Cross-battlegroup battlegrounds

[Memory]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...ots-Blue-posts

Like Boubouille reported on the homepage:

We're currently expecting both normal and rated battlegrounds to be cross-battlegroup (within a region) for the launch of Cataclysm. So, players queueing from anywhere in north america could play vs players on any north american battlegroup, etc.

I was invoking this solution since ages already, as the only one solution able to revive battlegrounds, still desolate after the introduction of the random BG feature. Furthermore, it's probably the only way to make rated battlegrounds viable.

It will be interesting to see what kind of consequences this is gonna have on the game, for example I guess Blizzard might just wash their hands and do not worry about improving PvP and battlegrounds anymore, because players basis will be large enough to keep PvP alive also if it would be as little appealing and as little integrated in the game as non-arena PvP has been for the past few years. Probably I'm over-thinking right now, and rated battlegrounds will address this issue for good, anyway gotta see (we don't know much about rated battlegrounds yet and I wonder what kind of answer they're gonna have from the community).

Also, whenever I discussed about this with friends, they always aired the opinion that cross-battlegroup battlegrounds wouldn't be viable because of servers locations. I'm not really into computers and I wonder if it might be an issue.

[Spoofus]

Also, whenever I discussed about this with friends, they always aired the opinion that cross-battlegroup battlegrounds wouldn't be viable because of servers locations. I'm not really into computers and I wonder if it might be an issue.

Each Battlegroup is a cluster of servers located in a specific data center somewhere. One of the thing that guarantees is that all of the people facing off in the current BG and Arena system are all connecting to the same location. Relays among different servers in the same Battlegroup are next to nil in terms of latency, since they are physically right next to each other and might even share a hardware connection. Having cross-battlegroup BGs may introduce more latency depending on how it's implemented.

Right now the data exchange between servers in a particular Battlegroup can probably be estimated to be zero or close enough to it. Imagine if the data needs to go from a West Cost Battlegroup to an East Coast Battlegroup. Some latency will obviously be added.

[DocQuantum]

I'm looking forward to this... but, then, my battlegroup sucks. I don't mean it's imbalanced for one faction (it's not, really, judging by the stats page for my chars) - just that people have no idea how to PvP, what the strats are for the BGs, etc.

My favorite is when someone with 0 "BG objectives" (e.g., flags capped for AB, demos destroyed in SotA, etc.), 0 killing blows, minimal honor kills, and minimal damage/healing done - that you remember making some snarky comment in the pre-game starting area - starts saying that "everyone else" should just go PvE because they obviously suck at PvP... grats on calling yourself out? Sorry, those of us actually trying to win can only carry so many.

[ComputerNerd]

Anything which gives us more variety in terms of the player attitude has to be a good thing.
There is currently an honor farming and ganking menality on the alliance side in the eu-reckoning battlegroup which tends to result in about one win out of every five or six battlegrounds.
Anything to bring in fresh blood and dilute that has to be a good thing, unfortuantly the much needed fixes to prevent that in the first place are not forthcoming, in fact being pushed further away.

[Spurmwhale]

what battlegroup are bg's desolate? i'm pretty sure its the most active PvP activity in the game across most battlegroups currently. i guess eveeryone is going to flock even more to bg9 to stack, considering its now all of N.American servers playing each other now.

WG on the other hand, they might as well kill when Cata hits. people only ever played it for the rewards, and it has no real world feel whatsoever. its more or less a siege based BG at this point, and a sad attempt at what it was supposed to be. i'm pretty much resigned to vanilla in-server pvp never having that same feeling of sandbox like it used to. WG was such fail design.

[Molo]

I don't know how it is with other battlegroups, but on mine, Alliance have an instant queue while Horde have to wait 10+ minutes. Cross-battlegroup might help with queue times.

[Spurmwhale]

I don't know how it is with other battlegroups, but on mine, Alliance have an instant queue while Horde have to wait 10+ minutes. Cross-battlegroup might help with queue times.

problem is thats the case on most battlegroups. we on horde might end up with 20 min ques when its all said and done.

[RakuRaku]

I only hope that blizzard's server doesn't stress too much, or suffer from latency issues because of this. A rogue from Miami might try to sap a druid from washington, though suffer the repeated "You need to be closer" error.

[Bokchoii]

I don't know how it is with other battlegroups, but on mine, Alliance have an instant queue while Horde have to wait 10+ minutes. Cross-battlegroup might help with queue times.

I chose my server because Horde queue times are nearly instant. I came from a server where queue times were 10+ min.

I can't go back to waiting for queues!

Even 1 minute queues make me anxious now. I've been spoiled and I know it.