Spangles!

[Artega]

Thought I recognized someone in AB last night. Now I know who:)

[Mirajj]

That makes me wonder how many of the Lurkers you've come across. Stormrage, home of the Lurker Alliance Guild, is in your battlegroup.

[Bolty]

Now I know who to mercilessly crush when I see him on the battlegrounds...

-Bolty

[Pantalaimon]

Now I know who to mercilessly crush when I see him on the battlegrounds...

-Bolty

With a name like that, wouldn't you already be gunning for him? ;)

[Tal]

Now I know who to mercilessly crush when I see him on the battlegrounds...

-Bolty

You already mercilessly crush paladins...so business as normal?

[Bob the Beholder]

I'm on Vindication. I don't know of any Lurkers I get to kill. :(

[Tal]

I'm on Vindication. I don't know of any Lurkers I get to kill. :(

Well the two most active Lurker guilds are on Ruin (Stormrage Alliance) and Reckoning (Terenas Horde).

[Artega]

Now I know who to mercilessly crush when I see him on the battlegrounds...

-Bolty

That's fine. I'll just have my pet enhancement shaman tear you apart;)

[Ynir]

av popped three seconds later and i was gone

[Kevin]

av popped three seconds later and i was gone

Wait that is so backwards. You go to AV while you wait for AB, EotS, or WSG to pop. AV is the instant queue BG. :) (Yes I understand different battlegroups and factions have different experiences with queue times). But I tend to queue for whatever BG's I want then go to AV, kill Balinda for a bit of bonus honor then my real BG pops. Seeing someone say they were going the other way just feels so wrong to me. :)

[Lissa]

Wait that is so backwards. You go to AV while you wait for AB, EotS, or WSG to pop. AV is the instant queue BG. :) (Yes I understand different battlegroups and factions have different experiences with queue times). But I tend to queue for whatever BG's I want then go to AV, kill Balinda for a bit of bonus honor then my real BG pops. Seeing someone say they were going the other way just feels so wrong to me. :)

on Ruin, AV is the long queue, the other BGs are typically instant or nearly so.

[Artega]

on Ruin, AV is the long queue, the other BGs are typically instant or nearly so.

It's not very bad for Horde, maybe a minute or two max. But then, Horde on Ruin completely suck at AV, so there's not much reason to queue. I didn't queue AV once, even though it was AV weekend. 30 minutes for 186 honor is crap when I can win two WSGs and get just shy of 300 in that time.

[Lissa]

It's not very bad for Horde, maybe a minute or two max. But then, Horde on Ruin completely suck at AV, so there's not much reason to queue. I didn't queue AV once, even though it was AV weekend. 30 minutes for 186 honor is crap when I can win two WSGs and get just shy of 300 in that time.

That's because Alliance on Ruin don't know how to play WSG.

[RTM]

I would actually play WSG if I could fit 2 matches into 30 minutes. 1 hour turtle matches make me want to stick forks in my eyes.

[Bolty]

That's because Alliance on Ruin don't know how to play WSG.

Playing Alliance WSG on Ruin is the most singularly painful experience possible, and I wouldn't wish it on my gravest enemies. The phenomenal stupidity displayed by its players is almost beyond measurement, and the general defeatest attitude of the Alliance there makes winning absolutely impossible. I lose roughly 90% of WSGs. AB and EotS are about 50-50 win ratio, and AVs are about 85% Alliance wins. But WSG? Sigh...

Highlights:

1) Got into a WSG with an Alliance premade from Bloodhoof. "Woah, awesome!" I thought. Haha, silly me. At the onset of the match, all 10 players on Alliance run straight for the Horde base (bad sign). I grab the flag and start heading back. We make it back to our base, with incredible team support to get me through the Horde zerg attack on me (my gear of course helps quite a bit with this). Going great! Now we just have to go get our flag back.

For the next 12 minutes (yes, I kept track), not a single Alliance member goes to the Horde base, despite a number of pleadings from myself and the BG raid leader. Not a one. All 10 Alliance players turtle in our base.

Finally, fed up, I just take the flag and head out to the Horde base, with about 6 players in tow. 3 players continue to sit in the Alliance base for some mysterious reason. 5 minutes later the Horde eventually run me out of mana and take me down, scoring a cap.

The Bloodhoof team calls me a total idiot for taking the flag to their base.

/afk

2) Stormrage trade chat states that they're forming a "winning WSG." Eh, what the hell, I figure, and join in. When Alliance forms a premade for WSG, the wait time is generally 30-60 minutes, so I spend the time playing some other BGs. The first warning signs were the number of players in the premade complaining about the wait time, and also assigning 4 people to sit in our flag room to guard the flag (bad strategy). A Druid from another guild and I convince the group that the best strategy is to take and hold mid, moving as a solid group to crush any enemy flag carriers and supporting our FC Druid as he's leaving the Horde base.

