Why i think ashran is a "failure"

[Beefkow]

It's as easy as leveling mobs and object health to level 100 numbers, adding TB and WG to the BG queue pane and making them cross server but capped at 100 players.

You wanna fly over the zone? Get transferred to a non-capped server. I mean, it's hella easy to implement and even easier to make sure the zone stays populated for battles.

Dude, we should bring this up to the devs.. i am positive, (hopefully) that blizzard can consider adding those two very good world pvp zones back to the BG pane, i think that will make the customers happy for the compensation of the fail implentation of Asharan.

[Evelyn]

Timeless isle was a success, it was fun. Between the boa tokens, random toys/pets, bloody coins...none of that was forced, it was all purely optional. I don't know how they took lessons from TI and ended up with this assram cesspool of fail.

Timeless isle wasn't terrible, but it was def a step in the wrong direction. Wintergrasp was better. Tol Barad was much better.

Ashran is just bad. When I think of it, my feelings are of frustration and anger.

[Itisamuh]

I think little to no explanation is required to point out that Ashran is a failure. Hardly anyone would disagree with that statement as it is.

[goblingirl]

Of Wintergrasp, TolBarad, and Ashran, the only one that was successful on my server - and heavily played throughout the entire expansion - was Wintergrasp. But the developers completely abandoned it, probably because whoever is "in control" doesn't like it.

Of the three listed above, there was by far the most actual fighting in WG. There was one major objective - that keep. You held it, or you attacked it, and I never did a WG during WoTLK where there wasn't massive fighting going on by 10 minutes in, especially after the attackers managed to drop a wall somewhere.

Nobody did TB on my server. You'd get in, and there would be like 7 players on each side. Nobody cared. Even gating that little raid behind it, nobody cared. The fighting was spread out too much between all the bases. WG was successful because it was all about THE KEEP.

Ashran suffers from the same thing as TB, especially now that they have removed the end boss conquest. It's all about the events. So either one side is 100 percent dominating events and the other side just doesn't play, OR the two factions divide up the events and keep the 2 at their "end" of the zone. There is no central objective that both sides must focus on. They made the most recent changes to Ashran because they wanted the factions to pvp instead of avoid each other, but it's not really working.

It is beyond me why they haven't turned WG into a battleground, and why they haven't clued into what made it work vs. the fails that are TB and Ashran.

Seriously. Forget the faction bosses at both ends of Ashran. Put an objective (a keep, whatever) in the middle that both sides have to attack and conquer to win. The fighting would be insane.

[Kazuchika]

I think little to no explanation is required to point out that Ashran is a failure. Hardly anyone would disagree with that statement as it is.

Pretty much this.

If you need any reinforcement of this idea look at the Ashran forum on the WoW site. Every thread is about its failure in one way or another and every single one of them are upvoted. WoD has had it's share of failures (Apexis, arguable lacking content outside of raiding) but Ashran by far is the absolutely biggest failure of them all.

[Coronius]

My problem with Ashran is mainly that it's too small and compact, and that all the "world PvP" feels forced in some way.

[Priority]

I love the unique class perks you get there, but actually hate the gameplay. Even the zone itself does not add interesting points of conflict. Add more bottlenecks on the road with cannons or something ( maybe not a great idea but I am throwing stuff out there ). Now it feels to me that they know it's bad and have now given up.

Some tips would be to remove the cap, or adjust it that you can only cap to the 200 pt mark, and run two events at the same time. That would encourage more running around I guess. Even with that the zone still sucks, and the npcs are stupid.

I can't even think what model they used for this piece of crap. It's not AV.

[Demsi]

My thoughts: Because there is only 1 lane it makes pvp pretty boring and predictable, the team that has the most players usually wins when zerging.
melees will pretty much just stand in the zerg mob and watch, and sometimes kill someone that got gripped into the mob or maybe a rouge or a druid trying to kill a healer.

The whole area feels way too narrow, there is so much stuff going on, i wish it was bigger and more open, having more lanes and other ways to get into the enemy base like in WG

[Crruor]

I honestly dislike ashran as much as everyone else, but it is very well done, the problem is the player base that doesnt want the zerg type of pvp and the rewards are garbage, if the rewards were better i.e non mendetory conquest cap but unique pets and mounts and skins and people would put a effort into it (i.e ashran only guilds and so on) i think it could be amazing.

