afk
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Forum Post of the Day: is reporting AFKers counter-productive?
In an odd expression of the "we can't beat them so we might as well let them win" attitude, someone on the forums has postulated the following logic: Battleground AFKers want a limited amount of honor to purchase their gear. AFKers will stop AFKing once they get that amount. Reporting them slows down their AFK honor gain. The slower it takes them to reach their goal, the longer we have to suffer their presence. We should let them have their honor, so that they'll get out of the battlegrounds faster. Obviously he is completely wrong. First of all, he's assuming that there's only a set amount of AFKers out there, and once they're all done, there won't be any more left. To the contrary, the more people succeed at getting honor rewards for free, the more people are going to see their example and try it for themselves. Additionally, the AFKer has no real reason set a limit to the amount of honor he can get this way. Only those who have bought all the items they can use and saved up the maximum amount of honor points and marks will stop, unless Blizzard gives us the tools to stop them ourselves.Besides, letting people get away with AFKing for their gear is inherently unjust. It may not be on a par with stealing the crown jewels of the Queen of England, but it's theft nonetheless. After all, in a battleground, other people do all the work, but AFKers get the benefit. They are effectively stealing the time and energy we put into the game, and making it doubly hard for us to succeed at the same time, just like a parasite which does nothing for itself except leech away the energy your body works so hard to create. We should never let passivity overcome our natural yearning to see AFKers fail in their goals, and should fight them with whatever tools we have, no matter how inadequate.
Player suggestions for fixing Alterac Valley
In response to a post-patch-2.3 post about the limitations and issues with the new AFK reporting feature for battlegrounds, many people commented with some interesting ideas for improvement. They vary greatly from fairly lenient to quite harsh, making it ever more apparent that this is a controversial topic. Many of you agreed that the system should automatically report players that are AFK, rather than relying on those of us who are fighting and defending to point them out. There also seemed to be an agreement that AFK'd players should not be allowed to remain so; after a certain period of time, they should indeed be booted from the battleground. In order to avoid harsh penalties in a legitimate and unavoidable AFK situation, jr suggests that whatever punishment is implemented, it should not be so for manually /AFK'ing oneself, or when the player is disconnected. Our own Matthew Rossi does point out; however much we might like to impose a more aggressive system of punishment, players will find a way to exploit and abuse it. Malachi145 also pointed out that, no matter what, AFK'd players should not be gaining credit for the daily battleground quests. Several players even outlined complete systems that could be implemented in a future patch to further reduce the problem that AFK'd players in battlegrounds pose for their teammates.
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?
Forum Post of the Day: Bring back the honor grind!
Believe it or not, there is actually someone out there who wants Blizzard to bring back the old honor system. You remember: the system where you had to slave away for hours and hours (and hours) day after day (after day) in order to get anything epic -- especially the "Grand Marshal" or "High Warlord" epic weapons. Apparently, Pahs thinks that the time sink the old honor system required proved a deeper dedication on the part of the players who went for it. Nowadays, anybody -- even people with jobs(!) -- can just earn up their honor points and spend them like money, when, according to Pahs, such folks should be content to "talk to a few friends and maybe do a BG or two." He says, and I quote: "Why people with real life responsibility's want the same treatment as people who can input more time into the game is beyond me."Yet a surprising number of posters in his thread agree with him, citing the number one problem with the current system: the appearance of AFKers in all the battlegrounds. Naturally, it offends our sense of justice that AFKers can get honor gear for free by having their characters sitting in the battlegrund leeching off of their teammates, while they themselves don't have to put in any effort at all. In the previous system, players would have had to actually kill the enemy and win in order to progress past rank 5 or so. Likewise, the old system's ranks and titles were fun -- people always like to be able to distinguish themselves from others, though whether for a genuine feeling of achievement or some kind of "Better than thou" badge, depends on the individual.But going back to the old honor grind in order to get rid of AFKers would be ridiculous. As Tyren says, the newer system, with arenas and objective-based world PvP in addition to battlegrounds, is a vast improvement. It provides more access and variety to more players, and exchanges time for rewards at a far more reasonable pace. What we see in this case is a classic example of people reminiscing about the "good old days," which were never really that good to begin with, simply because frustrating problems have appeared along with the improvements. As much as we all may hate AFKers and other new problems, it's much better to go forward and find new ways to solve such problems than to go back to such an unbalanced system with far more serious flaws of its own.
