Battleground Horde/Alliance Win Ratio, Setup of the Month

[Demeris]

This is stupid. Double counting up the whoozy

[Pud'n]

Wow show a chart proving horde dominates in most bgs, and all you can do is focus on the 8% the alliance win more in a single bg......

[Hagu]

1) I think people *really* underestimate racials in a world where people get to pick. Take for example where fire is 1% > arcance or MM 1% greater than BM. If you look at stateofDPS, you will see a much bigger difference in performance. it is because the more knowledgeable people tend to choose the "better". If people were randomly assigned a race, then tiny differences would be tiny. As it is, they are a shibboleth to attract the "better" players.

2) people tend to use graph axis like that (not at zero) in order to show data in a biased way. You should have done it the proper way.

3) I thought inactive accounts are not visible in the armory. So if you quit playing a toon it will not show up in the statistics. And perhaps toons with more losses tend to not get played.

[LuckyDeath]

It would be really silly to 'blame' these observations on such small factors as racials.

Rather, I think this data is really flawed. I would like to see these results broken down by battlegroup. Different battlegroups have drastically different server populations and makeups, and its possible that some disproportionately Horde dominated BG's are skewing the entire trend.

Also, it would be interesting to look at class makeup alongside these results. Ally and Horde don't play the same classes in equal amounts. Class balance is a HUGE factor in determining game outcomes. If, say, there is a significantly higher amount of certain classes on one side, I would not be at all surprised to see Win % fluctuate as well. Keep in mind this is REALLY hard to summarize into a bar graph because class balance is constantly changing from patch to patch, let alone over the course of a year.

Also, there is the added dynamic that certain classes fare better in certain maps. Druids are expert flag runners, pallies are expert node defenders thanks to bubble, and elemental shamans/boomkins make life hell for EoTS and AB lumber mill attackers. Since Blizzard admits classes are never perfectly balanced, neither are the games in which they compete unless the class proportions are the same for both sides.

In the end, you can't really expect a 50/50 split, even with a large sample size. Why? The result is NOT randomly determined. Skill, gear, class, spec, teamwork, organization... ALL of these will tend to favor different outcomes across different maps. The only honest way to look at this data is with more information alongside it. Not with bar graphs that have terrible scaling (do Ally srsly win AV 2x's as much as Hoardes?)

[tusker]

For a trusted website as this, I'm surprised Boubouille allowed graphs like these to be used. They are deceptive... it's really a good example of how NOT to graph something showing results. Maybe they were worked in this manner intentionally to rile up people, garnering more traffic?

[Milton]

I'm sry, this may be a very stupid question but were exactly are these Battleground values coming from on armory? Are we refering to Rated BG's only? Cos that seems to be the only BG information I can find..
If that is the case it should be said at 1st post to avoid confusion.

[Dace]

lol deceptive

[Groalarbear]

So i seriously doubt the graphs.

Reason 1: WoW Armory states that i have played Warsong Gulch Twice ... not correct.
So unless they are only tracking SINCE the update to the integrated battle.net/armory/forum.

Reason 2: Is that on my server (Rampage BG) Alliance win more than not.
Of the last 15 BG's I have been in, I have only won 3.

But that is just my 2 cents...

[Maelyn]

I have an idea. Lets all cry about the graphs. Are you people looking at them from 20ft. away? Just read the dang numbers if you want info and quite complaining. geesh.

[Twoshorty]

Thought alliance will win more then that, I seem to win way more on my battleground lol.

[Gouldylocks]

Chaud Chaud Chaud, Why the hell did you go for a AMD Athlon II X4 635 AM3? They are old, shit, old and well shit? Could you possibly, at least go a lower Phenom then some ancient piece of hardware?

[Deleted]

I spend time in PvP on both sides but always felt like the opposite faction won a lot more than the side i was on. Did most PvP on the Horde side and felt like Alliance was kicking out ass 24/7. Now i'm on the Alliance side, feeling like Horde is kicking our ass 24/7.

Don't care actually, this graph is very misleadingv imo. Blizzard is squeezing it's toes cause this could lead to some extra cash for them, cause some people might that actually change sides because of this graph.

[voskopoula]

These GRAPHS ARE COMPLETELY MISLEADING!!!!!
i can only think that are done on purpose...

show us the proper graphs with numbers from 0 to 100 to see the PROPER analogy of Horde/Alliance wins..

whoever has a brain can see this , as i did....

[Gruffertus]

soooo horde are better at pvp and pve. Is there any reason to ever play alliance? and if you think im wrong on the pve part consider this. EVERY world first guild in the world is horde.

Heroic Magmaw, Atramedes and Maloriak all went to an Alliance guild, not to mention did Heroic Al'Akir.

[Tussle]

haha all this proves is that most horde dont know how to read a graph.

[Bluespirit]

AV is the most imbalanced gametype Ive ever played, it obviously favors alliance and has done for years.

[cretos]

Seems about right to me. My stats after playing 2,367 games are:

AV played: 277 win: 70.04%
AB played: 550 win: 68.73%
Gilneas played: 212 win: 65.09%
EoS played: 377 win: 65.52%
Strand played: 281 win: 60.14%
Peaks played: 149 win: 75.17%
WSG played: 404 win: 73.51%
Isle played: 117 win: 64.96%

Total win: 68.06%

Check Chipbunk-Arthas for stats.

[kapowaz]

People seem to be discussing the charts as much as the data they represent, which is a sure sign that the charts weren't up to the task. There are two popular views which seem to come up again and again here, which (assuming Boub reads here) I'd like to address to ensure that future charts don't fall into the same trap.

1.) If you'd read the text about the values the axes represent, you'd not be confused.

The fact is, when drawn correctly, any explanation of the axes shouldn't be necessary — everything about the data should be visible on the chart. Since the whole purpose of a chart is to visualise the data, drawing it in a way that doesn't adhere to the standard way of drawing a bar chart means that the visualisation is useless.

2.) The data would be better drawn as a pie-chart.

Also wrong. Pie charts are a very bad way of representing the distribution of data within a dataset. When we scan a pie chart we're looking to see which colour looks biggest so as to determine their relative size, but since they are by nature (unless divided equally) of completely different shapes, it's very difficult to accurately ascertain how much one slice is relative to another. This problem is compounded when pie charts are given a pseudo-3D projection (as some individuals have done in this very thread), since perspective will exaggerate the relative size of an angle towards the front, and understate the size of angles at the back.

For example, take this chart that shows the win percentage for Eye of the Storm.



The win percentages are 58% vs 42%, but as a result of the 3D perspective and extra depth added to the bottom, the approximate number of pixels representing each area are nowhere near these values — in fact, they're closer to 66% vs 34%; a significant difference.

Hopefully in future when MMO-C attempts to convey statistics visually, they'll take these things into consideration. Remember: just because a chart has white space on it doesn't mean you need to crop it! That white space is significant too.

[Kooshkrusher]

Horde have more hardcore pvpers? Sureeee, keep making up statistics out of pure nothing like you always do.

[cretos]

@Kooshkrusher: How is he making up statistics? The Armory is made up?