But currently, why would i want to win ashran if i am geared and am capped, there is nothing to be gained.

[pfbe]

Timeless isle wasn't terrible, but it was def a step in the wrong direction. Wintergrasp was better. Tol Barad was much better.

Ashran is just bad. When I think of it, my feelings are of frustration and anger.

I liked Timeless Isle, but it wasn't meant to be a PvP zone akin to WG, TB or Ashran, I believe. Timeless Isle was just a jam-packed mix of solo play, wpvp and gearing. They tried to port some of its elements to Draenor, but they fucked it all up.

- The solo play challenges on Draenor are either not challenging and/or not solo at all.
- World pvp happened on TI because it was small, not just because people were grounded. Draenor is huge, you can't have the same dynamic.
- TI offered the best (non-"mythic") pre-SoO gear available. World content in WoD offers gear 10 ilvls below heroic dungeons :/

Still, on topic, Ashran design was "ok", Ashran implementation was awful. Allowing it to go unfixed for months, though, caused irreparable damage to how players feel about the zone. Hours on queue to join a lag fest of one-sided domination? Get bent, never setting foot on that trash again.

[potis]

1)Ashran is horrible cause there is no balance.

2)Blizzard are morons for insisting on this Alliance vs Horde bullshit.

3)Change it so you queue up for Ashran, FACTION DOES NOT MATTER, CAP IT TO 200 PEOPLE, 100 EACH SIDE, CREATE NEW INSTANCES AND VOILA, PROBLEMS FIXED.

Ashran is made a bit properly, Blizzard are just idiots.

Change the events, make them happen same time, make them all reward the same thing and only once, you cant do them all at once as example now its 250/100 x4 , make it 500/200 for participating to the event, have to be IN one of the 4 areas , dealt some damage or did some of the objective, generally its doable and easy to counter afkers.

Whoever wins most events gain an advantage, like 10% HP/Damage for the next 30 mins, if its 2/2 then make it reward nothing, whoever gets 3/1 or 4/0 gets the 10% buff but you are ALWAYS rewarded.

Make it worthwhile..Right now every time i go to Ashran all i see is 30 horde versus 100 alliance and i just leave cause there is no point doing anything there is no chance.

I dont understand how they have such terrible developers to not do changes or predict stuff.

Its not like gear matters or how fast you gain it matters, everything is capped, Honor gear is worthless, i dont understand why Blizzard is so bad.

The game became insanely famous and gained 3million in no time back in TBC, going from 9 to 12, when they made Season 1 gear farmable very quickly without caps.

Yes that was bad, but now they have the weekly point system, such worthless developers really.

[Deleted]

DREAM PvP ZONE

I wish they would make a pvp zone with a fortress on top of a mountain in the middle of the zone and there is some kind of reward for holding the fortress (2 conquest point per 1 minute for the team holding the fortress or maybe forget conquest points altogether).

When you spawn in the zone, you start at the starting horde or alliance spawn points, down at the base of the mountain, regardless of if your team currently holds the fortress. You never spawn inside the fortress. You have to run/battle to the keep to help holding it or taking it.

There should be multiple paths up to the fortress and multiple spawn points upon entering the zone for each team, so that you cannot just be farmed at choke points by the team holding the fortress (although there would be viability in trying to slow people getting to the fortress). The fight should be never-ending. There should be an ongoing desire to hold the fortress forever, or desire to get the fortress back. There are no pve bosses or kings or anything, no big trees to help you.

You win control of the fortress by breaking through several gates/doors/lowering the moat bridge, and enough people clicking on something inside the heart of the fortress (similar to a warlock stone - if 10 people all click the throne at one time you win control, damage does not interrupt). The gates/doors/moat bridge can all be reversed. The team breaking in can lower the moat bridge to let the main force inside, but the team holding the fortress can also raise the bridge again (how this is done I don't know...I can't think of everything). I guess it should optimally take 1 hour at best to win the fortress, but there should be no timelimit stuff, nothing ticking down. When you lose the fortress, the losing team are ported to the starting spawns points. The winners have that time to manually get the doors and moats closed again, so they have to hurry. The longer a team goes without holding the fort they get a stacking dmg/healing buff. This should be over hours not minutes (eg 10% damage increase if a team hasn't had the fortress for 24 hours).

Enough dreaming for now.

