in current wotlk classic there are 0 battlegrounds outside of warsong gulch call to arms weekend in the current level ranges : 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69;
The community has already been split up with multiple versions of classic wow, if your goal is to eliminate lower bracket instanced pvp, then it would be understandable to further split the lower level brackets in half like in cataclysm’s original iteration.
There are already 0 battlegrounds popping for the majority of the lower levels, do not make it worse by splitting the brackets in half like original cataclysm.
Now that RDF is available, people choose to level in dungeons over low level instanced pvp, an already established incentive to not pvp while leveling.
In Wrath Classic, you unsplit the xp on/off bracket that was present in original Wrath’s iteration, which helped the lower bracket bracket health tremendously, i believe the wording that was given to the classic community was something along the lines of “battlegrounds are better than no battlegrounds” if i’m not mistaken.
Please continue with the direction you had for Classic Wrath and make a change to the original iteration that would benefit lower bracket pvp. With heirlooms, the playing field is much more balanced than in tbc or even classic era in lower level brackets as far as gear disparity goes, and new cata quest loot will also have an positive impact for those leveling in lower bracket instanced pvp.
Consider this change to keep lower level bracket pvp a viable option for players leveling up, as well as for those that want to enjoy the early game along the way.
I’d agree that it seems like it would be logical, but there’s been no discussion on the topic of the split brackets that were present in cata from blizzard so far, i’m hoping they do look at what would be a logical decision when revisiting that part of cata during this development phase, before we end up with something that doesn’t work out especially now that the player base is already divided so much. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no queues at brackets other than 10-14, 15-19 and 75-79, 80-84 as far as lower brackets goes when cata classic launches even with the boom of returning players if they were to retain the split brackets that were present in original cata.
It would be nice if they acknowledged this like they did for the xp on/off split bracket issue back before wotlk classic came out.
Best thing they did for battleground activity in original wotlk was to add experience gains to battlegrounds and not matching level stop pvp alts with leveling players. The classic dev team thought leaving the queue together will increase the overall pvp activity, while it was proven by the original devs, that the activity is actually higher without level stop players, because less leveling players feel discouraged and have more fun by having a more similar power level compared to other players.
With an overall increase in participation, dividing the brackets wouldnt be that much of a problem. Players being on a similar power level are more willing to keep queueing at all levels too. Fighting players 10 levels higher is usually neither fun nor fair. Many players leveling with battleground skip 4-5 levels of each battleground bracket because of that reason right now.
Splitting the queues would be closer to the original experience too.
Their original reason for merging the xp off and on queues in wotlk classic was because players that opted out of xp gain would not have any battlegrounds, removing any benefit of turning xp off and staying at a certain level to continue enjoying low level player versus player battlegrounds since they would have no games to play in.
That is why they made their decision to not split the xp off and on queues in wotlk classic, hence their messaging “Battlegrounds are better than no battlegrounds.”
Now going forward, the queues for lower brackets are already dead for anything other than 10-19 or 70-79 in current wotlk classic now that RDF is out. There is less incentive to gain exp in battlegrounds when you can mash dungeon finder all day, which turns out lowers pvp activity.
That being said, further splitting the queues in half beyond what it currently is, will result in dead queues upon launch in the brackets that are currently dead in wotlkc.
Dividing the lower bracket pvp further than it has been since RDF as well as multiple versions of classic wow may be the equivalent of removing battlegrounds altogether at lower brackets other than 10-14, 10-19.
Classic isn’t the original experience, not any iteration of classic has been close to original experience so far. #nochanges is a pipe dream since they added layering to classic era.
As stated before, even if the classic Blizzard team stated “Battlegrounds with pvp alts are better than no battlegrounds”, this only applies to the point of view of pvp alts. Without these alts, the overall activtiy for lower level battlegrounds would be significantly higher. This is mainly due to the reason of power level differences, that make less players willing to queue up. This is also the reason for the change of making battleground range 5 level instead of 10 in catacylsm. You wont find many level 10 players, willing to join a 10-19 bg, simply because they wont have much of a chance to fight back. Therefore only few leveled only via battlegrounds in wotlk, while in cataclysm, players were willing to queue on every level.