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.
2.2 in review
As we're looking forward to a new patch tomorrow, it's appropriate to look back at the last patch and what it added to the game. While there were also several tweaks to class mechanics and items, the main thing it added was Blizzard-supported voice chat. Earlier today, Mike admitted that he hasn't ever used the voice chat, and aside from experimenting with it a bit on the day it was released, I haven't either. I don't do pickup groups much these days, but the few I've been in haven't bothered with the chat at all. This may be due to the fact that its sound quality isn't all that great and there may be other issues as well. People being embarrassed to talk out loud to total strangers or simply being habituated to typing in pickup groups are both possible reasons why the chat may be neglected. What's your experience with it? Have you used it much?One of the other major changes in patch 2.2 was reporting AFKers in Alterac Valley. While I personally like this change, (if nothing else, it gives me something to do while protecting a flag,) for whatever reason, it seems to have skewed the battleground in the Horde's favor (my main PvPer at the moment is Alliance). Honestly, I haven't read a lot about the reasoning behind this phenomenon, and for all I know, it's different on other battlegroups. What's it like on your server? Do you like this change?
Disastrous AFKs
While I'm sure we've all had the experience where a crucial group member went away from their keyboard at a bad time, a whole different type of disastrous AFK was brought up on the WoW forums the other day. An earthquake in the San Francisco area was cause for a lot of sudden AFKs for many posters, including Delthen who started the thread. It seems that many of the posters actually told their group that they were going away from the keyboard. Apparently they failed to read the recent article on the subject by our own Robin Torres. Nethaera chimed in with her own story of a group member needing to leave the game due to a tornado warning, one which I've seen occur in-game myself. Personally, the worst thing that's suddenly taken my attention from the game is my dog getting sick or maybe a desperate cry for me to kill a spider that's harassing my wife. What's the worst thing that's caused you to go AFK?
More balances coming to AV
After not playing in there for what probably has been months, I found myself back in Alterac Valley this morning-- with the recent AFK changes, things have just gotten so much more active in there, and considering this weekend is an AV honor weekend, there will probably be a lot of blood shed beween the Frostwolves and the Stormpikes. Of course, just because players are active doesn't mean they know what they're doing-- we had twenty people standing around the SP GY flag this morning, and I was the only one actually clicking on it to capture. Oh well.And now that players are playing in there, it's time to look at the other problems in AV-- map balance and fun factor. That bridge is still an issue when Alliance actually sit down and guard it, but the past few matches I've seen have a completely other problem-- it's just a zerg race. Sure, some folks stay on D at times, but really it's just a matter of which side gets to the other boss first.And Neth says changes are coming, specifically that Blizz wants to make AV "more fun" and "more balanced." She can't say what that means yet, but I'd be very surprised if the "more balanced" part didn't involve a little map adjusting. As for the "more fun," who knows? Personally I'd like (and I know some of you share this sentiment) to see additions in terms of the PvE stuff, but Blizzard has learned a lot since they first created AV. Instead of the summoning quests and the NPCs entering the action, I'm guessing there'll be things like zone-wide buffs and other Halaa-like happenings.But as always, we'll see. In the meantime, who wants to go get Balinda with me?
