Battlemasters seem to be excluded from this post. Assuming we’re getting them at the start?
Unknown.
I hope not, the world is a much bigger place when you must travel to location to experience events. And that brief period without Battlemasters created a magical time in the fields surrounding the BG entrances - weary soldiers hanging out with their group waiting to be called into battle, gank teams roaming to the other factions gateway. It was the best.
And the AV entrances were relatively close to TM/SS so it fueled that zone into a flash point.
The only issue I see is their content phases.
WSG and AV came out in patch 1.5 BWL and battlemasters came out in patch 1.6.
WSG/AV + BWL are coming out in Phase 3. This seems to represent that Phase 3 is 1.5 and 1.6 patches. So there will be no in-between for the no battlemaster phase.
Depending on how long the phases last. I’d think it would be all right to break with patching pace and put battle masters in phase 4 with AB.
Blizzard is trying to piece together a Classic release that best captures the Vanilla experience. I think the time without Battlemasters is it. It was an inconvenience that added to the expansiveness of the world.
In a perfect world they would have put bracket level specific BMs in corresponding level specific zone towns. Rather than the lamest option of tucking them into a safe room in capital cities.
Yeah but when would they do that?
I think adding them in phase 4 would be the only way. So leave phase 3 without them.
The reason why they implemented cross-realm BGs is because there weren’t enough players on many servers to get one BG running.
Have you ever tried playing an Arathi Basin that was 13 to 6 because that’s all who was available? (numbers may be off - I forget what the minimum number needed to start was.)
I’ve played in such BGs, and they’re miserable. Cross-realm support made these a bit more engaging for quite some time.
The main reason players had long queues was that they were on the bloated side of a server faction imbalance. The lesser populated faction would have instaqueues. Deal with faction ratio imbalance before it becomes an issue, and there is no need for crbgs.
Blizzard did deal with it. They added crbgs. Problem solved.
Also PVE and RP servers have really long queues even if the faction ratio is a perfect 50:50.
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I’d rather have free server transfers over to help low pop servers to help fix that rather than having CRBGs that completely reduce to dust any kind of PvP community feeling. You just end up facing nobodies alongside more nobodies that you will probably never meet again.
CRBGs just destroy the whole point of having a pvp reputation and some notoriety/respect within the community.
Getting to know the best players in your faction, developing respect for them along with respect for the best opponents on the opposite faction… that’s the essence of what it was to play in vanilla… a sense of community that would develop over the months. Your reputation was of utmost importance… in both PvP and PvE.
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This is just false. Pvping during vanilla and BC with battlegroups, I saw the same names over and over in BG’s. Hell even right now (with all battlegroups merged into one), in BFA, I still see the same names in the 20-29 bracket everyday for example.
If the same vanilla-style battlegroup system was implemented, you’d definitely recognize familiar players in lvl 60 BG’s.
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In my experience this is completely false. I still remember the day cross-realm bgs went in, because I was thoroughly confused when suddenly I didn’t recognize anyone. I was used to seeing the same twinks. We had developed rivalries. I’d recognize names every single game. After cross-realm bgs I can’t recall ever remembering anyone I ever fought against (or with) again.
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In my experience, your experience, is completely false. You’re just exaggerating to further your agenda.
Maybe on the very first day, yeah you won’t recongize all the new faces from other battlegroups. But if you played more than 1 day, you’d start to recognize the regulars. Battlegroups were only like 8(?) servers.
As I said earlier, even right now in BFA (no battlegroups, all servers are merged), I see regular pvpers in the 20-29 bracket every single day.
“Free server transfers” have frequently been offered, and do not work. Leaving a server frequently means moving a lot of alts, changing guilds (or organizing a mass guild transfer) and isn’t really realistic. It’s also relying on voluntary response. There’s no way to control imbalance, or even to really bolster a population on a server.
Regarding the “PvP community feeling” - Not being able to queue for battle grounds also kills that community. If you want to be doing battle grounds with familiar faces (on your side, at least,) then sign up for pre-mades.
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Seeing the same twinks every day in a low level twink bracket is not exactly compelling evidence.
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While I don’t agree that rapid queuing should trump battleground rivalry, at least I can see it as a logical argument for crbg. But to suggest that crbg didn’t grotesquely change the team matchups and composition is just false. As soon as crbg appeared, you basically stopped fighting the opponents you knew and hated. It quit being a world and was reduced to just a video game.
*** Our raiding friends have to deal with lockout, we BG pvp’rs are just going to have to deal with longer queues if we want to preserve the one-world feel of our realm.
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Agreed. Also I kind of wish they had more thought into what they wanted BGs to be beyond a on-demand side game within the game and loot piñatas.
At least AV started out via good intentions: to be an open world pvp zone. Understandably it was instanced, but then they went and tried to make it into something less like a zone and more like a minigame akin to WSG and AB.
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I’d still prefer to have Blizzard close some servers and merge servers to keep a healthy community over them just implementing CRBGs.
I know it really sucks to have long Qs… And i know that the whole Arena system in BC wouldn’tve worked without Battlegroups… hell even with that implimented… back in Season 1 when i was playing in the top 5 of my battlegroup in 5v5 our average Q time was 18 min…
But even then i don’t think that the same logic applies to vanilla. I understand your point and i think it’s a valid one, but I just really do not share that same view.
The community for me was what made Vanilla… Vanilla. I’d much rather get forced out of my server because it’s closing and start ‘‘grinding’’ my reputation anew on a new home server over having to do CRBGs.
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The problem is not just closing, but servers where different parts of the game are different popularity.
e.g. on a PVE server, the PVP may be completely dead while the Raiding is thriving. In order to give those who want to PVP while on a PVE server an option, they introduced CRBGs.
I raised the idea a while back in a thread that you could manage the PVP groupings better for a partial CRBG system. Where only the larger PVP participating faction would get CRBG and the smaller faction would always be matched up with the local server.
Therefore on fairly even matched servers, no-one would have CRBGs, and on unbalanced servers, the larger faction would get CRBGs consumate with the amount of groups missing from the other faction. It would also encourage people to balance realms themselves, because by being on the weaker faction they’d always get local battles.
Imo, just merge 2 PvE servers with that fit then. Like 1 with a majority of horde players with 1 with a majority of alliance players Qing. That way you’ll get more Qs while keeping the balance.
I’ll be real honest though i’ve never played on a PvE server so i don’t know much about that issue.
Maybe i’m not being reasonable but the feeling of community for me is so so tightly connected to my experience of Vanilla that i cannot see a world in which i can support CRBGs unless its the very last thing that would keep vanilla servers alive as a whole. (Not a specific server)