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Horde on Cho’gall defends poorly. Out of perhaps 30 games where we have defended, I can think of only a handful where we have successfully defended.

Once an outer wall is breached, because the glitch exists, more people need to fall back to prevent vehicles from coming in. The guns need to be manned and defended and every vehicle that makes it into the outer courtyard needs to be destroyed. Once they get into the inner courtyard, the Demolishers can fire off shots while being destroyed, but, still hit the inner door exposing the relic. Because the opposing faction resurrects near the Workshop, they are able to almost immediately bring in another vehicle. The stream of Demolishers coming in gets to the point where even though only one or two shots make it to the door, enough damage gets done that they do eventually break down the wall.

If you couldn’t send Demolishers through the wall, defending Wintergrasp would be much easier. The Alliance on Cho’gall have destroyed the inner courtyard walls a number of times, but, usually after they have sent 10-15 Demolishers through and still haven’t knocked down the relic wall.

Since so many of them are getting good at glitching the walls, they aren’t even taking the time to do much more than build a few siege engines from one side or the other, then, they just have a constant stream of demolishers sent on the way.

In cdthirtyfive’s pursuit of the Chef title, there is a recipe for Captain Rumsey’s Lager that is given out in the fishing quest. I powerleveled fishing so that I could do the fishing dailies given out just outside Shattrath to get that recipe. Luckily, in my second turnin, I received the recipe.

The following screenshots are from Fishing 1 to Fishing 285.

The achievements in order are:

* 25 Fish
* Journeyman Fisherman
* 50 Fish
* 100 Fish
* Expert Fisherman
* Fish Don’t Leave Footprints
* 250 Fish
* 500 Fish
* Artisan Fisherman
* 1000 Fish

A few names consistently show up with glitchers. In the first picture, you can clearly see Barlar’s demolisher is laying on its side going through the door. The second shot shows the resulting map after Horde lost control. Note that only the exterior walls are down and the interior walls have not been touched.

The third and fourth screenshots show more vehicles inside the inner courtyard with 1 wall half damaged and the resulting map after Horde lost control. Dezi was the one piloting the demolisher in this battle.

Blizzard’s stance appears to be that this is intended behavior. For more information, here is a page that details more Wintergrasp Glitches. Horde usually doesn’t even try to glitch as it really isn’t necessary. We usually have 3-4 full raid groups and outnumber the Alliance. Even with Tenacity, a mass of 30 horde will roll through 10 defenders fairly quickly.

While pugging Heroic Violet Hold, Pyronys decides to need roll the Frozen Orb that dropped. We wanted to reroll on it, but, he left the group almost immediately.

When pugging, this type of thing happens quite often and is quite annoying. On Cho’gall, there are a few guilds that are famous for ninjaing loot. One guild has even been accused of auctioning off the items with the master looter pocketing the cash.

I don’t run instances often, but, it is annoying to lose loot.

Herbskinner decided to do a little fishing. I flew into Grom’gol, ran straight through Stranglethorn Vale up to Stormwind. At that point, I debated which way to go. I stayed mounted, ran through the guards and dropped off the left hand side of the bridge and swam under to the right hand side and into one of the ‘canal’ portals. First cast, achievement accomplished.

Today, cdthirtyfive was up near the battlemaster, no one had started a group so I fired up InviteMe and created a raid group. It filled up fairly quickly and we still had about 10 minutes until the Battle for Wintergrasp. A second group was started which filled up almost as quickly. The leader of that raid and I decided that our group would go east, his group would go west.

That coordination won the game. I was amazed to see about 35 of our raid group all ‘within range’ according to grid when we got to the eastern workshop. We lost a few on the way over to random fights, but, as soon as we took east, we cleared out the defense that the alliance had set up and went mid. Within a few minutes, we had a few siege engines battering down the walls and towers and once we broke through the walls to the inner courtyard, short of a few alliance that were brave enough to defend against 35 horde storming in, we didn’t see much action. After the inner walls were breached, we parked 2 Siege Engines there until we took down the towers, broke through the wall and secured the relic.

Coordination easily won that game. It was one of the smoothest battles I have been in. The Alliance had 13 stacks of Tenacity and if I recall the patch notes correctly, a 4:1 imbalance receives 20 stacks. A 2:1 ratio would give them 10 stacks, so, I would say that the battle probably was 95 to roughly 60. I know we had 2 full raid groups and the third one had 15 at the end. We probably had two or three that never made it into a group and just zoned in too late to get an invite. I know we saw 20+ on our way to the east as by the time we hit the mid wall, I had completed ‘Slay them All!’. We had a mass of 35 or so Horde killing everything in our path and there’s not really any way they could have rezzed and gotten back into battle as we massed to the southeast wall.

As we hit the center courtyard, we couldn’t have seen more than 10 people inside. Either they all went east and grouped around their exit knowing they were going to lose the battle or hearthed from the gy.

