On occasion, I read more forums than just the Guild Relations one on the World of Warcraft forums.worldofwarcraft.com site. Sometimes I wander over to the General forums for general entertainment, and usually while I’m there, I see a lot of threads on the topic of Battlegrounds and whether Horde or Alliance have an inherent edge thanks to the various forces that influence things.

Alterac Valley is the big one right now that everyone is up in arms about - changes implemented over the last year have shifted the win:loss ratio according to some, to where Alliance is constantly losing to Horde, where it used to be flipped around, with Horde claiming Alliance had a geographical advantage. (and before that, there were 18 hour AV rounds…)

Do I know if any of it is accurate?

Not really. All I know is that as a casual player who wants to gear up my toons so I can hold my own in Heroics and occasional Raids I get invited to, grabbing a few rounds of PvP here and there is good for my gearing and therefore, I do it.

(but, check out this post on the European forums, entitled “How to win Alterac Valley (horde)“).

Fastest Honor? Premades

I don’t do the premade thing very often, but I do often think about how helpful it would be to find a good premade team to join for those days that Warsong Gulch is the PvP of the day, or for when I need 30+ WSG tokens to buy the PvP equipment I’m looking at. PUG WSG rounds very often tend to be excruciatingly long and drawn out, but a premade can get through the round in a rewarding amount of time.

I suppose Arena teams could also be a fast way to honor, but my personal casual style of play doesn’t include an Arena team, as my friends are largely into PvE and it’s hard to even convince them to PvP for the benefit of their PvEing. So, I’ll have to let someone else comment on that or write about it :)

One battleground I have started to get into premades with is one that you cannot join as a raid or as a group even - Alterac Valley. So then, how in the world do I get into premades with it?

Enter Addon: AV Preform Enabler

This addon is apparently only available for Horde-side, at least by this author. I’m sure there’s an Alliance version that someone else has created, hopefully someone can leave a comment with its name or link on some repository :)

It’s basically an automated way to trigger mass-queuing of everyone in the raid group, using an underlying communication channel subscribed to by the addon itself.

All you, the user, have to do, is have it installed and when you’re at the Battleground Master you’ll have an option for “Preform AV Enabler”. As long as you’re in a group and have these windows open, the Raid Leader or Party Leader will be able to queue you and the rest of the team at the same time, hoping to all land in the same Battleground instance.

Why Use It? And Does It Always Work?

I use it mainly because a 40-person PUG generally results in battleground lines full of abuse and whining, and a preform team is at least more silent, with the exception of the non-preform BG members insulting the preform for not winning the round fast enough. And yes, the honor tends to come more quickly because the rounds are faster and more efficient, and thus I don’t have to grind PvP endlessly when what I really want to be doing is PvE.

Does it always work? Well, no. There are still plenty of times that I queue for battlegrounds alone because there aren’t enough people interested in getting together for a premade/preform yet. If there are enough people to form a decently-sized raid (25-30 ppl), it tends to work well.

One of the big time-wasters, however, is sitting between rounds, watching the Raid Leader add and remove us all from the queue in the hope of getting 95% of us into the same BG round and forcing only a small number of people to manually queue and “hope to get in”.

But frankly, I’d rather waste my time sitting there between rounds than waste my time reading players abusing their own teammates and whining constantly while I’m in the battleground itself. #1 is less joy-draining than #2, at least for me.

From having glanced through the Elitist Jerks thread about the topic (linked above), I can see this is quite a hot topic these days. I’m looking forward to the responses I get to this post ;)

Tags: alterac valley, av preform enabler, Battlegrounds, burning crusade, casual pvp, how to grind rep, player vs player, pvp honor grind, pvp honor guide, warcraft battlegrounds, world of warcraft

I’m only writing this entry so that I can will the Warcraft Server Gods to bring the realms up, so … hopefully it will be a short entry ;)

Heroics in World of Warcraft

Heroics dungeons were introduced with Burning Crusade as a way to keep the general populace entertained for longer before having to commit to a “raiding guild experience” that went beyond a PUG in the Looking For Group tool.

Heroics only exist in the Burning Crusade dungeons (but will also exist in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion) and are dungeons whose difficulty are significantly higher than the regular version of the same dungeons. That is, all the dungeons from Hellfire Ramparts clear up to Steamvaults, Arcatraz and the many others players can traverse through on their trek to 70… have a Heroic mode that can be run once a player is 70 and adequately geared.

The Purposes Of Heroic Dungeons

Heroic Dungeons serve many purposes on the game.

If you’re a casual player who has no aspiration to ever see the inside of a 10-man-raid during the same expansion it was released in, Heroics offer a challenging environment that requires the same level of commitment and scheduling as a regular 5-man PUG, and offers a continuation of gearing-up that doesn’t require commitment to other players on a continuing basis.

If you’re interested in getting into Raiding, Heroics is a training ground for the skills required to be a good raiding contributor to the 10 and 25-man raids. Plus, the gearing from Heroics Badge rewards and Heroics drops (including otherwise-expensive Gems) is on-par with what drops in the 10-man raid instances - thus, gearing up through Heroics makes a would-be raider even MORE viable on a raiding team.

The Heroics Inside Track

I’ve noticed in my own gearing-up and PUG Heroicking (and social wheel greasing) and reputation grinding that the better geared I have gotten, the more people whisper ME to get involved in things - even when I’m not in their guild, and, in fact, my guild is a “nobody” guild when it comes to Heroics and beyond.

I’ve now got Heroics-geared Tanks and Healers who ask ME to join their group to handle DPS and Crowd Control. Folks who rank decently on the WoWJutsu.com ranking site for our realm. And let me tell you… partial PUGs where you know the Tank and/or Healer are solid make Heroics SO MUCH MORE FUN!

Why Do People Skip Heroics?

I’ve noticed something very interesting now that I’ve moved into this “gearing/geared up for Heroics” phase of my World of Warcraft existence - while Heroics gear is on-par with Karazhan gear (I’m going to have to find some links to point to here, I’ll come back and edit this later), there are those would-be raiders who seem to want to “skip over” Heroics and jump right from “Quest-and-Dungeon-Blues 67+” into Karazhan in order to get their gear upgrades there.

I realize that PUG Heroics are a crapshoot in terms of being able to make it past the first boss with the continuing waves of barely-geared players dipping their toes into the Heroics water, but isn’t that why we build a Friends list?

Oh, and BTW, if you’re in a guild with a bunch of Friends, this question is much clearer to me. I guess I’m asking mainly about the people who apply as complete strangers to join a raiding guild without having an inside reference asking them to join.

Thoughts welcome!

Woot! Game’s up…

Tags: bad pugs, burning crusade, casual player, casual vs raider, dungeon leader guide, finding a good healer, finding a good tank, heroics dungeons, heroics gear, heroics guide, how to be a good guildmate, how to find a pug, karazhan, level 70 mage gear, LF3M - tank and healz, LFG tool, LFM Tool, party leader guide, pick up groups, pugging, pugging strategy, raid leader guide, raider training guide, tanks in heroics, Warcraft Tips and Tricks, wrath of the lich king, zul'aman