Testing Same-Faction Battlegrounds in Burning Crusade Classic

[Mhyroth]

What would you suggest?

I'll quote a player from a different forum called Ontheluna for you

"Just so you realise, alliance players are pissed because apparently every fundamental change is on the table except for addressing the root cause of the faction imbalance - racial abilities. Count how many changes have had to be made because horde players outnumber alliance: AV premades - gone; honour from killing the same player - capped at 10 with diminishing returns; Dark Portal is a sanctuary zone; paladin seals.

The horde queue times wouldn't be as bad if the horde weren't objectively stronger than the alliance.

So yes, I want everyone to have fun playing the game and merc mode helps horde do that. But the festering boil that is population imbalance simply has another band aid applied to it rather than being lanced once and for all by making meaningful and positive changes to racials so there are pros and cons to playing both factions. Because from where we're sitting, they're removing all the cons from horde and the only pro the mathematically weaker alliance have ever been given was paladin seals."

This kills all incentive to play Alliance at all and will spiral into the same sh*tfest Retail is right now.

[Relapses]

I'll quote a player from a different forum called Ontheluna for you

"Just so you realise, alliance players are pissed because apparently every fundamental change is on the table except for addressing the root cause of the faction imbalance - racial abilities. Count how many changes have had to be made because horde players outnumber alliance: AV premades - gone; honour from killing the same player - capped at 10 with diminishing returns; Dark Portal is a sanctuary zone; paladin seals.

The horde queue times wouldn't be as bad if the horde weren't objectively stronger than the alliance.

So yes, I want everyone to have fun playing the game and merc mode helps horde do that. But the festering boil that is population imbalance simply has another band aid applied to it rather than being lanced once and for all by making meaningful and positive changes to racials so there are pros and cons to playing both factions. Because from where we're sitting, they're removing all the cons from horde and the only pro the mathematically weaker alliance have ever been given was paladin seals."

This kills all incentive to play Alliance at all and will spiral into the same sh*tfest Retail is right now.

Removing racials now won't suddenly fix the issue either. Sounds like people bitching for the sake of bitching, offering no real solutions and just in general being mad that Blizzard has the audacity to let the game exist.

[Drench]

Congratulations to all who used their one-per-account boost on Alliance char only because of instant queues, you've essentially wasted your boost. I did.

Dummy haha. You knew this was coming.

[Coffeh]

These people crying about racials are so silly. It's an mmorpg. Rpg elements are a huge part of the game. If you want to play a boring, bland game where everything is 100% 'balanced' there's plenty of other types of games for that. Going the e-sport route with WoW the first time around sucked the soul out of the game. And the reality is things like racial abilities are not what the VAST majority of players care about in terms of what race they play. It's just added flavor. You could remove racials from the game and it won't do a damn thing for faction balance, but it will suck some cool lore and rpg elements out of the game.

Anyway, this change is fine. Their whole 'battle practice' reasoning with players wearing masks and tabards is actually a bit inventive...which is very rare for Blizzard these days.

[Lochton]

Testing Same-Faction Battlegrounds in Burning Crusade Classic

Hello, Battleground enthusiasts!

As soon as we saw Battleground queue times go way up a few weeks ago, we got to work on our options for addressing the situation. They’ve all been discussed here and elsewhere, as you know, and in addition to following your discussions closely, we looked at game history and data. What was most evident from all of your feedback was: players want to continue to play on their chosen side of the faction conflict, players don’t want to wait in long queues for BGs, and players don’t want a highly convoluted mechanism for getting into a BG.

To solve those issues as best we can, we’ve been internally testing a configuration where the War Games system is used to bring about Horde vs. Horde or Alliance vs. Alliance Battlegrounds from the regular queue, and we’re ready to test it in the live game. Here’s the plan:

• Starting tomorrow (Friday, July 2), we’re going to enable same-faction Battlegrounds.
• You’ll queue for BGs as usual, and the matchmaker will first try to make an opposite-faction match for you.
• If an opposite-faction match cannot be quickly made, you’ll be matched against a team from your faction.
• Rewards such as Honor and Reputation will be assigned as usual.

We’ve been thinking of these like military training exercises, and to help get that feeling across in-game, we’re testing putting masks and tabards on the team playing out of the enemy faction’s base.

Please note that same-faction play won’t be available for Alterac Valley, which was never hooked up for War Games and would be particularly awkward for the team that found themselves fighting alongside a great number of enemy NPCs.

We’ll follow the action closely throughout the weekend, and with scheduled maintenance next week (July 6 in this region), we’re going to return the matchmaker to its regular configuration and analyze what happened.

When same-faction play goes live tomorrow, we’ll open a new feedback thread in this forum. After you’ve played some BGs, please come to that new thread and let us know how it went.

Thank you!

I do hope this will be added for main/progression servers too. Mostly just because it would be great. We have mercenary but would rather this system.

[SinR]

Wow.

The Mad Lads actually did it

[LordVargK]

Removing racials now won't suddenly fix the issue either. Sounds like people bitching for the sake of bitching, offering no real solutions and just in general being mad that Blizzard has the audacity to let the game exist.

The real solution would be to remove factions entirely. Or limit the ratio of H:A on servers.

Or: Do nothing. Everyone that started TBC and rolled Horde knew about the problems, but chose Horde because of BElvs or racials. Now everyone that went Alliance solely to shorten their queue times is fucked.

[Kralljin]

Which means that Horde has the Advantage now. Before long queue times offset their better racials and the most played race in the game. Now they have better racials, the prettiest race AND fast queue times.

I'm not going to argue about that, but the point is that Alliance itself loses nothing, they will have instant queues.

I laid out what should happen if you want to remotely solve the faction balance issue, but that's beyond the scope of TBC.

