flag-carrier
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How to kill a flag carrier
We've spent the last few weeks talking about Warsong Gulch and how to be a successful flag carrier. This week, let's talk about the most important skill for everyone else: how to turn that flag carrier into a greasy spot on the ground. These skills apply relatively equally to Warsong Gulch, Twin Peaks, and even Eye of the Storm. If the enemy has a flag, you want to kill them.* Let's remember that the entire other team will (should) be protecting their flag carrier. That really leads to the basic strategy here -- how do you kill that one dude when 10 other folks are trying to keep him alive? It's not as hard as you might think, but it does take a little forethought. *Unless you're in Eye of the Storm, in which case: Get the damn towers.
How to carry the flag in Warsong Gulch
Last week, we talked about some basic strategy for Warsong Gulch. We ran through the basics, the general flow of the fight, and how you (tend) to win it. One subject came up a bunch in the comments and landed in my email box a few times. That question: How do you run the flag successfully? It's no surprise that's a contentious issue. Without debating the fine points of who should be running a flag, I think we all agree that being the flag carrier is an incredibly vital role. Touch the flag and you just became the focus of 19 people in the Battleground. There's a little more to the job than just mashing a particular cooldown, so let's take some time this week to talk about strategy and tips.
LFG sells a Richard plushie, Resto4Life sells t-shirts
The Richard character on the WoW comic LFG seems to be pretty divisive -- either you want to rip his guts out, or you just can't love the guy enough. For both of you, there's good news: the folks behind the comic have released a plushie of the character, so either you can pick it up and torture it for being such a violent jerk (ah, the irony), or you can love and cuddle the maniac as your own. The item is in pre-order right now, and will supposedly ship in November of this year.And speaking of things you can cuddle, Resto4Life has some sharp new T-shirts in the mix -- they're rocking a Druid "Waffles" design, and the cheetah-skinned "Warsong Flag Carrier" (man I hate those sneaky Druids in WSG), but the best is the "Doncha wish your boyfriend cast 'hots' like me" shirt -- I don't know any boyfriends that would actually wear it, but it made me chuckle. Awesome to see these great fansites hopping with cool swag.Update: Not to be outdown, our own BigBearButt blogger also has some nice Druid wearables for sale. Don't miss the trucker hat -- perfect for showing off your feral side.
Warsong Gulch changes may not have helped much
Aloud on the podcast last week, I wondered if the patch 2.4 changes to WSG had made a difference (I haven't been able to make it in there yet -- too busy writing about Hello Kitty Online, of course), and now maxomi is wondering the same thing: since the changes dropped, has WSG actually been fixed?Unfortunately, from what we're told, the answer is no. The changes, designed to cut off turtling and players who ran around with the flag without capturing it, first made the enemy flag carriers trackable after 45 seconds, and then gave a damage debuff to the flag carrier after ten minutes (which doubled at fifteen). But all the reports from players say that makes no difference -- people still turtle away, even with the tracking and debuff, and eventually both drop the flag and the whole thing resets.So what's the solution? If you crib some notes from other capture the flag games, a match timer sounds like the best option, and indeed, that's what most people are suggesting. Blizzard would have to determine how long to tune it, but the idea would be that after a given amount of time, if there was no winner, the match would end in a draw, with both sides losing in terms of a reward. It doesn't seem like Blizzard can force players to fight, so the best option overall might be to just call it in a time limit, and keep the matches from going on for long amounts of time.
