Year after year regardless of the current expansion, casual bgs, especially epics, are why I keep subbing. Trouble is that this isn’t 2011. Bgs see very little support at all, much less the substantial changes needed to address problems that have been going on for YEARS now. Ashran is completely broken and I could write another whole post about it specifically, but of course the tldr is that backdoor meta is killing it. The others are functional, but still need some love. But there are myriad problems. So I will list my proposed solutions, because frankly I can’t stand the state of things any longer. I’m not /quit thread bsing, but the current state of the content I play the game for is so frustrating that its really just better to NOT play at all. Before I begin, I want to make clear that these suggestions are to overhaul/replace the current Epic BG system/queue options. This is not about rated PvP at all. Not about Arenas, world PvP, or anything else. Only casual Epic Battlegrounds.
The first and biggest problem affecting Epic BGs is queue time. I log in to play and end up sitting in queue for an hour. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, that’s my playtime right there. I’m standing in town or running around doing quests I don’t care about waiting on a queue to pop, so I can try and have fun in a bg for maybe 15 minutes. This queue time is completely intolerable. Win/Lose means less and less to you when you don’t even get to see any action. Its overwhelmingly frustrating to spend the time that I do have for WoW sitting in queue. My solution to this is thus: Don’t have queue time. Instead of epic BG queues, remove Alterac Valley and Ashran from the list, and make them static BGs that are always going on. Only one up at a time, with them cycling each week. Allow players to join them instantly, without a queue. Instead of the BGs ending, they keep going endlessly. Towers can be recaptured, Bosses respawn after awhile. Instead of end of BG rewards, Have periods of battle 20 minutes long called phases. During each phase, players killed by your faction, objectives captured, and bosses killed all add to your factions rating. At the end of each phase, honor and conquest+crates are rewarded based on faction rating. Because these maps are persistent and don’t end, players can keep fighting as long as they want to do so and have no need to re enter, but since there is no queue, they are free to do so regardless. If you want to stop playing your warlock and hop right back in on your shadow priest, go for it. When the maps get full, a new instance opens and persists until there is no one left in it. Maps that have been nearly empty for awhile, assuming there is room in another map to go to, should offer players in it the option to swap to the fuller map.
There should also be a buff for when one team is significantly outnumbered by the other. NPC guards become far more lethal and outnumbered players receive a scaling buff that maxes out at 20% more health and damage, but that number should almost never be reached. I’m saying 40 V 5 for the full buff as an example.
Although this system runs the risk of games with too few enemy players, its STILL WAY BETTER THAN SITTING IN QUEUE! Furthermore, buffing the npcs back to a moderate difficulty (as in the old days of long, unwinnable epic bgs) could help this somewhat. Adding in assault squads of fairly strong and durable npcs that spawn in when one team is significantly outnumbered that charge out and recapture some objectives, before assaulting the enemy boss (even if its suicide) would help keep things interested in low player situations too. To be clear the purpose of these assault squads is to give outnumbered players enough support to go on the offense every so often, not carry them to flawless victory. With this system the worst case scenario should be a few outnumbered players fighting the odds and trying to assassinate opposing players or capture objectives where they can, away from the frontline. Again this is still overwhelmingly preferable to sitting in queues doing nothing/content you aren’t interested in.
Premades have always been a problem in epic bgs, so to prevent this from being an issue/maps to gain a sudden +30 or more people to just one side, there will be NO PARTY JOIN OPTION. These static epic bgs are solo join only. If you join at the same time, you are likely to get into the same one anyway. But this is still more balanced than just allowing overwhelming premades to ruin the game mode. Furthermore it at least attempts to get players to form up once they are in the map, instead of before, which makes it more likely to include the rest of the team too, even if the possibility is only slight. Theres nothing wrong with coordinating things once you are inside, so long as casual players are included.
This system allows for players to spend more time in PvP than they spend sitting in queues that are 2-4 times as long as the BGs they are queuing for in the first place.
Balance is important, but secondary compared to players not being able to play at all.
Lastly, Given the long lasting nature of these battle maps, an idle timer is a necessity. Both to prevent team sabotage, waste of team space, and people sitting there getting free honor or conquest. Furthermore, this should be tracked per account id. Repeat
offenders should have their idle time reduced each time, until finally they are simply banned from the game mode for one week. After this happens twice, just permaban the account.
I realize these are some extreme changes, and naturally they are open to tweaking, But I strongly believe that this kind of system would be massively better than the current one. Even better if you could queue for other PvP (or even PvE) gamemodes while inside.
Time means a lot, especially as we get older. Sitting in a queue for such a large portion of our playtime is crippling, depressing, and frustrating. With this sort of change to epic
battlegrounds, instant action becomes possible. You can jump in and fool around even if you only have 30 minutes to play.
I believe this kind of change will bring a lot of life back into the gamemode that I and lots of other players love. Please give it serious consideration.
Thanks.
