On "Holy Crap, that is so much better"

Warning: rambling post to follow.

I did AB again last night for the first time since level 60. And even then, I hadn't done much. To give you an idea, go look at my "League of Arathor" reputation here.

Yeah, not much, is it?

Now, to give you some background, I tried a bit of PVP, and nothing ever really clicked for me except for AV. I loved AV. Did it all the time. Back when battle tokens were used as quest turnins, I literally ground from about 52 to 54-55 doing only AV. Mostly, I'd just run after the pack, find the tank, and keep him up against the NPCs, tossing a few offensive spells along the way. I had my Crackling Staff waiting for me by the end of that rush. That was my first big push PVPing, and I got to Sergeant Major. I took a break from it around 56 and quested up to 60 (I actually dinged 60 by crossing the bridge from WPL to EPL. Woot exploration ding!).

At 60, I did another PVP push, and made it to Knight rank. I was THREE PERCENT away from Knight-Lieutenant when they changed the honor system so I couldn't make it anymore. /sadpanda

I think what always attracted me to AV was 2 things. First, that it felt so epic. 40 people on either side, NPCs around to make it feel more like you're fighting an enemy army. Cool events that you can do (I'm a big fan of Ivus) and multiple approaches to winning - I've seen wins by rushing straight to the enemy general ignoring everything else, by methodically taking out every tower along the way, by turtling and utilizing turnins to give you such an advantage that you can turn into a steamroller, using ground troops, Ivus, etc.

The second thing is that I could win. Admittedly, Alliance won more often on my old server than Horde did. People will go on about how the map was imbalanced in favor of Alliance, etc, etc. I personally don't believe so - if that logic held true I could talk about how WSG and AB are imbalanced to favor the horde. I just think it was the fact that the scenario was half PvP, half raid, and Alliance simply took better to that.

So, back to my original point, I despised WSG and AB. First, because they felt like old rehashes of FPS games (Unreal Tournament, etc) I've played in the past. Oh look, it's capture the flag. They don't even bother to disguse it by saying "capture the secret enemy plans" or "take an enemy hostage" or something. And AB always seemed to me to favor the initial rush - a lucky break in the beginning could secure a win for a team, barring them screwing up. But mostly, it was because of the premades. There were 5-6 PvP guilds on horde side that I constantly saw in WSG and AB when I tried them. I mean constantly. At least 80% of the games I played were against them.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind losing sometimes, or even most of the time. I don't always need to win to have fun. I do need to feel like I have at least a reasonable chance. Out of 40 or so AB games that I did pre-BC, for example, I won exactly 1. Most of those games ended with Alliance at under 500 resources. It was pitiful.

So, back to the original point: our guild did a premade last night. It ranged from 10-15 for AB, with a couple people joining and dropping along the way. And dear god, it was actually kind of fun. Admittedly, after about 4 games, I'd had enough for the night, but I enjoyed myself. We won 3/4, and 5 capped one of the games, finishing 2000-10. But honestly, that wasn't my favorite one. I loved the one before that, where we were neck and neck with the horde most of the way - we had the blacksmith the whole time, and the stables most of the time. They had the Farm most of the time, and the lumber mill and mine kept swapping. It ended with us winning 2000-1780. And honestly, if we'd lost, it still would have been fun. Our guild is neither PVP specced, geared, nor practiced, so I don't expect that we'd win against a real PvP team, but at least we wouldn't make it easy for them.

I guess I'm making what is probably an obvious point, but I figured I'd spout some random thoughts today. :D