As I’m now in a prolonged struggle against the forces of The Alliance evil on multiple fronts, it’s become fantastically apparent that players with significantly more time allotted to grinding honour than myself are mysteriously without a clue as to how to win a Battleground (BG) in World of Warcraft (WoW), which all the more illustrates just how much time they have considering they’re spending three times as long to earn badges as anyone else.
In other words, even at the level 70 BG bracket, players in full epic PvP gear, who have undoubtedly played BG upon BG, are dumb as a brick when it comes to any semblance of strategy. Do these clowns enjoy losing? Or, as per my earlier post, are they more concerned with grinding honour than they are with earning badges? If the former, their inability to defend rather than be on the offensive is somewhat explanatory, else their idea of “defense” is horribly skewed as it relates to positioning.
In part, a solid defense is less about overt killing as it is intimidation and control. For example, in Arathi Basin (AB), nodes are successfully defended with a show of force; just as it can be useful to lure unsuspecting Horde into a an area with shadow-melded Night Elf defenders, a high population of defenders will keep would-be attackers moving onto another node.
Other BGs are even less combat-reliant. Take a look at Warsong Gulch (WG), in which a flag carrier is escorted by a number of flag defenders. When the opposing faction is trying to keep the flag from reaching the capping-area, they shouldn’t be trying to focus fire the entire opposition. Rather, crowd-control abilities should be used on everyone but the flag carrier, thus creating distance between she and her escorts. This distance is vital in focus-firing the flag carrier when no escorts are within range. Similarly, for the team defending the flag carrier, they ought be using crowd control abilities on the attacking force, in an effort to keep them away from the flag carrier, and the flag carrier should keep on moving in order to gain distance between herself and the attackers.
It’s uncanny how many times I’ve entered WG and wanted to defend the flag carrier, but all she does is engage in combat. I successfully Wyvern Stung one attacker, Scatter Shotted another, and was busy Wing Clipping a third, and my retarded flag-carrying teammate loses herself in bloodlust. Meanwhile, she could have gotten away.
This frustration is not unique. A good portion of all BG sessions are filled with idiots, and the occasional voice of reason drowned out by ad hominems from the former. Jokingly, I told one such voice of reason today that there should be a test to enter BGs such that some semblance of strategy would be inherent in every game.
In reality, BG mechanics simply need some tweaking. While Blizzard has begun doing just this, the changes don’t seem to be significant enough to prevent poor gameplay. Perhaps Blizzard should consider some of these changes:
- In all BGs, honour earned from killing opposing players away from nodes/towers/flags is worth less than honour gained near BG objectives. Hopefully, this would reduce the combat mid-field in WG, on the roads in AB, and away from key objectives in Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm.
- Honour earned from killing players near nodes/towers/flags are worth more than normal honour from killing a player. In other words, players either gain above-average honour for proper positioning on the battlefield, or sub-par honour for poor positioning.
- With the exception of honour gains, the losing team in a BG earns nothing. This would force the losing team to try hard, and displace many honour-farmers.
- Winning teams gain more MoH than they do in normal BGs.
These are but a few basic changes that could be implemented to foster a degree of strategy that is missing from most BG instances. Even a simple change in the introduction of a BG, or hints placed on the loading screen such as “Fighting near nodes is a better defense than fighting on roads” might prompt even the daftest players from repeatedly making horrible strategy decisions.
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