This post may contain excessive use of profanities.
Eye of the Storm Has one objective.
Score 1,600 points before the other team does.
There are 3 targets in EotS:
- The towers/ruins
- The flags
- The opponents
Only one of these matters, the other two are noob bait (unless fulfilling target No. 1).
- If you spend your time capturing or defending the towers/ruins you are a bloody genius in comparison to at least 10 of your team mates.
- If you spend your time mid-field fighting, or trying to capture or return the flag, you are the lowest of the low noob. Worse than the Huntard or the 200dps Deathtard.
The Server Restart was only the beginning of my Saturday Woes
On top of the server issues I had on Saturday night I had two games of EotS that were so full of fail that my normally passive demeanor turned aggressive.
I was frustrated, extremely frustrated.
I was filling BG chat.
To be honest I am not a quiet BG player, I call out opportunities and threats. I praise good game play.
So BG chat was full of:
Please ignore the flag, we can’t win while horde hold 3 towers, no matter how many flags we capture (like we were capturing any…)
If there are 15 Horde at DR, there are none at the other two bases. Sure enough, 2 people in the BG were listening and followed the healer to take FFR and BET.
Of course we were soon destroyed without any support from the other 12 players.
But the BG text is so small
I know, in the heat of battle, it’s hard to follow the little brown chat. So what’s thier excuse for missing the raid warnings popping up in front of their face?
In the 2nd game I was battleground leader, so there was no excuse. They obviously weren’t conditioned raiders, conditioned to follow a raid leaders instructions without question.
I don’t care
- I don’t care what level you enter a BG bracket.
- I don’t care if you are a newbie or a veteran.
- I do care if you don’t play the game to win, especially when helpful but frustrated people are telling you exactly how to win.
Yes you can
- Yes you can do well in BGs no matter what level you are these days, especially if you are a transient twink.
- Yes you can pop into the BGs from anywhere and then return to your regular program.
- Yes you can bank honor and marks for all sorts of booty
- Yes BGs drip XP these days…
But only when you win…!
If you play to lose, it’s just an exercise is frustration and a wasted half hour to hour.
Edumakate yourself in the Art of War
Do yourself a favor before you sign up, spend 10-15 minutes reading wowwiki or one of the plethora of battleground guides that are about, some of which are right here at the home of the Gnome.
Face it, if you ran onto the footy ground for the 1st time, you would listen to your teammates and coach. You would work out the rules and play to them. You wouldn’t go kicking goals for the opponents… Repeatedly.
But that’s what you do when you fart around on the Battleground with no idea of what you are doing and refusing to follow the guidance of those that do know.
How did Saturdays EotS end up?
I don’t know how it ended for everyone else, but I did something I have never done before in 3 years of playing BGs.
At 400/1400 (approx) I announced on BG leaders chat
You are all weak as piss. You are welcome to lose the game, but I won’t be a part of it
And hearthed
I did see one WTF!! Before I left the BG. I don’t honestly know if it was one of the twelve losers, or one of the 2 heroes of that BG.
There was a crater in my soul, larger than the one left with the removal of Dalaran.
I am truly sorry for deserting you two guys, but I can only handle so much stupidity in my life, and there is enough of that IRL.
So please, I don’t care what faction you play…
Ignore the noob bait!
Sunday Night Addendum
I got the chance to log on Sunday night so I decided I was going to chase the EotS win that would complete the daily battleground quest.
I was naively full of hope that the world would have changed over night, and I would walk into a coordinated EotS where we controlled the towers and ignored the flag.
You can see where this is going can’t you…
Before I knew it we were 370/1100 down…
I started having flashbacks. That angry little monster in the back of my head started rearing up to unleash a torrent of childish abuse at my team mates before I loaded the character selection screen and typed out DELETE.
I’m not a quitter and I don’t usually blow my cool… not even in hopeless battlegrounds.
So once again I started issuing instructions to our 15 man team of fail…
I started trying to solo the towers… then I stepped back a bit, and waited in the middle of the bridges, hoping someone else would join me.
Someone did, a couple of people did, but the flag was still being challenged, even though there was a chorus of agreement with my instructions.
The flag had been taken by one of my team mates /sigh
There were a few people yelling out to hurry up and cap the flag.
Then it happened, then I read these words in my BG chat from the Alliance flag holder.
I will not cap the flag until we have 2 bases!
30 seconds later we had 2 bases.
I added…
Great work folks, let’s get the 3rd base, then beat the Horde out of the 4th back into their starting zone.
Then I saw the BG chat gain another entry…
I will not cap the flag until we have 3 bases!
He got to cap his flag pretty soon after that
We won… 1600/1400!
Well done Alliance of Bloodlust, you restored my faith in humanity!
