Battle In Alterac Valley 11/20/09

The daily battleground today was Alterac Valley. I did it on Wranngar and we won the second one I was in. I ended up fighting in 20 AV's, 10 wins and 10 losses. The new big thing now seems to be The Alterac Blitz. The only problem with that is the people saying "STRAIGHT TO DREK, DON'T STOP FOR ANYTHING" aren't bothering to check and see if we have a tank that can tank Drek at 200% health plus 4 Warmasters and 2 Frostwolves, and healers that can keep him alive, so half the time we get there and can't do anything. That was the case a few times today. We didn't necessarily lose those battles, we just didn't Blitz.

We had the usual problems of fighting in a battleground on it's holiday weekend, the weekend warriors and twice the AFK. People are starting to take an interest in reporting the AFK again it seems, maybe it is because they are AFK'd right out of the battleground after a minute.

We did have a couple wins on reinforcements and those were nice. Those were long battles with a lot of fighting and a lot of kills :). We pushed the Horde back from SPGY to SHGY then took SHGY in one reinforcement battle. I don't usually recommend taking SHGY but in this battle it was Ok because we were winning on reinforcements anyway. I got a lot of kills in that battle and another one. In the reinforcement battles we had to pile 8-10 people into IBT and TP to keep them. The Horde never go to take a tower back with just a couple, they always group up so they figure they will have anyone there outnumbered by at least 2 to 1. We surprised them a few times :). They don't even go to take a mine back unless there are at least 3 of them because they figure it was taken by 1 Alliance. I only got about 700 kills tonight in the battles I was in but I had a lot of fun.

I fought in 2 Wintergrasp battles. I should say I was in 2 Wintergrasp battles, I was in the first one from the start, a win, and got into the second one seconds before we lost. A mark is a mark though.

Tuesday 2/17/09

I got on Wranngar tonight and did the daily battleground which was Eye of the Storm. We won the first one I was in with a 4 cap so I completed my daily. I fought in 2 more, one win and one loss. In the second win we had a 3 cap throughout and were keeping enough pressure on the Horde's only base that we were able to run the flag without any interference. In the loss we had the battle started off with 13 Horde versus 5 Alliance. That was enough of an edge so we could not recover. They 4 capped right from the start but we did manage to get 2 of them back and run a couple flags. If that battle had started 15 to 15 we would have owned them again. I guess the Horde have to win once in awhile and they need an advantage like that to do it. I find the Horde hysterical to watch. If they have 2 people guarding a node and they see 3 Alliance coming they mount up and ride away, basically giving us the node, they are the biggest cowards I have ever seen. They will almost always run away unless they have the Alliance outnumbered 3 to 1. Basically that is the numbers they need to be able to take down 1 Alliance.

I did my daily quests for The Kalu'ak today too. There are 3 of them and they go pretty fast. I am getting closer to my new fishing pole, the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole. I get 500 rep each for a total of 1500 a day.

The daily cooking in Dalaran was Infused Mushroom Meatloaf. I headed down into the Underbelly to get some Infused Mushrooms. There were so many people doing it I considered giving up and doing my other daily's first then coming back to it but all of a sudden everyone disappeared and I was able to get my 4 Infused Mushrooms pretty quick. I cooked that up with 2 Chilled Meat and delivered it in exchange for 9g93s, a Dalaran Cooking Award and a Small Spice Bag. Today my Small Spice Bag had 3 Northern Spices and another Dalaran Cooking Award in it, not a bad haul. I got another recipe, Recipe: Mighty Rhino Dogs, today and cooked that up. I only have 6 more to go now until I get my chef's title.

