Wrath Classic PTR - Testing Cross-Realm Arena and Battleground Queues

Wrath Classic PTR - Testing Cross-Realm Arena and Battleground Queues
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Greetings,

As we near the release of patch 3.4.1 and Ulduar, one frequent topic is transfer and new character creation restrictions present on some of the largest realms in the US and EU. We understand the desire for players to play with their friends on these realms, and while these realms are not currently queuing, their population is still larger than the realms were designed for, and queues could return with the release of future content. There are many other very healthy and active realms available that are thriving, and we have no plans to lift realms restrictions on these realms in the near future.

We do recognize however that PvP has been cross realm for all of almost all of WoW’s existence, and that realm restrictions get in the way of utilizing team-less Arena that was added in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. As a result, we’ve implemented a system to allow you to group with players on other realms, and queue into Arena matches and Battlegrounds together. We feel that this is a sensible change considering that Arenas have been cross server since their inception in 2007, and Battlegrounds have been cross-realm since shortly after they were introduced back in original World of Warcraft.

We’ve enabled this functionality on the Wrath Classic PTR, and we’d love it if you wanted to hop in with some friends to help us test this.

How to use this:

In order to invite a player from a different realm, you’ll need to type /invite playername-realmname. So for example, if I was on the Classic PTR Realm 1 and I wanted to invite “Aggrend” from the Classic PTR Realm 2, I’d type (with no spaces):

/invite Aggrend-ClassicPTRRealm2

…and the other player would see the following:



From there you would be placed into a cross-realm group:



At this point, the group leader could queue for Battlegrounds or Arenas as normal. You will join the same match, be placed on the same team, and gain honor and arena rating as you would with any normal Arena or Battleground group.

Please note that this can only be used to allow players on the same faction to group with each other cross-realm. Additionally, this system may only be used to queue for pvp and will not allow you join the group leader’s layer in the outdoor world, or enter non-BG, non-Arena dungeons or raid instances with the group leader in any way. Party chat functions as you’d expect it to, but past chatting and doing Arenas and Battlegrounds, group members on separate realms may not directly interact with each other at all.

We’d love to get feedback on how this functions as well as any bug reports for anything that feels like it doesn’t work like it should with this system. Thank you for all of your bug reports and feedback so far for patch 3.4.1, and we are really looking forward to seeing you tackle Ulduar, Titan Rune Dungeons, and everything else present in Phase 2 of Wrath Classic when 3.4.1 releases very soon!


Will this allow OCE to queue in the NA pool?

This is a very good question. If we do indeed move forward with this change on live US region realms, we will need to re-merge Oceanic and US PvP queues for it to work properly in the US/Oceanic region. I don’t have a lot else to report on this at this moment, as our focus here is to test the baseline functionality of cross-realm PvP groups, but in the months since we split the US and Oceanic battlegroups, this is has been a very, very frequent request, so it’s something we are looking at very closely.

Hopefully we’ll be ready to share more very soon. Thanks for asking!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Wrath Classic PTR - Testing Cross-Realm Arena and Battleground Queues started by Lumy View original post
Published on 2023-01-10 12:46 AM
22 Comments
Comments 22 Comments
  1. SinR's Avatar
    Well isn't this a surprise...
  1. Wekko's Avatar
    Still a dead game. I don't see WoW pvpers leaving Retail just for cross-realm WotLK.
  1. SinR's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wekko View Post
    Still a dead game. I don't see WoW pvpers leaving Retail just for cross-realm WotLK.
    There's people that'll argue WOTLK Classic is more alive than Retail.

    there's also people that insist that Dogs are better than Cats. Some people just want to see the world burn.
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    #NoChanges.

    Who remembers that classic meme from early classic? When some people genuinely, honestly, 100% believed they would get a patch by patch replay of their youth. I also remember when some of the same players swore black and blue if even a single change, even just visual, snuck into classic, they would uninstall wow. I remember, one of them was posting about their classic wrath raiding experience just the other day
  1. Jtbrig7390's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SinR View Post
    There's people that'll argue WOTLK Classic is more alive than Retail.
    They can argue it as much as they want, but they would be factually wrong.

