A Frank Discussion about Premades and “Premades”

PVP Battlegrounds
1

The other night, I queued for some chill random BGs with a group of guildies. When I say a group, I mean this in the loosest possible sense. Were weren’t stacking classes/specs, many of us weren’t geared, some of us were PVE players who don’t even really PVP, we weren’t using Discord - nothing. It was just a group of guildies playing together, being social.

We got a DHR as one of our maps and completely destroyed the other team. They didn’t stop me from stealing their Priest (I was on my BDK), their Resto Druid was being farmed, they lost both carts and crystal almost every time, and they got wiped over and over. It was a disaster for the Alliance.

After the match, we were sitting in Dorn, talking about queueing up again when one of our guildies had to leave the group. Seeing as we had an open spot, we asked in guild chat if anyone else wanted in before we queued up. As we were waiting around, the group leader received a request to join group from some random person (not a guildie) who turned out to be a Level 1 Mage.

Upon joining the group, this Mage proceeded to immediately go on expletive-filled rant about Premades, and accused us of being an organized Tich Premade looking to farm PuGs - you know the shtick. “You’re all in Discord”, “You’re all trash”, “You have to farm PuGs”, etc., etc. - but with more spicy words involved. He also made sure to deliberately go after who he correctly presumed to be the females in our group, and make them feel as uncomfortable as possibly with his piss-poor language. I can’t even say what he said because I would be insta-silenced.

…All this because the guy was in that losing DHR.

People… it’s about time we had a frank discussion about Premades and “Premades,” because it seems to me that you don’t really know the difference between the two. Just because a group of players comes from the same guild and the same server means jack all. Not every group you face is an organized Premade. Some are just a group of friends playing some chill random BGs together.

Fact of the matter is this: you call every group a “Premade” because you want to find an excuse for why you lost. It couldn’t have been because your team played poorly, it couldn’t have been because your team had more under-geared alts on it, etc. No - it had to be the group of friends on the other side. Obviously they’re organized because (according to “Anti-Premade” logic) all groups are organized - in Discord, calling strats, etc. I’m so sick and tired of that lame excuse. Organized? We basically just hit the queue together. That’s about as far as we were organized.

At any rate, WoW is an MMO. It’s a social game. People tend to want to play together in MMOs. If you want a true solo player experience, go play Super Mario Bros.

In my eyes, after this experience, the “Anti-Premade crusade” is over. If this is the sort of people your “Crusade” produces - people like this whiny, foul-mouthed Mage - then you don’t deserve any support from the PVP community or from Blizzard. How many people in this “Anti-Premade crusade” are like this whiny, foul-mouthed Mage? How many are just sore losers looking for something to blame for their losses? How many are just anti-social loners living in their mom’s basement? With the way this Mage behaved, I could see why he’d be alone. He’s just mad that he has no friends. Maybe if he stopped behaving like a jerk, he’d have some?

…All this because we were in a group, hanging out, in an MMO.

Grow up, people! Not every group you face is a sweaty, try-hard, PuG-farming Premade! Friends play together! You might have some friends, too, if you didn’t behave like jerks!

4 Likes
2

Lotta name-calling for a fella calling another fella out for name-calling, innit?
Regardless, I am clapping. Yass, king.

6 Likes
3

I made a friend in a random bg just by saying hi to him when I would see him inside and outside of the battlegrounds. Found out he routinely queues with two other people. I only do random battlegrounds if i’m queuing with my girlfriend, so together we have a nice five man group. We haven’t used discord, but we win I’d say 80% of the games that we play as a five player party.

Sometimes we lose, and it’s not even close, sometimes we lose and it’s exceptionally close, sometimes we win when the scores are very close, and most often we win while we are slaughtering them and having a great time.
That last kind of game where the enemy team has no hope several minutes in, our other teammates that we don’t know could potentially also be a five man team of people that work well together. And I can see how that could look like queue syncing to our opposition.

From their perspective, they may see a lot of the same names on the same team over and over, and draw and inaccurate, but well-educated guess as to what’s happening.

4

The burning crusade will never end

5

I wish people would make level 1 alts and try to join my group, that would have been some great entertainment

We used to joke when seeing a guild premade “easy game, it’s a guild premade” because 99% of the guild premades are either PVE players who have no idea how to pvp or are very casual PVPers just looking to have fun

It’s always the worst players that draw conclusions from nothing as if they’re fact. “you’re bad and need a group to play” “you just want to stomp pugs”. Lol, maybe we just like to have fun with friends and play with reliable friends who make your experience more enjoyable

6

It was.

We were kind of caught off-guard with how salty this Mage was over a random BG. As entertaining as it was, it was still entirely inappropriate.

Describes the situation very accurately.

It’s like they’ve never been in a guild before. Someone is going to queue for some chill random BGs and goes “Hey… anyone here want in for some chill random BGs?” That’s about as organized as it gets. You get under-geared alts, PVE players looking to hang, people just learning a new class/spec, people playing the worst possible classes/specs/builds, etc.

7

Those last couple of paragraphs really drove home the irony of this post.

3 Likes
8

Totally agree with this. A lot of people are just toxic.

But this experience does not mean, at all, that queue syncing isn’t extremely frustrating. His behavior isn’t acceptable and he’s probably sitting in a ban right now if he was reported (And you should have reported him).

But one angry little waste isn’t proof that there aren’t some problems out there.

