of it's glory days during vanilla to wrath gonna miss when it goes back to normal at max lv

Comment by Alanoor

Concerning the tactics for this BG, we would blitz all the way down south. We would not cap Frost Wolf Grave yard, but cap the Grave Yard that is inside the Horde base. This would force the Horde players to re-spawn at the Frost Wolf Grave Yard which it outside of the Horde base. People are not doing this anymore, when I did this BG recently and I mentioned not to cap the Frost Wolf Grave Yard. I got kicked from the BG, if there is a change in tactics would someone please let me know.

Thank you,

Alterac Valley

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