World First Hardcore Torment 6 Malthael Kill, Level 70 Builds For All Classes: Part 3, Curse Weekly Roundup

Armory Stats - Battleground Win Ratios
Today we are taking a look at the win percentage for each faction and battleground that took place in the last month. To find these numbers, we compared the number of battles and victories a character had in a February snapshot of data to a March snapshot of data.

These numbers come from a character's statistics pane, so any bugs with character statistics will have skewed the results. This means that there isn't any way for us to verify how accurate these numbers are, so do not take them as fact.

Percentages came fairly close to 100% in most cases, so we normalized the data to 100%. Unfortunately it seems that most Eye of the Storm wins are still not recorded in your statistics most of the time. This bug has been around for five or more years now, but we normalized the data we had (~7.5% and ~9.7% win ratios for each faction) for the chart.

The data used today is a sample made up of ~8.6 million level 90 characters and ~10 million battles. The sample is slightly biased, as players who are not in a guild are less likely to appear in our sample.

You can see the data from the last time we did this back in January.

The major change to note this time is the increase of Horde wins Alterac Valley. You may recall that Patch 5.4.7 changed some things around the Horde base.

  • December 2013 to January 2014 - Horde won 21.8% of Alterac Valley games.
  • January to February 2014 - Horde won 20.6% of Alterac Valley games.
  • February to March 2014 - Horde won 27% of Alterac Valley games.
  • February to March 2014 - ~10% of players took part in at least 1 Alterac Valley game.

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Battleground Queue Times
Holinka also shared something interesting about blacklisting recently, mentioning that the majority of people aren't using the blacklist function.



Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvP
I really want to play and gear my Horde alt, but every time I see a 17 min random BG queue I die a little inside. Any plans to fix?
Yes we have some things we're working on. More to come soon. (holinka)

"what would it take for Horde PvP players to switch to Alliance?" having faction change be FREE would be a mandatory start.
We certainly agree that removing that barrier in certain cases would help. (holinka)

Should give low level battle ground queues satchels of armor (and maybe gold) like dungeons
That's the plan for warlords because @nite_moogle is awesome (holinka)

Hey - I wrote you something for lazy friday afternoon reading. http://t.co/FUdgZPA7N9
cool, I'll give it a read when I find some time. (holinka)
thanks for putting a lot of effort into the article. (holinka)
My primary critique is the fixation on mathematical balance, at the expense of anything else, including the very soul of a game. This is a dangerous and common mistake that often sacrifices a game's flavor to balance a spreadsheet. Our primary concern is long queue times. We should strive to solve the problem & preserve what makes WoW unique and special. (holinka)
I am not suggesting that you try not to fix it, but rather that by choosing factions, you implicitly accept some imbalance.
Absolutely. It is a tradeoff every game has to make and there is a wide spectrum of implementations as a result. (holinka)
Compare Call of Duty (which values short queues and visible balancing) to Titanfall (which wants more narrative in MP) (holinka)

Classes
quick question, do best players often play at a level above or below the "cap" you designed them with? meaning that does players often find better rotations than the optimal rotation you had in mind when designing?
Not often, but it has happened occasionally. Scorchweaving, Masterfrost, and Festerblight are the 3 cases I can think of...-- (Celestalon)
Why did you accept DW masterfrost but kill scorchweav? Curious re thought process. B/c 2H frost exists as altern?
2H Frost existing as an alternate helps. As does it being a complication to the rotation, rather than trivializer. (Celestalon)

You (Bliz) think changing the game keeps it "fresh". Players outside the elite find it tiresome.
Change just for the sake of change is a mistake and a trap. We only act if confident we're making a real improvement. (WatcherDev)

Professions
Why is there a system for Mining/Herbalism/Blacksmithing to fast-level in MoP but not the other professions?
It was something we started small with, to try out. We're considering doing more of that in the future. (Celestalon)

Pets and Pet Battles
Pet cap staying at 25 for new expansion? would love to have Epic quality pets!
Cap staying at L25, didn't want you to have to level all of your old pets, lots of new pets to level and new trainer challenges (Muffinus)

Character / Items
Any updates for Toybox regarding items with charges and pure fun trinkets?
Investigating how we can split these up so that the fun effect is in your toybox, may not be possible for everything. (Muffinus)

Warlords of Draenor Flying
Sounds like developers already made up their minds not alowing flying the entire wod expansion.
If that were the case, we'd say so. Our plan is no Draenor flying in 6.0 and player feedback is important to us. (WatcherDev)

PvE
Are you happy with how Mists of Pandaria panned out?
Overall, yes, especially from a raiding POV. There are of course regrets and lessons learned, though. (WatcherDev)
Within your realm of responsibility, what do you regard as your biggest success in Mists of Pandaria?
Flexible raiding. (WatcherDev)

Misc
You seem like the nerdiest Blizzard employee. Either you or Kosak, I cant decide. Hes a lore nerd and you're a numbers nerd.
There are some REALLY nerdy people at Blizzard. (Celestalon)
(Which is awesome, BTW. We love to geek out about all manner of nerdy topics.) (Celestalon)