I admit. Seeing a mass of 35 players coming at you and a group of 5, even when you each have 65000 hit points can be rather daunting. I don’t believe we saw more than 2 vehicles created on the Alliance side which proves that we either steamrolled them or, none were able to get enough kills to create any vehicles.

Now if we could just get our defense as organized…

Alliance on Cho’gall will do anything to win. Horde does control Wintergrasp about 80% of the time, so, I can see some of their frustration. In the last few days I’ve played roughly 30 rounds of the Battle for Lake Wintergrasp. In those 30 games, Horde has been on defense for 20 of those and on offense probably 10 of those games. On defense, I’ve seen vehicles inside our keep without any walls being down. The first time I saw it, I thought it was one of those random issues where a vehicle just happened to be on the edge of something and it jumped across.

However, after seeing it in probably 12 of the 20 times we’ve been on defense, I think it is more than an accidental thing.

The Alliance has figured out how to glitch through walls using almost all of the vehicles. Even the Siege Engine can come through the doorways in the walls on the inner courtyard, but, requires a bit more finesse. Normally, you’ll see a string of Demolishers coming through the doors in the walls, and they will just keep pumping them out and getting to the wall doorway outside the relic.

On the outer tower, they get the vehicle lined up on the northern side of the southeast tower, and at a very small angle, continue riding forward into that corner. After a few seconds, the vehicle pops up on the tower platform and is able to roll through the courtyard without the wall even being touched. Its not done very often as it takes a number of people with enough kills and the skill to walk up the tower wall and come through.

It also appears that as soon as the battle starts, when the Alliance has 20 stacks of Tenacity, the NPCs near the bridges can be killed granting a PvP kill and giving them full rank to purchase any vehicle. A raid group then makes Siege Engines and they can easily glitch the counters there. Player A creates a vehicle, exits the vehicle, someone else grabs it. Player A then creates another vehicle. I believe they can get double the count and then there hit some limit. The most I’ve seen is 16/8 or 32/16. Its not frequent that I have seen them do this. The one time I saw this, they had 16 Siege Engines within the first 30 seconds of the game and won Wintergrasp before half the Horde even had a chance to zone in.

If they get an outer wall down, they can build Demolishers, turn them sideways and run through the doorways in the inner walls. At that point, the Demolishers are on the interior courtyard battering down the wall in front of the relic. Normally we’ll see 6-8 of them rolling in at the same time and it only takes 2-3 pounding on the wall to break it down.

Once the wall is halfway down, there appears to be a way to get feared or polymorphed through. Its also likely that there is a crack as there was a shaman inside that almost got the orb after we destroyed a few Demolishers. It was dumb luck that we sent a few people in to check the orb.

When Alliance holds Wintergrasp, they have a portal in Dalaran that they can use. Horde’s portal is only open during a battle. I have seen the portal up once when we controlled Wintergrasp and a battle wasn’t going on. I have mind visioned players into the Alliance portion of Dalaran and have seen their portal up each time. I am told by one person that the Alliance portal isn’t always there, but, is there fairly consistently when they hold Wintergrasp.

Horde outnumbers Alliance on our realm roughly 2:1, so, we are always fighting Alliance players with multiple stacks of tenacity — often times we’ll see warlocks with 70k health and dots that tick at 6k. No problem. As a healer, I just have to stay on my toes a little more. I am one of the few that really doesn’t mind Tenacity. If I were Alliance on Cho’gall, I would think it exceedingly difficult to fight 1v3 as it often is during Wintergrasp. Tenacity as it stands seems quite fair and well proportioned. However, the tenacity buff doesn’t disappear at the end of the battle. Often times they will camp the graveyard and kill off the few people that died near a workshop and aren’t being rezzed inside the fortress.

Horde has attempted to glitch a game or two, so, we’re not really immune, but, with our numbers, it is less likely that we need to cheat to win. Even without the cheating, Alliance does have a chance to win and has. Horde is sometimes disorganized and if the Alliance play smart, they can win.

There are plenty of Wintergrasp tactics that the Alliance could use — they just appear to resort to exploits more frequently than fair battles.

In this particular one, Bobom was one of the ones that was exploiting. One day maybe Blizzard will fix it, but, it appears that things are working as intended based on the GM responses and responses in the forums.

After running Heroic Violet Hold, the group invited me to run Heroic Occulus. As cdthirtyfive doesn’t have the epic flier, I took the flight path to the Colderra. I’m not sure how I had the flight path open without having discovered Colderra, but, as soon as I landed, I earned the achievement.

First 25-man raid and cdthirtyfive looted his first Emblem of Valor. As I am mostly a PvP battlehealer, I probably won’t see too many of these.

After a quick Wintergrasp battle, cdthirtyfive was invited to heal VoA 25-man. I died twice, lost the roll on the loot, but, gained the achievement. There were actually only 23 people as we had trouble finding more DPS, but, it wasn’t too difficult.