Breakfast Topic: AFK debuff
I got the idea for this breakfast topic when I saw the following two posts virtually back-to-back in the WoW forums: Reporting AFK'ers - a Pleasant Surprise, and AFK Reporting System Broken And Abused. The former tells the story of the AFK system going well, all the AFKers being removed from the game, and the Horde going on to win. The latter is from the perspective of a player who was erroneously flagged AFK, and asks for several changes to be made, including a limit to the number of AFK reports a player can make in a given amount of time. (It turns out that limit, while not user-visible, is already in place.)So there are obviously some diverging perspectives on this AFK debuff system thing. What do you all think of it, having had a couple days to check it out?
AFK is fixed... for now
First thing I did after getting the patch installed was head into Alterac Valley, and I am very glad to say that the anti-AFK measures Blizzard put in place are working... for now.It was amazing to see Horde up and at 'em again-- coordination still needs work, as we didn't wait around long enough to capture Stonehearth Graveyard and had to recapture it a few times (and I heard that earlier in the day, Balinda was double spawning), but once we cracked into Stormpike, it was all over. Horde is winning in AV again, at least in the Vindication battlegroup. As Foxx says, things haven't been this fun in a while.We reported two folks out in our first match-- a flurry of messages in the chat line had them leaving the BG quick. One guy, however, actually came out of the cave to AFK, but he had a reputation, and we all voted him out before long. It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out going towards the future-- will the AFKers just stop trying, or will eventually they find another place to hide on the map where people won't notice? While I was playing, someone came to my door, and I actually went AFK for about 5 minutes, but because I was standing near the bridge where combat was going on, no one actually reported me.So the system still isn't perfect, but it is many, many times better. If you were plagued by AFKers before, Alterac Valley is definitely worth another try. It's much more fun in there-- at least until the AFKers come up with another plan.
More AFK concerns in Alterac Valley
Here's more about the upcoming AFK debuff in Alterac Valley. Last week, we talked about what the voting requirements might be to give out the debuff, and there were some really great comments on that post, specifically about an idea to give the debuff out right when players start the battleground. I think that's a great idea, and it would give everyone in the BG an impetus to get right into battle and do what the BGs are meant for: PvP fighting.But here's another concern, voiced by Fantastiko of Alleria: Currently, as we know it, the debuff won't actually disconnect AFKers from the battleground. If players vote to give them the debuff, and if they don't enter battle within the set time period, all it would do is keep them from gaining honor while AFK. Which means that even if the debuff works as planned, and the 10 people in the Peace Cave get the debuff and gain no honor, your team is still down 10 people. Not good.So as planned, what exactly will this debuff stop? AFK players can still go AFK, and just hope that no one thinks to report them (when this first starts up, tons of reporting will probably go down, but eventually, people will likely be able to get away with more and more). It seems like the best solution would be to give everyone this debuff when they enter the BG, and have it cancel on combat. And if combat isn't entered, or they are reported, AFKers should be disconnected from the BG completely-- even better, with the "deserter" debuff-- allowing other players to take their place.Of course, this reporting system is still in the planning stages, so it could be that Blizzard has already reached these conclusions and it is going to be implemented this way. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of testing as well-- we likely won't see the system until 2.3 or even beyond anyway. But the problem with this is that AFKers are crafty-- if there's any way at all that they can gain honor while they go AFK, they'll do it.
Voting requirements for the AFK debuff
One of the choruses we heard at BlizzCon was that Blizzard knows about the AFKers in Alterac, and justice will be handed out. The plan, we've been told, is that it will be handed out in the form of a no-honor debuff, that breaks on combat. In other words, if enough people report you for sitting in the Peace Cave, you don't gain any honor until you get moving and start fighting.The problem, however, is that we don't know exactly how many people it takes to hand out that debuff. Thunderbein tells the story of an AV where only 20 out of 40 players were actually playing, and so if the number of players that have to "vote" for the debuff is anywhere over 20, no one's getting the debuff in that BG. Hortus replies and says that it's not as high as 30, but how high is it? Can you give someone the with two people? With ten?And then there's the question of whether we should know at all. What if we learned it was 10 people (in the interest of clarity, I should stress that we don't actually know what it is yet), and a group of 31 AFKers joined up to the BG? Then, nothing is solved at all-- those guys could sit in the Peace Cave all they wanted and gain honor the whole time.The AFK debuff sounded like the best solution at BlizzCon, but every system can be gamed. Blizzard is going to have to be really careful about setting up the numbers on how the reporting works. And because we'll likely find out whether they tell us or not what the number is, they'll have to watch out for other ways AFK players can get around the punishment.