Dark Legacy Comics - #434
DLC #434 has been released.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Armory Stats - Battleground Win Ratios, Battleground Queue Times, Blue Tweets, DLC started by chaud View original post
Comments 90 Comments
  1. Syh's Avatar
    The main thing I'm disappointed about:



    I really would love to know the reasoning behind that stance.
  1. Itisamuh's Avatar
    Pretty obvious what these stats indicate. Horde has the better pool of players right now (whether that is because of botting or not is debatable) but those two big maps are imbalanced. I was pretty surprised to see how few players actually use blacklist though.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Syh View Post
    The main thing I'm disappointed about:



    I really would love to know the reasoning behind that stance.
    The reasoning is pretty simple, random battlegrounds are one of the few places left where the faction war is still actually relevant.
  1. Bawl's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrExcelion View Post
    One thing that definitely couldn't be quantified is how long queue times impact a player's desire to win. If you have to wait 8-15 mins as opposed to an instant queue, you might be apt to take it more seriously, or at least not AFK out at the first sign of falling behind (which I see quite a lot of).
    That's actually a good point I hadn't thought of. The shorter the queues the more inclined players are to hop in, halfass their way through, get a few points, and get out. I recall seeing a lot more players like that on alliance side when I bothered with PVP- they're not technically bots but they're pretty close.
  1. Syh's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Itisamuh View Post
    The reasoning is pretty simple, random battlegrounds are one of the few places left where the faction war is still actually relevant.
    That's cool and all but when it affects a faction negatively that's honestly a pretty bad reason. Does only playing against the opposite faction benefit anybody?

    I rather go against both Horde & Alliance groups than have to wait 10-15 minutes simply because they want me to only play against Alliance players.
  1. Thallidomaniac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syh View Post
    That's cool and all but when it affects a faction negatively that's honestly a pretty bad reason. Does only playing against the opposite faction benefit anybody?

    I rather go against both Horde & Alliance groups than have to wait 10-15 minutes simply because they want me to only play against Alliance players.
    It's apparently to hold the argument that keeping a faction war like this is just something that goes with the franchise, and if you take that away, then that's just a sign of pandering to other demands and not keeping the standard gameplay instead. There were some arguments about this back when they made Rated BGs cross-faction due to Horde players having ridiculously long queue times.
  1. glycerethe's Avatar
    Haha 7% increase in Horde AV wins, I told you guys before this change is a joke.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Bawl View Post
    That's actually a good point I hadn't thought of. The shorter the queues the more inclined players are to hop in, halfass their way through, get a few points, and get out. I recall seeing a lot more players like that on alliance side when I bothered with PVP- they're not technically bots but they're pretty close.
    More excuses please, try swap the AV starting place and see if Alliance will have ANY desire to win at all, if Horde starts at Alliance cave, the winning percentage won't be 80%, it will probably be 95%.
  1. Rekra's Avatar
    Long ago PvPers figured out the alliance had an advantage in AV and IoC. Not great, but enough to make the difference in some battles. Totally disagree with holinka, most of the serious horde pvpers are using blacklist and they are blacklisting AV and IoC. Small map imbalance + mostly noob horde players makes those 2 maps the only ones where alliance has advantage.
  1. Sky High's Avatar
    lol dat IoC ratio, oh that's why my entire guild blocks that shit out. total waste of time unless you are the handful that can cap.
  1. longevity's Avatar
    I wish Chaud would post data on premades vs solo q in WoW bg's

    probably be extremely interesting how it factors into the win ratios
  1. Cosmic Janitor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syh View Post
    The main thing I'm disappointed about:



    I really would love to know the reasoning behind that stance.
    They want to keep the non-sensical pseudo (faboi) warfare, with totally war like scenarios like CTF or who can touch the orb in a naughty way the longest, faction specific to never have to change the static faction 'dynamic', which at this point is hardly even canon in itself. Considering how non-sensical faction PvP is in general. A way more elaborate way of doing it would have been to let people decide which surogate race they want to play in the epic retelling of a story, which just let's you chose a race and a faction and just assembles a loby, you know like any sensible PvP game ever. Not to mention this could also make asymetircal gameplay work alot better.
  1. ringpriest's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syh View Post
    The main thing I'm disappointed about:



    I really would love to know the reasoning behind that stance.
    Don't worry. In Blizzard speak, "not on the table" translates to "wait an expansion or two, less if we figure out how to charge for it".