Allowing pvp alts seems to increase the activity, but lowers overall participation instead.
Keeping the battleground level ranges at 10 instead of 5, seems to increase the activity, but lowers the overall participation instead.
These changes were done in original wotlk/cata by good devs for good reasons.
Here is their original post regarding the removal of separation of the xp-on and xp-off queues.
Their original messaging was that they want battleground matches to be available for all who want it at lower level brackets. Not just for tourists, but for those with xp-off who want to stay and keep it active as well.
The reason they didn’t bifurcate the xp-on and xp-off brackets like the original wrath iteration was because people who want to pvp and get xp weren’t finding matches without those who turned xp-off; it hurt both those wanted to pvp for exp, and those who wanted to turn xp off and enjoy lower level bracket pvp.
I see plenty of the contrary, regardless of the difference in powerlevel.
Before RDF, players of all levels would be queued up in each lower level pvp bracket in-between getting bored of open world questing/grinding and waiting for a group in the old LFG system.
Removing their option to do so by splitting the brackets in half, further dividing the lower bracket pvp, as i stated before will result in no battlegrounds for the ones that are already suffering since RDF was released.
Splitting the brackets in half = splitting the activity for each bracket in half. It’s already a rare occasion when more than half the battleground is at the level cap for their bracket in current wotlk classic.
Most of the new brackets that will be created by splitting the current brackets will be dead on arrival; there are no xp-off 34s, there are no xp off 24s, there are no xp off 14s.
What you will be left with is tourists for those brackets, and tourists are already not a core of each bracket. The current core of each bracket is those who have xp turned off, they are the majority responsible for keeping the lower level brackets active, regardless if tourists get a bad taste in their mouth from getting squashed due to power level.
Tourists in lower bracket pvp come and go, they will not stay to keep the lower brackets active. they will keep exp on and go to endgame in whatever path they feel is most enjoyable for them.
What you have left after Tourists leave, are those who actively enjoy lower level bracket pvp who want their bracket to stay active. There are already no main core group of players that have turned xp off at 10-14, 20-24, 30-34, 40-44, 50-54, 60-64, 70-74.
These new brackets are already at a disadvantage in activity due to not having a core of players to begin with, they will rely solely on tourists who will leave once they are done touring. resulting in half of the brackets dead on arrival.
Not only is splitting the brackets for cataclysm going to create new dead on arrival brackets, it will lower the activity of the existing brackets of those who have core groups of players already with xp-off by taking away the participation of tourists and handing it to dead on arrival brackets.
Not Bifurcating the queues for lower brackets kept them from dying off. There wouldn’t have been activity in a wide range of lower brackets for the majority of wrath classic if they didn’t go with this decision.
There was activity in most brackets before RDF was enabled and shortly after. RDF is the major negative factor in lower level bracket pvp participation. Splitting brackets further now considering what a negative impact RDF had on lower bracket battlegrounds will be a major misstep in the direction of letting people have viable options to gain exp on their path to endgame, not only that but also a misstep in the direction of letting players choose which bracket they want to pvp at.
Further splitting the lower brackets in half, will leave the ones that already have core players with xp-off at lower participation, and the new ones they create by splitting them in half will create dead brackets on arrival.
This is what the original wrath devs thought about bifurcating the xp-on and xp-off queues in battlegrounds, and classic devs saw their misstep and came out with a W here by saving the lower level brackets for the majority of the expansion, for tourists and for those who like to pvp at lower brackets.
That is an assumption proven to be untrue. The number of pvp alts with exp turned is lower than the number of leveling pvp players, that wont queue because of these minmaxed alts. That was proven in original wotlk. Exp stop players are few and most want to feel superior in terms of power, so there are even less who actually want to play only against similar geared players. These players have fun on the cost of others, who dont have a chance of fighting back. This is the main reason the participation is as low as it is.
The original dev team understood that most players without a chance to fight back wont have fun and therefore wont queue (again) at all. The classic team is not able to comprehend this.
