Ok, why don’t you take my word for it just to humor me.
I have literally not seen a single win in Alterac Valley. Not a single one, and I am half-way to exalted. It is so bad that I hit rank 10 before I’ve even gotten to exalted AV, because I deferred to other BGs and avoided AV due to how painful it is.
I currently have a 0% win rate, out of however many matches it took me to get to halfway through revered.
I would wager a RISKY BET, that a lot of people are in my exact position or damn near close.
I do not think you are lying. If that’s what you are saying has been your experience then I believe you. Until today, we have been on different battlegroups, so perhaps that made a difference for me.
It’s also not impossible that we had different experiences, as you and I represent so few of the overall WoW players that we effectively represent none (as data points).
That sounds horrible.
I wonder if the reunification of our battlegroups will have any effect whatsoever. It may just increase my win rate.
Based on conversations on the forums, it appears there are two main issues people are having with AV:
Alliance win-rates
Horde queue times
Some of the proposed solutions bring up things like Horde racials or phase 2 attitude, and (at least in my opinion) completely derail their own conversations to bash on something orthogonal to their points.
Whether map adjustments are made (or not), something I think would be an interesting#change to consider would be having the ability in AV to have either faction on either side (not merc mode, I am not a proponent of merc mode). That would also allow faction vs same faction, if there were numbers in queue to support it.
Will anything happen? Who knows. Should something happen? Idk… on the one hand, no… we have what we have, and we can deal with it/adjust accordingly; I have Alliance characters, and have spent time in BGs at max level as such, and yet I still decided to roll Horde alts and live with the queue times.
I would not personally oppose changes that would decrease AV queue times for Horde and increase Alliance win rates.
Okay, this isn’t some kind of shadowy mystery. I’ll break it down for you and I’ll go ahead and start with the horde queue times, something you can relate to, as a grounding point.
Horde queue times are long BECAUSE > Alliance are, in ever increasing numbers refusing to queue for AV unless they require the reputation, which only fresh 60s or maybe even non-pvpers need.
Alliance have started refusing to queue BECAUSE > the win rate is absolutely abysmal. Making honor grinding not a reasonable objective in AV, and it being an unpleasant experience in general to get stomped repeatedly.
Alliance win-rate is abysmal BECAUSE > Horde have a clear and inherent advantage allowing them to achieve their rate of winning.
THIS is where the debate starts, some say it’s because the horde are just THAT much better, some say AV is poorly designed.
What do you think is the more logical position to take?
Well, if we take an approach where Horde vs Horde is possible, and/or Alliance in the South, Horde from the North, we might be able to have a better perspective.
If what you are saying about only undergeared, fresh level 51 to 60s are queuing on the Alliance side is accurate, while there are many, many rank 10+ on the Horde side in every AV, that’s a different issue altogether (even if it is the result of anything that may have happened in the past).
This interaction was kind of painful to read. I understand what hes trying to say, but @Frosto original argument was having the same number of wins per hour, which is so incredibly incorrect. On the WoW classic reddit forums, I have seen 3 pictures where alliance players are exalted with no more than 3 wins, which 1 had zero victories. I think he lacks the perspective of being alliance, and its easier for him to ask for a hard statistic.
But it would be nice to hear that “Okay, my statistic is probably wrong”. You could also ask for where the statistic “1 win in every 5” comes from.
Except that is not the case for horde. Serious ranking horde are also queuing in WSG/AB, as the queue time for AV is much too long. The long queue time affects horde in the same way losing repeatedly affects alliance. It creates the same result for rankers on both factions.
So that is not the case. Both the horde and alliance are relatively focused on earning rep, difference being that horde can win a vast, vast, vast majority of the time.
Sure, and if you queue for all three, you are never going to have AV pop, so really the only way to get AV is to queue specifically for that, which will be a 2+ hour queue.
Were any of those on the Eastern Battlegroup? My win/loss ratio may change drastically now that we are reunited.
It’s also quite possible that my single person perspective does not provide accurate data. It’s also possible that the 3 pictures you saw did not.