This kills all incentive to play Alliance at all and will spiral into the same sh*tfest Retail is right now.

Mate, as long as Blizzard is unwilling to actually redesign those older version, those legacy servers will inevitably end up as Retail, because Blizzard is just rereleasing expansions, hence you will enter the "retail territory" sooner or later.

[Dequanacus]

And claiming that Horde will have the "same queue times" is a massive assumption, because it will only be enabled when queue times are long(er) for a certain faction, hence Alliance will still have faster queues than Horde.

The bluepost itself states that it will simply take horde players in queue and make a horde v horde battleground if an alliance one isn't available. Logically, we have no reason to assume it won't be instantaneous.

[Relapses]

The real solution would be to remove factions entirely. Or limit the ratio of H:A on servers.

Or: Do nothing. Everyone that started TBC and rolled Horde knew about the problems, but chose Horde because of BElvs or racials. Now everyone that went Alliance solely to shorten their queue times is fucked.

I'm usually of the opinion that doing nothing is the right approach but I think the severity of this particular problem and the intrinsic impact it has on the game itself is why Blizzard has decided to act on it. I don't really think this or Merc mode are the best solutions but it's a step in the right direction. I think providing additional incentives for Alliance to actually fucking queue (shit like free VP or bonus honor or something) is the better, more elegant solution but it seems like Blizzard is reluctant to go this route.

[kranur]

Bandaid attempt at fix. Sure it will be great short term. Remains to be seen what happens to factions long term. Though with wotlk all but confirmed, many will probably stay there and many flock over to grab humans new racial .. but remains to be seen.

[Kralljin]

The bluepost itself states that it will simply take horde players in queue and make a horde v horde battleground if an alliance one isn't available. Logically, we have no reason to assume it won't be instantaneous.

If an opposite-faction match cannot be quickly made, you’ll be matched against a team from your faction.

Unless quickly means less than nothing, then it can't be instant.
Heck, it's a more restricted version of Merc mode and even with that you don't have instant queue pops.

It also needs to be underlined: They're testing this feature for the coming weekend, it's gone next week, this is not a permanent solution.

[Dequanacus]

Unless quickly means less than nothing, then it can't be instant.
Heck, it's a more restricted version of Merc mode and even with that you don't have instant queue pops.

It also needs to be underlined: They're testing this feature for the coming weekend, it's gone next week, this is not a permanent solution.

I feel like it's a common sense conclusion to reach that quickly would be "if an AvH bg isn't already available it will automatically switch to HvH".

[Warning]

I'll quote a player from a different forum called Ontheluna for you

"Just so you realise, alliance players are pissed because apparently every fundamental change is on the table except for addressing the root cause of the faction imbalance - racial abilities. Count how many changes have had to be made because horde players outnumber alliance: AV premades - gone; honour from killing the same player - capped at 10 with diminishing returns; Dark Portal is a sanctuary zone; paladin seals.

The horde queue times wouldn't be as bad if the horde weren't objectively stronger than the alliance.

So yes, I want everyone to have fun playing the game and merc mode helps horde do that. But the festering boil that is population imbalance simply has another band aid applied to it rather than being lanced once and for all by making meaningful and positive changes to racials so there are pros and cons to playing both factions. Because from where we're sitting, they're removing all the cons from horde and the only pro the mathematically weaker alliance have ever been given was paladin seals."

This kills all incentive to play Alliance at all and will spiral into the same sh*tfest Retail is right now.

Racials aren't the difference though. Alliance actually has better racials for the current arena meta. Rogue Mage is the most dominant 2s comp and alliance is better in the mirror. RMP is the most dominant 3s comp and the alliance version is favoured in the matchup as well. Alliance (gnome) warriors are better than any horde warrior. Warlocks you can argue undead and orc, although I don't think gnome or human is really much worse.

The real difference is simply that PVPers want to have options for arena partners, and currently horde has many more.

[LordVargK]

I'm usually of the opinion that doing nothing is the right approach but I think the severity of this particular problem and the intrinsic impact it has on the game itself is why Blizzard has decided to act on it. I don't really think this or Merc mode are the best solutions but it's a step in the right direction. I think providing additional incentives for Alliance to actually fucking queue (shit like free VP or bonus honor or something) is the better, more elegant solution but it seems like Blizzard is reluctant to go this route.

Blizzard is probably reluctant because it's already too late. The Horde outnumbers Alliance by such a margin that no bonus would ever be enough to convince enough Alliance players to queue.
They just ripped the bandaid off and effectively chose to make the majority of players happy by ignoring the Alliance and giving the Horde everything they want.
Better to have no Alliance players and full Horde sides than a few Alliance players and Horde players quitting.

[Kralljin]

I feel like it's a common sense conclusion to reach that quickly would be "if an AvH bg isn't already available it will automatically switch to HvH".

And that switch will only be performed after a certain time, not right off the bat.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

They should just train their combat AI and a do comp stomps.

What could go wrong.

[Relapses]

Blizzard is probably reluctant because it's already too late. The Horde outnumbers Alliance by such a margin that no bonus would ever be enough to convince enough Alliance players to queue.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the H:A ratio across all servers fairly even? The issue is the lack of Alliance queuing not a lack of Alliance players.

[Puxycat]

It is very unfair. Horde has the world pvp advantage and best pve-pvp traits and now also this... World of Hordecraft Horde'ing Crusade Classic.

[Kralljin]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the H:A ratio across all servers fairly even? The issue is the lack of Alliance queuing not a lack of Alliance players.

At least from public available data (which is Warcraftlogs, thus only PvE), the ratio has started to shift in the Horde's favor since TBC launch.

It used to be 45-55 (Alliance Favored) in Classic, in TBC it straight flipped to 55-45 (horde favor) within a few weeks.