Then, I got an itch. I don’t know why so don’t ask but I just did. So there I was, and the levels began to fall behind me. As of right now my rogue is level 24 and questing in Hillsbrad Foothills. Now, there’s one other interesting fact before my story goes on: Gorefiend is a PvP server, the first one I’ve ever attempted. Runnik is on Silvermoon, a normal server, so I’m used to going through the whole “/pvp” thing before I get owned…

So Arcyon (my rogue), was in Hillsbrad questing. I believe I had to take out a few Hillsbrad mages or something irrelevant. when out of nowhere from behind me unstealths this red “Level 33 Rogue” demon from the horrid, flaming pits of hell. You can imagine my surprise when it dawned on me about halfway through my life: “ZOMG… I’m getting ganked…”

I try in vain to fight off this rogue but alas, he pwned me. Before I leave for the graveyard he of course emotes me with “Vipers spits on you,” before he trots away laughing at his devilish actions. I immediately search my social tab for someone to tell this to. There’s no one online from my new guild (that only has like 17 members) and there’s just one guy on my friends list who I’ve only talked to once. I know for a fact he has no clue who I am. He’s a level 70 hunter in Shadow Labs that I met through my roommate four months prior. Screw it, I gotta tell someone.

So I send him a tell saying: “Ok, let it be known: I just got ganked for the first time ever since I’ve never played on a PvP server before… just had to tell someone.”

I don’t get a reply from him, instead I get tells from level 70s in his guild that I’ve never spoken too: “Sorry you got ganked ,”

“Sorry man, getting ganked blows,” “I’ll run you through SM sometimes to cheer you up from getting ganked,” “We’re talking about you on vent, lol.”

I reply to the last one with: “I feel like I just lost my virginity, from behind… with a Backstab…”

This guys starts rolling laughing and talking on vent with his guild about my comments on getting ganked for the first time.

So finally I release and make the trek back to recover my body. I continue my questing and just after downing three mobs at the same time because of crappy adds I turn around and there’s a red “Level ?? Priest” on a mount…. Oh crap…. The Night Elf Priest dismounts, and this douche Mind Controls me and I watch in horror as I say out loud, “Oh! Come On!!!” as Arcyon runs into a group of mobs and then the priest stops her MC and the group tears through my 17HP I had left from my last fight. ZOMG I just got ganked… again… /sigh… dangit….

Well, now I have an idea of what the whole PvP server thing is about. It’s nothing but working and working and working on quests that you may frequently die on if you’re soloing, and just before finishing it getting your butt handed to you by cross-faction characters. And that’s just at Hillsbrad, I can’t imagine what STV is going to be like! So, you can imagine how I feel about PvP servers now and how I feel about even working on leveling Arcyon from now on… You guessed it: I LOVE IT!!!! I can’t wait to level up higher. Those ganks only fueled my desire to level up and gank the heck out of other lowbies on that server. With that said, I still need to finish that quest that I’ve been trying for the last hour… I guess I’ll start there.

This will be an ongoing series of my personal exploits in BGs as a complete and total noob for this kind of playstyle. See it as your one opportunity to openly laugh at me and have a good old time at my expense, because I’ve made some seriously dumb mistakes, but learned a lot already. I’ll be as transparent as possible in an attempt to comfort other noobs who are coming to learn from scratch.

Arathi Basin – Level 48 – Protection Paladin

That’s me, Paladr, and that’s where I am now. We’ll ignore my first AB match the night before… I sucked so much, a Hoover would be put to shame. Let’s start with my questions to Growl the next morning and what I did from his advice that night.

Gitr: I suck. A tankadin has no place in PvP.
Growl: Sure they do – you can give Kings – spot heal – and provide last stand guard on points about to be taken. You won’t be at the top of the killing list – but that doesn’t matter. Your value is in steady irritation to folks trying to cap points. The longer you keep that point contested – the better chance reinforcements will arrive to save the day.

He’s right: tankadins DO have a place in PvP. By the time I was done for the night… um… morning, I was topping the list on healing, being quite an irritation, and constantly being the target of hunters and their pets. There isn’t much more satisfaction available than to stand 30 yards off from combat and toss full heals on a fury warrior as he mows down 4 enemies… at one time.

