...Is Ion for real? He thinks that increased rewards will bring alliance back into warmode, when the vast majority of alliance have forgotten that warmode even exists?
This kind of measure is too little too late. A few alliance may turn on warmode, find themselves getting facing repeated 10v1 situations and then turn it off again.
Some time ago we made a hotfix to War Mode which enforces all War Mode shards that have both Alliance and Horde in them to have a stricter, more even ratio. Weâve been monitoring the results and so far weâve noticed a significant improvement in âfair and balancedâ shards. So much so that itâs safe to say that if you are Alliance, and you see Horde in the outdoor world in War Mode, you are a relatively even horde to alliance ratio shard. There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
We do have some plans in store in Tides of Vengeance (Patch 8.1) to entice the underrepresented faction with greater rewards to increase participation and create more active Horde/Allianced mixed War Mode shards. The intent of those rewards is not to give the underrepresented faction some âcompensationâ for being outnumbered in a War Mode shard (since that really canât happen anymore).
We're also looking forward to what you all think about the Incursions in War Mode for 8.1, since it brings Horde and Alliance to the same location which should create some pretty fun skirmishes.
Interesting, how long ago were those changes? I haven't logged in much for awhile. I never felt like I was in an equally balanced shard back when I was playing frequently.
What % of shards currently are basically 100% horde vs. ones that have both factions in them?
Does the shard manager randomly rip players out of other shards without warning to balance other shards? If so, would it not be better to have at least a chat message saying "you're being moved to another shard for X reason" and possibly waiting for them to be done with what they're doing before you do so? Or saying somewhere you're currently in an all horde shard and will be moved to another shard when there's room. When I was playing, I would sometimes be in the middle of a WQ with nobody around and randomly appear in the middle of a dozen enemies and die. Not sure if that was the work of the shard manager or if that was before the changes you're talking about.
If you have equal numbers of each faction in a shard, that doesn't mean you have similar levels of organization or that those players are in the same parts of the zone or that half of one faction isn't sitting afk in a town.
Incursions sound like PvE content when I read about them. They may get people to come to the same spot, as PvE WQs already do, but nothing about them would seem to entice anyone to come to that area or stay there after they've already finished their PvE objectives.
Why not have PvP-centric content with more PvP oriented objectives in War Mode? It seems odd that the primary ways of getting players to go to the same spot are PvE content. There should be PvP content to get you to come PvP and stick around PvPing rather than swooping in, doing PvE with minor side PvP and then moving on to more PvE. Now that you have a PvE and PvP mode, you could add more PvP specific content to the PvP mode.
Some time ago we made a hotfix to War Mode which enforces all War Mode shards that have both Alliance and Horde in them to have a stricter, more even ratio. Weâve been monitoring the results and so far weâve noticed a significant improvement in âfair and balancedâ shards. So much so that itâs safe to say that if you are Alliance, and you see Horde in the outdoor world in War Mode, you are a relatively even horde to alliance ratio shard. There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
I think most of us would prefer changes to be reverted to how they were prior to sharding and the prepatch. I rolled on a pvp server 9 years ago when I first started, yes my server was mostly Alliance. CRZ helped introduce more horde into the mix, however sharding has created an environment where 90% of alliance play with warmode off, further increasing the imbalance.
I love wpvp, but I don't like getting camped at every single wq node by 5-10 horde. And this wasn't a problem in Legion. It's only been an issue since the pre-patch when sharding was introduced. And yes I have also turned on warmode this past week. It's still just as bad. 1 alliance to 5 horde at each wq node.
The general faction imbalance makes sharding balancing impossible unless you restrict the ratio to 1:1, which would also create horde only shards due to the amount of them vs alliance.
The only real fix I can think of is create a system where the faction imbalance corrects itself like in battlegrounds where horde are put in with alliance. Then a 1:1 ration can be feasible and maintained.
- Or free faction changes from horde to alliance...
We do have some plans in store in Tides of Vengeance (Patch 8.1) to entice the underrepresented faction with greater rewards to increase participation and create more active Horde/Allianced mixed War Mode shards. The intent of those rewards is not to give the underrepresented faction some âcompensationâ for being outnumbered in a War Mode shard (since that really canât happen anymore).
We're also looking forward to what you all think about the Incursions in War Mode for 8.1, since it brings Horde and Alliance to the same location which should create some pretty fun skirmishes.
You can let Ion know that no amount of rewards will entice me to turn it back on. It's just a huge waste of time and time is more valuable than any increased rep (already exalted with everyone), AP (pretty much capped out at an effective power level for the rest of this tier) or gold (Hilariously low compared to Legion) reward. He can try but his vision of making World PvP great again has failed miserably.
<span class="truncated">...</span>Is Ion for real? He thinks that increased rewards will bring alliance back into warmode, when the vast majority of alliance have forgotten that warmode even exists?
This kind of measure is too little too late. A few alliance may turn on warmode, find themselves getting facing repeated 10v1 situations and then turn it off again.
