Thread: BG queue times

  1. #1

    BG queue times

    I'm not here to complain about them I am just wondering why they are so long now. I started PvPing in Cata and the queue times where 2-3 mins on my server and it was great. I stopped toward the end of cata (laptop broke) and came back around 5.1 (made a PC) and queue times have been terrible. It is the main reason I don't PvP as I don't want to wait 10 mins for a BG only for it to go horribly wrong and then wait again for another one. Is there a reason the queue times have gotten so bad?

  2. #2
    High Overlord Coldbeer's Avatar
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    Yeah, they are eally long, i started the defilers rep fpr the tabard a couple of weeks ago and is impossible when i have to wait for 15-18 min for each bg.

  3. #3
    Swap to Alliance. Our queues are always less than 1 minute.

    Of course you will lose almost every BG you get into aside from AV and IOC, so there's that.

  4. #4
    Immortal Fahrenheit's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaliblaze View Post
    I'm not here to complain about them I am just wondering why they are so long now. I started PvPing in Cata and the queue times where 2-3 mins on my server and it was great. I stopped toward the end of cata (laptop broke) and came back around 5.1 (made a PC) and queue times have been terrible. It is the main reason I don't PvP as I don't want to wait 10 mins for a BG only for it to go horribly wrong and then wait again for another one. Is there a reason the queue times have gotten so bad?
    The winning percentage of Alliance right now is about as bad as I've ever seen in regards to solo queuing up for random BGs, so a lot of us just stop playing, at least until WoD. Maybe that'll change up the status quo... at least that's my hope.
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  5. #5
    If alliance didn't have AV and IOC wed never win. Id rather wait 20 minutes than lose 10 battles to 1 win. Of course this is all part of the Wow business model to get you to pay for faction and realm transfers.

  6. #6
    My horde brethern and I would gladly faction change for instant que times. The problem is Im not paying 25 per toon when i have 5

  7. #7
    Que times are always longer during IoC and AV call to arms weekends. Alli will only que for those, and 90% of horde have them blacklisted. Que times go from 7-9 min to 12-15 min during this time.

  8. #8
    yeah BG queue times have been slow for me too

  9. #9
    It's pretty much broken right now, for the reasons people have already said. Most serious PvPers are Horde at the moment (Alliance was the PvP faction for much of Cata; it changes back and forth over the years.) So Horde is currently having more players queuing, making them longer, and we're winning the majority of BGs outside AV and IoC (which are inherently Alliance favored by design.) It's actually been this way before, off and on. At some point later, the tides will turn once again and Alliance will start winning more.

    But now, there's blacklist to figure in. Most Horde players have them blacklisted, due to the imbalance issue, while Alliance players often specifically want to do them instead of randoms. That's making queues suck for everyone, except Horde willing to lose those two or Alliance queuing random. I dread when Alliance once again inevitably becomes the PvP faction. Then they'll have the fast queues (even when most serious PvPers go Alliance, Horde still tends to have more total players queuing) along with the high win rates, and their two imbalanced BGs.

  10. #10
    Think most of it has been covered, but I'm going to offer a couple other factors I think have contributed to the current situation.

    The Silvershard Effect

    Silvershard Mines in it's original incarnation had horde bias. The strategy Alliance adopted in the face of the bias was a losing strat. While changes were made to correct the bias, it was too late. The losing strat is engrained and is now the default Alliance plan. So Horde continues to do extremely well in this BG.

    Just 1 BG, no big deal? Except that the legendary quest chain forced all pve players to get a win in each of the 2 new BGs. Typically for Horde players this was a relatively easy task. Many probably had fun, and so the Blizz objective of exposing PVE players to PVP as a hook likely had a degree of success. For Alliance on the other hand, getting that Silvershard win could be excruciating. I'd suggest there were relatively few Alliance players that said "That was fun. Maybe I'll pvp a little more.", and far more that said "Omfg ... never again."

