Does WG favor defense?

[myrkyr]

So a little while ago a guildie of mine was complaining about Alliance losing WG....again.
On our server Horde outnumber Alliance to the point where there is never a WG where alliance has less than 5 tenacity, and it's typically much higher. I made the assertion that we would win far more often if the populations were equal for both sides, as WG favors offense. He......disagreed, aggressively. He made under the assertion that WG favors defense to the point of imbalance.
I asked him how he would balance it and he listed these "reasonable" suggestions:
1. Make the bases in the keep capturable. Or better yet remove them.
2. Make the southern bases uncapturable and always in the offenses possession.
3. Give the offense RPGG's at their bases.
When I told him these changes would give the offense a considerable advantage in damage potential and survivability, he countered with the well thought out argument of "offense should be better at offense". I said that it was stupid reasoning, and the GM told us to stfu, and that was pretty much the end of it. And I was thinking, perhaps he was right? Maybe, behind his crude typing and reasoning, he actually had a point? I thought I would ask the intelligent chaps in this forum what they thought of the issue of WG favoring offense/defense.
TLDR: I don't give summaries, read the damned thing.
Edit: Removed some irrelevant commentary about my opponent.

[Shirahadori]

the only thing that needs to be done to fix that kind of problem with wg is setting a maximum ratio of horde to alliance per battle so that there isn't an extreme gap between factions.

like on mal'ganis, horde outnumbers alliance 11 to 1, and as you might guess, horde pretty much never loses wg... ever. if one faction didn't dominate the other in numbers it would be fair, and there would be no need to balance around the battle itself. oh, and, wg favors offense imo. it is far easier to attack than it is to defend when the sides are equal. that being said, a good defense can be tough to break through. (if people actually work together, zomg)

[Cactusbat]

This is my opinion:

If WG Defense was superior to the offense, here's why it would make some sense. Generally when you hold a fortification the size of WG Keep, you have resources to maintain workshops like the ones always in Defenses' control. Making them seizable would throw the balance too far towards offense (insert random rogue squealing at the idea ).

Offensive "camps" or bases don't have stockpiled resources to maintain workshops, so the "offense's" workshops being procurable makes perfect sense. I highly doubt a majority of the playerbase would willingly choose to farm lumber, ore, and whatever else if it meant their side would have semi-permanent workshops. The majority just want to kill things.

Wintergrasp would be faceroll all the time if you had 40-80 people that'd work together, use strategy, and not fight amongst themselves/mine during the event/insert choice side activity. Hell it could be done with 25 vs 60 in those circumstances cause chances are, the other side is squabbling amongst themselves or some such other crap.

The back walls (Northeast and Northwest) are the weakest points of defense on Wintergrasp Keep. Lowest number of wall/tower cannons to contend with and longest stretch of ground to cover if the Defense needs to go from one side to the other in the event of a pinch attack (which is what I think should be done all the time). The fastest wins I've seen on Offense are done that way unless Offense seriously outnumbered Defense, though seeing that strategy used is rare.

End Note: My server is Alliance > Horde in population so I know the pain of losing WG all the time. Even so, Wintergrasp is fine atm.

[worlddan]

I am not sure what setting ratio is going to accomplish. On my server Alliance typically out number Horde ten to one in WG. We will have 100+ players and the Horde will have 10. And that's one of the real problems because if you are on offense it's next to impossible to win with 10 players no matter how much tenacity you have. Defending three towers and also attacking the keep...not happening. Even if you made the ratio 5 to 1 the Horde on my server are still going to lose. Ratios are not the problem for us, absolute numbers are.

This where I think the argument that WG favors defense has some merit. If you are on offense there is a minimum number of players that you must have to win. Namely, you must have at least as many players as there are on defense. Because if you play smart defensively you can drag out the battle so that even with all the towers up the offense loses. Why? Because all you have to do is defend the keep, nothing more. But the offense has to worry about covering a lot more ground.

Still, I would argue that if WG is played as it was meant to be played with two teams of 50+ players then whatever minor advantages that might come from playing defense are overshadowed by the advantages gained by teams that have better coordination and execution.

So do I think that WG favors the defense? Yes. But it really only becomes a decisive or game breaking issue when the teams are unbalanced to begin with. Regrettably, that state of unbalance describes my server.

[myrkyr]

My idea is that, realistically, defense should have an advantage against offense in terms of net damage potential and survivability(don't confuse this statement as endorsing defense having superior ability in winning the battle, just in damage/survivability; in my opponents terms this would make defense better at offense, reflecting typical historical siege scenarios), at the start of the game at least. The reasoning of which is lies in the win conditions for either side. The offense merely has to chip away at the walls and then swarm the orb inside the base. The defense has to prevent this while slowly losing many of their defensive capabilities, which can't be reclaimed during the course of the battle. They can cut down on the amount of time they must spend defending by sending a considerable portion of their troops to go attempt to destroy the southern towers, during which time the defense loses more of their walls and canons. If skill, population, and net damage potential/survivability are all equal this means a nearly inevitable win for the offense. Increasing the amount of damage/survivability the defense has increases the chances they can hold out long enough.

