While the proposed BG changes are good, there are a few questions.

[HolyDKPriest]

As per topic, whilst the BG changes seem good, and may get a few people back in. There are a few questions left answered. As it stands, the population overall between both factions are close to equal (or Alliance slightly having more people, thanks to PVE servers).

The PVP participation between Horde and Alliance is another story, since a vast majority of PVP-focused players faction transferred to Horde, along with X-realm Dungeons and WG balance, Horde outnumber Alliance on a vast majority of PVP servers and battlegroups. A lot of off-peak matches currently start lopsided in favor of Horde, not to mention longer queue time as Horde on most battlegroups, whilst Alliance has instant queues (yet start outnumbered in over half the matches).

Blizzard did do the "Full Queue" requirements in 3.3, but due to large amounts of Horde QQ over at the WoW forums, it was quietly reverted back, thus lopsided starts returned on some battlegroups, mostly in favor of Horde. The first question would be;

1. Will the random BG finder be similar to the X-realm Heroic tools, where it enforces equal starts like the X-Realm Heroics LFD does, thus ending imba starts (This may increase Queue times for Horde on most battlegroups), but still?

Faction Transfers, X-Realm Heroics and WG balance has already done the damage to what is left of the Alliance PVPing population, with many players going elsewhere to farm/have fun getting PVP gear/honor through other avenues, such as heroics, or x-realm Premades. so the second question;

2. What can be done to bring 'dillusioned' Alliance players back to the BGs (at least on the US realms)?

Edit: I do noticed that HKs are being increased on kills. The final question on that one, is that only going to encourage more road/mid field fighting? (unless if objective honor were increased significantly)

[bunnyhat]

As per topic, whilst the BG changes seem good, and may get a few people back in. There are a few questions left answered. As it stands, the population overall between both factions are close to equal (or Alliance slightly having more people, thanks to PVE servers).

The PVP participation between Horde and Alliance is another story, since a vast majority of PVP-focused players faction transferred to Horde, along with X-realm Dungeons and WG balance, Horde outnumber Alliance on a vast majority of PVP servers and battlegroups. A lot of off-peak matches currently start lopsided in favor of Horde, not to mention longer queue time as Horde on most battlegroups, whilst Alliance has instant queues (yet start outnumbered in over half the matches).

Blizzard did do the "Full Queue" requirements in 3.3, but due to large amounts of Horde QQ over at the WoW forums, it was quietly reverted back, thus lopsided starts returned on some battlegroups, mostly in favor of Horde. The first question would be;

1. Will the random BG finder be similar to the X-realm Heroic tools, where it enforces equal starts like the X-Realm Heroics LFD does, thus ending imba starts (This may increase Queue times for Horde on most battlegroups), but still?

Faction Transfers, X-Realm Heroics and WG balance has already done the damage to what is left of the Alliance PVPing population, with many players going elsewhere to farm/have fun getting PVP gear/honor through other avenues, such as heroics, or x-realm Premades. so the second question;

2. What can be done to bring 'dillusioned' Alliance players back to the BGs (at least on the US realms)?

Edit: I do noticed that HKs are being increased on kills. The final question on that one, is that only going to encourage more road/mid field fighting? (unless if objective honor were increased significantly)

I would imagine it decreases que times because instead of a few alliance spread out over 6 battleground ques, it all feeds from one.


In my battlegroup, Alliance already wins 90% of the Bg's.


The bonus honor from doing things like capping flags or getting objectives are calculated by HK's. Say capping the WSG flag is an extra 10 bonus HKs. So now it's worth twice that much. The blue poster explained it in the post.

[Deleted]

They need to do somthing to revive the dead BGs - that means IOC, AV, Strand, and somtimes EOS too. The only played BGs are AB and WSG, which on my battlegroup horde win 80%+ of the time. At least these changes will make WSG give more honor for a loss i guess.

[ComputerNerd]

Unfortunatly it is just the opposite in my experience playing as alliance, where a good 1/3 to half of the players have little idea of the objectives and only care about farming their honor.
This is still a buff to those who lose a battleground, and that is what needs to change.
Remove honor from random kills full stop, and have it gained only from completion of objectives, or from kills within a distance of the objectives like defending a flag/flag carrier.
I agree that we need full battlegrounds before they start since I have seen alliance often down by as many as 5 people often in arathi basin.
Only when players are forced to win, or have a damn good go at it to actually gain something will it be something we can be proud of. Remove the honor farm, and actually bring back proper PVP.

[jb226]

I think you're making a lot of assumptions. On my server, the battlegrounds almost always start even, and when they don't it's probably 65-35 in favor of the alliance. It's usually substantial difference at that point, and it also varies by battleground. I don't think it's as "QQ Horde wins" as you make it out to be.

Nobody knows the answer to your questions right now other than the Blizzard devs, but my suspicions are as follows:

1. You will likely see less BGs start unequally just because I think more players will get into the system. Even if the numbers didn't increase, lots of players will be queued for "give me whatever" instead of waiting for a specific battleground. Thus in general queues will be quicker and they can afford to take a little extra time to get complete groups without making things any slower than they are today (in fact, probably still faster).

However, I doubt it will ENFORCE equal starts. Nobody likes sitting in queues for 15 minutes, and 15 minutes sitting in no battleground at all nets you a grand total of 0 honor. As frustrating as losing is, particularly when it's because you started without the same number of players, a fast queue, fast loss will still get you more honor than a slower queue almost all of the time.

2. How do you bring disillusioned PVPers back to the game? This is a start -- making queues faster, and thus making the rewards come more quickly (even without the HK value doubling). Lots of people are extremely goal or reward-oriented, particularly players of this game.

The second is to make it more about skill, which is something they're planning on doing in Cataclysm with their Rated Battlegrounds feature.

Beyond that, it's still Battleground PVP and if you don't like that anymore, for whatever reason, chances are there's not much else they can do to get your interest back up.