Battlegrounds 8/1/08

The daily battleground today was Eye of the Storm again which wasn't bad, we do good in there and it wasn't their holiday weekend. We won the first one I was in, 2000/300, we trashed them. We had MT, DR and BET capped and were keeping them busy at FRR while we ran the flag. It didn't take me long to collect my 11g99s, 419 extra honor and of course get my 3 Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor mailed to me.

I did some AV's after I was done in EoS, I fought in 7 battles, 4 wins and 3 losses. Our first battle was a win, then we had a loss, then 3 more wins and finally 2 losses before I called it quits. I usually don't fight in a battleground on it's holiday weekend but I decided to give it a try to see how the new add-on I installed today, TuringTest AFK Reporter, was working. I hit it at the right time because overall we were doing good for awhile. Yeah there were a lot of AFK, and the add-on was working great, but it didn't really get bad until the place filled up with weekend warriors. In our wins we rushed FWGY and the relief hut in one, even took down Galv at the start in one of them and still won, that should give you an idea of how good the group was at one point. But towards the end it got really bad and the last 2 battles everyone was in Dun Baldar so I decided to call it quits. Those are the weekend warriors, they are not there to fight, they are there to get honor and marks, they are just a little above the AFK as far as I'm concerned. The only difference being if the Horde come into DB while the are "guarding" it they will put up a fight even if it is half hearted. I am really pleased with this new AFK reporter, it reports automatically so I don't have to waste time doing that anymore and I think if everyone was using it, or Blizzard got off their ass and incorporated it into the game, AFK in battlegrounds would be a thing of the past.

Daily 8/1/08

I only did one daily on Wranngar today so I can't really call it daily's. I did the fishing daily which was Felblood Fillet and spent the rest of my day in the battlegrounds. To catch my Monstrous Felblood Snapper I headed over to my spot at the Pools of Aggonar (39,37) in Hellfire Peninsula. I got one in 7 casts and headed back to Old Man Barlo, (40,59) at Silmyr Lake in Terokkar Forest, to hand it in for my Bag of Fishing Treasures. For that I got 7g4s39c, 3 Elixirs of Water Walking and a Broken Spyglass which I sold to a vendor for 2 gold. Certainly no exciting rewards from this quest today but I will keep plugging away for the good stuff :).

AFK Reporting Add-on

I downloaded a great mod today for reporting AFK in the battlegrounds. It is called TuringTest AFK Reporter. It automatically reports the people that are AFK and also lets you know it reported them. It has other uses too, reports most damage, most healing, best defender and so on. I have tried it in a couple AV's and there were no problems I could see, it seemed pretty accurate. It doesn't report people just getting into the battleground either, I guess it gives them a little time to get out of the cave and do something. I highly recommend this to anyone who fights in a lot of battlegrounds and are as sick of the AFK problem as I am. For those of you who use WoWMatrix you can download TuringTest AFK Reporter right through there and there is also a download/install program available from the download website. I use WoWMatrix to keep track of all my add-ons and it is really handy to update, I update every Friday and it is a one button process with WoWMatrix. Both of these are free to download and use.

Update: I have used this in 7 AV's and I love it, no more taking time to report people AFK, it does it automatically and reports them again in a couple minutes if they are not marked inactive. I think if everyone had this add-on, AFK in battlegrounds would be a thing of the past :). Too bad Blizzard didn't take the initiative and just incorporate it into the game...

Battlegrounds 7/31/08

I fought in Eye of the Storm and Alterac Valley today on Wranngar. EoS was the daily battleground and we won the first two I was in and lost the last one. We won the first one by over 1,000 and the second one by over 1600 :). Then in the last one we got trashed, we only had one base and it was all we could do to hang onto it. In the first two we capped MT, FRR and DR then ran the flag while the Horde were trying to defend BET, we kept the pressure on them there to make sure they all stayed right there. In the second battle we capped MT, FRR and DR and ran the flag, eventually capping BET towards the end. In the third battle everything seemed to fall apart and we were only able to cap BET and it took all of us just to hang onto that, we got beat by quite a bit on that one. I got my 11g99s, 419 extra honor and 3 Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor from the daily.

In Alterac Valley we didn't do too good at all. I didn't realize it was AV holiday weekend or I would have thought twice before going in there. We did win the first one I was in but we lost the next 2. In the first one we had a Frostwolf pre-made in our group so they were a little more organized than a pug but not by much. I think it was a trade channel pre-made and sometimes those aren't any better than a pug but we did win although it was a close fight. We rushed FWGY while the pre-made took care of the towers and eventually moved into FW Keep and got the relief hut. When all the towers were burned we went in and took Drek down. The Horde were on Vann so it was close. In the last 2 you could really tell it was a holiday weekend, there were a lot of AFK and most of the people didn't have a clue what they were doing, the weekend warriors that only do battlegrounds on the holiday weekends and don't really do anything anyway, might as well be AFK. Anyway those 3 battles were all I could take.