Horde Turtle in AV Rant

Alliance in the Cyclone battle group can only win in Alterac Valley with any consistency. Yet with the new AV changes the Horde introduced a new turtle tactic on our last AV weekend that has impacted the last bastion of Alliance honor farming.

The Horde establish a strong choke point at Iceblood with reinforcements of varying strength inside Galvangar, at Frost Wolf graveyard, and sometimes their base. Alliance often can get Galvangar down despite interference only to be hammered at IB. Some Alliance will sneak past the choke but they invariably die when faced with the organized groups they encounter. By this time, Horde have established their usual dominance at Stonehearth and sometimes even take the Snowfall graveyard. Upon death, Alliance finds themselves rezzing back at their base.

With Alliance offense crushed and demoralized, the Horde destroys the middle bunkers, giving them a strong lead in reinforcements. Now they settle in for a war of attrition where it takes anywhere from twenty to forty minutes while the numbers slowly drop. Horde get some honor from the middle towers but Alliance is often denied all honor beyond the pittance of honorable kills.

My coping strategy has been to go on offense. Ensure people live through Galavangar and offer to rez anyone who died in the keep. I then park in Iceblood Tower or Tower Point to make sure we destroy them (it takes only seconds to Mind Control and fling the most pesky Hordling out of our hair *evil lol*). Once those towers are down I take stock of the situation. If we haven't gotten the East and West Towers started that usually means it's a turtle. Or if there aren't clumps of Alliance dots on the map south of me, I know it's bad news.

If it's a turtle or I die anywhere along the way, I AFK out. This is very unfair to the person that's brought in from the queue but I'm bitter enough not to care. I've been sucked into no-honor games before so they can suck it up and deal like I did. I camp that character and let their deserter buff expire while I switch to another character to see how the next game goes.

I never AFK out of a loss. If the Horde are racing along with us, that's okay. If they backtrack to fuck with the towers, that's acceptable. Alliance should be guarding and paying attention. But I have no more patience for the turtle. I hope Blizzard sees this as a problem and takes some sort of action. This battle ground is the last source of honor in my battle group.

Chatting some with Kidknux last night he said a Horde friend was telling him how they feel bad at the need to turtle but it's the only way they can win. Well, fuck them. They win 90% of all the three other battle grounds. They can accept single tokens from AV when they get three for everything else.