Wintergrasp 2/15/09

I got back on Wranngar to see if I could get one more Wintergrasp in tonight. I got lucky, the battle was starting in 13 minutes. I joined a raid group and we all got buffed up, ate, and got ready for battle. I put out a Fish Feast which is always a big hit in the battlegrounds. When we started I believe we had 2 full raid groups, that would be 80 people total, plus another raid group started. I don't know what, if any, the limit is in Wintergrasp. We got in there and basically dominated the Horde. We were on offense meaning we were attacking the Keep and we got in pretty quick. We wiped out all the Horde that were inside trying to defend and then assaulted the Keep itself. We got in in no time and won the battle. It went really quick. The last one I was in earlier I got in while it was in progress and it lasted twice as long as this one did and we lost. I had no deaths in this battle thanks mostly to some really good healers but I got a bunch of kills and killing blows in :). I got another Stone Keeper's Shard bringing my grand total to 8.

Wranngar 1/13/09

I did the daily cooking in Dalaran on Wranngar and got another Dalaran Cooking Award which allowed me to get Recipe: Dragonfin Filet. I cooked up 4 of them because I needed it for the North Rend Gourmet Cooking Achievement and that got my cooking to 428. I also got 3 Northern Spices in my Small Spice Bag from that daily. I went and did the daily fishing and cooking in Outlands too. It only took a few minutes but I didn't get anything good. After that I went into the battlegrounds. The daily was Alterac Valley and I fought in two of them but stopped because they were taking forever to get into and were so imbalanced once I did get in. We had one battle that was 11 Allaince versus 40 Horde, a little uneven. Anyway I fought in 2 battles there and they were both losses. Then I went into the Strand of the Ancients. I fought in 3 battles in there, 1 win and 2 losses. I am still undecided how I feel about this battleground. Sometimes I really like it and other times not so much. The was one incident in the first loss we had where I died right before the Horde captured the Titan Relic and all of a sudden there was a load screen and I found myself in Westfall at the graveyard with a 15 minute deserter debuff on me. Strange thing is I queued for the battleground out of Darnassus so I am not sure how I eneded up there. I might get on a little later and do a few more battlegrounds.

Wranngar 1/5/09

I did the daily cooking in Dalaran on Wranngar tonight. I had to go out and hunt down some chilled meat to complete it. Once I had that done I headed over to Kalimdor and did some more exploring. I got a few places opened up and it seems to be moving right along. Maybe I will be able to finish up the exploring tomorrow or the day after. The Alliance is doing so bad in the battlegrounds I was in I am just discouraged. Maybe disgusted is a better word. I guess I will try the battlegrounds again when I am done exploring.

Wranngar 1/2-1/3/09

I only did the daily cooking on Wranngar on the 2nd, it was all I had time for. Today I did the daily cooking, the Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's, a daily at K3 and 3 EoS battles, all losses. The Alliance is not doing too well after all in EoS from what I saw. I am going to check it out tomorrow early in the day and see if it is any better. I also did a lot of farming for meat and got a bunch of leather. I have 2 Dalaran Cooking Award's, I will get my 3rd one tomorrow and get another recipe. I cooked up 13 Great Feast today and only got one point in cooking for it :(. My cooking is now 421 and I need 4 more before I can get the 425 skill recipes which will be brown to me so I will get a skill point off each thing I cook for awhile. I got my Leatherworking to 420 and went and got some more training. I will work on that some more tomorrow too. I got a lot of leather while farming the ingredients for the Great Feast and that will come in handy.

Wranngar 12/30/08

I played Wranngar for a little while tonight, I did my daily cooking in Dalaran and also did the daily cooking and fishing in Shattrath & Terokkar Forest. I got my third Dalaran Cooking Award so I was able to get Recipe: Mega Mammoth Meal. It gives me +80 Attack Power and +40 Stamina for 60 minutes. After that I did 3 Alterac Valley battles, all losses. The Alliance is doing really, really bad in AV lately. It is some of the worst playing I have ever seen. In the 3 battles today we captured IBT once. That was it. One tower in 3 battles. We never even got Galv. The only thing anyone seems to be interested in is the kill 50 Horde defending Vann Accomplishment. So 7 battles later I still don't have my daily from yesterday done :(. One of the problems is the battles are starting way off balance. We are starting with 20 players and the horde are starting with 40. 10 minutes into the last battle we were only up to 27 people against 39. I think I will see how we are doing in EoS tomorrow. Hopefully we are doing better in there than we are in AV. I think part of the problem is people are busy leveling and not doing the battlegrounds. Usually when you join AV there is at least a page of battles to choose from, lately there have been one or two and yesterday none. That one took me a full 3 minutes to get into one. I always choose "First Available" when I join. AFK is completely out of control in AV too, with at least 1/4 of the people in there doing nothing at all.