Gitr: I keep running out of mana when I did try to heal. Should I notch it down a couple of ranks?
Growl: Are you using your Flash of Light heal? I save Holy Light for after fights and use the flash heal for “in-combat” healing. You can spam flash heal for quite a while… and it’s fast.

Man! Talk about an endless supply of mini-heals! I really can hit Flash Heal all day long. It doesn’t do much in certain situations, say a warrior against a caster doing full damage through his armor or on a caster up against a rogue. Then again, it’s better to get a heal off than no heal because you were still casting when they die a miserable death. What Flash Heal often does is match the incoming damage enough to give your man twice as long to make a stand and wait for backup.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears – School of Hard Knocks

Nothing hones your skills like a real battle. I got 6 full matches in and earned 22 Marks, including the 3 from the night before. My honor topped out at 1,100 and I got 286 kills so far, as I was doing about 35-45 per match. I made several mistakes right away:

• I used BoK on everyone but casters. I looked into it, and it looks like BoM should go on Melee and Hunters, and BoW should go on casters. Take the time to sort them out and help out the team. The benefits provided with the correct buff outweigh the time spent using multiple buff types. If you’re “good,” it doesn’t even make a difference in your time.
• I waited 2 matches before I enabled Klik. OMG!! This is the single most important tool I had on Deadr for instances, and I would not recommend going into a 15-man BG without some way to heal people using the raid/party UI frames. It wasn’t until I was healing with Flash Heal with the LMB (left mouse button, if you’re a REAL noob) and Holy Light with the RMB that I started to feel somewhat comfortable. I still didn’t know any tactics, but at least people stopped dying in front of me while I looked for them in the mess of bodies.
• My UI was simply not prepared to fight with so much going on. Instances and grinding mainly keep all of the action in one place. Look out when you get into the fray in a BG. I moved all kinds of things around. Here is what I ended up with, without too much trouble.



• Press Shift-M. That brings up a little map of the BG/zone and all of the nodes, who has control of them, where your teammates are, and who is in combat. When you hover over a numbered dot, it displays the name(s) of the people under the cursor. When there is combat, they start to flash red. As sides take over nodes, they turn red for Horde and blue for Alliance. Move it. Use it. Love it. Thank me later.
• Try to stick with a warrior, or at the least a rogue or ret pally. They will be able to bail you out if you take all the damage and you can really lay on the heals on them and let them concentrate on creating as much havoc and totally wrecking a node that is only guarded by 2-3 people.
• Don’t just sit on defense! Travel around with the aid of the above classes and kill on sight and take back lightly defended nodes. Be sure to stick the full minute until the possession changes to you. Consecrate the area around the flag if you are defending, as it will interrupt everyone trying to assault the flag.
• Don’t waste Consecrates if you might need to heal. Consecrate is a huge mana drain, and if you need to start healing, you’d best figure out some other way to do some damage.
• Save your Bubbles. Don’t bubble up unless you are doing critical healing, tanking, or you need to get away. You never know when you’ll need it in the next minute.
• Don’t forget to stun with Hammer of Justice when others are in the area to finish off mobs.
• Use Hammer of Wrath if you’re not on an active heal. It’s fast and will finish of a caster.

That’s all for now, kids. If you like this feature, drop us a line and we’ll keep them coming. There is always time for a little PvP, as long as the queue isn’t too long.

<Start_Grandpa_Rant>

I hit exalted with Frostwolf on my first character a good long time ago. Back when games could literally take hours to play and where you *had* to pull out all the stops, gathering the meat and blood of your enemies, killing rams, upgrading your forces and summoning Lok’ to have any chance of breaking the Alliance turtle around Dun Baldar. There was an epic flavor to AV back in those days – the rush from graveyard to graveyard, the exultation at seeing Balinda go down and the Alliance towers in flames. There was the urgency to gather your shaman and summon the elemental, the need for fleet cheetah form druids that knew how to kite the Alliance druids when they tried to summon their tree. It was a dirty, cold, blood filled battleground where everyone had a place. Even protection warriors had part to play, stepping forward with honor as we began to pull Marshalls and eventually big Van’ himself.

AV back then was HUGE, intense, vital and marvelously flawed, and I loved it.

