With the new Black War Bear mount from the achievement of killing the opposite side's Faction Leaders, I started thinking about the cities themselves. Why is it that the Horde have such horrible lay outs for city defenses?
I mean... take the old world cities first. Stormwind, Iron Forge, and Darnassus all have exactly 1 entrance from which the Horde can attack. Sure, you can argue that Stormwind and Iron Forge have a tram that runs between them which is technically another entrance, but since you'd still have to run through an enemy city to get into that, it's not really the same. And you could also argue that you can get into Darnassus from Teldrassil. But how do you get to Teldrassil unless you go through Darnassus, so that doesn't really count either.
And Iron Forge has to be one of the best strongholds in the game. Especially since there's now spells that will knock you back, a frontal assault to Iron Forge would never be successful with a mage or two (and appropriate healers) that have Blast Wave.
In contrast, there's two ways to get into Thunder Bluff, Orgimmar, and the Undercity. Now, granted that the elevators in Thunder Bluff are a bit more predictable as far as when you'll get attackers, but there's still two choke points for direct attacks. Again, the mage and healer thing could apply here, but you'd still have to have double the defenders.
The two cities that were added in the expansion may have been the attempt to even this up. Exodar has two entrances, while Silvermoon actually has 1. (I don't remember being able to get in another way. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) But one pair of cities doesn't really add up to the 3 pairs.
I guess I was really just trying to figure out why the imbalance. Is it because the Horde racials are generally better than Alliance for PvP, and therefore they should have an easier time killing Alliance attackers? That certainly can't be the case or else the battlegrounds would need to be always more favored towards the Alliance as well, and I know they've gone to great lenghts to make sure things are equal.
Nothing game breaking here, I suppose. Just one of those things that make you think a bit. If you've never entertained the idea of getting a Black War Bear or doing World PvP type of things like this, then just move along... I'll have another post on Monday. But can anyone think of any other reasons?
3 comments:
It doesn't really matter the defenses. All it takes is 1 Paladin to run through all the defenders, solo tank/spank the faction leader, then bubble hearth.
Oh wait, they nerfed Pallys.
I think the coolest idea I have seen to get into IF is have a lock and two others sneak in (usually running in naked and dieing over and over) and then lay dead for about an hour. Once everyone thinks they have given up, they all go and rez in the basement of an abandoned house and summon in a raid of 30-40 people then go wreak havoc. I was still lvling at the time but I was impressed.
I miss the old world days of PvP. Maybe achievements like this will help bring some of that back.
OK, the real reason why alliance cities are just better is...luck. I'm betting the designers didn't take PVP at all into account when they created these cities. They had some basic requirements and just went at it. They made it the prettiest they could (ignoring that people had to run around in it, I hate the layout of some of those cities!!!). The testers would check for bumps and oddities, but they probably never did a PVP check.
So, WoW was shipped and players had fun and didn't think about it until they started raiding cities and strategizing and then realized, hey the horde got screwed. Then blizz realized it and did...nothing. Most likely because the new cities for the 1st xpac had already been designed by the time they got the feedback and also patching a city isn't that high on their priority list because it would cost a lot and wouldn't enhance gameplay too much because town raiding isn't the fad.
The fad for blizz is travel time. It's the way all MMOs go. They create this big expansive world, then realize it takes a real day to cross it. So they create shortcuts and mods to lessen travel time. But what's funny is this travel time has given the horde a new way into the city of Stormwind, by raiding from the sea.
Anyways, I'd like to raid each city once for the bear, but after that I'd be done.
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