Alliance Battle

Alliance Battles (abbreviated as AB) are 12 vs 12 PvP battles that control the Kurzick-Luxon border. Kurzicks wear their traditional blue color and appear as blue dots on the map while Luxons wear their traditional red color and appear as red dots on the map. Alliance Battles were introduced in the Guild Wars Factions campaign. They are only available to players who have Factions registered in their Guild Wars account.

There are five alliance battle maps. The battlefield map is determined by the location of the border between the two warring nations. The more territory one nation has, the "harder" the map will be for that nation.

Finding an Alliance Battle

 * Your guild needs to be allied with the Luxons or the Kurzicks.
 * Travel to your Guild Hall and talk to the Luxon Navigator or the Kurzick Kommandant (which one appears depends on your guild's alliance) and accept the request to fight for their side. You are then teleported to the outpost of the battlefield that represents the current status of the border.
 * Players allied with the Luxons can be invited as guests by Kurzick guilds to join their side in Alliance Battles and vice versa.

Battlefield Maps
There are five battlefield maps:


 * Kaanai Canyon (Deep Luxon)
 * Etnaran Keys (Shallow Luxon)
 * Saltspray Beach (Neutral)
 * Grenz Frontier (Shallow Kurzick)
 * Ancestral Lands (Deep Kurzick)

Players cannot choose which map they will be in, instead when they choose to fight in an alliance battle they are taken to the one closest to the current Kurzick-Luxon border. If the border has shifted while the player is in battle, they will be transported to the new map once their battle has ended.

You leave the map automatically when the border changes.

Forming a Party
You assemble your group of 4. The party leader will press the "Enter Battle" button and your party will be sent into the alliance battle, provided there are twelve individuals (three teams of 4 people) on the other side waiting to enter as well. The game will keep resetting the counter until there is a full team ready on each side. It's important that players build experience with these battle maps as a certain level of untold coordination is needed. Team Chat in the chat window allows players to chat with all those in the battle from their alliance. Chatting players from another 4-player group will have their names in darker blue, and an (Ally) suffix. You cannot chat with only your team in alliance battles. Drawing on the map will only be seen by your team of 4, and no one else.

Battle Objectives
Winning the Battle: To win a battle the winning side has to accumulate 500 points before the other side. Accumulating points can be done in two ways:
 * 1) Killing players of the opposing faction. 3 points are added per kill.
 * 2) Holding a control point: From the start of the match, every 7 seconds the game checks to see how many control points a side holds. 1 point is added to a side's score for every control point that side holds when the game checks.

A faction may be given an automatic victory under the following circumstances: that faction controls all seven capture points for 60 seconds, or when all members of the opposing faction leave the match.

Control Points: There are seven control points on the map which are captured by having more players and allies in its vicinity than the other team. Depending on the specific battle map, control points will be at equal distance from either side or closer to the side that is losing on the border. By default, a control point will be in neutral status.

A team attempting to capture a control point will bring in a number of players to it:
 * If the control point has the same number of players from both sides, then it will not start to shift in either direction.
 * If the control point is neutral and one team has more players at it than the other, then it will start to shift in the direction of that team. The speed by which it shifts is dependent on the number of players that team has more than the other team in the vicinity of the control point. For example, if one team has 4 players and the other has 1, the control point will shift to the team with 4 players with a speed of 3 pips (the difference between 4 and 1).
 * If the control point is already owned by one side and the other side brings more players to it than those of the team that owns it, the control point will first shift away from the side that owns it (speed again relative to the difference in presence). Once the control point has drained away all its allegiance bar to one side, it will be announced as "neutralized" and then it will start to shift towards the other side.
 * The NPCs guarding a control point (see below) will count towards the team they belong to when the shift is taking place.
 * Pets, minions and spirits do not count as allies when affecting the shift.

Once captured, a control point will spawn a few NPC guards (which count towards holding the control point) and offer some other special abilities (resurrecting allies closer to the battle, increasing characters speed, elemental protection, creating NPCs that follow players around). The NPC guards do not respawn, except in some cases such as the saltspray dragon hatchling, unless the point is lost and then recaptured so it can often be advantageous to kill one even if it means your character's death.

Contested Territory
There are currently 12 contested locations. The wins and losses of alliance battles determine who owns each town.

Reward
Each player or NPC kill awards all members of that side with 1 Kurzick or Luxon faction point and 20 Balthazar faction points. Each player kill also adds 3 points on to your team's score.

As of June 22, 2007 update, both the winning and losing team earn 1 Luxon or Kurzick faction points for each point they scored in battle, effectively meaning that you get 4 Kurzick or Luxon faction points per kill. The winning team receives an additional 1,000 Luxon or Kurzick faction points. Normally you will receive in total 1,500 faction points for winning an Alliance Battle (For scoring 500 points, plus the win bonus) as well as any faction you will have scored from kills. However, since it is possible to score multiple points at once from holding multiple shrines, a final score of over 500 is possible, and this is factored into the amount of faction you receive.

As of the July 5th, 2007 update, the disadvantaged attacking side gets additional faction in an "Underdog Bonus". The bonus is equal to the attacking side's total score in Etnaran Keys and Grenz Frontier, and equal to double the attacking side's total score in Kaanai Canyon and The Ancestral Lands. So for example, if Luxon were to win in The Ancestral Lands they would receive 3 faction for each kill, plus 1000 for winning, 500 for the points they scored, and 1000 for under-dog bonus. Hence 2500+ faction for a win.

General Strategy

 * There is no Death Penalty during alliance battles and characters are respawned 20 seconds after their death. This makes Minion Masters and skills like "I Will Avenge You!" viable as there are almost always corpses lying around to use.
 * This lack of Death Penalty and quick resurrection means there is little point in bringing resurrection skill unless the ally would have to run too far a distance to rejoin the battle.
 * It is important to spread out and focus on gaining shrines rather than directly fighting the enemy. A clumped up team can't easily capture or defend multiple control points.  Sometimes it is worth giving up a control point and then recapturing it in order to respawn your NPC guards.
 * Look in the "U" map the state of the shrines to more strategicaly decide a next move. Keeping the "U" map open and zooming it out to see all the flags helps to easily stay informed of the ownership or state of each shrine.
 * A tutorial to the current map is offered by a NPC in the outpost. Be sure to have read the instructions before forming a group.
 * Generally, you'll want to capture resurrection shrines so your team members can resurrect closer to the battle instead of on the other side of the map.
 * Since there is a great deal of running around involved in alliance battles, bringing a speed increase is highly recommended.
 * Often, the gates will open 1 to 4 seconds early. Be prepared to run early on if needed.

Videos

 * Sample Video from the Kurzick Side (An Air Elementalist perspective in Grenz Frontier, with a few added scenes from other outside areas)
 * Sample Video from the Luxon Side (A Fire Elementalist perspective in Etnaran Keys, unedited)