World Of Warcraft: More AV Changes on the Way

Going along with the recent trend in balancing the always tumultuous Alterac Valley battleground, a variety of new changes will be going live with patch 2.3 to change the way the game is played.

One of the newer strategies for Alterac Valley is, according to Usagi on Icecrown:

A good chunk of those games had the losing team end up with more honor than the winning team because the winning team was too focussed on killing the general and not killing commanders and lieutenants and capping towers.

In true Blizzard style, this method of play, which is indirectly a method of skipping content, is being phased out by adding more incentives for actually controlling various points in the map as Naethera points out:

Keep in mind that the AV changes are still in testing on the PTR. We are fully aware of the concerns in regard to honor gains per hour and are continuing to work toward getting the gain closer to what it is now. For instances, we are lowering the amount of reinforcements and raising the honor gain a bit. The daily quests are also going to help. We're still fine tuning the changes with this battleground, however, so it's a bit too soon to say goodbye to it.

We are also going to make capturing a mine more worthwhile as well. Capturing a mine is going to give you back reinforcements as long as you hold it. It should be about +1 for every 45 seconds.

We want Alterac Valley to be fun and yet still give a solid amount of honor. Keep an eye on the test realm and keep giving feedback on the changes.

The addition of faster spawning reinforcements will provide a bigger wall for defending forces, making it much more difficult for the standard rush and ignore tactics to work. While this does put AV more in line with what it once was, a turtle-friendly hellhole that could take hours to win, it seems that the devs are trying to keep honor gains in line with what they are now while changing the feel of the game.