There was a 20% swing from Alliance to Horde since Classic. See below:
Not only will the same faction BG change cause even more people to go Horde, it continues to reward min-max meta chasing. You would have thought Blizz would have learned from the world buff problem in Classic…
TBC faction imbalance was telegraphed more prominently than Talon King Ikiss’s arcane explosion.
The majority of this is retail tourists.
… and the world keeps turning.
Regardless of my thoughts on implementing war games as the solution to horde queue times, what was your proposed solution? Please elaborate. Right now, all I see is a complaint without any kind of solution. Fact is, I don’t think there is anything Blizzard can do with the current state of TBCC servers to balance the factions. You want to talk fresh servers, that’s a wildly different topic. But this change strikes me as Blizzard making a code change in an effort to proactively keep the most people subbed that they can while impacting the fewest number of players.
What this change should tell you is just how bad they anticipate the state of alliance queuing into BGs will be in the next couple of months and chose to proactively make a change now rather than wait on it.
and Blizz is being influenced by them and changing classic to a retail hybrid
Shouldn’t the devs be coming up with and trying other solutions?
I’ll give it a shot with ideas that should have seen many times before this weekend on the forums:
Increase bonus honor gains for everyone. Honor acquisition is too slow and is far behind PVE.
Free faction changes.
Wait a month until the Horde retail tourists move on.
Adjust alliance racials. If Blizz is going to have same faction BGs, then no changes are off the table
Bonus honor or marks for Alliance. This is done in retail.
Merc mode
Using the nuclear option right out of the box was irresponsible and short-sighted. Now, even if Blizz offered free faction xfers, it likely won’t work because people will hold out for same faction BGs.
Actually I saw a thread titled “Aldor vs Scryer” by Joehidin that would easily explain how to do infaction PvP fighting with a system that already exists.
This happened when BC was “retail.”
Anyone else remember Cho’Gall? Alliance there literally BEGGED for help about once a month on Cho’Gall, because you literally couldn’t play Alliance there.
So rather than solve the more inherent problem with the game, just accommodate one faction and make the problem worse?
This change basically tells me Blizz knows TBC is going to be in the trash can/mainetance mode in three months and they just want to keep a few subs as long as possible.
The fact that a Classic+ poll went out before the first 30 days of TBC shows the writing is on the wall that TBC is not delivering enough subs.
They should. Presumably they looked at multiple options and chose this one.
Personally, I think 1 should be done regardless as should 2.
I guess. Seems to me like the game bleeds subs too fast if that is implemented though.
I think they should do this as well. There are a number of ways to accomplish it. My favorite would be to have a list of racials to choose from and you get to pick 3. Would probably need to change them from racials to “traits” or something, but it would definitely make it fair across the board.
Given the state of A/H ratios in retail, this seems like all it does is give alliance an advantage without any tangible benefit to evening out the factions.
Would have preferred merc mode. I don’t think that does much for evening out the factions either though.
This is hard to know without having any analytics to go off of, but again the speculation is there and Blizzard is basically screaming that they don’t see the alliance queuing into BGs at a sustainable rate.
Whether that means they think TBCC is going into maintenance mode early isn’t something I think we can know from this. The survey is way more indicative of the complete graveyard that is current classic era servers than anything about TBCC. Those servers are on life support right now and something needs to be done in that sphere.
I don’t follow Asmongold at all, but I did hear one thing he said that was interesting and probably true is that the most interesting thing Blizzard has released for world of warcraft in the last 5 years is a game they created 15 years ago. That’s telling in and of itself and I think it is likely true. The sad fact is that other than the game being a money generator, they don’t have any ideas left. Basically that translates into decisions intended to maximize subs rather than actually making a good game. Unfortunately, it very much feels like that’s where this game is.
I agree with you. I just wish they tried something else before same faction BGs.
If there were basically no Alliance q’ing, I admit this might have been the only option. I appreciate that it would suck for there to be 100+Horde in queue and only 10-20 Alliance. But it’s clear they either didn’t care about trying other options or there was no hope, both of which are bad.
Now that the genie is out of the bottle, faction changing will be far less likely without Alliance only bonus honor.
Using this term is just dumb, like you are somehow elite for playing classic.
Just let people enjoy the game, if you want a healthy game don’t try to roast others for playing a game you love, like what logic is that?
The logic is cutting off your nose despite your face.
Making changes to satisfy retail tourists who will be gone in 2 months at the risk of losing long-term fans is a bad business decision no matter how you look at it.
It’s true though? Horde had near the same que times for the majority of classic and people knew it was bad.
Then all the sudden TBC came out and people were shocked that TBC que times are bad for horde? Lol
There is PLENTY blizzard could do. Implement faction based queues, server transfers, improve honor gains for the less populated faction, the list goes on. Blizzard chose the ONE option that could literally kill the alliance on pvp servers.
Just FYI, it’s “Cut off your nose to spite your face.”
You also get a hug.
And it’s a slippery slope.
As Alliance bail on PVP servers, it’s harder to form Alliance premades. As Horde population increases, it makes it easier to form Horde premades.
There is plenty they could do, but you make it sound like alliance on pvp servers aren’t already going extinct on all but a couple of very specific servers. The sad fact is that blizzard needs solutions that entice the pve crowd into pvp. That means pve rewards for doing pvp. And the thing is, I am not even positive these would work.
But if you are banking on getting the pvp server population up for the alliance side, I have bad news for you. Nothing is going to do that.
Edit: And there is precedent saying that pve players will do exactly that for pve rewards. Classic pvp was littered with pve rewards and generally speaking alliance queued early to get those rewards. There would need to be something similar, but in seasons to keep a steady stream of alliance playing BGs. I don’t know what that looks like, but that’s what actually needs to happen to save BG queues without crushing the faction balance further. Add in free faction changes and suddenly we might be in business.
The term is "Cutting off the nose to spite your face " just in case you need to use it again in the future.