Now I personally am not a big PvP person. I don't roll on PvP realms. I tend to avoid what I call 'real' battlegrounds (AKA Not Alterac Valley). The biggest exception was Wintergrasp. I loved Wintergrasp. I enjoyed the way it worked, the insanely large scale battles (especially early on in WotLK), everything. To me it felt more like some grand-scale PvE encounter with the Horde.
When I heard there was Tol Barad, I was interested. I was interested big time. Not only was it Wintergrasp 2.0, it had mounts.
Not just any mounts either. It had a sexy Cataclysm Wind Drake.
So of course, out of ALL the Cataclysm factions, I decided I would get Exalted with Baradin's Wardins. See Earthen Ring/Therezane/Hyjal: if you had offered me mounts, I would be helping you stop Deathwing/Cho'gall/Twilight's Hammer before serving my own needs.
So began my obsession with Tol Barad. I lived on Tol Barad. I drank Tol Barad. I went to Tol Barad so often, I would automatically click the Tol Barad portal before I even realized it....even when I actually meant to go to Uldum...
Soon, I realized some huge problems in regard to Tol Barad.
It's like 600x easier to defend then it is to actually attack. I thought it was just in my head, but then I realized... the Alliance on my realm held Tol Barad for the entire first 5 days of Cataclysm. Eventually the Horde got it, and then they held it for a week. It swaps maybe once every 3 days or so, but I realized, this is an issue.
I mean think about it. Sure Wintergrasp (near the end of WotLK) heavily favored one faction on occasion, but the fact remained that there was a handicap to ensure that *eventually* the other faction would get a hold of wintergrasp at least once a day.
Tol Barad doesn't.
When you defend Tol Barad, you basically just have to make sure the opposing team doesn't 3 cap. Which isn't really that hard considering the queue for Tol Barad won't let the sides get unbalanced. The towers are mostly a nuisance for defenders, but again, it doesn't pose much of a problem so long as you can defend at least one fortress. If you can just "turtle" one of the 3 fortresses until the time is up, defenders win!
Attackers absolutely need the towers. Maybe down the road they won't, but if you don't take down at least one of the 3 towers as an attacker, you probably won't have enough time to kick out your enemies and cap all the forces. Unless its a really small queue and you end up with maybe 4 people from each side duking it out.
It doesn't sound exceptionally hard, and theoretically it isn't. But that slight difference plus the fact that you may be dealing with a realm like mine AKA where one faction owns it for literally 4 days straight begins to annoy even the most patient players.
Suddenly those commendations are a lot more treasured...
And then you remember you need 200 of them.
/cry on the inside
Good bye Tol Barad, and may Blizzard give the losing faction a handicap someday.
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