in a BG like fricassee said, if you are occupying 3-4 players, there are that many less that your teammates have to get past. The key to any BG is communication, and knowing what you are doing..

Sadly enough, bg’s don’t come with a newbie walkthrough, you are tossed into a brutal sink or swim situation where you are expected to be a top performer out of the gate.

I remember how many /fail comments i got the first time i poked my nose into AV. and that was even after studying everything i could read about it on the wiki’s, and the prima guide. What those guides don’t tell you is that people don’t play it the way it was initially setup to be played.

How many of you have seen, recently, either side call the giant protector thing during an AV match? AV is all about (now) zerging your way to the other end of the map, taking the nearest graveyard to the main guy and pounding him. possibly taking a tower or two along the way. Almost nobody bothers with the airstrikes, or doing the little quests for wolves/rams, upgrading the guards, ect.

I do agree with gnome the that the cowards should be punished, perhaps not as strongly as he mentioned but.. in principle i agree.

@mel – come on, you bailed because of a little heat?? lol
seriously tho, I hope you didn’t lose too much in that fire, it’s a lousy thing to have happen.

So I understand the frustration that comes with playing a BG that is inherently unbalanced.

That being said, the sheer number of folks that quit, even if things are going “ok” (ie, we’re not being crushed) is just disheartening. It’s bad enough if you are still losing when the teams are even. If you then have 3, 4 or 5 people drop, it gets ugly really quickly.

I think the idea of a stacking debuff is a good idea, but I think it would need to be a 24-48 hour debuff, that stacks & renews, but with a couple modifiers:

- smaller if you joined a BG mid-fight
- smaller if mid fight AND losing by 2 points.

that sort of thing.

I also think a “loser buff” should be implimented. Something like a 5, 10 or 15% bonus to exp & gold. You get it when:

- lose, but stay for the full game
- lose and stay, even if you joined late

BUT, you need to have some minimal amount of damage done, or healing done, or damage received. Just so that there’s SOME indication that you joined and actually played, not just hid in a corner. (especially easy for druids & rogues)

The one good thing they did was impliment a time limit. Many of my quits were in the “old” days, where you were losing, and the other team refused to finish the game, and were just farming “honor” for an extra 20-30 minutes. You were stuck there. Simply horrible.

@Mel
Remember, if you’re getting focused by 3-4 players, you’re doing a good job distracting the other team. Assuming the other 9/14/39 people aren’t completely useless, you’re helping by being the target!

On the other hand, I could accept negative honour. Say, -200/-300 honour (seems to be the average given out in BGs apart from AV) for bailing. I’d accept that, even if it’d suck. But then again, I also actually think it sucks to bail on a BG, even without any penalty beyond the debuff.

I think the Deserter debuff needs some work. Firstly, it needs a new name and you should get it from more than just leaving games early. There are all sorts of underhanded stupid crap that people pull that would qualify.

The debuff should last 24 hours during which time you can’t earn honor (even from honorable actions), experience, and you can’t earn gold from PvE looting. And vendors should get wind of your lame behaviour and up the prices on repairs and maybe even flat out refuse to serve you.

Basically, the game should become as unpleasant for you to play as you’ve gone and made it for others. We can only hope that when the debuff wears off you’ve learnt your lesson.