Changes coming to Alterac Valley
It looks like Blizzard is finally starting to take this issue of AFKing in Alterac Valley seriously, and not just with the AFK-reporting feature that you've likely already heard about.In response to one poster who begged Blizzard not to implement this reporting feature because he says the map is imbalanced and the Horde always loses anyways, Drysc gave us a relatively long list of changes that Blizzard is making in order to help solve the problem -- not just reporting AFKers, but also finding other ways to encourage them to get in the game as well, such as fixing exploits, changing or removing NPCs, and yes even modifying the map a little bit.Here's what he said: There are quite a few changes coming, all of which we hope will culminate into making players want to participate, and ultimately win the battleground. Obviously as most people know we have the anti-afk reporting measure, by which you can right click on someone in the battleground and mark them as AFK. With enough reports they receive a debuff that keeps them from earning honor in that battleground, and only by entering combat can they remove that debuff. It's going to help, but it's certainly not enough on its own. Other things we're doing are changing or pulling out NPCs in key locations to help even out the balance of time and effort each side has to take to push through. As well as some minor changes to locations that people find are easily exploited to advance faster. We're shifting some of the honor from the earlier NPCs, that help make AFKing so lucrative, to the end of the battleground and more for actually winning. The graveyard spawning is being changed so that players aren't sent back to the cave unless there is nowhere else to spawn, which should help encourage horde to play a bit more defense if they're being beaten back. And we're also correcting the ... I think Jeff referred to them as "creative pulling mechanics" with the general's. Everything together, we feel, should help encourage players to participate, while also improving overall balance.
AFKers ask Blizz to "save the Peace Cave"
I really have no pity for people who AFK in Alterac Valley, but I will laugh at their last ditch attempts to get honor for free, especially when they're as witty as this.Thayne from Hyjal is fighting for his right to not fight-- he describes himself as a conscientious objector, and wants Blizzard to recognize that while others are fighting each other, he is fighting, in his own AFK, non-combat way, to end the war once and for all. He calls the Alterac cave the "Peace Cave," and pleads with Blizzard to please, please save the Peace Cave, and let Thayne and his fellow peaceniks remain to observe the battle (and gain honor) without actually getting involved in it.Of course to that we say: No chance. We're still kicking you out. But nice try.Thanks, Robert!
Overheard at BlizzCon: Changes to the bgs?
Well, as I stood in line for food this afternoon at BlizzCon, I found myself behind some Blizzard employees. They were very nice, and evidently from the QA department. As the the line moved on, their conversation turned to some of their PvP exploits from the day before. Evidently guys who spend all day playing WoW go home and....you guessed it, play WoW.What was interesting wasn't really what battlegrounds they were playing in, or how they did. What was interesting was what they let drop while they talked about their PvP exploits. Evidently fairly soon Blizzard will release a method of dealing with those pesky AFKers in AV and WSG. They said something along the lines of "I can't wait to select all those guys hanging out in the caves and just hit 'report.'" Perhaps this will be a system similar to that which has removed all but the most tenacious gold spammers from my whispers. Intriguing? I thought so, and also thought you should hear about it. I'll keep my ears perked for anything else tantalizing I hear tomorrow.
Welcome to Alterac Valley, you can go AFK now.