    OT: This is a Band-Aid to a issue that was fixed years ago, The same issue that dungeons have faced and are facing now in WOTLK Classic. Make stuff Cross-Realm, Add LFD = problem fixed.

    I love how they want to call this (WOTLK Classic) but it has already changed a lot compared to the original. They should just stop dragging their heels and make stuff Cross-Realm already.

    Then again the WOTLK Classic Pop is so small they could just make like 4 servers and call it a day.
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jtbrig7390 View Post
    They can argue it as much as they want, but they would be factually wrong.

    OT: This is a Band-Aid to a issue that was fixed years ago, The same issue that dungeons have faced and are facing now in WOTLK Classic. Make stuff Cross-Realm, Add LFD = problem fixed.

    I love how they want to call this (WOTLK Classic) but it has already changed a lot compared to the original. They should just stop dragging their heels and make stuff Cross-Realm already.

    Then again the WOTLK Classic Pop is so small they could just make like 4 servers and call it a day.
    What is the classic wow pop?
  1. munkeyinorbit's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    What is the classic wow pop?
    At least 12000
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by munkeyinorbit View Post
    At least 12000
    Well, you are likely not wrong.
  1. relaxok's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by munkeyinorbit View Post
    At least 12000
    350,000+ as of late, will go up significantly for Ulduar
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by relaxok View Post
    350,000+ as of late, will go up significantly for Ulduar
    Is that the real number? How was it come by?
  1. Mendzia's Avatar
    Oh man... this is still so funny to see same mad people from 3 years ago using same 'arguments' being mad at Classic still doing good.

    'Classic is dead at arrival'
    'Classic is dead after MC'
    'Classic is dead after BWL'
    'Classic is dead after Kara'
    ...
    'Classic is dead after WotLK Naxx'
    'Classic is dead after Ulduar'
    ...

    and so on.

    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    Is that the real number? How was it come by?
    https://ironforge.pro/population/classic/
    Official? No.
    True? Also not really as it does count only unique arena players and raiders from logs so it is even close to all players.
  1. Blizzard-ruined-DHs's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jtbrig7390 View Post
    They can argue it as much as they want, but they would be factually wrong.

    Then again the WOTLK Classic Pop is so small they could just make like 4 servers and call it a day.
    This is ridiculously funny. Naxx alone has had 1.5 times more logs than ALL 4 SEASONS of Mythic+ COMBINED in Shadowlands

    Source, owner of Warcraftlogs: https://twitter.com/KihraOfTemerity/...79466341056515
  1. munkeyinorbit's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Blizzard-ruined-DHs View Post
    This is ridiculously funny. Naxx alone has had 1.5 times more logs than ALL 4 SEASONS of Mythic+ COMBINED in Shadowlands

    Source, owner of Warcraftlogs: https://twitter.com/KihraOfTemerity/...79466341056515
    If you continue to read it also states that retail has more players. It's not the victory that you think it is.
  1. Kralljin's Avatar
    Bit surprising to learn that they're punching more holes into that sacred basket of "realm identity" but i think (rated) WoW PvP just isn't it for me anymore.

    If it came down to play some BG's on occassion, i'd be down for it, but considering the best PvP gear is locked behind rating, i just can't be arsed to engage in it anymore.
    The main issue in Classic in particular is that:

    1. The group of people willing to engage in (rated) PvP is quite small, so that makes it difficult to find partners (this addresses this issue partially)
    2. Stale Meta (nature of Classic)
    3. You mostly play against die hard PvP'ers, that frankly stomp anyone less experienced with the Meta and encounter them already way before anything close to "high rating"

    The latter point is quite common among older games that feature PvP and is certainly not helpful to get the bit of new blood / returning players into it, especially mixed with the common attitude of "if we lose a game, i'll drop the team" among PvP'ers.