You call casual (leveling) players “tourists”, but as we can all see, the activity is barely enough with exp stop characters only. We need the “tourist” casual player to have a chance and to have fun in order to significantly increase the quality and activity of low level battlegrounds. Most “Tourists” wont have fun due to not being able to fight back and wont queue again.
As said, in original wotlk the activity for lower level battlegrounds were at an all time high after speparating the queues, while the exp stop queues became inactive, proving that these players were few and not interested in fair fights.
That is what Blizzard assumes and you assume, but as said, the opposite was the proven to be true in original wotlk.
I can understand your point of view as an exp stop enjoyer, but you should be aware that you, as a exp stop player, are the main reason the activity for low level battlegrounds is as low as it is. The fairer level and gear wise, the more fun, the higher the activity. Crazy how that works.
Activity in most brackets was fine before RDF, this includes from start of wrath all the way to beyond ICC patch; xp-off and xp-on being able to queue together made it last that long. RDF stifled the participation of low level bracket pvp;
Do you think more leveling players are not queuing low bracket pvp now because they dont want a power gap when facing opponents or do you think more leveling players aren’t queuing low bracket pvp now due to RDF giving more exp on top of higher participation in RDF in comparison to low bracket pvp?
Do you think players who are leveling now that are queuing for battlegrounds are getting matches? And do you think if those same players who would queue for battlegrounds now would have gotten more or less matches before RDF was available?
The main reason low bracket pvp is low is simple; RDF takes away participation as it allows an easy, stream-lined flow of experience points in comparison to trying to gain exp from battlegrounds.
Once there are no matches, it doesn’t matter if tourists want to queue or not, queue times will deter even the core group of players who want to pvp in brackets which will further lower participation for those brackets. If the core group of players for each bracket aren’t queued up due to queue times, the bracket dies. The bracket is not able to support itself on just tourists or just xp off players, it needs both.
Blizzard knows the lower level pvp brackets need xp off to survive through a majority of the expansion, hence why they chose to combine xp off and xp on queues in wrath classic.
The original dev team didn’t understand player attrition as it hadn’t hit yet, classic dev team understands player attrition. Back in original Wrath, most players were leveling, leveling was a larger part of the game for many more players that it is for classic, not to mention a much larger subscription base.
In classic wrath, once the majority of players burns through the content, they don’t stay long. it’s apparent with both expansions so far. Megaservers from launch turn into medium servers in comparison at expansion’s end. And now with SoD, Multiple versions of Classic Era, the player base is divided enough to warrant a decision from blizzard to protect lower level bracket pvp. If there aren’t enough players to support it, there will not be matches simple as that.
Current Wrath post ICC patch, as stated above, 0 games outside of 10-19, 70-79 & 80.
Cataclysm’s split brackets will see some activity at launch for the already established brackets, ie 15-19, 25-29, 35-39, 45-49, 55-59, 65-69, 75-79 since they have a core group of players already, but will die out twice as fast if they split the brackets resulting in half the participation for each bracket.
Low bracket PVP participation in classic wrath doesn’t have anything to do with power gaps, 80 pvp has larger power gaps than lower level brackets. Funnily enough, even with the larger power gaps, you still see matches at level 80 even after premades roll pugs all day for achievements.
They are tourists to each low level bracket as they only tour each bracket, they don’t stay. I don’t think it’s such a stretch to call them tourists if that’s what they do while queuing in low level bracket pvp.
Tourists aren’t the core of each low level bracket, they tour and then they level out to the next.
Original wrath had an astronomically higher subscription base compared to classic wrath; and leveling was a major part of the game for more players in original wrath compared to classic wrath; Classic wrath nobody is leveling their first, third, fourth, fifth characters anymore; they are on double or triple digits by now and taking the fastest path to endgame. Touring low level battlegrounds on your way to endgame is not as common in classic wrath as it was in original wrath.
Blizzard knows their subscription numbers, they know more than you and I about player attrition. If they weren’t incompetent then they most likely took this into consideration when making their decision in prolonging low level bracket pvp by combining xp-on and xp-off.