Strangely enough, it was the the PvE element and its intermixing with the PvP that I enjoyed the most. It was like world PvP almost – a small raid wheeling in around Stonehearth, fighting the Lieutenants and warding off assaults by Alliance players. I always felt that of all the battlegrounds, AV was the one that truly had the most to offer players looking for challenge on multiple levels. Sure it wasn’t as quick or as accessible as WSG or AB, but it wasn’t supposed to be. This was where the *real* war was. You had to be at the pinnacle of your characters leveling career to even gain entry and the reputation rewards were some of the most sought after.

Yes – games took too long. Yes AFK’ers and fisher-folk were rampant. But I loved it still.

I’ve lived through and appreciated most of the changes that have occurred since the death of the old PvP honor grind. After the great NPC nerf, AV became more of a race and the game seemed to benefit from a more rapid pace vs. the protracted battles of old. Sure you could still get into some stinkers from time to time, but at its heart, there were still Marshalls and Warmasters to worry about. Wandering Lieutenants to kill and the Captains of each faction, waiting in their respective halls. From time to time as the Alliance started getting better at AV (or their turtles more determined) – we actually had to pull out frosty Lok’ to finish games – or worse – we had to worry for our own general as Alliance zergs were making it into our village, burning our towers and capping our relief hut.

Win or lose though – the game retained much of its epic heart if not so much its epic length.

Then 2.3 came along and Blizzard claims that the battleground is now better than ever. Better at what? It’s fast – or at least the few games I’ve seen since the change have been. Strategy is slightly different as defense is more important and you can no longer simply throw bodies at a problem until one side cracks. The reinforcement aspect of the game is a good one I’ll grant and it makes players think differently about what they attack, who they attack with – and who’s healing. But that’s all. The battlespace seems a vast empty place now. Not only are the mobs that guard the towers and graveyards nerfed beyond all belief, but the Lieutenants are gone and the once hazard filled expanse between Dun Baldar and Frostwolf now a small empty place.

Sure you might say – you play Horde, it’s easy for you to miss the old AV – seeing as how you never used to *lose* back then. Maybe that’s true – but I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in the valley on Alliance toons as well. I’ve hit exalted on a night elf druid and won only a single game through the entire ordeal. I know about the valley – I know from both sides.

And still – I miss the old AV.

<End_Grandpa_Rant>

With my latest character, Skychaser now in the 50′s – I know that there is a fair amount of AV left for me to do before I enter Outlands. But unlike before, where the valley represented a true destination and a valid place to camp and grind honor and reputation, I don’t think Sky’ will last any longer than the time required to gather enough tokens for his Frostwolf Howler.

Sad.

Time will tell and perhaps the new AV will grow on me more as I spend more time there. But at the heart of it all, I miss my old PvE opponents the most. There was nothing quite like tanking Captain Galvanger from start to finish for the first time when my old Alliance guild took control of the raid and actually nearly won the game. Nor will I forget the mishappen shapes of the Horde constructs at Iceblood, the massive furball of each force meeting at that forward chokepoint and the desperate fight on both sides to win through. Some say that after 2.3, PvP has finally come to the valley – but in my opinion, it was always right there. Mixed and spiced with an epic (if perhaps sometimes too epic) PvE element that gave the battleground character.

Time will tell of course and the truth will be told in future patches.

I a Hunter’s Mark above my head before I could even think to run, and his cat was running up to get me. My first thought was to frost nova the cat and get to a mountain and jump. Would you believe that there were no accessible ledges to be found without risking a dead end attempt? It sucked. He chased me all the way down to Mirkfallon Lake before I met some help. He died. I went to Sun Rock Retreat to turn in what I did get done.

Then…it happened again. Someone got bored. I was in the big tent looking for a repair NPC when this Adiroth jerk one-shotted me out of nowhere. He then killed the orc sitting AFK and all of the NPCs in Sun Rock. He was finally gone when I returned after healer-rezzing by my next quest turn-in and finishing up 3 more quests.

I got on Deadr and bought some nice stuff for Frostr and got the gloves enchanted. I got him:

• Thunderwood
• Magician’s Mantle 
• Azure Silk Pants
• Watcher’s Handwraps (+10 Haste rating enchant for PvP)

I keep sinking more points into Frost and have a 100% increase in Frost spell crits and put a 2% increase in Frost damage. Now to work toward the entire Azure Silk armor set, unless there is something supremely better.

