The Calvary jumps over the embankment, and the hooves of the array of mounts hit the dusty ground with a thump. They thunder across the grass, leaves and dirt flying out behind them, hands hold tight to reigns, bodies bent forward into the wind, they are off and racing……..
Whoa….
They all stop. Pull up the reins of their mounts. hesitant. Their mounts stamp impatiently, tossing their heads in frustration at having their charge broken, because up ahead, just over the rise , already firmly planted, with spells charging, and weapons ready, the enemy is waiting for them.
There is what we call the ‘clean up.’ Meet the horde head on in the middle of their zerg run, and wipe them up. It sounds a bit like honor farming, considering at that time we aren’t heading straight to the their flag room. The main purpose of this clean up, is to force them all back into their GY, break them up because they will all die at different times and get different rez timers, and most importantly demoralize them.
It’s hard to come back from being obliterated. Any team spirit they managed to muster in that initial push is gone. They will hesitate when they rez, some will go afk, some will try to go around, and others will just jump blindly into our group only to be cleaned up again, and while we keep them occupied at the base of their graveyard someone breaks off and we go for their flag, all the while looking for leakers that go after ours.
I like the clean up better than the “Lets all zerg together” strat when we go for your flag, you go for ours, and we meet in the middle for a glorious battle.
That’s not really demoralizing. Both teams get this successful feeling of having grabbed the enemy’s flag so will fight harder, you need to snatch away their spirit before they get to touch the flag.
What I shall call a distracting farm, which is more humane than a full farm seems to work quite well. The opposition get so caught up in the apparent endless cycle of rezzing and dying that they don’t try to go for the flag. If you can keep enough people at their base to catch the rezzers, then you control the whole field. We don’t like to torture, there is more honor points earned, and honor to have by winning the next bg so we do cap the flag somewhat efficiently.
There is a psychology to winning in a BG. There is only so many times you can hit your head against a brick wall. Even premades suffer from it. People are more likely to leave a group after a loss, the earlier on you can shatter the opposing teams confidence, the more likely you will win.
Bging with 5 man only teams have been interesting – certainly more challenging. I have been looking at forums for why we are no longer able to queue with more than five people in a BG as a premade, and not found anything official on it yet, but the consensus seems to that it was done because when rated BG’s come out you queue for rated, and not as pugs, and it would not be fair to allow premades to compete against Pugs.
Maybe at 85 when they have been playing for months and have gotten rewards, but not now. There is no gear or opportunity balance. Everyone has equal access to gear.
So how is this not fair?
I’m going to argue that the main component of unfairness is that people do premades because they want to win. They want to work as a team.
The real unfair part is that pugs have to deal with people in your own team that basically do not have the same goals as you do, they want to play in the sandpit more than they want to win. That’s the unfairness – not who you oppose, but who you fight with. Your own side is often your worst enemy.
The only thing a Premade has advantage of over a pug is the teamwork. A premade will work as a team. A Pug often doesn’t. So maybe that’s where rated BG’s come in. Pugs can play in the sandpit. The serious people will play rated, but that means that the people who don’t want to play rated, but do want to have fun will be forced to play with the people who cbf’d.
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