To Turtle or Not to Turtle...?
We're 45 minutes into an Alterac Valley run and 30 players are sitting in our base playing defense, fighting a pitched battle that doesn't help us win, but slows down the rate at which we're going to loose. We haven't managed to hold a single graveyard throughout the fight, and the Alliance has a line of defense that quickly picks off most players attempting to move north from the Horde spawn point. I manage to sneak up to the next graveyard with a hunter friend while everyone else is busy fighting back in Frostwolf hold - and we manage to tap the flag there. However, before we manage to make the capture, a group of five Alliance comes down hard, and we're sent back to where we started.
My friend whispers to me, "They have no idea what causes people to turtle, do they?" And, while I hadn't thought of it in this way before, I'm forced to agree - this sort of fight is probably no fun for either side. By playing such heavy defense, and not allowing a single capture, they push us back towards Frostwolf hold again and again - and when there's nothing else for players to do, many of them regroup back at one of the worst bottleneck points in the game, and the match ended up lasting an nearly an hour and a half.
So what's your experience with turtling? And is there, perhaps, something to be said for letting the opposing side take a little, just to prevent them from fighting with their backs against the wall? Or is there some better strategy to avoid or break the opposing team's turtling efforts?
