#0 - Oct. 5, 2007, 12:16 a.m.
Strategy can be an important element of any battleground. We want to emphasize this in Alterac Valley more and give players additional meaning to both defending and attacking. To push the strategic element of the battleground to the next level we have changed how players maintain their reinforcements or deprive the other team of theirs.
Each team will have a starting reinforcement count. Reinforcements can be lost in significant amounts if a tower is destroyed or if Captain Galvangar or Belinda Stonehearth is killed. For each team member death, an additional reinforcement will be lost. On the death of General Drek’Thar or Vanndar Stormpike, all reinforcements are lost and the team is defeated. At any point in time, if a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team will win the battle. Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.
Warmasters can be the boon or the bane of any team. They are an important element for the defense of your general or the defeat of the opposing general. Warlords and their general will be more closely linked in the next patch. Pulling one is a guarantee the other will come as well. Each team begins with four Warmasters. Destroying a tower will eliminate the associated Warmaster. Unlike the current game play, however, destroying the enemy tower will not add a Warmaster to your own side.
We will be changing the pace of the battle slightly with a reduction in the time needed to control a tower or graveyard. Where it currently takes five minutes to gain control, the time will be reduced to four minutes. The honor for capturing a tower will also be increased.
Graveyards can be an important resource for getting your teammates back into the battle more quickly. Currently, players can sometimes be sent to their starting tunnels far from the battlefront. This can often be an inconvenient location to respawn and more out of the way from the action than we would like, to correct this, players will instead respawn at a team-controlled graveyard. Should the team not have a graveyard under their control, they will respawn in the starting tunnel.
Players will only be awarded bonus honor during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Once the battle is concluded, bonus honor will be awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in battle. The bonus honor awarded should be similar to previous totals, but will reward players for taking more active roles in Alterac Valley toward defending or attacking key locations and NPCs.
Lastly, we are changing NPC interactions within Alterac Valley. We have reduced the number of elite NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds as well as sent all Commanders and Lieutenants out of Alterac Valley. They are currently in search of other battle opportunities. This should reduce the amount of NPCs that players will have to fight and place more focus on PvP combat over key locations on the map.
Strategy is the name of the game in Alterac Valley, and these changes will bring out the need for more teamwork and coordination from both the Horde and the Alliance as they vie for domination of this battleground.
Update 31/10/07
Just as a quick update to this, there are some further changes planned for the 2.3.0 PTR:
- If a side controls a mine, then every 45 seconds they will gain 1 supply. If they control both mines, then they'll get 2.
- No side can ever have more than the max number of supplies (currently the max is 600)
- The Herald yell text for taking a mine includes a line about getting reinforcements for owning it.
- The 45-second ticker is on an independent timer (i.e. the first "+" a side gets for controlling a mine won't be 45 seconds after they take it. It'll be somewhere between 1 and 45 seconds -- whenever the ticker ticks).