[worlddan]

The back walls (Northeast and Northwest) are the weakest points of defense on Wintergrasp Keep. Lowest number of wall/tower cannons to contend with and longest stretch of ground to cover if the Defense needs to go from one side to the other in the event of a pinch attack (which is what I think should be done all the time).

Really, you must have a lot of noobs playing on your server because that is a fail strategy if there ever is one. If the offense is going to attack one of the back walls they have to chose between two unappetizing realities. The first is to take the normal route towards the keep. This allows the demos to be pounded by the guns all the way to the back and they almost never make it without being destroyed. The second approach is to run the demos wide and keep them out of the range of the guns. But this chews up a great deal of time and makes the vulnerable to on the ground attacks.

The only time I have ever seen this strategy work is when the defense leaves the keep undefended because everybody runs out and tries to take down the towers and no one stays at home.

[Brachamul]

Stop with the abreviations already!

WG is Warsong Gulch !

About wintergrasp though, yes it obviously favors defense.

For one, if nobody in defense comes out of the fortress, it can take ages for the offense to get any vehicles.

Basically, when server population is low (early morning), defense is much favored. When population is high, offense can not lose if it is organized.

[Duskmourne]

No, no.

Wintergrasp favors OFFENSE. It's just that it favors superior numbers (tenacity is meaningless), and it also favors the side that has more players who understand how to anticipate where to go next.

This is why, on truly balanced servers, WG changes hands every single battle.

[KandyCane]

Hm, I always see the defense being burned into the ground within a few minutes of Wintergrasp starting.

At least on my realm, the offensive side is much superior to the defensive, whether it's Horde or Alliance attacking.

[worlddan]

No, no.

Wintergrasp favors OFFENSE. It's just that it favors superior numbers (tenacity is meaningless), and it also favors the side that has more players who understand how to anticipate where to go next.

This is why, on truly balanced servers, WG changes hands every single battle.

Pleas explain your reasoning because that that defies the logic of the design and contradicts all experiences I've ever had. If the two teams are matched perfectly even in terms of knowledge, skill, and ability the design of Wintergrasp dictates that the defense wins every time.

[Ciah]

From a logical standpoint, defense should be favored, seeing as they've got a well defended castle with workshops inside and stuff.

From a gameplay standpoint it makes sense to favor offense. That way, on servers that are close to balanced, it changes hands often, leading to less QQ and more chances for people to run VoA.

Seeing as next to NOTHING in WoW makes sense from a logical standpoint, I'm gonna go with assumption that Blizz is trying to deliver compelling gameplay and say WG favors offense. Which, in my experience, it does.

[myrkyr]

Stop with the abreviations already!

WG is Warsong Gulch !

About wintergrasp though, yes it obviously favors defense.

For one, if nobody in defense comes out of the fortress, it can take ages for the offense to get any vehicles.

Basically, when server population is low (early morning), defense is much favored. When population is high, offense can not lose if it is organized.

Offense can gain the ability to pilot vehicles by killing npc's. If we are under the assumption that defense is organized enough to never come out of the base, we can at least not insult the intelligence of offense by assuming they would ignore that fact.
And, because I deleted my post calling your post irrelevant because you made it relevant: Warsong Gulch is WSG in most online conversations, and was that way before WG<--(flamebait)

[Newspaper]

In Nagrand EU exactly the same happens.... Ally has WG for 6 days and 22.5 hours everyweek , the only time horde might show up for the battle is on wednesdays for VoA....Ally outnumbers horde but since the cap that has been "fixed".

On topic-er : I think that Wg yes favors defense , don't ask me why , i've just seen Horde keep WG for 2-3 consecutive battles with the same amount of people everytime (that'd be around 3-4 tenacity if we're lucky). While on offense unless we have 1 stack tenacity tops we're plain screwed. You can make a train when the allies have 10 people on every workshop while you can afford to have 4-5 and there are 20 allies waiting to annihilate any sort of vehicle >.>

/rant

[myrkyr]

In Nagrand EU exactly the same happens.... Ally has WG for 6 days and 22.5 hours everyweek , the only time horde might show up for the battle is on wednesdays for VoA....Ally outnumbers horde but since the cap that has been "fixed".

On topic-er : I think that Wg yes favors defense , don't ask me why , i've just seen Horde keep WG for 2-3 consecutive battles with the same amount of people everytime (that'd be around 3-4 tenacity if we're lucky). While on offense unless we have 1 stack tenacity tops we're plain screwed. You can make a train when the allies have 10 people on every workshop while you can afford to have 4-5 and there are 20 allies waiting to annihilate any sort of vehicle >.>

/rant

Just like my guildie, you have a skewed view of wintergrasp due to being on a server with serious population balance issues. And your argument as to why WG favors defense only takes into account one or two aspects of the battle.
This thread does wonders for relieving the boredom of getting Loremaster.