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Haidaes View Post
    They want to keep the non-sensical pseudo (faboi) warfare, with totally war like scenarios like CTF or who can touch the orb in a naughty way the longest, faction specific to never have to change the static faction 'dynamic', which at this point is hardly even canon in itself. Considering how non-sensical faction PvP is in general. A way more elaborate way of doing it would have been to let people decide which surogate race they want to play in the epic retelling of a story, which just let's you chose a race and a faction and just assembles a loby, you know like any sensible PvP game ever. Not to mention this could also make asymetircal gameplay work alot better.
    But then they'd have to abandon the pretense that WoW is an MMORPG, instead of a themeparked lobby game.
  1. Eldrad's Avatar
    Someone explain Strand of Ancients data!!!! It's literally a perfectly balanced map.
  1. Zalraki's Avatar
    So Horde dominates all but 2 BGs due to various things like map travel times, paths, objective locations, layout and gear (yes player skill is only a minor factor)... Yet the only thing Blizzard fixes is 1 of only 2 maps that Alliance has a good chance at.

    I can't help but think biased.

    Based on these stats what reason would any alliance have to do BGs, knowing you will always lose more than you will win, unless you do AV and IoC?
  1. subanark's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eldrad View Post
    Someone explain Strand of Ancients data!!!! It's literally a perfectly balanced map.
    It is one of the hardest maps to learn how to do correctly. All it takes is a few players who know how to slow down defenders once they get past the gate along with proper capping. The vet horde players know how to play this map and since they have avoided IoC and AV, they dominate on that map. Alliance doesn't want to queue that map since they will usually face more experienced horde than alliance they have on their team.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    Those "map imbalances" aren't even remote factors in 99% of matches. They're not the reason why horde lose and ally win a majority of the time in said BGs; the horde have fundamentally flawed strategies in them.
    If the horde have a more difficult stragety in a full on 40 v 40 match up, it matters. Yes, most of it is alliance knows what they are doing since they queue the BG more than horde, but this mostly started with a handful of around 5 per map knowing where to place the glaives such that any horde who sees what is happening has to go really out of their way to kill them. Yes, all it takes is a 5 rouges/feral druids to sneak up and stop them, but trying to convince them to gang up to do this is hard. When horde uses glaives, they are more accessible and less hidden.
  1. ringpriest's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by OUTclassed View Post
    Based on these stats what reason would any alliance have to do BGs, knowing you will always lose more than you will win, unless you do AV and IoC?
    Blizzard is counting on most of their customers being ignorant, and that they'll continue to believe shit like, "it's not really in that bad a shape" and, "we're going to make it even better real soon".
  1. Thallidomaniac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by subanark View Post
    If the horde have a more difficult stragety in a full on 40 v 40 match up, it matters. Yes, most of it is alliance knows what they are doing since they queue the BG more than horde, but this mostly started with a handful of around 5 per map knowing where to place the glaives such that any horde who sees what is happening has to go really out of their way to kill them. Yes, all it takes is a 5 rouges/feral druids to sneak up and stop them, but trying to convince them to gang up to do this is hard. When horde uses glaives, they are more accessible and less hidden.
    And yet, that may not even be enough for a Horde team to win. They tend forget about the second wave of Glaives and let them break into the Horde base. Or even worse, Horde manages to break into the Alliance base first, yet still lose because either they don't have a tank to tank the boss, Horde's DPS on the boss is abysmal (as in ToT LFR boosted toon DPS bad), Alliance have a defense squad inside the boss room, or somehow Horde manage to pull the boss out of his room making him enrage and one-shot everyone.
  1. ringpriest's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by subanark View Post
    It is one of the hardest maps to learn how to do correctly. All it takes is a few players who know how to slow down defenders once they get past the gate along with proper capping. The vet horde players know how to play this map and since they have avoided IoC and AV, they dominate on that map. Alliance doesn't want to queue that map since they will usually face more experienced horde than alliance they have on their team.
    Yep. And don't forget that just 1 or 2 players who know how to speed up the flag caps can make a huge difference in that BG. And with any of these: Strand, IoC, or AV, there are multiple positive feedback loops going on. (Negative reinforcement for the losers, positive reinforcement for the winners, accumulated experience with the BG, morale, experienced vs. inexperienced players queue, etc.) It's taken literally years to get to the huge imbalances that we see now. Unless Blizz manages to fix Silvershard soon, you're eventually going to see a similar effect there I suspect, and it will be equally hard to reverse. Full redesigns might get things back to an even keel, IF they were properly done. (But that would probably come at the cost of a raid tier or two. )
  1. MrExcelion's Avatar
    Yeah, years in the making like you said, just how the current faction imbalances on servers didn't happen overnight when server transfers opened up
  1. subanark's Avatar
    Even equal maps will eventually lead to this problem as long as you have two separate groups fighting each other (instead of allowing players to fight within factions). If they don't want to mixup with same faction fights, they will need to provide incentive for playing those maps even with a greater chance of losing:
    1. Increase honor gain if your side is losing a lot, like they did in Wintergrasp (or possibly something more exciting).
    2. Force players to rotate though the BGs. E.g. A reward bonus if you participate in (that is play until you win or lose) every BG once per week.
    3. Provide some kind of BG buff to the side that isn't winning as often (probably not a good idea).
  1. Barnabas's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syh View Post
    The main thing I'm disappointed about:



    I really would love to know the reasoning behind that stance.
    The underlying premise of the game is horde vs alliance battles. So why detract from that?

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