Speaking of gaining faith in Battlegrounds
I joined an Alterac Valley match a little while after it started, reinforcements were pretty even, about 400 a piece.
It was another turtlefest.
We were offensively turtling, the Horde defensive turtling.
But the Horde numbers were going down, fast…
Ours remained pretty much the same.
Then I saw BG chat:
You Healers are awesome… Alliance holds the top 4 positions for heals in this AV.
Sadly I wasn’t in that top 4, I was placed 6th after a Horde healer (due to my late arrival I guess), but what the commenter missed was not only did we hold the top 4 positions for healing done, but we held 8 of the top 10 positions.
At least 20% of our AV team was healing, and we were slaughtering the Horde.
/s ty nice heals
I have also seen a lot of folk thanking the healers for their work. They have been doing this is 2 ways.
- Saving the healers’ butts
- Thanking us publicly.
So I thank you for protecting our butts so we can heal yours!
[Squidly] <– Resto
I have maintained telling people on entry to a BG that I am Resto. I had the following exchange in a AB on Saturday…
[Squidly] <– Resto
[Healadin] holy
[Retardin] sweet
[Retardin] leet
[Squidly] Excellent, Sweet Leet Retardin is protecting our Holy Resto butts
[bg chat] lol
- Protect our butts they did
- Heal their butts we did.
- Win AB we did.
And we were recognized on subsequent battleground entries by those we had saved before…
Excellent work folks…
Isn’t it fun when we work as a team!
Remember: Ignore the noob bait!
Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/05/the-flag-is-noob-bait/
Myrhani is as holy as holy can be these days, and she’s gotten to level 66 almost entirely in instances. I can’t believe how much instancing I’m doing in Outland, I’ve run Ramps, Blood Furnace, Underbog (which I DC-ed in the last boss and didn’t get achieve for. *grumble*), most of Slave Pens, Mana Tombs (four times!) and Auchenai Crypts just this weekend!
I have yet to go into a battleground with her as holy though. She wilts and dies all over the ground as ret, and I am as squishy as squishy can be. Scary thought. Do people *actually* protect you in bg? Or is that your usual gnomish optimism bubbling up again? I had to make a /rw macro that says “aggro on healer, help!” for instances for those rare but annoying occasions where the tank chronically neither sees nor cares that I’m being beaten to death.
But on the whole I am as happy as a holy clam and pondering big changes… stay tuned.
I’ve run a few of the instances, chain ran Ramps a week ago… I just wasn’t getting enough XP… well maybe I was, but healing instances can be a bit mind numbing if it is all going right.
Nothing mind numbing about BGs though…
Not quite sure where in this post you detected my Gnomish Optimism… ohh yeah, near the end…
Yes, I am protected… often, but not always… after running a Mage through BGs for so long I don’t fear death, I fear lack of support.
I need to be more careful about being over enthusiastic and racing the DPS to the “flag”, want to be mid-to-rear of pack. close enough to get heals off on the 1st comers, but far enough back to not be an immediate and obvious target.
There is a reason I make it known that I am resto… if I am resto, I am purely there for healing… so if you dps folk don’t protect me I am a dead weight… and you get no heals…
They catch on pretty quick.
In AV I have been getting a lot of attention… way too much from the horde once they realise the alliance aren’t dying every time my colored sticks are around.
But there have been a heap of occasions where I have been coping a caning from the Horde, only to see 3 Allys running in to sort the problems out… They are even picking off casters that are targeting me.
I usually just stand there and spam heals on myself until the situation sorts itself out (I do take other action, LoS, Frostshocks, Maces over the back of the head), but I am more confident now that the dps will realize the sudden lack of heals and trace it back to the source.
People even come looking for me
/s heals ty
and they wait before charging off…
Matticus had a post that might be worth a read: 5 Ways to Survive Alterac Valley
The flag is an accelerator: You press it to make it go faster, but you need the thing started in the first place.
Yep, and the bigger the engine (more towers) the faster you go…
Whhhheeeeeee
Ahhh, BGs. They can go oh-so-beautifully or oh-so-horribly, but not usually somewhere inbetween.
When I was new to BGs, I remembered trying to tag along with people that looked like they knew what they were doing and trying to watch for instructions that made sense.
The people I followed weren’t always the right ones, but it was easy to figure that out…. imo. Sometimes, I just don’t understand what goes so horribly wrong.
I also don’t really get the concept of “I want to lose a lot of BGs really fast for honor and marks.”
I’d rather have fun, follow the objective (win or lose), and get more honor and marks for wins.
Call me crazy…
Yep, you can win a battleground (or 2) in the time it takes to lose one, for 3x the marks & 20x the honor
Something I didn’t mention was that I have read lots of BG chat about “WoW when do I start getting the awesome XP”… there are usually 4-5 response along the lines of “When we win… if we win.. now pull your finger out!”