5g to the first guildie that correctly identifies Mindkiller’s funny quote: (I can’t believe he has it memorized)

What did you do this weekend?

First, and easiest, I changed my screen resolution to nearly double the vertical pixels and strangely noticed a slight increase in my framerate. ~hmmm~ It must be the aspect ratio that was not kind to my video card; some non-native scanning that was driving it bonkers. I used to have bouts of 4-8 fps, but after the change, I never saw it less than 11, even outside. I like it. I like it. So will you, as my screenshots of items and text will be much nicer.

Next, the biggest dueling jerk ever. I was still level 26 (granted, totally twinked with 120g of gear and enchants) when I was turning in the quest reward for killing Arikara. As I ran up to the turn-in tauren, I got a duel request from a level 32 hunter named Morgnthorg. The first fight was over in about 10 seconds…with yours truly the victor. I even started the fight in Aspect of the Cheetah mode. Seconds after the fight was over and I was back at the turn-in writing up a GM ticket for it not working, he’s whispering me that he was kidding the first time…this time will be funny as he pwns me…clucking and flapping his arms doing the /chicken. After I wrote the ticket, I came up to him and invited him to an a$$-kicking.

I came, I saw, I wiped the floor with him, although not as soundly this time, to his only credit. Here is how that one went:

Edit: I totally forgot to mention that the real kicker was that after I beat him the second time, he immediately put me on his /ignore list. What an idiot.

I would love it if someone could look up his gear on Armory for me while I’m at work and let me know what his schtuff looks like. How bad is it to have 1185 mana? I got some nice blue Barbaric Bracers this morning, so those might not show up in my armory profile, but I updated both RPG Outfitter profiles.

I had scheduled guild time, but K was not feeling like herself most of the weekend, and with working 55 hours last week and half the day Saturday, I didn’t really want to rush off to the computer. I got the kitchen tidied up and the dishes stowed (my realm of cleaning) and we chatted for a while. I finally went to the office (45 minutes late) to blast away with my blue Double-Barreled Shotgun when the phone rang.

It was my parents. They were at the mall 30 minutes from their house because there was an open house ot the home for the realtors in the area. They watched a movie and were calling to see if they could stop by and waste some more time because they hadn’t called to give the the OK to head home. *SHOOT*

Now, I love my parents a lot, and they aren’t annoying or pressuring about coming over, so Dad offered to take us out to dinner, his treat. Aww, geez, I already spent 45 minutes preparing a pot roast for dinner that was going to come out at 7:00 when my guild time was over. Not having any “real good” reason to say that it was a bad idea, I asked K, and she said it was bad timing, but OK since we had just made the place spotless again and had food already coming out.

They brought over a Blockbuster movie and we ate a gloriously tender top round with carrots, potatoes, and onions. They went home shortly after 8:00, and by 8:30 I was on Bloodr trying to level before bed. It didn’t happen until this morning, but mission accomplished, nonetheless.

So much for a nice, quiet night of killing mobs 1-3 levels higher than me in close quarters, only to get shot in the back by a 98-point arrow hit as 2 centaurs are shooting at Catr and me. This didn’t just happen once…or twice…or three times. Yes, 4 corpse runs before I fetched my Great Equalizer. I’m more pissed that she was gone when I got there with firepower. I stayed for a while and helped the other players finish their kill quests by Power Word: Deathing everything with one shot. BANG!! 1,300 dmg…dead. It was so awesome. “I need 3 more scouts, Mr. Awesome Priest,” BANG!, 6 seconds, BANG!, six seconds, BANG! Man, I wish that was a gun…I wonder if Miss Anti-Guns has ever read my blog…hmmmm.

I know I signed up to play on a PvP server, so some of you are probably thinking, “SHUT UP!” but there comes a point in the game where it’s not funny or cool. I’ll take a random 50-70 running by and one-shotting me, but they’d better keep moving along. Making my life harder is fine, but miserable…no. That’s where I draw the line. Check out what a bad player looks like. Lots and lots of greens: Myssiamea’s Armory Profile.

Now for a gratuitous photo-op of Bloodr at level 23:

What have been your PvP experiences in Outlands? Has the LFG system been working for you to group up when your guildies are busy so you have a buddy to keep you protected? Inquiring minds want to know.