wow-afk
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More Alterac Valley changes on the horizon
As we've noted before, a sizeable portion of Alterac Valley players are growing more disgruntled each day about the AFK'd players that leech honor and, given enough, cripple the team's efforts. The main unfortunate side effect of all of this frustration has been extra long queue times on many servers, which is only serving to fuel the fire.When the ability to report a player as AFK was first introduced, there were mixed reactions. The tool did seem to reduce the volume of moochers in any given battleground, but it also put the onus on the honest, responsible fighters to take the time to locate and report the individual. Because of the fact that no action would be taken against any AFK'd player until a sufficient number of reports had been received, AFK'ing continued, and went back on the rise. To combat this, Blizzard hotfixed the reports, lowering the threshold required before the debuff would be planted.
Breakfast Topic: Quitting battlegrounds
Battlegrounds, one of the main resources for PvP action in World of Warcraft, may be growing less popular with the average player. On the flip side, they may be gaining in popularity for players who are new to the whole experience. Why are so many avid battlegrounders boycotting the queues? The most popular battleground that is off-limits is Alterac Valley, and many are getting fed up with the afk'ers and Blizzard's attempts to solve the problem they create. In fact, ever since the dynamics of AV changed in patch 2.3, some people have been longing for the honor grind to return. Queue, run north/south for 10 minutes, gain much honor. Not everyone is enjoying the actual PvP action they're seeing. The recently explained honor calculations have also been causing controversy, especially regarding holiday weekends. At the same time, many battleground regulars are becoming annoyed with the increased population of players new to the grounds popping in, either for arena season one gear, or for the daily battleground quests. Some are even spewing their opinions on the subject rampantly in /bg chat, making the experience less fun for everyone. How much time do you, or have you, devote to battlegrounding? How are you feeling about battlegrounds these days?
Blizz still evaluating afk reporting feature
In patch 2.2, Blizzard introduced a reporting system to help players tackle the issue of teammates going AFK in battlegrounds, especially Alterac Valley. While this was a good start, it has several major flaws, and players have been worrying that the system may not see any improvements. Fortunately, Nethaera has confirmed that in fact, Blizzard is studying the performance of the new reporting feature very closely. So far, the system has not been operating consistently, and the issue continues to be evaluated. With any luck, we'll see some changes soon. What exactly are the current limitations and problems with the reporting feature? Here is a quick summary: A reported player is merely unable to gain honor, and not removed from the battleground itself. This is meant to deter players from willfully entering AV with the sole intent of going AFK and gaining honor without doing any work. Unfortunately, any players who end up AFK, whether on purpose or not, stay in the game. The remaining team members are still short-handed. Players need to physically report AFKers. This takes time, effort, and is considered by some an annoyance. After all, a battleground is for battling, and not for running around trying to find AFK players. Many of the AFKers are bots that can be programmed to keep the character in the battleground, by moving enough to avoid going AFK, or other such maneuvers.