    There's also some minor points, such as getting the gear in the first place, the encyclopedia extra of keybinds (mouseover, focus and Arena Target for multiple spells for example) that are quite the necessity if you want to compete, at which point i just go fuck it, boot up some Moba or other PvP game and have my fun there for a few hours.

    I had my fun in PvP during Classic (ironically), where i joined a Premade, then sat back and played some PvP for a few hours, the entire thing was just way more relaxed because even if you lost a game against another Pre made, people just went "okay, whatever, let's do it better next game", whereas in the purely Rating based system, every loss is also a setback from your goal that you need to make up for for.
  1. SinR's Avatar
    The problem with using ironforge.pro for population guides is that its based off of people submitting logs for raids and for Arenas. Didn't log the raid? that's a few less people in the pool. The opposite can be true though for alts, it has no way of telling the difference between Pockettank and PocketHeals and PocketDeeps, so that one person is counted three times.
  1. Nubpwn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SinR View Post
    The problem with using ironforge.pro for population guides is that its based off of people submitting logs for raids and for Arenas. Didn't log the raid? that's a few less people in the pool. The opposite can be true though for alts, it has no way of telling the difference between Pockettank and PocketHeals and PocketDeeps, so that one person is counted three times.
    That's true and what that really means is the number on ironforge.pro is likely much smaller than the real number, even accounting for alts.

    Classic most likely has MORE than 351157 players.
  1. Dashmidu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Blizzard-ruined-DHs View Post
    This is ridiculously funny. Naxx alone has had 1.5 times more logs than ALL 4 SEASONS of Mythic+ COMBINED in Shadowlands


    You want to know why? People do not log M+ lol, its auto onto raider.io so there is no point in doing it.
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mendzia View Post
    https://ironforge.pro/population/classic/
    Official? No.
    True? Also not really as it does count only unique arena players and raiders from logs so it is even close to all players.
    And Retail?
  1. csguba's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Bit surprising to learn that they're punching more holes into that sacred basket of "realm identity" but i think (rated) WoW PvP just isn't it for me anymore.

    If it came down to play some BG's on occassion, i'd be down for it, but considering the best PvP gear is locked behind rating, i just can't be arsed to engage in it anymore.
    The main issue in Classic in particular is that:

    1. The group of people willing to engage in (rated) PvP is quite small, so that makes it difficult to find partners (this addresses this issue partially)
    2. Stale Meta (nature of Classic)
    3. You mostly play against die hard PvP'ers, that frankly stomp anyone less experienced with the Meta and encounter them already way before anything close to "high rating"

    The latter point is quite common among older games that feature PvP and is certainly not helpful to get the bit of new blood / returning players into it, especially mixed with the common attitude of "if we lose a game, i'll drop the team" among PvP'ers.

    There's also some minor points, such as getting the gear in the first place, the encyclopedia extra of keybinds (mouseover, focus and Arena Target for multiple spells for example) that are quite the necessity if you want to compete, at which point i just go fuck it, boot up some Moba or other PvP game and have my fun there for a few hours.

    I had my fun in PvP during Classic (ironically), where i joined a Premade, then sat back and played some PvP for a few hours, the entire thing was just way more relaxed because even if you lost a game against another Pre made, people just went "okay, whatever, let's do it better next game", whereas in the purely Rating based system, every loss is also a setback from your goal that you need to make up for for.
    It would be nice if they inflated the rating a bit to enable easier gearing. It was for sure more inflated back in original WotLK, I remember hitting 2k for the first time and I was pretty bad at the game clicking half of my spells. I could be wrong but I think the smaller participation across the board has resulted in quite a deflated system.

    Based on what you're saying though it actually sounds like retail pvp would be more up your street? In that gear is a non-issue and you can join premades with less stress.
  1. Kralljin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by csguba View Post
    Based on what you're saying though it actually sounds like retail pvp would be more up your street? In that gear is a non-issue and you can join premades with less stress.
    For me personally, gear is a smaller factor, just bothers that if you just want to play some BG's, you're at disadvantage because you don't have the required Rating for the best Items.

    As for Retail, i'm not going to play Retail just for the sake of PvP, it's always been a sidegame to me.
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