#0 - Sept. 10, 2009, 10:39 p.m.
EDIT - Short Version for those who find this post TLDR: In certain AV turtle situations, where I can't do anything to break the turtle, I'm asking if it's okay to fight harpies for XP in those situations only. I would only fight the harpies in hopeless situations only, since capping towers provides a lot more XP than killing harpies. I also note that Blizzard actually has a QUEST in this game where you have to get the banner in the harpy cave, and Blizzard went through some effort to implement the harpies, the harpy cave, and this quest. So if Blizzard does not like players fighting harpies, then the existence of this quest seems to send mixed signals about what Blizzard does not like.
I have a level 78 Alliance rogue. Since I find PvP more exciting than PvE quests, I've been doing many Alterac Valley battles. I play like I'm supposed to. I help my team defeat Galv. I help capture Snowfall GY so that Alliance is not stuck at the chokepoint near Icewing Bunker. I help with trying to take Iceblood Tower and Tower Point by standing inside a tower for four minutes with other Alliance; fighting any Horde who may try to recap those towers back. Once those are capped, I help out with capping the West and East FW Towers, and ultimately fighting Drek. Depending on battleground conditions, I'll help with capping graveyards, the two mines, and retaking towers Horde is trying to capture. In short, I'm playing AV the way it's supposed to be played. Since capping even one objective yields around 19,000 XP, playing AV the way it's supposed to be played is the thing I want to do most. Let there be no mistake about that.
Sometimes however, things don't quite go right. Sometimes, when we're trying to take Iceblood Tower and Tower Point, Horde will recap Iceblood GY while we don't have Snowfall GY yet. And then Horde will swarm in and reclaim Iceblood Tower and Tower Point (killing me in the process of course).
And now, because Alliance doesn't have Snowfall GY, what happens is that nearly 95% of all the Alliance in this AV are now stuck at the "chokepoint" near Icewing Bunker. At the chokepoint, Alliance simply cannot get past Horde. The problem is that many Alliance would rather "HK farm" at the chokepoint instead of trying to make it past the chokepoint in order to try to get Snowfall GY back or ninja a tower or something like that.
In this situation, I would love to be able to try to rally the players in BG chat to group up with me to get past the checkpoint and try to take Snowfall GY together. (I can't take Snowfall GY by myself because I can't fight the Horde guards by myself.) But of course that doesn't work. This "turtle" is doomed to last for ages if the majority of my Alliance teammates just want to sit at the chokepoint and HK farm away. If I managed to get past the chokepoint with a few people, and we capped something together, there wouldn't be enough of us to hold off the Horde trying to take that node back.
The short of it is this: There is nothing I can do in that situation. I could HK farm at the chokepoint. And since I'm level 78, I'm eager to get to level 80. You don't get XP for killing players. Given the battleground conditions, it doesn't look probable that any tower caps would occur for at least the next ten minutes, depending on how long the turtle drags on. That would mean ten minutes of receiving no XP.
It's in these types of situations that people start begging in BG chat to "just let them win" or "just let them cap our bunkers so that this AV is over sooner so I can requeue for a hopefully better AV sooner". I'm sure some of the Blue posters here in the CS forums have been in Alterac Valleys where people have said things like that in BG chat.
So in that hopeless situation, while I'm waiting for the turtle to end, and since I'm more interested in XP than HKs, it seems to me that the most reasonable thing to do is to go fight harpies. Each harpy yields about 1,000 XP. Nowhere near as good as 19,000 XP for capping a tower, but when there's zero hope of capping a tower, killing harpies seems like the next best thing. (BTW, in these hopeless turtle situations, if it were not for the Deserter Debuff, I'd be AFKing out instead and requeueing.)
(I'll assume the Blue poster who responds to this knows what the harpies are.)
Now I've noticed some things that puzzle me about the harpies:
1. There's actually a QUEST in this game where the objective is to go into the harpy cave and get a banner. Along the way, you have to kill harpies that are in your way. Now obviously, while you're doing this quest, you're definitely not participating in the battle. But if grinding harpies in the harpy cave would count as BG non-participation in Blizzard's eyes, then how come Blizzard's designers created a QUEST where you must go into the harpy cave? The existence of the quest sends mixed signals to me about what Blizzard does not like.
2. It puzzles me that killing harpies gives you XP.
3. It puzzles me that the harpies and the harpy cave are in Alterac Valley at all. Blizzard obviously put some effort into creating these, but yet they don't contribute to the battle at all.
So given all this, I have two questions:
1. Is it okay for me, in these hopeless turtles, where there's nothing I can do to help cap something given the battleground conditions, to go fight harpies for XP?
2. If fighting harpies is considered bannable by Blizzard, then why are the harpies there? Why is there a whole quest in this game revolving around it? Why have the harpy cave in there at all? The existence of the harpies and harpy cave sends mixed signals if Blizzard doesn't like players being in there at all.
If it does turn out that fighting harpies is not permitted, I do have a plan B, which would be to "HK Farm" at the chokepoint. Strangely, although that is definitely participation, HK farming doesn't really help try to win the battle.