[Ryanite]

prior to 6.1 my server had 4 hour ashran wait times, now I get in instantly but end up playing with 5 people on either side. I knew ashran was crap from the get go but man I didn't think they could make it any worse, blizzard continue to prove me wrong.

They funnelled people into ashran putting time and effort in, scraping the first faction cities all for nothing.

My number 1 hate of WoD is that the faction capitals are tied to ashran, I miss the dalarans, I miss the shattraths both infinitely better.

[pankind]

Why dont they just make WG and TB level 100. Make it so destroying the towers gives you like 50 CP, and winning it gives you 200. No chance at loot. No WG/TB/Ashran only 200 cp cap. Just something extra thats fun to do, in addition to ashran. People wont be forced to do these and there will be no downsides to not doing this because players can just get CP elsewhere if they choose to.

Holinka is only concerned about his status, he's not going to save PVP by using other developer's work from the past.. and he's got a lot invested in Ashran, maybe even his position as pvp designer on the line.

[ellieg]

prior to 6.1 my server had 4 hour ashran wait times, now I get in instantly but end up playing with 5 people on either side. I knew ashran was crap from the get go but man I didn't think they could make it any worse, blizzard continue to prove me wrong.

They funnelled people into ashran putting time and effort in, scraping the first faction cities all for nothing.

My number 1 hate of WoD is that the faction capitals are tied to ashran, I miss the dalarans, I miss the shattraths both infinitely better.

I'm ok with the capitals being tied to them if it wasnt on an island. Obviously you are supposed to pvp against the opposite faction in the middle, but ganking outside major cities was always fun. Cant really do that now.

[Rekrul]

ashran was great got to 650 in like 2 days

[Deleted]

I know nostalgia is just so powerful, but I have the feeling that people in Vanilla/TBC were more focused on having fun in PvP than getting rewards. Of course, it was always very important to get better gear, big sword and epic mount.. but I feel that now it is just not possible to create battleground/PvP zone where we won't be focused on CP/HP or something else.. Quick example:

Alterac Valley in Vanilla/TBC: It was just amazing to leave main fight and go in a group of two people to occupy the tower, next trying to defend it. Next, when reinforcements were going bad - ride for the boss and playing with time to win the game. You felt that it is real fight between two fractions, that your strategy had some meaning. People were having fun fighting with opposite fraction. There wasn't one path but many paths, many smaller battles, sometimes really interesting 1vs1 battles.

Alterac Valley in WoD: Ally ignore horde, horde ignore alliance, just go for the boss. No fights, nothing spectacular. Just trying to win for bonus.

I don't know how it looks in Rated BG, I play only casual, maybe it's better, I don't know.

I know that the topic is about Ashran but it is connected. I can't imagine Ashran with a system which won't be so focused on getting CP/HP but having fun. Maybe the only way is to make it TOTALLY without rewards, but it will be total disaster because we can't do anything in WoW if we won't get any reward for it. Example? It is more likely that we will play 5h a day grinding reputation by just killing mobs in shattrach than playing PvP with nice enjoyable system but without rewards. And what is sad, I will do probably the same thing. We are just to accustomed to getting rewards.

[Gamevizier]

...why did they scrap faction capitals for this cesspool...i mean. I keep going to shadowmoon valley and take a stroll through Karabor. and all I can think about is.... F*** YOU BLIZZARD.

just why?! what did you see in Ashran? I mean...like seriously, what is Ashran even trying to achieve? I would've been fine with it if it was a small world pvp zone but god why did you have to waste so much time and sacrifice so much for such a fucking mess???

I went to Ashran, and there are many design flaws with the zone, it tries to be timeless isle and AV in a world pvp zone like WG but fails miserably in it. but instead of giving players something else to keep them busy and satisfied they keep trying to shove the zone down people's throats.

[VanceHunter]

My thoughts: Because there is only 1 lane it makes pvp pretty boring and predictable, the team that has the most players usually wins when zerging.
melees will pretty much just stand in the zerg mob and watch, and sometimes kill someone that got gripped into the mob or maybe a rouge or a druid trying to kill a healer.

The whole area feels way too narrow, there is so much stuff going on, i wish it was bigger and more open, having more lanes and other ways to get into the enemy base like in WG

This. All players being on the same lane.

[Bushtuckrman]

The best pvp zone blizzard has ever made is timeless isle

Why couldn't they have just made ashran to be timeless isle 2.0