Blizzard on Against Overwhelming Odds - including changing the 400 to 385

PVP War Mode and World PvP
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Ion’s latest developer Q&A includes some discussion of war mode starting at 21:58 into the video. There has been a lot of cherry picking on this forum of quotes from this video, so I figured I’d provide a more complete summary.

The purpose of Against Overwhelming Odds

Here’s what Ion says about the purpose of Against Overwhelming Odds:

In other words, a lot of the Horde war mode population is people who only turned it on after a lot of Alliance had left, and who just wanted to get the “free 10%” even though they actually dislike PVP.

Ion goes on to say that Against Overwhelming Odds incentivizes PVP in a way that helps restore war mode to a place for people who like PVP, as opposed to being a place where one faction can get a 10% bonus for free.

Rewards for Against Overwhelming Odds

Ion does mention that an ilvl 400 item at this point in the patch might be too much, and that the reward is likely to be reduced to 385 next week. He does say that some Conquest might be added to sweeten the pot.

Personally I think that adding Conquest might not be the right step, since it will result in Alliance completing their weekly Conquest quicker, possibly resulting in reduced participation in PVP. Maybe a Quartermaster’s Coin might be a better choice, especially if there were other ways of getting Quartermaster’s Coins in world PVP like completing assaults, which currently have pretty worthless rewards for the final completion quest. This would of course require that the Battleborne Sigils purchased with Quartermaster’s Coins be usable on Season 1 gear, and not just on Season 2 gear which would already be ilvl 385.

Progress on balancing war mode

Ion:

The buff ticking down to 25% would of course mean that Against Overwhelming Odds would no longer be available.

Ion also says that they are working on the performance issues that people are seeing as their first priority, and may separately provide more information on what they’ve fixed and what they are still working on.

Personally I think this discussion is a really good sign for two reasons: first, because it means Blizzard is paying attention to PVP, which has traditionally been the red headed stepchild of development; and second, because it does a good job of helping keep the player base informed of what’s going on, for example with the data that the war mode participation gap has been reduced by about half since the patch.

If you want to watch the Q&A for yourself, it’s here:

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/world-of-warcraft/22864560/watch-the-live-qanda-vod-with-ion-hazzikostas-here

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I agree to a point but if Blizzard’s way of Balancing the odds is prevention rather than cure it doesnt fix the core issue.

If annoying enough Horde players so they dont want to pvp is a “Fix” to a population imbalance then imo Blizzard has hit a new low.

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They should raise the horde % to 15% or right put the alliance to 10%, because the way it is now, is really discouraging me to do any WPvP when Alliance have been sit on a 30% for 2+ months, while the horde got nothing to compensate.

The WM % should be done DAILY, not weekly or monthly or by patch.

There is so many alliance right now that are “abusing” the 30% while there isn’t a lot of horde that have war mode on(FROM WHAT I SEE PERSONALLY!). How fair is that to the Horde? When the Horde will get their 30% moment? Eh? Where is the fairness in this Blizzard?

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Yeah I actually really had to scrounge up some kills this week (gosh that sounds bad) to get my Call to arms done on my characters.

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Like January 29th will start 20%/20% (just a raw number)

the next day, algorithms will look at the data and determine a new %.

let’s say there was like 60% horde compared to 40% of Alliance had WM On, so you turn that 20%/20% into 60% to the Alliance, which give a 24%/16% in favour of the alliance, and so goes on. But that would be too much for Blizzard.

Next day: 70% of WM on are Alliance and 30% are Horde.

the 24%/16% turn into a 28%/12% in favor of the Horde.

Simple as that. But nah, instead of “balancing” things out, they rather put a FLAT 30% to the alliance and let it wild for 2+ months without thinking of the Horde. rolls eyes That is some BQB at it finest (Blizzard Quality Balancing)

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Yeah, turning off the sweet rewards because they see that it will flip to horde because we turned wm off in protest.

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This is primarily because the zone restriction got reinstated this week, plus it’s in an Alliance zone so there’s no need for Horde to be there to complete emissaries or anything. Granted there didn’t seem to be any Horde there trying to kill Alliance while I was doing my Drustvar emissary, but the zone overall was really pretty empty.

There are still enough Horde in war mode that Against Overwhelming Odds is easy to get done. I finished it earlier this week, while I’m only 2/10 Call to Arms.

It has been recalculated every week. It’s just that the balance leaned so overwhelmingly toward Horde each week so far that so far, the result has been the same.

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It pretty much confirmed what I suspected, that a ton of Horde turned WM on to get a free 10% knowing that hardly any Alliance were in WM - but those Horde had no intention of WPvP’ing and would avoid PvP as much as possible.

Now that the 10% isn’t free anymore, the chorus of tears came from people with almost no WM achievements or pitiful progress on those achievements. That is to say - people who don’t PvP and just want WM for the reward. Interestingly, they’re the ones who most vehemently accused Alliance of only turning WM on for rewards. Projection much?

I have respect for Horde who actually want to War Mode to WPvP, and seeing them get screwed because half their faction mates just turned it on to get free rewards with no intention of joining them on the battlefield is irritating.

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Warmode is a mode that replaced pvp servers. Some people just like the style of play that pvp servers offered. Suggesting that because you don’t want to farm players like some sort of stupid pve grind means you aren’t a real pvper.