Original Wrath’s subscription base reached over 12million in October 2010; they had 13 battlegroups with 20 servers to each battlegroup.
The reason they were able to split the battlegrounds and still have games was their subscription base at that time.
Current Wrath, all US west and US east servers as well as Oceanic all share the same battleground queues, and we still don’t have a single match in the majority of low level bracket pvp.
You put alot of emphasis on power gap, but have yet to mention subscription base gap yet, when comparing classic to original wrath.
End game has wider power gaps, it’s not even close. Do you participate in low bracket pvp? Or do you avoid it because of “power gaps”?
Better solution is to have some logic behind it. If enough players are around for instant ques dynamically split them up by levels more closely but if ques meet a threshold around 5+ minutes open it up to speed it up.
While the power levels are not balanced on max level either, at least players know, what they are working towards to. After a few battlegrounds, they will catch up, the difference in power reduces. In low level battlegrounds, they wont ever catch up even close to the power of an exp stop alt.
Are you willing to tell anyone that a lvl 10 player in grey/white quest gear has a fair chance to fight a maxed out lvl 19 pvp exp stop alt? Just looking at the numbers of hp and damage, the differences are easily as bad as they are on max level.
How is that relevant? In original wotlk the overall activity increased after splitting the exp stop players from the leveling ones. Why should it be different now? Its only natural that “tourists” will play more regularly, once they have more fair and fun fights. That was also the reason why the brackets were split further in cataclysm. To increase the activity by reducing power gaps!
Also the classic Blizzard team stated that players dont want RDF. They thought loot boxes are helpful and fun while leveling. They stated wow token reduces RMT activities. There are many more statements and actions of the Blizzard classic team, that show, that they are either straight up lying or have no clue about the game and the community. Therefore I personally think that putting too much trust in the competence of the Blizzard classic team is questionable.
I would not be opposed to this, as long as players are getting matches then i’m all for it.
Low level bracket pales in comparison when talking about power gaps.
They go from getting rolled against premades to not being phased by premades in a few games at 80 pvp? News to me.
In low level battlegrounds, tourists level out in a few days, there’s no reason to close the power gap in low bracket when you’re a tourist. The reason tourists queue up for battlegrounds isn’t to close the power gap to have fair fights, it’s to gain exp when they are bored of the other avenues of leveling.
I love how you completely ignore the fact that with such player attrition that current classic wow has in all versions, and continue beating a dead horse about a power gap that happens at every pvp bracket in this game; the same thing that happens in 10-19 bracket happens at level 80; it happens in all pvp brackets. it isn’t specific to lower level brackets. That was never an issue with player participation, otherwise 80 battlegrounds would be dead as it has the widest power gap margins out of any bracket.
It’s worse at 80, go into battlegrounds with a fresh 80 in dungeon blues and heirlooms and tell me how it felt for you; Low level bracket pvp doesn’t have premades rolling all day for achieves, 95% of the time much more tourist friendly where you have both tourists and xp-off on each side, and not just premades. Already more attractive to tourists who want to enjoy battlegrounds while leveling.
Think logically; An already rapidly declining player base in comparison to the original, do you think splitting the activity in existing brackets will bring players back to the game to play low level bracket pvp or will it just stop those who are left over at this point from enjoying low level bracket pvp as a result of cutting participation in half for the already established core of each of the lower level pvp brackets?
Not only do you seem to be ignoring the fact that player participation at lower brackets relies on a healthy player base to begin with, but you also seem to be ignoring the fact that tourists don’t stay in brackets for longer than a few days to a week, regardless if they experienced a power gap or not.
If you chose to spend an ounce of thought into the topic you’d realize that your talking point of claiming power gaps the main issue with participation is wildly incoherent considering the fact that every expansion pack so far has had healthy low level bracket pvp participation throughout 90% of their lifespan.
In lower bracket pvp, was there a power gap in classic tbc?
Much more than in classic wotlk by comparison.
Was there a power gap in classic era?
Definitely, about half the gap in comparison to classic wrath.
No iteration of classic so far has had lower bracket pvp participation die out so fast in comparison to wrath classic. Do you know that wrath classic is the only iteration of classic that had RDF or do you ignore that fact as well?
