Battlegrounds 8/14/08

Today's daily battleground was Arathi Basin. We didn't do too well in there, overall I had 4 wins and 4 losses but I got my daily done. The daily pays 11g99s, 419 honor and I also got the 3 Arathi Basin Mark of Honor for winning. After I had finally won I went back in for some more and had 3 good groups where we had two 4 caps and a 5 cap. I only have about 60 of those marks as I used some to buy some gear so I need to build those back up along with WSG marks. I went on to fight in 9 Eye of the Storm battles, 6 wins and 3 losses. We had some good groups and some bad groups, with a couple of the good groups we had 4 caps and held the Horde on their rock. I also fought in 5 AV's, 3 wins and 2 losses so that wasn't a really bad day in AV. We killed Drek in all of our wins and both of our losses involved people going for Galv first which usually ends in a loss and in one of them they defended SHGY which almost always ends in a loss. Overall it seemed like the quality of players was better today. As usual we had a lot of AFK in AV but they are getting reported more and more and people are asking me about the TuringTest AFK Reporter when I post the Leechers/AFK and they are saying they are going to download it. If only 5 people in every battleground had this mod AFK would be a thing of the past as they just would not be able to get away with it. If Blizzard put a little effort in and started removing them from the battlegrounds, say after 3 minutes, and banning them from battlegrounds for a certain amount of time each time, and maybe permanently after so many, I think it would go a long way to solving the problem too.

Battlegrounds 8/10/08

Another really bad day in the battlegrounds for the Alliance. I fought in 11 battles on Wranngar, 3 wins and 8 losses. Surprisingly two of the wins involved holding SHGY believe it or not, I couldn't. We held SHGY and moved forward to take IBGY, the towers, FWGY, FWRH and finally Drek in one and the other we won on reinforcements. We got Galv in both of them so there was some good honor involved. I have no need for honor at the moment but I can always store it up for later use. I am just in there these days for the kills and there were a lot of them, over 380 today alone, over 350 yesterday :). The other battles were total losses, no coordination, no teamwork, a lot of AFK, although I am happy to see people are taking an interest in reporting them and a couple people asked me where I got the mod I was using to report the leeches. I was more than happy to advertise it. Hopefully things will get better during the week, we will see. The daily battleground today was WSG but there was no way I was going to do it on their holiday weekend. Hopefully tomorrow's daily battleground will be Alterac Valley.

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.

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...