Those funny little orcs in the wolf-skull hats and white and blue outfits were loitering outside the bank in Orgrimmar again. You sort of take these NPCs for granted after a while, but I suddenly realised the other night that one of them had a yellow exclamation mark over her head. I’ve been L50 or above for quite some time, but never really thought about the Alterac Valley Battleground as something for me, being a 40v40 raid PvP battlezone. I’d always thought of it as a kind of Molten Core for the Bloodthirsty, and dismissed it out of hand.

Anyway, figuring ‘what the hell’, I signed up for the quest, which turned out to be an easy ‘referral’ type mission, to the AV entrance in Hillsbarad Foothills. I completed it, and got given the first AV PvP one, Proving Grounds, and figuring I had nothing to lose, plunged on in to the big red whirley.

Seems that with typical timeliness, I’m a bit late to this craze – most other WoW Blogs cover the experience quite extensively, talking up the stats, the trials, the frustrations, and so on, but for me, it was something completely new, and yet extremely familiar also. I shaln’t bang on about the details of the battleground itself too much here, as there are plenty of good guides and blogs out there, most of which it seems I need to spend some time reading too!

WoW Wiki: Alterac Valley

As can be seen from the page, there is just so much going on in there, compared to say, Warsong Gulch, let alone the fact that there’s a massive 40 a side zerg-fest rampaging up and down the valley as well. I played two matches over the weekend, and frankly, am still very confused. The quest I was in there for was actually almost nothing to do with the main PvP action, needing to clear a cave of green-level NPCs to pick up a flag. The spacing was terrible though, and not very soloable, so gave up during the first match and just went to join the herd clashing up and down the central valley area. I was quite surprised by the huge number of NPCs, of both sides, also thrown into the mix though, and the various map structures were almost completely incomprehensible first time in.

I gave up worrying about it and just started my previously devised tactic of being light-cavalry, combining Charge and Hamstring, and Intimidating Shout when I could, to heroically disrupt the enemy front lines, allowing our boys to take advantage of the ensuing havoc, mostly at the cost of my own life. Despite that, I finished about 1/3 from the bottom of the table, which I was satisfied by.

Second match, the next day, was with a friend, who is 60 (I was 55), and we broke off from the battle early on to barrel through the gnoll cave and get the Rank 1 Insignia sorted out, then joined the fray. Again, much chaos, much shouted gibberish, unknown two-letter acronyms, and much zerging, but this time, the thing seemed to be taking some kind of shape, or at least familiarity of a sort:

Van Hemlock: Alterac Valley Drop-Pod Deployment Map

Madness, I know, but the one thing that struck me about the two forays into AV this weekend, was how similar to Planetside it all felt. Bases, Towers, Spawn Points, the various ‘Control Console’ flag-post things that need converting, invisible rogues, sniping hunters, charging heavy weapon people, and of course, the general ignorance of orders, smack-talk in team chat, headless footzerging and lack of perspective.

Having rampaging NPCs all about the place was novel though, as was the general lack of vehicles, aside form the odd token NPC ‘air assault’. Of course the biggest difference was not being able to ‘aim’, instead relying on a cack-handed mashing of the various targeting, hotkey and attack buttons, which all kind of let me down a bit. Also, I’ve been playing Planetside for quite some time and am, if not actually any good at it, understand it, and definitely know exactly what is going on at any given time, and what people ought to be doing next. Alterac Valley on the other hand, is completely new to me, and my usual only advantage – foresight and tactical planning- was irritatingly absent.

Another win for PS over WoW-AV is classes. I’m always going to be the Warrior in AV, whereas in PS, completely downscaling from one role and learning another can take perhaps two or three days to accomplish, and less drastic changes, such as learning to fly a plane or drive a tank, take much less time. It also has an 'Instant Action' button, which I quite like, as I'm sure would many of the more ADHD-prove PVP WoW players. We at Van Hemlock do not condone waiting up to TEN MINUTES to be one-hitted in the face!

We, (the Horde), lost both matches. I’m still not sure why– we may have sucked, true, but I’d be curious to know exactly what particular victory condition had been met - something obscure to do with the NPC commanders, I think. Personally, I came about 1/3rd from the bottom of the big table thing at the end, both times, so managed to keep some semblance of self-respect. Clearly much to learn, and take on board before I go in there again, and I’ve not even seen the other one yet – Arathi Basin.

(I'm L55 Troll Warrior, with average green-quality equipment and no Epix, so still have room to improve, and indeed, one poor L53 chap in the second match got one hell of a /raidchat beat-down for having the temerity to even show up at that level. Apparently, we should be 'out xping', instead of 'ruining the BG for everyone', presumably meaning everyone-L60. From the farcical organisation and scattered free-for-all-ing I saw going on, I'd suspect having one or two sub-60s on the team is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the overall result, but then I'm such a tourist...being merely a Scout!)

So far, I prefer Planetside, with it’s more direct Cause and Effect, and more varied tactics and strategy, but AV may yet grow on me…