Blizzard, it’s a rather big oversight to implement the battle group split across all levels. I understand that the 60 PvP bracket can afford the split, but the lower level PvP brackets (59 and below) don’t possess very large player pools (although they do have healthy community sizes atm). Cutting down the player base in half for lower level battle grounds can only hurt these communities.
The people that play in these lower level battle grounds are not playing them for honor, they are playing them for the sake of PvPing. One could even make the argument that you could not even apply double honor weekend in these lower level battle grounds. After all, AV double honor weekend does not even apply in most of them (49 and below). It would be very tragic if this change destroyed the lower level BG community. The change won’t be felt in the 60 bracket, but it will definitely be noticeable everywhere else.
Please reconsider this change for the lower level brackets.
Split it. It doesnt matter as long as matches are still popping. It makes it even more close knit. I think the 29 and 39 brackets can take it without any issue. And I stopped caring about the 19 because it’s dead during my playtime anyway.
It’s a bad idea for all levels. It’s going to increase queue times for everyone, which is never welcomed (and is even worse as the playerbase decreases). It’s also unnecessary. Just set it all to the same time… Blizz time or central or w/e. No need to split things up at this point.
Take it “without issue”? Cutting the player base in half for a limited population would cause queue issues.
Also, if the brackets you play in are faction skewed in US West but not so bad when combined with US East, that will also impact queue times negatively.
Don’t be so sure that your brackets can handle it.
Totally unrelated - but - Any servers known for twinking? I know you’re ally on grob atm. Is it worth leveling my twink on my home server and xferring it?
Or does it not matter cause twinks end up in the same bgs anyway?
You raise a good point there that I wasn’t thinking about. I play on a West Coast Server, but my time play is more in-line with east coast. Could easily go pretty bad for me on that split.
Outside of the time zone part of it, let’s say player queues are like this:
US West: 28 A; 16 H
US East: 23 A; 37 H
Combined games under previous system: 5 games
Combines games under new system: 1 game US West; 2 games US East
Queue times will increase, no question about it. Relatively fast queues may now get pushed into the 15+ minute time length or more, and it may hit one region/faction quite a bit more too.
It doesn’t matter since you end up in the same BG unless you want to group queue with other twinks (which isn’t really good for the bracket anyways).
If Blizzard doesn’t change the separate battlegroup system, my guess is that twinks will eventually migrate to one region to improve queue times (leaving the other region to fester).
Honestly, it’s not a bad idea to level on your main server and transfer it (assuming you don’t mind shelling out the cost of a server transfer). It would be the smoothest leveling process for sure.
@Charax your post completely highlights the problem with splitting the lower brackets into two battle groups. There is good potential for queues on both sides to go up. Furthermore, the time of day when queues begin to happen might get pushed further back. It also concentrates the player base heavily, and reduces diversity of classes, and overall there’s just a smaller player pool to pull from.
Summed up perfectly. It will affect even level 60 believe it or not, and greatly affects lower brackets. Not sure why this change even seemed necessary.
I hope for your sake that the majority of one faction wasn’t concentrated on either east or west coast servers
Even a 10% faction imbalance in this regard could add over an hour to queue times
Blizzard, please revert the battle group change for lower level brackets. Twink community was healthy before, but now this could ruin it. You are splitting apart a small community. Players will quit if twink queues become too long
Due to time zone differential (according to the post) west coast and east coast servers will now be on separate battle groups. As in, west coast players will now only face west coast players and vice versa. Personally, I do not believe it will have a significant affect on the 60s bracket, however, there’s a strong possibility it can have an adverse affect on any of the other “twink” brackets.
I can’t speak for all low level PvPers, but I personally do not care whatsoever about honor, double honor, or whatever. Honestly, I just want to PvP against like minded people and have quality games. AV weekend already does not apply to lower level brackets. You may as well keep the system the same, and just apply double honor at max rank.