Posts with tag arathi-basin

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

Now that you can spice up your leveling experience by adding a little PvP to the mix, you owe it to yourself to do it up right. Battlegrounds can be bufuddling for new players, and WoW Rookie would be sad to hear you'd given up on them based on a couple of false starts. Head straight over to Zach Yonzon's A-to-Z coverage of Battleground basics in The Art of War(craft)'s Absolute beginner's guide to the Battlegrounds. Join us after the break for a complete list of the Battlegrounds you can enjoy, starting at level 10.

Zach loves the Battlegrounds. He could probably play World of Warcraft entirely though the Battlegrounds, because he's kind of lame like that. If he could have the word 'Battlegrounds' tattooed on his rump, he totally wouldn't... because dude, that's just wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a basic look at the Battlegrounds for all the new players who don't know anything about it. From the looks of it, Blizzard expects an influx of new players, too, so newbies will always be on the lookout for 'For Dummies'-type information. Because we're such awesome folks over here at WoW.com, we're ready to oblige. Last week we answered some basic questions about the game's first Battleground, Warsong Gulch. This week, we'll answer some beginner's questions about Arathi Basin, the next Battleground leveling players are eligible to enter. Hit the Read More button to, you know, read more.

Ghostcrawler has posted a little paragraph on the forums, reaffirming something we've already heard from Blizzard: that in the past, they've spent more time on Arenas to the detriment of battlegrounds, and that battlegrounds are going to be gaining a little more focus in the future. They've already started, actually, with the Isle of Conquest in 3.2, but GC says there's even more on the table, and that future plans will be revealed at BlizzCon.

He also brings up another good point, however: in terms of class balance, Arenas are a much more striking example of imbalances than battlegrounds are. Battlegrounds have all sorts of things going on, and so you don't get as good a picture of just how the different classes work with and against each other as you do in Arenas. And so, if you're a dev trying to figure out class balances, of course you'll spend more time looking at the Arena gameplay than the BGs. GC also says that the majority of issues in BGs tend to be map-based rather than class imbalances, which is really a whole other science. Not that BGs aren't relevant to how the classes work, just that there are many more variables in there than the relative vacuum chamber of Arenas.

All good points. I'm a fan of battlegrounds much more than Arenas, but I don't particularly feel that Blizzard has ignored them necessarily. The real problem, to my mind, with BGs is simply how faction imbalanced they are: it seems like on every realm in every given BG, one side always seems to have the upper hand, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's a population problem, sometimes it's a map issue. But GC is right: those problems are more pressing than class balance in the BGs.

I'm sorry Blizzard, but I'm with the whiners on this one. The School of Hard Knocks is so badly designed that it's ruining, instead of enhancing, the Battleground experience. Take, for example, the requirement to return a flag in Warsong Gulch. First of all, the requirement is that the player return the flag personally as opposed to being in the vicinity of a flag return. This means that all ten players on one side are angling to return the flag... which is great in theory but in practice encourages entire teams to wait inside the base hoping to get the Achievement. This results in extended stalemates that don't actually encourage what needs to be done, which is to capture the flag.

In Alterac Valley, we have forty players and four capturable towers or bunkers. Sure, the opposing faction can defend the towers/bunkers allowing it to be recaptured, but the whole business of racing to capture one -- again, personally -- turns every Alterac Valley into a race. This means lesser chances of defended towers. Realistically, if players tagged and defended until the objective burned down, only 10% of the team would be able to accomplish the Achievement requirement in every match. I'm sorry to tell all those who are allergic to PvP that you'll actually have to play quite a number of Alterac Valley matches just to get this one. Unfortunately for me, on my Battlegroup, playing Horde-side AV is like pulling teeth.

Let's take a look at the Children's Week PvP achievement School of Hard Knocks and the resources you'll need to accomplish it.

If you want to get your Violet Proto-Drake and fly around at 310% speed, you're going to need to do this achievement. Reports are mixed on how easy or hard this achievement is. Some folks are saying it's done quickly and easily with a good group, others are banging their heads against the desk and spewing curse words at Blizzard.

But just like everything, if you research and take an educated look at these achievements, they become more understandable and easier. That's not to say the achievement will become trivial, but it'll at least become more manageable.

The achievement is broken down, complete with tips, after the break.

All right, folks, we've got another sub-achievement needed for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been (and thus the 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake) on our hands here. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that most of the achievements for Children's Week are fairly straightforward, and should be easy (and even fun) to complete. Appropriately enough for a mini-holiday, most of the achievements are simple, amusing, and not too time-consuming. The bad news is that one of the achievements may be a huge headache to get done, and unlike Noblegarden, your character has to be at least 75 in order to get all of the achievements needed for the year-long meta.