Battlegrounds 11/08/08

The daily today was Alterac Valley and I did it on Wranngar. I didn't have any time to play the last few days so I felt good to get on today. It took 3 battles in AV to get a win and get the daily done. I ended up fighting in 7 battles altogether, 2 wins and 5 losses. Needless to say the Alliance isn't doing any better in AV. There was only one battle where the Alliance held SHGY and cost us the battle though so that is getting better. In the other losses a couple were close and the others was just poor playing. I hope to get on and do some more later. I got Wranngar's hairstyle changed as part of an Achievement but I changed it back today. Attached is a shot of what his hair looked like before I changed it back. I thought it made my ears look like they were sticking out.

Battlegrounds 11/3/08

I fought in 3 Arathi Basin battles tonight on Wranngar. It was my daily again and it took 3 to finally get a win. Not as bad as last night but not great. The first battle I got into was already in progress. I thought we were going to win that one for a little while until I realized the fact we had 3 nodes when I came in was pure luck. After watching the other players perform I knew we were going to lose. It wasn't that they were playing poorly, they just weren't thinking, an all too common problem for the Alliance. They were leaving nodes with one person to guard it if they left any at all. I saw a few occasions where there was no one at a node. They were constantly on the move trying to get another base, leaving the ones they had poorly guarded, and the Horde were coming along and taking them. The next one really wasn't any better. I got in that one at the start and we were doing ok for a little while then it was back to one or none at a node and half way through the battle the majority of our team was at the Stables trying to get that back. Rational thinking would dictate if the majority of the Horde are there then there are some Horde bases left pretty much empty. No one could be torn away from the Stables though and we lost that one too. In the last battle I was in we actually had a 5 cap going on for a minute then we held 3 and had a 4th on and off. We won that one by about 600 points. Anyway I got my daily battleground done.

Battlegrounds 10/22/08

Today's daily battleground was Eye of the Storm. I did it on Wranngar. We won the first one I was in by over 1000 points, we had and held 3 nodes throughout. The Horde seemed more concerned with running the flag than getting more nodes but that only works if you have 2 nodes. Usually it is the Alliance that makes that mistake. I got that done and collected my 11g99s and 419 extra honor for the daily. I spent 55,000 honor the other day so I need to restock that again. After that I went into AV and ended up with a really poor group. We were way ahead but people decided to take and hold SHGY and that cost us the battle. It is really quite sad that the same people make the same stupid mistakes over and over again. The fact they are unable to learn from their mistakes doesn't say much for them. Those were the only 2 battlegrounds I was in tonight, I was really tired and not in the mood to lose any more AV's which is what would have happened with the quality of players that were on.

Battlegrounds 10/20/08

I only did a few AV's on Wranngar tonight. We had one win and 2 losses. The Alliance is still doing pretty poorly in AV even though they made it a lot easier to win with the latest patch. The major reason behind that is people defending SHGY. I don't know what it is about that graveyard but you get the same people battle after battle defending and holding it even though they see it causes us a loss almost every time. The only time we win when they are holding SHGY is on reinforcements and that is a 45 minute to hour battle, clearly not worth the little bit of honor you get winning on reinforcements. Hopefully some day those people will smarten up. Another problem is people trying to gear up for the expansion coming out in November. I am seeing more and more people in AV asking questions that plainly say they have no idea what they are doing in there.