I’m not claiming that my suppositions are accurate, anymore than I think you can claim anything else is.
I have max-level Alliance on Western servers. I have some perspective, but as I said, I have not queued AV since maybe the first week it was out. I don’t particularly like AV (I particularly dislike it).
It isn’t enough data to really be worth anything. It’s representative of my personal experience. Just as everyone else’s “data” seems to be.
Which was explained:
What is not?
Ah, that’s a good point actually. Winning in AV isn’t particularly that important. Getting exalted is. It may be worthwhile to compare time investment on either side to do so.
You are taking an insufferably neutral approach to a topic that is beyond the pale already.
This isn’t some kind of unknown mystery or something that requires extensive further polling/testing/experimentation. The results are clear: horde win AV at a vastly higher rate than alliance. The debate is about why. Not whether it exists or not. You even said yourself your win rate was 80%, I’d consider that a low figure horde-wise, but even that is plainly absurd in terms of being skewed towards horde.
Alliance win rate is not because of our “focus on getting exalted”, it’s because winning is just too damn difficult to do in almost any context without completely overpowering the horde side in several categories, to the point that it’s almost impossible if the horde aren’t drooling morons.
There have been topics on the forums that have been grossly blown out of proportion, such as faction balance during phase 2, where upon further investigation are not anywhere near the levels claimed.
In this case, we are talking about AV. Well, what matters about AV? Win/loss ratio? Perhaps honor-per-hour? How about time to get exalted?
Maybe all of these things, maybe none. Maybe something else entirely.
You may dislike my approach, and I feel for you if you do, but I have my own perspective and would appreciate any data and/or insight that could help to improve that.
It’s not as if I am able to influence the game developers to make changes, so it’s more a matter of curiosity and interest than anything else.
Also, please keep in mind that my questioning of data or perspectives is in no way meant as a personal attack on anyone’s character nor meant to take away from their personal perspectives or opinions.
What “matters” in AV is completely subjective, but in most cases it’s going to be whatever is feasibly able to be accomplished with most players.
Alliance certainly can’t win, and our honor in there is terrible, so we focus on the only thing we feasibly can focus on, which is rep. It’s not really a choice.
It’s kinda funny, what got me into PvP was the instant x-realm BGs waybackwhen, I played Horde on a low pop but Alliance dominated server (Garithos).
Now I see queue times in excess of 2 hours for AV, well played Alliance!
So I switched sides, now it’s 4 minutes AV queues with some of the WORST people ever, who make no bones that they are there to exploit the system(s).
I remember there being leeches but nowhere near as many on the Alliance side. Geared up Allies on epic mounts just soaking up the free stuff, sad, so very sad.
What game designer could possibly predict such behavior from paying customers? Seriously, this is what the WoW community looks like!
That alliance behavior in AV is something that devolved into the monstrosity that it is now over time. It wasn’t always like that, alliance TRIED to be competitive for many months, but after the premades got taken away (literally the only way ally can have a chance at winning) it went downhill from there. When you have at best a 10% chance of winning even when you try your hardest, that tends to break the wills of anyone. Now AV is just a bunch of alliance zombies trying to get rep and semi afk.
My reply was supposed to be in response to Murlyn above my post about how he recently joined alliance and noticed how they have some of the worst people in AV. I was informing him how it became like that. To answer your question about what to do from here, there’s literally nothing that can be done unless blizz decides to make changes, which they more than likely won’t.
It doesn’t matter what the desirable state is unless Blizzard indicates they’re actually willing to make a change to it, and the only change they HAVE made to it hurt alliance more than help.
If Blizzard would change anything, the desirable situation is a 50/50 winrate between alliance and horde. Believe it or not, this result is a GAME DEV responsibility, not player.
Well we already know what blizzard did to try and fix things. Literally the exact same thing happened 15 years ago. They moved the horde starting cave back to make it more fair in the beginning of the match and to also stop the horde from resurrecting with 20+ people 15 seconds away from IBGY. Blizzard also added resources as another option of winning.
I’m pretty sure they also buffed Balinda and nerfed Galv.