A surfeit of Honor – Alterac Valley weekend

Got to love Alterac Valley weekend. My Druid has gone from being a brand new 85 in blues and greens to a full PvP set in no time at all.

Have to admit I’ve always loved AV though. The sheer scale of it offers so many possibilities. Take and defend towers, kill Galvanger, defend Balinda, sneak around ganking people on the field of strife. Each game is a wealth of opportunities depending on your mood.

Although I can’t help but feel the speed that honor is earned at devalues gear. We were getting at least 300 a game  with the games on average only lasting 10 minutes (unless we met the German realms who seemed to want 45 minute zergfests which came down to the last man standing) and pretty much instant queues. It all added up pretty fast.

Then there is the fact that AV is basically as hard as you want to it to be. For every person like me who was sneaking around retaking bunkers and defending towers, there were four or five “armchair commanders” sitting on “noobhill” yelling instructions in raid chat. Yet they are getting 99 percent of the same honor for basically riding from one end of the map to the other and capslocking a lot. I particularly liked it when the solo rogue up the west frostwolf tower was frantically announcing his incoming demise yet was ignored by  the “armchair commanders”, even though they were standing 5 feet away and then proceeded to call him names for the rest of the game. Yes, it was totally his fault that eight horde ran up the tower and killed him.

I hit 85 the day before I took this screenshot

My other favourite moment had to be when I retook stonehearth bunker using the oldest trick in the book, Mr Harpy dancing around in his bubble distracting the five or so defenders (who were all emoting chicken at him), whilst I stole the flag back. Never underestimate how much everyone hates retribution paladins. The icing on the cake came when we leapt triumphant from the bunker and escaped unharmed. They were clearly in too much shock to chase us.

Now it’s a case of what to do next. I’m already at 4000 resilience and the only PvP upgrades would come from rated Battlegrounds and Arenas, but we’re playing on a server where we don’t know anyone and the thought of pugging rated battlegrounds sounds horrific.