Battlegrounds 10/14/08 - 10/19/08

I haven't been doing too many battlegrounds lately, I haven't really had a whole lot of time to play or update this blog. In the last 5 days I fought in 35 battlegrounds. I can remember a time when I would do that many in a weekend. I should have more time soon though. I did them all on Wranngar. The Alliance hasn't been doing too hot in the battlegrounds lately so there really isn't much to say. There is still a lot of AFK going on and a lot of stupidity in AV surrounding SHGY. I don't know what it is with that graveyard but it has cost us more battles. Since the new changes it is easier to take down Drek and Vann though, it can be done pretty easily with 2 towers up so they must have nerfed that too. The game is a lot easier to play now than when I first started, I guess Blizzard is worried people might find it too hard to level so they made it easier. Any I will try to start updating this blog on a daily basis again going forward. Something they added as part of the new expansion are Achievements. I am not too sure what the points you get will be used for but one of them is a title for the battlegrounds. For 100,000 lifetime kills you get "of the Alliance" added after your name. Needless to say I am going for that one. I currently have 54,000+ lifetime kills.

Battlegrounds 10/12/08

Not too bad a night for the Alliance in EoS tonight. I fought in 15 battles on Wranngar, 11 wins and 4 losses. It was back the way it should be with us winning all the time in there :). The 4 losses were just 4 really bad groups I got into. We were lucky to hold one tower in those 4 battles and a few times we ended up on the rock. In the 11 wins we were dominating. I think there were only one or 2 where it was even close and by close I mean 400 points or so. We had four or five 4 caps in those battles. We had the Horde trapped on their rock and held them there. It was also the daily battleground today but it actually took me 3 battles to get it done, we lost the first 2 I was in. I also did 2 AV's, 1 win, 1 loss. We got the win on reinforcements and it wasn't really a good Alliance group, it was just a bad Horde group. Someone took SHGY in both battles if that tells you anything.

Battlegrounds 10/5/08

Not a great day for the Alliance in the battlegrounds again today. I did get yesterdays daily done along with today's daily though. I fought in 20 total battles on Wranngar. Yesterday's daily was WSG, I tried one and it was so bad I dropped the quest. I picked it up again this morning before daily's rolled over and got it done on my first, and only, WSG battle. When the daily's rolled over I got today's which was AB. It took me 3 battles to get that one done but I got it done. After that I did a bunch of Eye of the Storm battles with a few AV's mixed in. We had 7 wins and 6 losses out of the 13 battles I fought in EoS. Once again it was going well then you could see when the quality of the players change. We went from 3 and 4 caps with running the flag to barely able to hang onto one tower while half the team, or more, was in the middle trying for flag. The flag means nothing when you only have one tower. Instead of hanging around in the middle trying to get the flag the time would be much better spent getting another tower. I think out of the last 8 battles I was in 6 of them were losses. The Alliance is still doing bad in AV with people taking SHGY and causing the battle plus all the AFK. There was also a lot of inexperience in there. People were calling out to kill Drek while we still had 3 towers up. The groups I was in didn't stand a chance of taking Drek down with 2 towers up let alone 3. We had one battle where we rushed Frostwolf and no one bothered with TP or IBT. By the time we got them it was too late. We had 1 win and 2 losses in AV.

Battlegrounds 10/3/08

Another bad day for the Alliance in the battlegrounds. I fought in 14 battles on Wranngar, 7 wins and 7 losses. We were doing bad in all the battlegrounds except AB. I was in 2 battles in AB and we won both of them, one was a 5 cap. AB was the daily so I was able to get that done. I was in 8 battles in EoS, 4 wins and 4 losses. I am not sure what the Alliances' problem is lately but we usually dominate EoS. There has also been a lot of AFK in EoS which you don't usually see. I fought in 4 AV's, 1 win and 3 losses. That was just a lot of the stupidity I have come to expect from the Alliance in AV. We would have won 2 more of the AV battles but someone had to go and take SHGY causing all the Horde to rez right where we were trying to cap towers/objectives and they just overran us. That also happened in the battle we won but we were able to hang on and win by reinforcements. Even then it was close. Of course AV was plagued with AFK, up to 10 per battle, I guess Blizzard is just not up to the challenge of correcting the AFK problem as they have failed so far.

