piastoax

Back dooring is the equivalent of having each team /random 100 and then just award the winner 3 marks and end the game. There is no actual "strategy" involved. Successful back doors only happen when the stars are aligned. Since we're talking about a game with a completely random comp there sometimes may not be enough tanks or healers to do a back door. What then? Just "give up and lose"? No. There are actually a lot of people who enjoy playing Alterac Valley, and those of us who do enjoy it actually want to win the game even if it takes longer than 15 minutes. For us, it is pointless to wait for a 40v40 pvp battleground queue then go in and race to a PVE boss. I've gotten exalted leading maybe 10 premade AV's that lasted about 1.5 hr to 2 hr. I've only joined maybe 5 pug games total since it came out. Premades take a while to get in to a game, so we make the best of it. It's just a bunch of random people so sometimes I don't have many tanks or healers. Yet my team always wins. We burn every tower, kill every commander/lieutenant/captain, summon the Ice Lord and force the other team to PVP. We have a 100% win rate. I average 2k-3k rep per game and 5-6k honor. The honor keeps flowing with no diminishing returns because when you hold the other team at a choke point they rage quit and are replaced with fresh honor. It's not the fastest way to gain rep or honor, but I'm not in there for honor or rep. I'm in there to have fun, and to win. Slash ignore the back door whiners in chat and enjoy your Alterac Valley folks. In summary, you can win every game of AV if you know how to play it. Now, start peeling that onion!

I disagree with you on all points. I spent many hours in vanilla ganking and ganking gankers in friendly, enemy and neutral towns and in my 12 years of playing this game I never received a single warning or ban for it until Elysium. In retail Bliz just added guards where needed and didn't go about randomly banning people for having fun. And when I say randomly I mean only when some cry baby opens a ticket because they got killed in a PVP zone by someone who was just crafty and not cheating in any way.

Can you give an example of this? Because I can't think of one way that someone could "counter" a rogue vanishing to avoid guard aggro in a neutral town. As soon as someone casts any ability or spell on the rogue, which would have to be before the rogue vanishes or attempts to vanish, the guards will instantly kill them. The rule itself is inherently stupid because it deters people from doing what they were allowed to do in Vanilla. Countering someone in World PVP by giving them a taste of their own medicine doesn't sound stupid to me. Some people find it gratifying to gank gankers. It's part of the Vanilla experience. I'm not talking about the hard to get spots I'm talking about the easy ones. Certain instances of what is considered safe spotting are ridiculous and unreasonable to the point where there are many players who have absolutely no clue that they are even safe spotting. A bunch of Horde who got ganked into oblivion get together and raid a town, and so they all jump on the roof (which is easily accessible) and taunt and torment the inhabitants. So .... the inhabitants start crying and whining about it and so the Horde gankees are the ones to be banned from the game? That's absolutely absurd. Another example is attacking someone on the second floor of the inn in Booty Bay. It's just a place in the inn. If I decide I want to kill someone who is PVP flagged because I don't like their name or maybe they ganked one of my alts. It's not some special roof that you had to point your camera in a specific direction and jump at a certain angle. It's literally just a place inside the tavern. If I can get banned for killing someone there, then why would a Paladin not be banned for killing someone and then bubble hearthing out if a ticket is opened? Or a rogue be banned for killing someone and vanishing if someone is upset they got killed? To me, there is absolutely no difference. Should people be banned from being on the second floor of the inn all together? The rule is too ambiguous and ultimately people are getting banned for killing players on a PVP server, which kills World PVP.

Why, because you said so? This doesn't change the fact that it's still considered safe spotting by the rules own definition, since cooldowns are "any other game mechanic" being used to avoid guards getting to you. You just contradicted yourself. I never said enforcing rules is toxic. Bending them is, though. Safe spotting isn't some rare occurrence that only a few players experience once in a while. It happens on a continuous basis and apparently some classes are allowed to do it (i.e. bend the rules). Regardless of what the definition is of safe spotting is, standing in a place and attacking someone and not dying is not being a cheater ; there is no unfair advantage gained over the other player by standing in a spot that is easily accessible by the opposing player, no special techniques needed that the opposing player cannot use themselves and no external programs or exploits required. It's simply killing players on a PVP server while not in view of guards. The guards can path to those locations just fine, there just aren't any in range. The window is small enough; one wrong step and you're dead meat and you lose durability. If killing players in neutral cities without dying yourself should not be allowed at all, then major changes would need to be made to the game. Randomly banning people for this and allowing certain classes to continue doing it is toxic to the World PVP community. Guards can be moved or added to encompass these "safe spots". Blizzard did it. The devs can, too, if they believe it's that much of a problem. But if they keep banning people who enjoy sneaky World PVP ; ganking , corpse camping , forming raids and attacking towns, eventually there won't be much of a PVP community left aside from people standing outside Org/Stormwind dueling.

Rogues, hunters and paladins can attack the opposing faction and circumvent the instant repercussions from any location. This fits into the category of "guards cannot reach you due to game mechanic". Yet those people don't get banned. Cherry picking who gets banned for killing players on a PVP server is toxic to the PVP community.

Last month I was banned for a full day for "safe spotting" in Booty Bay. There are several places in and around the tavern that do not require any special tricks to get to where you can attack someone passing by and there are simply no guards within range to see what you're doing. It's really that simple. The guards can't see you. After attacking someone, the guards WILL become hostile and WILL attack you if you move within their range. In some cases, you only need to move 1 yard from your "safe spot" to get attacked; and it does happen frequently. It sounds like the roof in Darkshire fits the same description. Just like the safe spots in BB, you don't have to do anything special to get up on the roof in Darkshire, but there is a spot or area on the roof where the guards can't see you and therefore will not aggro you even if you shoot someone on the ground. The guards will still be hostile to you after you attack someone, and will attack you if you move within their sight/agro range. If you wait until they become friendly or neutral again, about 30 seconds, then you can move about freely again until you attack someone again. I believe "safe spots" are part of the Vanilla experience for casual world PVPers and I wish we could continue doing it without repercussion, but I haven't dared do it since I was banned. I tried reasoning with the admins on the forums but they would not listen. The GM's/admins of Elysium have made up their minds about these "safe spots". The way they see it is; If you're in a town, you should not be allowed to kill anyone and get away with it. Of course, this is completely unfair because I don't know of any rogues, hunters or paladins that got banned for killing someone in a town and then vanishing, feigning death or bubble hearthing. The proper solution would be to either put guards in range of the "safe spots" or just let the game mechanics do their thing as they have done for the past 12 years. Blizzard never banned me for "safe spotting" and I did it regularly in retail. Banning people for Pvping on a PVP server is over the top. If someone is killing you or your friends, call for help or go somewhere else. Heck, come on the forum and wine about it, but nothing should be done about it. This is why the saying "QQ PVP SERVER" was coined in the first place. In fact, how I ended up "safe spotting" in the first place was I had seen several alliance doing it to the poor Hordelings in Booty Bay, in large groups, daily, so I decided to exact revenge on them. Many players continue to safe spot on a regular basis without being reported. If they were all reported, the admins/GM's would have a full time job. The fact that I got banned for this is both ironic and toxic in and of itself.

Release AV already, allow us to queue into it as a raid, and script in reinforcements off the bat, and all will be fine in the pvp community.