Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

Ancient legends say the rank a fallen warrior held

Depended on an Honor Guard of foes that one had felled.

And so in tardy tribute to the one we couldn’t save,

We’ll lay your fiery deaths like crimson flowers on her grave.

No Quarter – Echoes Children – Honor Harrington

One of the things that disappoints me in RBG’s is the tendency for losing teams to leave the BG

“Where did they all go?”

So you have to go through the motions of capping the flag 3 times, or waiting for your resources to cap out. This happens because the other team,  sometimes one at a time,  often all together will just leave the BG – and give up.

Starcraft does this better I think with the surrender button.  Not sure how they would do this in Wow,  but at the very least the Raid Leader could have the power to do a surrender maybe with a supporting vote to enact. That way everyone ends the game without having to all leave and give up, and the winning team doesn’t need to go through the motions.  This would mean then you could punish players/a team that leave the bg without surrendering. Currently there is no deserter debuff.

I understand not wanting to play a game where you are clearly outmatched.  Sometimes the ranking can be a little off kilter. We managed a guild run RBG last night after raid – and we smashed team 1  – none of them had any rating.  We sent a FC and a healer to get the horde flag, and we mopped them up, and rubbed their faces in the dirt before they could get ours. I looked up and couldn’t find any of them around, and they had all died, and were rezing.  Then they left BG. The 2nd game we were closer matched,  but we were the ones outclassed, and on the 2nd cap my team started leaving.

I’m one of the last to give up in a normal BG. The infuriating person who keeps going after the flag, and often sneaking past the horde only to die tragically in the tunnel to our flag room because I have no support. I don’t like giving up because it’s boring.  There is always something new to learn, a reason to keep fighting.  I won’t go quietly and It pee’s the other team off when you just won’t die.  I hate leaving a Rated BG unfinished as well,  but in this case mainly because we still have an opportunity to work as a team. To learn as a team. Maybe we won’t win, but how do you get better if you don’t try?

I’ve pugged a fair few tragic Rated BG’s in my time. and so with the highest rank achieved being 1600 I’m technically only a armchair expert, but I will stick out a bad team just because often the only way to get better is to practice. And most importantly practice as a team but most Pug RBG’s end quite messy after a loss.  Often to competing leadership, people who don’t listen to targets or strats, or tunnelers, but some of  the correcting that can be done is just having a good leader focusing the efforts of the team – you assume a Rated BG team is more likely to listen to a ‘get out of mid’ call.  Players don’t follow a pre determined sequence of phases like a boss fight does. The unpredictability is what makes is fun for me, and difficult to lead when you can’t see or trust that everyone is doing what they should be doing. ( or at the least avoiding the things they shouldn’t)

But I get the impression that there are a lot of people out there who have dabbled in RBG’s but give up because it’s too hard to make headway, or their guild doesn’t run it.  Even as a 25 man guild with subs and casuals and alts we still have had issues getting 10 interested in doing RBGs regularly.

I’ve been curious to try Battlemasters.Org premades which is supposed to work like the x-realm raiding sites as per Joystiq’s list of resources and I’m hoping to give it a decent shot this weekend when more people  should be around ( if anyone will have me.) 4.7k resil Disc priest LF RBG. 🙂 that is on when I am awake, not a work, and not raiding.