Wranngar - 50,000 Lifetime Kills 9/28/08

I passed 50,000 lifetime kills on Wranngar. I was in Alterac Valley, of course, when I hit this milestone. I fought in 16 AV's tonight, 8 wins and 8 losses. Some of the battles were pretty good and some were not so good. We had a few turtles, a couple directly related to holding SHGY which is never a good idea. We won a couple battles on reinforcements which is unusual for the Alliance, usually the Horde win on reinforcements. I didn't care either way, I have 100 marks from each battleground which is the maximum you can carry (I got the last 4 I needed from WSG this morning) and I have 75,000 honor which is the most honor you can carry, so I am in it for the kills now. I finished the daily battleground I had this morning on my second battle. When the daily's rolled over and I got today's daily it was AV again :). All in all I did 16 AV's and 3 WSG, 1 win and 2 losses. Now I am setting my sights on 75,000 lifetime kills.

Battlegrounds 7/2/08

I only fought in one AV tonight, it was a loss. I was on Wranngar. There were a lot of AFK which hurt in every battleground but the people that were fighting clearly had no clue what they were doing. The first mistake they made was going for Galv first. That in itself is an almost guaranteed loss unless you have a really good group, this wasn't a really good group. They Horde put up a major wall of defense at IBGY and nobody rode past it, everyone that wasn't killing Galv stopped there to fight, that was the second mistake. When the Horde are really defending IBGY you need to ride past them and go for FWGY. I was trying to hold IBT with 4 other people but 3 of them left before it capped and we were overrun by about half a dozen Horde. Pretty much everybody ended up back at DB. After that nobody seemed to have any direction, there was no teamwork, some people were just hanging around in DB while others were trying to take SHGY which doesn't make any sense as SHGY is useless to us, it is just another place to turtle. With more than half the Horde at IBGY they were still able to easily take over DB with 3/4 of the Alliance, including all the AFK, there. We never really got any farther than IBGY. I have a really sad feeling it is going to be like this all summer. There are certain time slots that are better than others, I assume it's when the kids are sleeping, and you just have to find them. I will try fighting in there at different times and see if I can find out when that time is.

Daily Battleground 6/7/08

Today my daily battleground was Eye of the Storm. I did it on Wranngar and it took me two battles to complete it. In the first battle we got beat pretty bad, We were just hitting the 1,000 mark when the Horde hit 2,000. It was a classic example of everyone trying for the flag instead of getting bases to bring it to. The Alliance had two bases for part of the battle but were down to one for most of it. In the second battle we were doing a lot better at the start, we got DR, MT and BET and were ahead by over 500 at the 1,000 mark. Then people started concentrating on the flag too much, which the Horde had 4 healers at, and we lost BET. Then we lost DR and got it back, same with MT. The Horde were running the flag the whole time. By the end we ended up winning 2000/1957 which was way too close for the lead we had in the beginning. Anyway all I needed was the win to complete my daily. I got 11g99s, 419 honor and 3 Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor which got mailed to me, I can't carry any more, as you can only have 100 at a time, and can't take them out of the mail so they will disappear in 24 hours. This weekend is AV's holiday weekend so I am staying away from there.

Daily Battleground 6/3/08

The daily battleground today was Warsong Gulch. Have I ever mentioned I hate Warsong Gulch? If not rest assured it is my least favorite battleground. I did it on Wranngar and the Alliance won the first one I was in 3/0 so that made it a little less painful. I captured the flag once and was running it a second time when I got set on by 5 or 6 Horde. I always run the right hand side, coming back to our base, when I run the flag. I stick as close to the edge as I can get and usually have pretty good luck as everyone else usually runs right up the middle of the field. It took about 15 minutes overall for the win which is not bad, I have been in some battles in WSG that have run over and hour. The daily battleground pays 11g99s, 419 honor and marks from that battleground which were Warsong Gulch Mark of Honorx3.