Children's Week runs from Friday, May 1st at midnight through Thursday, May 7th at 11:59 PM. Got your kiddo? Let's get cracking.

EDIT: This article's been revised and updated to reflect new information and the hotfixes that have gone live since initial publication. All information herein should be accurate as of 11:30 AM EST Saturday May 2nd.

It's the Arathi Basin Call to Arms holiday once again, and The OverAchiever is here to help guide you through the Master of Arathi Basin Achievement, which is required for the Battlemaster meta-Achievement. You should be playing quite a bit of Arathi Basin this weekend considering it's one of the most fun and balanced Battlegrounds, so why not grab some Achievements while you're at it? Speaking of Achievements, one of the requirements for I Pitied the Fool is to hop into Arathi Basin and visit the Blacksmith, so head over to a Battlemaster and queue up!

Arathi Basin Veteran
Win 100 games. Like all the Veteran Achievements, this is just a matter of time. The hardest part is slogging through all the losing games.
Difficulty: Moderate

Arathi Basin Perfection
Win 2000 to 0. In the one hundred games you're supposed to win with the previous Achievement, you're quite certain to have one of these. However, if you want a little strategy thrown in, the best tactic would be to send teams of five to the Lumber Mill, Blacksmith, and Mine, with one to tag the node nearest your spawn point and any team that finds no resistance to head straight to the Farm or Stables. Essentially, the idea is to prevent any flag from being captured, as all it takes is ten seconds for it to tick for 10. Because it takes ten seconds to tag a flag, that's ten seconds too late.
Difficulty: Moderate

Me and the Cappin' Makin' it Happen
Take 50 flags. This is easy, and again just a matter of time. It's quite possible to have a lot of flag tags in one game -- you're not required to capture the flag you've tagged for it to count for the Achievement. In a worst case scenario, simply be the first to take the nearest node (Farm or Stables) in fifty games.
Difficulty: Easy

Several classes and specs have gotten "knockback" abilities as part of patch 3.02 and the game's transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and I've had fun watching these skills be deployed in battlegrounds to extensive and quite possibly evil use. It's pretty funny watching an elemental Shaman defend AB's lumber mill now, and the AV bridge? Even funnier.

And yet...as I laughed, I started to cry inside, because I knew that these skills would also be deployed in 5-man groups and raids to much less amusing effect. And man, it's a real burden being right so often.

I have to admit, I've been giving Arathi Basin short shrift lately -- while I'm having a great time hitting all the solo achievements (just got my Delicious Chocolate Cake the other day, and Mr. Pinchy is my next goal), battlegrounds have fallen by the wayside on my play schedule. But AB is a great time, and if you've recently found your way back in there, Slorkuz happens to be an expert on AB winning -- when a player wonders how to win AB in a tournament setting, Slork shows up a wall of text on how to walk away with at least 3 nodes.

Of course, Zach has already written extensive tips on how to win in there, but Slorkuz has a few tricks of his own -- rather than the usual 5-5-5 group, he recommends a 4-3-3-3-2 setup, with a group of four holding down what he says is the most important node, the Blacksmith. It's the closest point to all of the nodes, so if you group has to move fast, that's the place to be. The other three person groups hold down the other nodes, with an extra three person group and a duo moving back and forth and defending as necessary. And in a tournament setting, there are lots of things you can do to make the setup even stronger -- give mount buffs to the moving players, communicate back and forth to match the numbers, and make good use of CC when possible.

Definitely food for thought (and probably enough to pull me back into AB for a few fights this weekend -- to get Make Love, Not Warcraft, if nothing else). When Wrath actually releases, Wintergrasp will probably be the place to be, and I'm just plain tired of WSG and all the shenanigans in AV, but AB still seems to have some fun in it.

You've seen it happen. Players fighting on the road or midfield, ignoring the Battleground's objective. Or sometimes the opposite, such as Alterac Valley races where players ignore each other in a mad rush to the opposing army's General. In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will introduce Achievements, a system that measures a player's... well, achievements in the game. There's a category that tracks PvP Achievements, as well, including some interesting goals for the Battlegrounds. The question is, will these Achievements actually improve the Battlegrounds PvP experience or ruin it?

On the surface, it looks as though the various Battlegrounds Achievements are designed to improve World of Warcraft PvP. Achievements like Frenzied Defender, which requires players to return the flag five times in a single Warsong Gulch battle, seem like the perfect solution to get players to actually try and win the game. The Achievements also add a little spice to every game, where players can pursue personal goals which contribute to the overall objective.