Some time ago we made a hotfix to War Mode which enforces all War Mode shards that have both Alliance and Horde in them to have a stricter, more even ratio. Weâve been monitoring the results and so far weâve noticed a significant improvement in âfair and balancedâ shards. So much so that itâs safe to say that if you are Alliance, and you see Horde in the outdoor world in War Mode, you are a relatively even horde to alliance ratio shard. There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
We do have some plans in store in Tides of Vengeance (Patch 8.1) to entice the underrepresented faction with greater rewards to increase participation and create more active Horde/Allianced mixed War Mode shards. The intent of those rewards is not to give the underrepresented faction some âcompensationâ for being outnumbered in a War Mode shard (since that really canât happen anymore).
We're also looking forward to what you all think about the Incursions in War Mode for 8.1, since it brings Horde and Alliance to the same location which should create some pretty fun skirmishes.
I spent the time after BFA launched fighting the good fight as Alliance on Warmode and finally quit when I spent literally hours trying to complete a few world quests on a kul tiras zone one night. It was Stormsong valley and I formed a group of five alliance guys not with the objective of smashing the horde but with the objective of just peeling the onion on the edge of the world quest areas that had dozens of horde swarming around them like locusts.
I'm assuming the blue post here is a canned response from someone that has never ever once logged into war mode as an alliance character and possibly has never actually played world of warcraft in their life.
Can an alliance 120 actually confirm that they have made some kind of fix to war mode? I don't mean disrespect to the blue as a person but I am saying that I don't think you actually play the game or have played the game in the past 10 years.
Unless the shard has a 1-1 ratio and does not allow grouping ... Not gonna happen . I know groups is still a thing caus e Horde are cowards who travle in packs. it takes 3-5 of them to kill 1 alliance player who is only in warmode for the extar 10%
<span class="truncated">...</span>Is Ion for real? He thinks that increased rewards will bring alliance back into warmode, when the vast majority of alliance have forgotten that warmode even exists?
This kind of measure is too little too late. A few alliance may turn on warmode, find themselves getting facing repeated 10v1 situations and then turn it off again.
Some time ago we made a hotfix to War Mode which enforces all War Mode shards that have both Alliance and Horde in them to have a stricter, more even ratio. Weâve been monitoring the results and so far weâve noticed a significant improvement in âfair and balancedâ shards. So much so that itâs safe to say that if you are Alliance, and you see Horde in the outdoor world in War Mode, you are a relatively even horde to alliance ratio shard. There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
We do have some plans in store in Tides of Vengeance (Patch 8.1) to entice the underrepresented faction with greater rewards to increase participation and create more active Horde/Allianced mixed War Mode shards. The intent of those rewards is not to give the underrepresented faction some âcompensationâ for being outnumbered in a War Mode shard (since that really canât happen anymore).
We're also looking forward to what you all think about the Incursions in War Mode for 8.1, since it brings Horde and Alliance to the same location which should create some pretty fun skirmishes.
"more even ratio" -- No, that's total !@#$. It needs to be a directly even ratio. Solo vs solo. Group of 2 vs group of 2. The 'shard manager' needs to be intelligent enough to know when people are fighting and when they're not. Packs of Horde with multiple kills that are roaming is very different behavior than solo Alliance doing world quests.
"since that [shard imbalance] really canât happen anymore" -- Oh really? Excuse me if I think this is a bold faced lie.
"We're also looking forward to what you all think about the Incursions in War Mode for 8.1, since it brings Horde and Alliance to the same location which should create some pretty fun skirmishes." -- Could not care less. Horde can have a !@#$ty incursion experience because I won't be there to take the %^-*.
Unless the shard has a 1-1 ratio and does not allow grouping ... Not gonna happen . I know groups is still a thing caus e Horde are cowards who travle in packs. it takes 3-5 of them to kill 1 alliance player who is only in warmode for the extar 10%
This. Current state of things, the "shard manager" is pulling as many horde into my 1v1 skirmish so I get dog piled as quickly as possible. It's a cluster!@#$.
Personally, I don't think overall server population balance is the issue. I *assume* it's that Horde players with a preference for world PVP are more pre-disposed to form that large group and monster an Alliance area.
I don't get how the imbalance is considered to be a shard management issue. I mean literally *none* of the people in my Alliance guild, nor any Alliance I randomly group with have Warmode on. How do you balance shards when there are twice as many Horde as Alliance? Are 75% of Horde with Warmode on being placed in shards by themselves?
There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
Why not keep the 40-man raid in a separate shard until the shard manager finds enough players to compensate?