If you don't often visit the PvP battleground Alterac Valley, then you may not know what I'm talking about. But AV seems to be the best place for people to go and collect honor points while safely sitting AFK in at the battleground's starting point. Why Alterac? Well, Alterac offers great honor returns for anyone -- and most of the honor is given out zone-wide, regardless of whether you're near the rest of a group when an objective is captured or a boss is killed. It's just too easy to collect large amounts of honor by just sitting around without doing anything -- much to the chagrin of players who are out there fighting and trying to win the battleground.And while Blizzard has shown themselves quite eager to rid people who are botting or hacking to prevent their AFK flag from coming up when they're not at their keyboard, there's not much they've been able to do about the people who sit in front of their computers watching television and occasionally hitting the space bar. So what's Blizzard to do? There are plenty of suggestions on the PvP forums, though I can't say many of them seem practical. They could remove honor gain from the starting point -- but then players would just learn to idle elsewhere. They could alter the battleground's honor mechanics to give out honor based on a player's range to the objective giving honor -- but this would likely gimp players playing defense by limiting their honor gain (despite the fact that defense makes an important contribution to a match). They could somehow tie honor gains to overall damage or healing done -- though such a change probably isn't a quick fix.What's your solution to the AV AFK problem?
"AFK neighbor just bit my dog"
There's a running joke in my guild that whenever anyone has to leave an instance for a little while, everyone says "AFK to wash face." Apparently someone actually used that AFK excuse at one point, and it's been funny ever since. Most of the AFK's I've seen have been pretty tame, although I have had a few people leave instance runs fast because their kids have demolished their house in some way ("chocolate syrup all over kitchen floor, afk a sec"), and once because "afk 2 mins, cops at door." We didn't hear from that guy for the rest of the night.But there's lots of better AFK excuses than even that. "g2g guys, there's smoke coming out of my computer..""afk my brother has a knife""Guys I have to go there's a car that crashed into my house""guys i got to go, dog just died"" I have to go AFK for a bit guys, my son just told me he's gay.""brb internet just went out""afk wife giving birth"Ok, so those last two are excuses given, not received. But I've never heard anything this crazy-- I must be grouping with the wrong people. Or maybe the right ones...What's the craziest AFK excuse you've actually heard in game? And (because most of these are probably fake anyway) what's the craziest one you've ever given to get out of a bad PUG?
Battleground sploitz and Blizzard's responsibility
Been jumping into PVP as often as I can lately, and I've noticed two little quirks still floating around the PVP system.The first one's fairly harmless. I too wasn't sure how to get out of a battleground until a friend informed me of the /afk trick. You're not allowed to go AFK in a battleground, so just purposely go /afk and Blue will boot you (with a deserter buff that wears off without consequence shortly).The other exploit is a little more troublesome. Apparently, when a raid leader joins a battleground "as group," members of the group can click the button to join in without the group leader doing so. Which means those members can check the player screen to see if they're up against another premade (by noting if all the other faction's players are from a single server), and if they are, the group leader, still out of BG, can then join another BG (say AV if the original players are in WSG), and then join back to WSG when another instance of it opens up. Understand all that? Basically they're using the fact that a group leader can stay out of a BG to constantly enter and reenter battlegrounds until they're matched up with a nonpremade. Then it's honor farming time, and 3 captures later the process starts all over.Now, I'd hate to be the tattletale on this, but I'd assume Blizzard knows about both of these "sploitz" (the first one isn't really an exploit in the strictest sense, but it is using an ingame function for a benefit it's not meant to confer). What players have done here is construct their own fixes for Blizzard's "bugs"-- there is no PVP matching system yet, so they've created their own (even though this system matches for the win, not for fairness). And there is no easy command out of the BGs (even /leavebg would be great and easy to implement), so players are using /afk.Which begs the question: does Blizzard care about the battlegrounds as they are now? Or are they too focused on expansion PVP to fix these "flaws"? And if they are too focused, is that a bad thing? We already know the honor system will be scrapped, as well as the current LFG and most of the PVP system. Does Blizzard have a responsibility to fix what we have, or is it OK that this musical chairs of premades continues until expansion release?