If you've been paying close attention to the Wrath of the Lich King Beta -- and let's be honest, how could you not? We've been covering it like crazy over here are WoW Insider -- then you might have noticed that Blizzard will be implementing a nifty little feature called Achievements. Of course, the first thing that jumped out at me (and probably you, too, since you're reading this column) were the PvP Achievements.

I didn't plan to pursue Achievements actively. Not before I heard about the PvP Achievements, anyway. Now, it's one of the things I can't stop thinking about... more accurately, I can't stop thinking of how to complete them. There are quite a bunch of PvP Achievements to pursue, and most of them will only be tracked once the expansion goes live. But there are also some achievements that you can start working on right now because they'll be tracked retroactively (as far as I can tell). Let's take a look at those Achievements so you can get them out of the way before Wrath.

One word of caution: all these Achievements are in beta and can change at any time before (and possibly after) the Wrath launch. So proceed at your own risk.

Every Wednesday, Encrypted Text explores issues affecting Rogues and those who group with them. This week Jason Harper, the new Rogue feature blogger, discusses battleground PvP, useful macros and techniques that strive to keep you alive longer.

My last Encrypted Text post generated a lot of terrific feedback, and when you smoosh it all up and blend it I think you'll find that saying Rogues are a controversial class is a bit of an understatement. No more especially so than on the PvP side of things. In a future column I'll dig deeper into specific PvE instances, both raid and heroic, as well as give you some commentary on the new skills that come with the Wrath expansion. In the column this week we're talking about PvP and how to get the most out of it with your Rogue. I hope to make this a semi-regular topic, updating as we go, focusing on one or two PvP related items each time.

If you could distill the feelings of the majority of non-Rogues out there, at least the most vocal ones, you'd come up with a collective "over-powered" when it comes to PvP. Designed to counter most (but not all) casting classes, especially those *not* geared or spec'd to prevent spell push-back, our goal is to get our target into melee range and keep them there. Keeping this in mind, my first bit of PvP advice for you is avoid fair fights at all costs.

Around every 4th of July I reread Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, which is a book about the battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. There's an early passage about the Southern general James Longstreet's unease over the Confederate push north to Pennsylvania: He had never believed in this invasion...He did not believe in offensive warfare when the enemy outnumbered you and outgunned you and would come looking for you anyway if you waited somewhere on your own ground. Longstreet, one of the finest military minds of the age, spends much of the subsequent bloody fight knowing that Union forces had a terrain advantage impossible to overcome.

There's been a lot written about battleground strategy (particularly Alterac Valley) but I think all of us have known the sinking feeling you get when you realize that your side isn't going to win. Some causes of failure are relatively easy to pinpoint; starting a battleground with a heavy numbers or healing disadvantage often seals the fate of a match. And of course the collective quality of a team's gear will always play a role; people in Season 4 are unlikely to lose to those in Season 1.

All other things being equal, what I find most fascinating are the matches -- PuG versus PuG, or premade versus premade -- where the battle can swing either way depending entirely on each team's degree of foresight and strategy. Rarely, single players can sometimes decide the outcome; I once saw a protection paladin in a 2-cap versus 2-cap Eye of the Storm prevent the opposing side from taking any flags by parking himself in the middle and simply taking forever to die, and one of my own favorite techniques is to suicide/harass heavily-defended nodes in Arathi Basin and EOTS while Horde quietly caps elsewhere (you'd be amazed at the number of players who prefer an easy kill over responding to "Inc!" calls elsewhere). But failure and success are usually collective and hard to pin down. How do you convince people to do the less-glamorous jobs -- defense, distraction, crowd-control -- more likely to result in a victory? How do you know when the battleground is lost for sure?

Or, how to celebrate the birth of a nation via an ugly series of Horde losses in Arathi Basin:

1. Every single Alliance character in the game has a Black War Tiger.

2. Every single Horde character in the game has a Black War Raptor (yes, myself included).

3. I could be wrong, but I don't think "Lich King" is pronounced "Lick King," as I keep hearing it pronounced on my server.

4. However, it might be because the word looks somewhat Germanic, and I will be unable to keep a straight face for the duration of the next expansion.

5. To the point of losing it completely if I hear "World of Warcraft: WRAAAAAAATH OF THE LICK KING" intoned by the Deep-Voiced Serious Trailer Guy.

6. How male human characters run. There's a lot of great animation in the game. This is not one of them.

7. Practically every main-tank of every Hordeside raiding guild is a male Tauren.

8. An egotistical male Tauren. Look, Spanky, just because Bulwark of Azzinoth is bigger on you than anybody else does not mean that the same is true of appendages elsewhere.