Let me offer some real talk for you Nearo, you have honor level 47. That means since legion you’ve essentially barely pvp’d at all. I have honor level 280 which means on average in that same amount of time I’ve gathered more than 5 times as much honor as you. Take it from an actual pvp player who constantly engages in real pvp (instanced) that your supposition that warmode achievements mean anything is complete nonse.

Plenty of us didn’t ever like the warmode model from day 1. If you can’t find the internal integrity to call something out for being garbage because it benefits you personally you are helping making the game significantly worse for everyone.

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I don’t think you understand how honor levels are awarded. You get much more progress on Honor levels by doing Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds, which I’m assuming is much of what you do.

I don’t like Arenas or Rated BGs. They feel artificial to me - I’m an RPer first and foremost, and I enjoy being out in the open world and getting that feeling of unpredictability and danger that you never know what’s around the corner. You don’t get that in Arenas. You get a little bit of that in Rated BGs, but there are set strategies and comps for both that make it too artificial for my liking.

I like WPvP, so my Honor level is very low despite having almost as many HKs as you. My Honor level will never be high because I mostly do WPvP, I haven’t done a single arena match this entire expansion.

You don’t like War Mode or WPvP, that’s fine. That’s you. This forum is about War Mode and World PvP - we’re not here to talk about Arenas and Rated BGs or the benefits of doing Areans and Rated BGs. There’s a separate forum for that, and if you prefer doing that sort of PvP then more power to you.

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True, though I also appreciated their faction mates because sometimes I’m in a hurry and want easy kills. Going into war mode because you enjoy the risk even when you don’t initiate PVP is also a valid play style.

World PVP achievements mean way more than honor level when you’re talking about world PVP, which is what this forum is about.

And frankly, honor level is pretty irrelevant for battlegrounds too, now that Conquest exists and is far more valuable than honor. It really only says how much battlegrounds you did in Legion.

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Honor Levels are account wide, HKs are not. Not really a good comparison. Also, I’m fine with them getting the PvErs off horde side to turn it back off again. Once they are gone and raids are less frequent, Horde will get the alliance PvErs to turn it off as well (again), and the balance will ensue.

If you dont like participating in WPvP, turn off WM. Regardless of faction. Raids go both ways and now you can see so do numbers.

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Not to mention Blizzard punished players who focused on one character for prestige in legion compared to those with lots of alts. Attaining high honor levels really isn’t a really good representation of pvp experience due to the algorythm used to calculate it.

Not to say 200+ honor level is something to scoff at, but saying you have 5x the pvp exp isn’t exactly true.

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If you’re doing a quest where the sole requirement is to kill people in PVP, you’re hardly a “non pvper”.

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That depends on if you only do it in 5 man groups running around with 5 other groups. Then yeah, you are likely a non-pvper.

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Eh, i think he’s right on this one. Logging in, turning WM for 20 mins, “dealing with” completing the quest in a mob, then turning it back off is pretty common. I see it on my ally monk. In fact, i had this mage in our group that was saying stuff like “this is boring i can’t believe we have to just sit here to get this gear ffs”.

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The true way to tell if someone is a “pvper” is to just not have any bonus incentives for WM. I played PVP servers and WM because i like the thrill of possibly being ganked or fighting over resources in the world.

Vanilla STV leveling up was absolutely amazing, and i hope to get a glimmer of that from WM. I’m kind of bummed out about all the uneven (for both sides) carrot on the stick nonsense that goes on now.

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Agreed.

/10chars

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Agreed on that. IMO, there should be a radius around a flightmaster where those kills won’t count towards quest progress. Even a small radius like 30 yards would be enough. The flightmaster camping would still happen, but it wouldn’t be incentivized which will help weed out some of the folks doing it for no reason other than the gear rewards.

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While I think that’s uncommon - unless they’re bored because they’re not finding Horde - they’re still a PVPer for that 20 minutes.

Think of it as 4 categories:

  1. people in war mode that love the bonus loot but hate PVP and don’t do it.
  2. people in war mode that do the PVP but only for because they get rewards
  3. people in war mode that do the PVP because they enjoy it, and don’t care about the rewards
  4. people in war mode that do PVP because they love it, even when it reduces their rewards

The Alliance we’re talking about are in category 2: they do PVP, though it’s only because they get rewards from it. That’s no different from, say, doing arenas, but only because you get rewards from it. Most people who do arenas are likely in this category.

The Horde that the category 2 Alliance are hunting are mostly in category 1: they want the rewards, but they’re not even willing to PVP for them. They’re the ones starting the current “boycott war mode” threads.

Alliance who stuck around in war mode during 8.0 when it was almost impossible for Alliance to get anything done there are in category 4. That’s different from category 2, but both do PVP.

You already get a 30 second honorless debuff when you land which makes you not count for the quests. That’s worth a lot more than 30 yards.

But I disagree with even that. Why would the Alliance high command care whether you wait 30 seconds to kill a military target or kill it immediately? Especially when flight masters are no doubt more valuable strategic targets than world quests, where nobody seems to complain about the camping. From the player perspective, flight masters are actually easier to avoid, since you can get everywhere on the ground, while you can’t actually complete, say, emissaries without completing world quests.

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