Finally, WSG pops. 10 Stormrage players enter and face a Horde PuG. Despite thoroughly explaining the strat ahead of time to all 10 players, the defined strat of sending 2 players to the Horde flag while 8 others take mid immediately falls apart when only 4 players go to the middle at the start of the match and are promptly crushed by the Horde PuG. The Horde PuG eventually wins 3-0.

*facepalm*

I never, ever queue for WSG without also queuing for something else as an "escape."

-Bolty

[Kevin]

I would actually play WSG if I could fit 2 matches into 30 minutes. 1 hour turtle matches make me want to stick forks in my eyes.

In my last 10 WSG matches (6 wins 4 losses) I have only been in 1 game that was longer than 30 minutes. That was a very well played 3 - 2 loss which was a lot of fun. Of course there was only 1 other game in those ten that wasn't 3 - 0, it was a 3 - 1 loss and that was because we lost 3 players, a druid, paladin, and priest all from different servers and they were replaced by a mage with 6K HP, a hunter in PvE greens, and I don't know what but it left me as the only healer.

I've noticed that pretty much whichever team scores first the other tends to kinda give up now.

The problem with WSG for me is that I have way more fun playing with other Lurkers, but our BG matching system really does tend to put partial premades with other partial premades if you have more than 3 people joining as group. And that 10-20% (I don't track more than the last 10) chance of catching the hour long turtle fest can turn me off as well, but those seem to be the exception not the rule now.


As Bolty said strat is still not understood, but at least horde on our battlegroup will generally do a 10 man zerg, and get the flag back while grouped at least for the first cap attempt. We suffer when that fails and 1 - 3 people get seperated and don't just try to group back up. The most important thing is to just stay grouped up with a couple of other people, at least as a base level strat, but yeah. I'm happier with holding mid and then having 2-4 go get the flag, depends on what classes you have to carry the flag. Some decent carrier classes can't clear the flag room quickly and need more support.


Of course since my last 10 AB's have invovled us 5 capping them 6 times, and I've been in on three 4 caps in my last 10 Eyes, I still have better luck in there. Of course I still win about 33% of my AV's which seems to be a pretty high win rate for horde in our battlegroup and I end up in more 30+ minute AV's than 30+ minute anything else.

[Warlock]

If your playing in PUGs and winning reliably it's a fair bet the other faction is having trouble there.

For me (Horde Khaz'goroth at Oceanic prime time) AV is a short queue and fast wins with a lot of bonus honour. The others with PUGs are generally losing games - but enough of a fight that the games take a while. I won't go to WSG without a premade any more.

[Bob the Beholder]

Alliance WSG on Ruin sounds a little bit like Horde WSG on Vindication. I am not exaggerating in any way when I say that every WSG I have queued for in the past six months has ended in a loss, and me telling the team that I hope they all get painful rectal itch.

But, then, I haven't lost an AB or an EoTS in weeks. So I'm good.

[Sir_Die_alot]

I find it pretty typical that 2 or 3 people well geared skilled people will carry a team while the other 7-12 run around with no clue what the hell they are doing. If a healer in halfway good gear decides to ride my warrior we can usually make up for the other retards. :)

As for WSG I've done the run to the other side and attack the flag carrier while carrying the flag thing myself. I usually give fair warning to the effect of "if you don't go over there and get the flag, I will". I'm an asshole and intolerant when it comes to morons!

[Bolty]

Playing Alliance WSG on Ruin is the most singularly painful experience possible, and I wouldn't wish it on my gravest enemies.

Except for this weekend!

I have no idea what was in the Alliance Kool-Aid™ this weekend, but Alliance was winning WSGs left and right. It was so insanely bizarre that I felt the need to share, multiple times, in guild and GEM chat. I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

All weekend long, Alliance PuGs just kept winning and winning WSG. The usual cries of "just let them win" and bickering were replaced with actual teamwork, communication, announcements, and quality play. I couldn't get enough of it. Detecting that the universe had been turned upside down, I just kept queuing WSG over and over to take advantage of the situation. Hell, I could stand to max out my WSG rep - which is still not exalted after all this time - because Alliance wins there are so rare.

End result for the weekend's PvP WSG action: 22 wins, 5 losses, 4 games left due to incoming losses. That's a win ratio of 70%, if you're scoring at home. Two of the losses were tight 3-2 games, as well. Yes, most of the time I was running the flag as a decked out S3/S4 Disc Priest, but believe me that doesn't mean crap without 9 other players doing their job to at least some level of competency. No one player can carry WSG, no matter how good they are.

All I can figure is that it was Arathi Basin weekend on Ruin, and the Horde who wanted to score big honor were all queuing up for that, or jumping to that after playing a few minutes in WSG. They don't like long turtle matches either compared to the much quicker always-take-the-Blacksmith Horde AB wins.

So now I don't know what to do with the ~75 WSG tokens I have rotting in my mailbox. :) Oh well. For one glorious weekend, I felt like I was PvP'ing as a Horde. And winning.

-Bolty