Arathi Basin Blues

Last night I did three rounds in Arathi Basin with my frost mage. She’s not hit 70 yet, but she was still eligible for the daily, so I decided to give it a go. The Horde lost all three matches. Argh…

I hate to say it, but I got very frustrated with my teammates. In the first match, the Alliance capped four nodes really quickly, and there was essentially no organized effort toward getting any of them back. Given the number of enemies pummeling the farm, our one remaining node, there had to have been at least one unprotected Alliance node somewhere, but folks just weren’t finding it. My typical response when the Horde is falling short is, “what’s the plan, guys?” People usually respond well to this (though I’m always bracing myself for the smartassed answers), but I got absolutely no response at all with this team. As a noob pvp mage, it’s not as though I can personally lead the charge anywhere, though I can encourage it. I suggested we take the gold mine since it’s a little easier to defend than the blacksmith’s, and some folks did join me, but we just weren’t organized enough.

I entered the second match after the Alliance had already capped three nodes, so I must have been a replacement for someone who quit. ( /sigh ) I stuck it out, I didn’t quit, and we managed to get a two nodes, but we just couldn’t hold them. This was one of those groups where the whole bunch swarmed in and killed all the enemies, took the node, and sometimes left for the next node before the newly captured one had capped. Grr! Again, as an individual player, there’s only so much I can do to defend by myself. I should make macros:

/bg We could use more defense at the mine.

/bg I’m the only one here.

/bg inc mine!

<–dead

So stupid. Of course, we lost.

In the third match, the Alliance again capped three nodes alarmingly quickly. Rather than abandon all hope, I stuck with the group and helped us gain control of two and then three of them. The leader said, “Hold these, don’t get greedy.” I looked at the map and saw that we had at least three folks defending each node, so I thought there might be some hope. There was a rogue that couldn’t help but scope out the mine instead of help defend (ok, fine), and I saw someone wandering the road toward the stables, too… it was a mage. Wha?

I was at the blacksmith’s, defending along with a hunter and a rogue. We fended off a few small waves of Alliance and the few times that I thought I was totally dead I managed to outlive my attackers. The attacks stopped coming at our node and we could see a battle ensuing down the hill on the road, toward the farm. My fellow defenders began to wander a bit toward battle and then they mounted up and left. “Keep defending bs, please,” I said, but of course you know what happened next. Alliance poured over the hill behind me, destroyed me, and took the node. We never got it back either. Gah! I don’t think the three of us necessarily could have defended it from such a large attack, but with just me alone, there was no chance.

So, I think AB has now replaced WSG as my most frustrating BG. I had a pretty good time in WSG last night, in fact…

When I entered Warsong Gulch, the Alliance had 2 captures and the Horde had zero. Ah, another case of a mid-match replacement. Oh well, free mark of honor, right?

I buzzed in and starting killing Alliance. Awesomely fun. Despite the score when I entered, the Horde was playing some great defense (maybe thanks to other new arrivals?). The Alliance got our flag a time or two, but we knocked them down and destroyed them each time. “Just let them win,” one of my teammates said. “Screw you,” said another. “Ya lets turtle,” said someone else. “No let’s win,” said the screw-you guy. Heh… that’s the spirit!

We continued to fend them off for quite a while when someone finally said we should either go get the flag or let them win. So, some folks went and got their flag and managed to get it back to the Horde base! I stayed midfield and froze enemies as they rode by. In particular there was a hunter and a rogue that I made a point to attack every time I saw them. Hee hee hee… We captured their flag a second time, and there was much rejoicing. (Yaaay!) The screw-you guy did a lot of mocking of the let’s-quit guy at this point. I can’t say I blamed him, but we hadn’t won yet.

After getting killed midfield and resurrecting in the graveyard, I noted a lot of action outside our base, so I ran over to help defend. It was a lovely chaotic mess and I got killed a few times, but managed to take several enemies out, including the druid carrying the flag at one point. Aww yeah… We had our base pretty well cleared out, and it all seemed a little quiet to me for a moment. Then the music played and the scoresheet flashed up: Horde Wins!!

So, AB sucked, WSG was a blast. Go figure.

Also…

Woo! Thanks for reading! 🙂