In Classic Era and Classic TBC, both towards the end of their lifespan about 2 months before prepatch to each of their following expansions still had enough low bracket pvp participation to produce matches in a majority of low level brackets.
In Wrath classic, a couple months after RDF released there was 0 games in a majority of low level pvp brackets. We are now shy a few days from 6 months since RDF released. There has not been low bracket pvp in 80% of the low level pvp brackets for atleast 4 months.
In original wrath, subscription numbers were at a point where they had never been before, 12 million; they’ve never been able to produce a product after this point to reach that number again. They could have split the queues into 4s if they wanted to and still had participation at every bracket with 12 million subscriptions.
Tourists visit every bracket for a few days each, at the fastest pace they would be out in the same day. Simple oversight on your part but I understand that you might not have much experience in low level bracket activity in classic wow, which is fine and I don’t mind filling you in on what happens with these tourists in reality.
Tourists don’t make up the majority of low bracket pvp, they are in and out of each bracket, regardless if they have “fair and fun” fights. Regardless what the fight turns out to be, the tourist doesn’t stay to keep the bracket active.
Where’s your citation that validates this claim?
Regardless if not bifurcating the xp on and xp off brackets was one of the few good decisions they made, the reality of the issue of further splitting low bracket pvp with original cata brackets still exists; Blizzard has a real opportunity to get at least one more W on their list if they choose to see this issue and decide a change is necessary to avoid the outcome of low level brackets being dead on arrival at worst, dead in a few months at best.
If they are able to maintain the same direction that they had to keep low level brackets active for as long as possible with wrath classic by not splitting xp-off and xp-on, then they may have an opportunity to build more trust with the player base at least on one aspect of the game.
Seems pretty reasonable to me. I’d rather have matches than no matches.
I havent played many battlegrounds on retail lately. However, that is not the point. A lvl 10 character without stam items has like 200hp, while a maxed out alt can easily reach 5-6 times that amount. The damage for physical classes is multiple times higher, too. No lvl 10 caster will have the mana/damage to kill such an exp stop player without drinking multipe times. That is not fun. Additionally, unlike max level players, low players with 10 level difference dont have the same amount of tools due to them being locked behind levels.
Even if DF pvp balancing/power gaps are much much worse, which I personally cannot imagine, why even argue here?
You are not wrong. BUT. They would be the majority, if the brackets were split. I tell you this based on facts from original wotlk. This tells us, that most of these tourists dont play right now, mainly because of the existance of exp stop players.
All the other stuff, I get it, but you can only see your point of view, not the reasons, why “tourists” are so few right now. Personally I assume you dont want “tourists” to have a chance. If there were stat templates and players were set to the same level for the duration of the battlegrounds, so that stats/gear wont affect the game, you would have much less interest in these battlegrounds, maybe not even playing them anymore. I make this assumption based on the fact, that while in original wotlk there were enough pvp alts in many brackets, most of them died off nearly instantly, because many, if not most, werent interested in facing players with similar power level. Maybe you are an expeption, but it is generally true for the majority of exp stop alts.
You say yourself the activity in wrath was nearly non-existent for the majority of low level pvp brackets. Ask yourself: why is that? There are two reasons. Firstly, there arent many exp stop alts and secondly tourists simply have much less fun compared to the dungeons, you keep mentioning. Pvp could and should be just as fun as dungeons for leveling players, but as I explained in detail, with powergaps too big, having fun is not possible for them.
Nobody asked about or talked about retail in this thread yet, the discussion is solely surrounding classic era up to classic wrath low level bracket pvp participation and how further splitting it beyond what RDF did to it will result in dead brackets, the same dead brackets classic wrath dev team avoided by not bifurcating xp-off and xp-on queues.
Fresh characters to a bracket don’t stay fresh, they level up along the way, naturally closing the gap, this happens in every bracket; Shocking, I know.