Because then (a) people just run around as a group of eight 5 mans, (b) sometimes the 30 people camping a flight path are just a mob of individuals and small groups, but it should still be possible to take organized action, namely a raid, to clear them out.
such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
We need raids to be phased in against other raids. Even if it ends up 20v40. It isnt fun getting a lot of people together and running around only seeing 3-4 horde in 4 hours and it isnt fun for the 3-4 horde that runs into the big group. Even if for some odd reason 40v40 strains the hell out of the servers now, people want raid v raid and there needs to be some systems to get that going. I join a 40 man and see literally no horde. I leave the raid and go solo wqing and run into 2 different horde raids. Is there not a way to make sure people grouped over 15 get phased into shards that have raids running around?
The best way to get raids to phase against other raids is for the server software to keep out of it. PVP raids specifically seek out other raids, and have the ability to shard to those other raids. The players will make this happen naturally if the software stays out of things and doesn't overload shards by trying to balance them with questers that want no part in a big battle.
Note that some of the "raids" one sees on the other side are actually just bunches of small groups and individuals. The actual PVP raids do seek these concentrations out, but it sometimes takes a lot of time to find out about, find, and get to them.
Just cause you are out numbered in a zone doesn't mean your outnumbered in the shard. I think people are getting angry thinking that as soon as they go into a new zone we should all get ported there...
There are still poor experiences created by WM blocking party members from using summoning stones together. Are there any updates to making summoning stones a non-issue as it was before WM got the green light?
edit: -forcing ppl to like things doesn't work (eg increased rewards for alliance) -breaking things that were non-issues doesn't work (summoning stones)
Why are devs so obsessed with telling types of people how to play? Alliance like wearing shiny stuff and having soft skin. If they don't care about pvping, stop forcing it, after all these years.
There are so many areas that require dev attention. When am I going to notice you use resources wisely? Put your egos aside, leave alliance well enough alone. Fix the things you broke with wm like summoning stones.
You devs with your egos effortlessly reaping the rewards Metzen and Morhaime etc gifted to you need a reality check. You make bad decisions. You're bad with people. You do not understand the human condition. You are token adult entitled talentless hacks. You're cowards that can't have a dialogue, always passive aggressive, "communicating" in a monologue video or disingenuous forum post, set it and forget it, who cares about a thoughtful discussion to follow. Nice and safe because you have no reason to be confident in what comes from your mouth, unless an artist was involved.
There are people that could run circles around you at your professions who will never have the opportunity to work for a name like Activision. Count your blessings, pay it forward.
I dunno, I sat stealthed a fair bit back at the WQ where you have to kill rotbough for CoA, just watching the horde dogpile the WQ (mind you, this is with the emissary up, so incentive to do it plus everyone likes these quick one and dones).
I sat stealthed for 30 minutes keeping track of every horde/alliance that showed up. After 30 minutes there was 64 unique horde players who showed up compared to... 3 alliance (including myself). After 30 minutes of being in que/waiting for alliance to show up I gave up, hopped servers tell I found one that wasn't horrifically out numbered and killed it then moved on.
Still not going to turn it on regardless of the incentives. I'm so happy war mode exists. I can turn it off and go about my day without ever having to engage in PVP in PVE content.
Maybe a badass transmog might sway me but right now in its current form... meh I can leave it.
Some time ago we made a hotfix to War Mode which enforces all War Mode shards that have both Alliance and Horde in them to have a stricter, more even ratio. Weâve been monitoring the results and so far weâve noticed a significant improvement in âfair and balancedâ shards. So much so that itâs safe to say that if you are Alliance, and you see Horde in the outdoor world in War Mode, you are a relatively even horde to alliance ratio shard. There are some rare exceptions, such as when a raid of 40 players enter a zone. It may take a bit for the âshard managerâ to compensate and balance the shard.
Please just get rid of this stupid "sharding" system completely. It's completely wrecking any world pvp larger than 10 or 20 per side, and preventing larger forces from actually working together or finding each other in a fight. Except, of course, for the handful of groups that have figured out how to exploit the sharding system (in some cases using mods) to deliberately avoid opposing groups and then appear right on top of them when they're ready.
See, I'm the opposite. I can't imagine playing without Warmode on. The worst situation involving imbalance I've experianced happened just a couple nights ago. I was questing with a friend in Stormsong on our newly minted 120 alts. We went to Bennadam (sp?) and there was a 12 Horde group, about 6 with bounties, killing everything and everyone, Player and NPC alike, in town. Of course, my friend and I got slaughtered as soon as the bird landed at the FP. However, as we were heading back to our bodies, there was quite the lively discussion in General chat about it, and mostly involved people complaining about imbalance, talking about switching off WM, and what not. Eventually we all said screw it, rezing up, and gathered outside of town. We buffed up and rolled 15 deep and slaughtered all the Horde there. We then chased them out of the town, all the way back to the Horde base, and out of the zone. All of us were Slayer buffed by the end. We started thinking of ourselves as victims, and instead cleaned them out.
It was one of my favorite nights in recent memory and yet another reason I love being in WM. These are the memories I would not have if I skipped it. It was also that night that I noticed the effect of the population controls. There always seems to be Alliance around when there are Horde about causing mischief, so apparently the system works. Congrats Blizz.