3 Likes
9

Granted I regularly play in premades with good PvPers but…ya know

Solo queue players wanted blitz, they got blitz. RBGs are now dead (more dead than they were). The only place for groups of 2+ players to play now are randoms

10

I don’t think I’ve seen a single instance of queue syncing for 2+ expansions in random BGs. I know of exactly one group who has done it in these 2 expansions, but never run into them

11

Of course. I understand this.

The problem, however, is that way too many people in this “Anti-Premade crusade” go around attacking any and all groups as if they were all organized Premades when - in fact - most of them probably aren’t. Most of them are likely going to be just a group of friends, guildies, etc., that happened to queue together. Most of them are also not going to be even remotely organized.

Of course, people don’t like to consider that. The convenient “Premade” excuse serves another purpose: avoiding responsibility. You didn’t lose because you played poorly, but you lost because the “Odds were against you”, “The outcome was rigged”, etc., etc.

Of course.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not denying that there are issues with Premading, but I’m saying that the “Anti-Premade” crowd doesn’t have the green light to go around attacking any and all groups because of their ridiculously conspiratorial suspicions.

One of the things that makes this issue so difficult is knowing when you are actually facing an organized Premade. You really need to stop treating it as if every single group was an organized Premade. You certainly shouldn’t go around harassing people based solely on your baseless suspicions.

I honestly wonder just how prevalent the problem actually is as opposed to how it seems.

5 man? With friends?

Working as intended? :dracthyr_love_animated:

While I get that people might not like that (I can certainly sympathize with them), it’s the way the game has been designed. It’s been like that since forever. It’s an MMO. They’re social games. It’s hard to knock players for grouping up in an MMO - even if they’ll have varying degrees of advantage in content that doesn’t matter.

The thing is… I really don’t know what people expect Blizzard to do. While I get that playing into a Premade sucks (we’ve all been on the receiving end of that)… what exactly do they think is the solution? Make the whole game Solo and destroy the sense of community even more? If that’s what they think, then maybe it’s time to reconsider playing MMOs?

1 Like
12

Well, it’s a good thing you documented the full encounter here for us.

13

We’re on the same page, but just discussing some other perspectives, that’s all!

I will also acknowledge that it’s basically impossible to look at a BG roster and just be like, “Yup, that’s clearly a queue sync’d premade.”.

However, the fix to the frustration is, to me, the same old fix.

Disincentive toxic premade gameplay by… Get this… Cool idea…

Rewarding fast wins. If a team wins in 3 minutes, they should be seeing substantially more rewards. Or 5. However long. This would stop the long, drawn out turtle matches “for honor”, or long graveyard farms. (Well, okay, it won’t stop it, but it would help a ton)

And reward losing. Reward trying. Reward players for doing lots of damage and healing and CC and playing near objectives. This was a much more complicated ask 15 years ago. Today it should be very doable.

Also, could consider rewarding come back victories. Larger rewards where you get behind, either in points or flag captures by a certain, reasonable threshold. This could accomplish two things.

  1. Allow a sort of… “Give them a chance” mentally for strong premades or lobbies where they don’t deliberately wipe everyone and on the opener and then GY farm because they’d see better rewards for a closer game.

  2. Incentive the people who don’t leave after the first 30 seconds of a bad start to keep trying and maybe actually see some rewards for the benefits.

Personally?

All 3 would be great.

14

Most people in premades are not there for the “rewards” evidenced by the fact that they are still going at the end of the season.

Which if you have done literally anything at all you are already in full gear. So there is nothing left to be gained.

So that means they are either if we want to be generous 1.farming bg achievements or 2. Just griefing.

Or they are searching for a “close good game” that has a 95% chance of never occuring because of their usually stacked and experienced team in the again starter/inexperienced bracket.

There is really not a whole lot to be gained by premading in randoms instead over literally any other bracket in general which is why i never could figure out why they choose to sit in the most casual bracket with the least amount of return on investment in the entire game. Until i realized human nature and that they are just there to make other people miserable usually.

2 Likes
15

Bloodstones for gold

They want to play what they and you like, battlegrounds. But do it all together, not that hard to grasp.
Now, is is exploitive? Yes.
Does it upset you? Yes.
Should it be allowed? No.
Will blizzard ever do anything about it? If not by Midnight launch, then no.
Continue to pay and play? Yes? No? Maybe?

16

I’ve said before that literally any gold farm in this entire game gets beat out by just putting in more hours at work for wow tokens.

Which is crazy to think about that just farming more hours at work gets you closer to in game goals than actual in game gold farms but thats where we are.

17

So you waste your real life money to skip the lines and buy gold, great.
I made 500k gold so far just by queueing bgs over the last few weeks and still have 20$ to my name.

What are you even spending gold on after enchants anyway? Goldshire Inn?

18

I solo q on my rogue sometimes late at night because I just want to play and not lead. Any time the horde get stomped the whining starts that it’s automatically a premade on the other side. I even flat out tell them, no, it’s not a premade, group up and fight.

1 Like
19

Solo queueing random BGs is a terrible experience, not defending you or the level 1 mage. They’re just not fun and I don’t recommend them to solo players. You’ll be farmed 7 out of 10 games as a solo player. Queue blitz instead.

1 Like
20

Well there’s Premades and “Premades”. But there’s also PrEmAdEs