    The Swollen Bottom Effect

    Most who pvp realize you win sometimes and you lose sometimes. A hard fought loss can be just as entertaining as a victory. A lop-sided ass-kicking can be completely demoralizing.

    Asskickings happen due to the random nature of group making. One side gets a good composition (proper dps:healer ratio, powerful classes) or a much bigger slice of the skill pie. They happen.

    The relative number of asskickings I've received as Alliance in MoP has been astronomical. Bots are part of this (factor for both sides). OQ is part of this (greater adoption by the Horde faction). Put a couple OQ beat downs with a few bot carries and some run of the mill bad group luck, and it's easy to see how a player on Alliance side can get very discouaged. I think there are quite a few players (including myself) who simply reached their breaking point and stopped queueing.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Itisamuh View Post
    It's pretty much broken right now, for the reasons people have already said. Most serious PvPers are Horde at the moment (Alliance was the PvP faction for much of Cata; it changes back and forth over the years.) So Horde is currently having more players queuing, making them longer, and we're winning the majority of BGs outside AV and IoC (which are inherently Alliance favored by design.) It's actually been this way before, off and on. At some point later, the tides will turn once again and Alliance will start winning more.

    But now, there's blacklist to figure in. Most Horde players have them blacklisted, due to the imbalance issue, while Alliance players often specifically want to do them instead of randoms. That's making queues suck for everyone, except Horde willing to lose those two or Alliance queuing random. I dread when Alliance once again inevitably becomes the PvP faction. Then they'll have the fast queues (even when most serious PvPers go Alliance, Horde still tends to have more total players queuing) along with the high win rates, and their two imbalanced BGs.
    I agree with most of your post, EXCEPT about your assertion that there is Alliance bias in AV/IOC. This is absolutely not true.

    The reason Horde loses these most of the time is the same reason Alliance loses all of the others most of the time; winning vs. losing strategy. The Alliance strategy to winning IOC revolves around getting the first set of glaives to attack the Horde west gate. Horde loses so much because they are usually completely ineffective at killing the first set, and if they fail to do so their strategy of take hangar and run bombs cannot compete with the glaives. All the horde has to do is send a couple of rogues/ferals to the glaive shoot point, drop smokebomb+evasion+burst CDs and both glaives are dead. Even if the entire Alliance team is there guarding the glaives, if rogue pop SB they will kill both of them before the Alliance can kill them. The issue is that this strategy requires rogues to sacrifice themselves.......which is complete anathema to rogues so it is almost never done in a random. So, IOC is not imbalanced, the Horde just chooses to lose by adopting an inferior strategy.

    Same deal for AV. Every single Alliance win I have been a part of sends a team to backcap SHB and IWB. Not once has a Horde team done the same. Choosing to follow a losing strategy is not imbalance.

    On the other hand, every single Alliance team I get in EotS sends 1 or 2 people to DR, 3-4 to MT, and the rest to mid. Horde immediately attacks either DR or MT and takes it without a hitch, yet manages to delay Alliance from taking the flag. By the time towers cap Horde has a 3-1 advantage + Flag while Alliance just wander around aimlessly or attack mid and fight on the road the entire game.

    DWG? Alliance sends 6-8 people to Panda mine, all the while ignoring the Horde cart AND the horde team stealing the Alliance cart, and ends up down ~500-100 within 2 minutes of the gates opening. Happens virtually every single time.

    In reality, the only BG that was seriously imbalanced was SSM, with the close proximity of the Horde spawn point to carts/capture points. They fixed that, but the horribly bad taste most Alliance players have in their mouth with regard to this BG is still there and no one outside of people wanting their legendary cloak will queue for the monstrous beatdown they are going to suffer through. ALL the other BGs have horribly skewed win-loss ratios because the losing faction adopts a losing strategy 9 out of 10 times, and since people from the losing side never experience a winning strategy the cycle of losing is just perpetuated.

