Over the weekend I played a good bit of 51-60 Alterac Valley. Over the span of however many games I played, I noticed some interesting trends. The overall trend that I noticed is that PvP skill is highly lacking in AV, and in BGs overall, both in 1v1 situations and in overall strategy. Generally all players follow the mob around the map, regardless of where it is headed, and all too often you will see 3-4 players break off to chase one enemy halfway across the map. Players will also stop and fight when they see an enemy, even if the plan is to ride past and fight at a flag. It’s not hard to realize that if you kill an enemy at the halfway point, by the time you reach the flag they will have respawned and will be at 100% to fight you again. Letting them ride past you, or better yet chase you, will remove one defender from your intended goal.
The map itself is highly flawed, not in that it favors one side over the other, but in that it tricks the sides into playing poorly. For instance, knowing that both sides follow herd mentality, it would be all too easy to allow the main attack force to surge ahead and tag towers/graveyards. Logic would dictate that the attackers would wait for the tower/gy to finishing before moving on, but herd mentality insists as soon as something goes gray you rush to the next target. Knowing this, a smart group will simply wait for the masses to move on, recap a forward gy, and catch the attackers in the middle without a close gy to respawns at. The enemy gets tossed all the way back, joining the defenders slowly as your attack force pushes them farther and farther back. Sadly that never actually happens. Instead both sides simply herd rush, and whichever side provides the greatest resistance wins. By removing almost all of the NPC resistance, Blizzard only encourages herd tactics to generally work. Since the brainless ‘charge forward’ tactic works more often than not, it’s no wonder most WoW players never actually bother to stop and think about better strategy.
What’s really sad is that back before TBC, winning AV in a reasonable amount of time did actually involve some planning and team work. The ‘herd vs herd’ games would be standstills, but given good leadership and coordination victory could be achieved in a short and satisfying manner, usually by coordinating NPC special attacks with your teams own GY push. Those victories, and the encouragement for strategy they provided, were far more beneficial than the mindless grind AV is now, and I think that the blame should be squarely placed on Blizzard. By rewarding everyone and encouraging games to end as quickly as possible win or lose, they have created a culture that cares more about the next queue time than actual results. The fact that most PvP participants in WoW are simply there for the item grind does not help matters much. This is one of the greatest downfalls of rewarding everyone, in that actually winning is only slightly more beneficial than losing, especially if you lose quickly.
Going forward, and making the now standard comparison, one would hope Mythic is already well aware of the downfalls of ‘everyone wins’ and implements a system in Warhammer that encourages and actually favors winning. WoW gets away with it because it’s a PvE (for now at least) game at its core, and PvP is a tacked on as an afterthought. WAR is a PvP based game, and can’t afford its primary gameplay to turn into the sad excuse it is in WoW. History will tell us that it won’t, simply based on the gameplay we had in DAoC, but DAoC is a pre-WoW game, and we have seen since what that means. Just another interesting concept to track and watch for when WAR finally drops the NDA and we are all able to discuss it in detail.
Note: I realize Arena combat is a bit different, and that is clearly the direction Blizzard is heading with WoW, but like raiding, Arena’s are generally played by a small fraction of the population, and hence don’t really apply for the topic above.
Hardcore Casual 
Speaking of the “herd mentality”, why not find another topic to talk about? WoW and PvP — are you seriously complaining about PUG PvP in WoW? I’ve got three words for you: whine more n00b.
PUG: pick-up-group
WoW could be used as an interesting study. The lack of risk vs. reward (zero risk) and the adaptation of a PvP system that focuses on item grinds and the “everyone gets something in the end regardless of winning and losing” idea really speaks to the latest cultural mindset. Something that I always loved about old school UO was that you had to work for everything you had. If you had run-ins with PK’s, you had better learn to fight or at least flee before losing what you had. Being able to defend (or kill) was a big accomplishment in going about regular life in UO. Made you be aware of what you were doing instead of the “I died oh well – just have to pay a few more gold for repairs.”
Like you, I’d love to see a game come out where PvP and risk vs. reward actually mean something. Imagine WoW with old school UO rules – the ability to kill anyone outside of town and freely loot anything on them. The game might be able to hold up to the namesake of “Warcraft”.
Considering you can’t (yet) queue as a group into AV, all AV is PuG…
Plus why use PuG as an excuse for everything? DAoC had a ton of PuG PvP, yet it’s overall quality was much higher. Same goes for PuG PvE in games like LoTRO. It’s Blizzard’s rules that encourages such low level play in WoW, not the idea of a PuG in general.
Sure a PuG will function on a lower level than a guild or premade, but the PuG level in WoW is so much lower than other MMOs.
It’s a thought-scaling problem. Most players are thinking in terms of the simplest layout of pieces, so they usually move in a giant clump and don’t think to send small groups towards specific targets. This is obvious in the back-and-forth “More D!” “More O!” demands.
I play horde. As an example of autonomous, small-scale strategy, I immediately grab 1-3 people and take Snowfall. I then camp Snowfall, whether or not anyone else sticks around, until either we lose Iceblood, or we’re fighting at Stormpike; at that point I join the team that needs me.
Does anyone remember the 6 hours long AVs back in the days? It was a pain. The issue with WOW in my opinion is that the average player lacks any general playing capabilities, not to mention the lack of strategic & tactical capabilities. WOW is a mainstream game, easy to pick up and very user friendly. For many players this is the first PC game ever played. You have 40 ppl on your side in AV, and only 3 play 100 % of they class posibilities, the other 37 use 20 % of their possibilies. I remember a player back in the days on our server, who didn’t even had one point invested in his talent tree.
People in WoW acually use tactics?
Do you all even know what an extend group is? Or what extending even is? Do you even know how to form a “Setup” or what it is? The Skill in wow is so below par id take a 11 year old DAOC player over a 25year old WoW veteran. There is no PvP skill in WoW what so ever. Its a game made for 11 year olds. Its like the Retard or MMOs. Simple stupid anyone can play it. Has a horrible PvP system. No game will ever beat DAOC and how they arranged their RvR or point system. i have ran against some WoW guilds in War with our 6 man group vs their 9-12 mans. Its sad how easily they are rolled. They cant tell what is happening to them.
Just makes me laugh when i see 3 tanks getting extended chasing down a caster getting massive heals. then before they know it they are all alone and that caster turns on them and the rest of the casters group assists them down. WoW players need to step their game up or they are going to constantly get rolled in the new MMOs. You can tell a good Daoc player easly. they know how to play and how to play against other people, with other people.
To all you wow players:
tactics are a bitch, maybe you should learn some lol