I’ve recently started doing BGs with my ret pally and resto druid. I find it a lot more frustrating with my druid. Unless I’m in a big pack in AV I rarely use tree form, it’s like a big sign “KILL ME!”, I still die depressingly often though
In Strand of Ancients on Saturday I lost count of how many times I got killed by the same rogue, I try not to get mad about it but a few times there were team mates standing about doing nothing but watching me get repeatedly stunned and that just made me grind my teeth. On the upside I did get thanked for healing by a shammie I’d pulled back from the brink of death, I managed to keep us both up and he killed the 3 horde that were trying to take the tower – it made my day 
Dimity feels a lot easier to play, she just runs around smashing heads!
@hulan… The stuuning Rogue… I too find it amazing they can see me being shreded… but I have come to accept it.
My strategy… Ping the mini map madly, people respond to that very well.
Trees have been doing some awesome business in AV, especially in the bushy areas… It’s like camoflage… Unlike my glowing pulsing totems… Makes it hard to hide behind trees…
And the inviting Jesus beam…
A tip would be, keep moving,
so that they confuse which one is the end of the beam (it’s hard to miss the water globe though…)
Ha yeah!
Join the dots and kill the bead wearing hippy at the end of them…
LHW has become my spell of choice, with the odd Jesus beam when it’s hitting the fan or nearly all over.
I’m slightly less of a target that way and I don’t know if the Horde notices the smaller increments of health gain…
I guess they must because the do come hunting for me, especially after 2 or 3 pitched battles.
Then I become most wanted… My picture scrawled in every inn in Hordedom
[...] anyway. I don’t usually do this, but The Flag is Noob Bait almost made me weep tears of salty joy. I’m not gonna lie, I am glad I am not on the same [...]
Glad you are coming back and I am looking forward to those Shaman PvP tips!
Lol so I have never done a BG other than warsong Gulch. . .
WSG is but one small variety of BGs…if you enjoyed it great… if you didn’t, don’t let it tarnish your view of BGs
i am a noob to BGs. i have done warsong exactly two or three times, back when i was in my teens, and it scarred me so badly i didn’t set foot in another BG until this past year, as an 80, in wintergrasp.
Syrana describes my modus operandi for my first handful of wintergrasp runs: follow the zerg, and try to understand wtf is going on by watching the people who seem to know what they are doing. now, i feel comfortable enough to just do my own thing, and i believe i do my part all right – at least, i help take down hordies and i don’t die as often. being a clothie, it’s not wise for me to get into the thick of the fight, but sometimes i can’t help myself.
: )
all this being said… now that my BG-phobia has been lessened considerably, i now need to go into all the other BGs, and i have NO IDEA WHAT TO DO, so this post is a welcome sight for me. i must get comfortable being the noob and do some reading and just dive in. BANZAI! SUICIDAL FIRE MAGE!
Hey Prelimar, I was getting worried you had stopped reading once the shaman posts came thick and fast… glad to see you are still around!
WSG is only a good beginners BG if you have no other options. Don’t get me wrong,y ou will learn a whole lot of skills that are useful anywhere, but if you are even a little BG-phobic, the WSG will confirm your worst fears…
AB is only marginally better, at early stages, unless you are prepared to hug a resource, guard it an call out enemy troop movements (a valid occupation for fresh and experienced players)
AV is brutal enough that you get to experience PvP, but you have 39 other targets. Particularly as a Fire Mage, AV is the BG for you… Living bomb the pack… throw down a blizzard or flame strike, watch the Horde cry.
If you are enjoying WG, the AV would be your next step (yes, it’s backwards, there isn’t much there for you apart from piles of honor.. and a goat… err ram mount
well, to be honest (not brutally so, i hope) i DO find squidly’s adventures not speaking so much to me as a mage player, but i can’t seem to stop checking in — your twitter feed keeps me clicking like pavlov’s dog! : ) but since i don’t know much about any class other than what i am, i can’t comment as much unless it’s something that crosses into something common, like this one. fear not! i’m still here, reading, just not commenting as much!
and thank you for the info about which BG should be my next. i’m going for the chef title, and dammit, i need to hit several battlegrounds to do it! everyone says “drop the meal and hearth out”, but i’d feel guilty doing that. i mean, there’s hordies about!
Ahh I can rest easy…
I do have some silly Mage posts waiting to be released.. but they are just… well, let’s call the rainy day posts, because I wouldn’t be looking for writers awards for them…
Ah yeah, BG feast time!
Like you, I used them as an opportunity to explore the BGs. Yes I could have popped in and out, but hey, I’m here, might as well have some fun for 1/2 hour… my objective is already complete, so nothing to lose, lots to gain.