  12. #12
    Playing my hunter a bit in pvp recently and have had really quick BG queues. I'm alliance though, so queing solo into random bgs I've literally won 3 of the last 25 bgs played on my hunter (and yes 2 of those were IoC). That one twin peaks win though was the most crushing victory ever though In all honesty I think the 'premade' thing has destroyed random bgs. Lining up against a team where a majority are geared and guaranteed to have 2-3 solid healers is a recipe for an ass kicking. I've said it before and I'll say it again, transferring from horde to alliance toward the start of this expac was the worst thing I could have done in terms of my enjoyment of pvp. I don't need to win all the time to enjoy pvp, but I'd at least appreciate a 50-50 chance.

  13. #13
    the trick as alliance is just to queue for av, which is like 3-4 minutes for me. Sure you don't get conquest points, but you can try the other bgs once you quickly receive a full set. If you want cp, try your realm or oq. The random bg grind for cp is too slow anyways.

  14. #14
    Immortal Fahrenheit's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shomari View Post
    ...the 'premade' thing has destroyed random bgs...
    I agree. It'd be better if the only groups able to queue for random BGs were same realm parties of 5 or less. None of this OQ stuff.
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  15. #15
    If Blacklisting stays so will your Q times.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by walkingtall View Post
    If Blacklisting stays so will your Q times.
    Blizzard just fucked up with that feature. Surely they have data suggesting that EVERY HORDE PLAYER IN EXISTENCE blacklists AV/Isle/Strand (depending on what they hate the most). I would love to see the black list numbers. I bet it is Horde overwhelmingly AV/Isle, Alliance overwhelmingly WSG/AB. Has always been funny to me that the BGs with the most PvP are dominated by horde and the BGs with the least PvP always dominated by alliance.

    Whatever. Only solution to queue times is for them to get their heads out of their lore asses and make random BGs cross faction like RBGs. If that goes in, warlords here we come, otherwise it will be more of the same....

  17. #17
    Back in WoTLK, I had about equal queue times on my alliance and my horde.

    Then, they introduced faction changes which was the start of the headache. This allows people to switch factions at will for a few bucks. Over and over. Now you have alliance xfering to horde for "free wins", and horde xfering to alliance for "instant queues", and back again. Completely unbalanced factions which shift and sway over time. At the end of cata, it was actually alliance with the wait times and horde with instant queues (due to human racial being buffed).

    I don't think many people are going to continue to put up with the bullshit long queues, when there are other games out there (especially with the new consoles being released) where you can just plug in and play. No wait times. 15 min queues are ridiculous and archaic gameplay systems.

    This is not a player problem, it's a developer problem. They created it themselves w/ greedy-pocket-lining faction xfers and now the playerbase is left with subpar gameplay. We cannot change the game. It is up to the creators at this point.

    They have several viable solutions including (1) disable faction changes entirely, (2) allow free faction changes to the underdog faction on unbalanced servers, (3) buff alliance racials to make them more appealing for pvp, (4) allow same faction BGs.

    Ball is in Blizzard's court now. How will they fix it?

  18. #18
    You know that is a good point about faction transfers and the start of Wrath. I remember so many people switching sides to alliance because they always controlled wintergrasp and back then it was sort of a big deal. Only way to get access to what we call the PUG bosses and there were buffs that applied to dungeons, leveling, etc. Towards the end of wrath the numbers evened out on my server though for win loss but it was mainly because of tenacity.

    I think Blizzard has stated that they don't want to do free transfers to lower population realms or factions because no one wants to be the first person to jump ship. I just wish they were creative enough to make a system where you commit to the transfer but it only happens once a certain threshold is met for balance, then everyone gets to move at once. Seems simple right?

  19. #19
    I would say the biggest factor now is blacklisting. Secondly, a lot of alliance players who had an interest in pvp have switched to horde. There's just too many bots and incompetence in alliance random bg's.

  20. #20
    Cross faction random BGs is the obvious and simple solution.

    Horde get much shorter queue times, and Alliance stop losing 9/11 BGs. Might even be fun to experience maps from the other sides point of view, for those that don't play both factions. A functional PVP experience far trumps "lore" or the supposed faction war.

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