From memory I notched up a few achievements doing the meals on wheels run… basically just by being present.
[...] Noob Bait Jump to Comments Gnomeaggedon has a great post up about working together in EotS, The Flag is Noob Bait. It’s funny, with some good advice, and a touching twist at the end I won’t spoil for [...]
Hey Cynwise… How have I missed your blog Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual?
Thanks for the linkage, but…
“a touching twist at the end I won’t spoil for”
Then you go on and tell them
Ohh well…. I tend to spoil my surprise endings too!
I didn’t spoil it! Well, not entirely. They still have to come read it.
I’m glad I found your site — loving catching up on your articles so far!
Well, there’s close enough to 18 months worth of writing… so I will give you till Friday for the full review
<— followed Cyn over, added to blogroll. So few pvp people on my server, I have to make all my friends in the blogosphere :-p.
I'll take your healer announcement, and raise you one further — I like to also ask who the other healers are and then try to coordinate where we're all going (so we don't have all three of us going to LM, or something). Many people are idiots…but I find that many other people are just looking for someone to tell them what to do. You have healing-leads in raids, why not in /bg, I figure. Plus, having a *discussion* about heals that goes on for several back-and-forth comments helps boost your visibility in the bg as well as your teammates' morale
.
Great post! Unfortunately, Zerg blood runs in my veins. I will stick to groups as much as possible, but I find myself at the fail angel nearly alone many times, and even when I’m not, by the time I re-buff, everyone’s gone (I’m a ret pally, so auras, seals and blessings are a must!) I find it odd that they rush off so fast, simply because I can’t buff THEM if they leave, either.
I’ve only played AV twice, and still am completely lost. I try to follow the group, but I still end up lost & alone all to often! Then it’s off to either follow the blinking circles on the mini-map or kill the nearest hordie I can. lol
I do have one SERIOUS flaw though: unless I’m sitting still, I can’t read the chat box. I’m *SO* used to voice chat (I’m normally an xbox gamer) that I have a REALLY hard time reading. The color/contrast of the text/box don’t make it any easier to read, either…
Anyhow, thanks for the basics on EotS! I’ve never been there, and now I can at least contribute when I do!!! (any hints for AV or AB?)
That is such a huge frustration…
I was a bit behind the pack last night in EotS (which is better than being at the front when you are a healer)… but I was just too far behind.
So I would arrive at the scene of the battle to find Alliance corpses and gleeful Horde…
We just kept getting out of sync, so they would rush off to their doom, and I would come skittering behind.
I’ve been reading your blog for quite a long while now and was thrilled when you started your Squidly…I’m a retro shammy too and i love the class. I’ve been watching your progress and getting great tips…i didn’t have a clue about ES until you wrote about it. What a god send…lol
and now BG’s, all i can say is Yeah!!
I actually am one of those weird gals that love playing BG but i share the frustration in that there is never any team work. I for one read the BG text and willingly follow a leader with good advise and when in a clueless group I try and give advice that of course is never heeded.
Thanks for the hot tips
Kattastrophe
Velen
Hey tiggs4e, I’m glad that I have drawn you in with Squidly’s exploits!
I think just like Mage blogs, the Shaman ones do exist, but sometimes they are hard to find, and I think (after being down this path with Gnomer) that you start to run out of inspiration.
Squidly is giving me more than enough inspiration… which isn’t to say that Gnomeaggedon isn’t going to get a run.
Ahhh… “one of those weird gals”
I think I surround myself with weird gals…
PuG BGs (like I know any other) are full of frustration, which makes those times that they comet together all the more sweet.
believe it or not, I am as good at reading the chat as I am at filling it… it’s just that when no one else speaks up and the team is in a muddle, I have found the quickest way to change things about is to share my “wisdom”… which after all was passed down to me by other PuG BG’ers… so might as well share it about.
@Ihra: A PvP Tree!
Your blog looks interesting.. will invest some time there.
Great idea. I know Gnomeaggedon used to try and get people organized, but DPS (and everyone is DPS if they aren’t heals) in BGs tend to play their own game….
Now healers… we think of the team, so that’s a great idea.
[...] The Flag is Noob Bait [...]
[...] Storm: Control 3 bases, or 2 bases and the flag. 3 bases > flag. The flag is a buglight, it is noob bait, it is a shiny thing to distract you from three bases. But it can also help you win when you only [...]
[...] biggest problem with this achievement is that the flag is noob bait. It can help you win Eye of the Storm, but the better strategy is to take 3 of the 4 bases and hold [...]
[...] March 28, 2012 by Gnomeaggedon I’ve said it before, The Flag is Noob Bait! [...]