Even though this is irrelevant to the topic, fun in pvp is subjective to each individual. Where it becomes a problem is when there are no matches to pvp in order to have that subjective experience, hence why the classic wrath devs made the change of not bifurcating xp-off and xp-on queues in order to allow lower level brackets to actually have matches for as long as they turned out to produce.
The only person who mentioned DF pvp balancing here was you; This topic is for classic wrath brackets being split if original cata brackets are implemented. It feels like you aren’t trying to stay on topic but maybe that’s just me.
The brackets have already been split, RDF lowered the participation of tourists now that they have an alternative route to questing to gain exp.
Splitting the brackets any further and tourists will level out of each bracket in half the time in compared to classic wrath iteration of low level brackets. You’ll be lucky if you get 1 match a day at launch for those new brackets. When you are in a RDF dungeon in classic wrath, your queue for battlegrounds is paused.
Do you think tourists in cata are only going to be queued up for battlegrounds? A tourist would be lucky to get 1 match in any low level bracket beyond 19 in a day if they are also running RDF.
Original wotlk had 12 million subscriptions, the most active playerbase in wow’s history. They could have split it further and still had matches all day long.
Compared to wrath classic’s all time high of 660,000 raiders which you can find on ironforge pro; Original wrath still had at least 20x the amount of monthly active users than what classic wrath had at its peak.
What this means is that the pool of players that were queued up for low level bracket was astronomically higher in original wrath than what we ever had here in any version of classic wow. They could afford to split the bracket and still have matches with that pool size of players.
Tourists are busy in RDF right now, they don’t queue for battlegrounds in low level brackets until wsg weekend in wrath classic.
Pretty loaded run-on paragraph, i’ll try to do my best to answer all points here even though this is entire paragraph is besides the point of the main topic of this discussion, just like much of what you have stated previously.
Tourists will queue up if the progress is worth it, it doesn’t matter what the power gap is or if there were stat templates; if the progress isn’t worth it for what they get out of queuing up for low level bracket pvp, they will skip it and pursue the most efficient path, which at the moment is RDF.
Some people enjoy endgame pvp more, some people enjoy low bracket pvp more; there are in betweens as well. Regardless of what the playing field is, some people would rather play the bracket of their choosing rather than being put in a bracket which they enjoy less. This is where i stand, i enjoy the brackets that i choose to participate in, when i get forced to play something i didn’t choose, i find less enjoyment in that. Now i don’t know if that is sufficient enough to quell your unbased assumptions of me, but i hope it helped you understand that not all players are the same. Each individual finds enjoyment in their own ways.
In original wrath i know there was enough monthly active users in wow to fill every bracket enough in every battlegroup server cluster to produce matches all day long throughout original vanilla, tbc, and wrath. I played the same brackets in original vanilla, tbc, wrath, that i played here in classic era, tbc, and wrath.
The people that suffered by original wrath devs splitting the queues in original wrath was the players that enjoyed the lower brackets that they chose to stay at. Tourists didn’t have a care in the world. There was enough tourists to support themselves, but not enough of the players who chose to stay in those brackets because they enjoyed them, they weren’t enough on their own to fill matches to go against only themselves.
Now in wrath there isn’t as big of a pool of tourist as there was in original wrath, it is apparent now that RDF is open and no games are popping for the majority of lower level brackets.
Quote me saying this including the context; i’ve made it clear it’s been the opposite for each iteration of classic wow up to the last couple of months for each iteration; As in each iteration of classic wow so far has had healthy low level bracket pvp participation up to each of their final couple months before the next iteration (or expansion), except for classic wrath; The participation was healthy before RDF, and quickly died out after it was enabled like i mentioned previously.
I feel like you don’t even try to read what others post here when you can’t even correctly state what one other person posted.
The activity has been healthy in every iteration of classic, even despite the abysmally small playerbase compared to original wrath. There is one similarity between the two in low level bracket participation though; Original wrath devs bifurcated the queues of xp-on and xp-off in original wrath, splitting the brackets and resulting in no matches for one of those two groups. In Classic Wrath, devs reenabled RDF which they were vehemently opposed to as it went against their “pillars of design” for classic, whatever that meant. This in turn split the lower bracket pvp participation just like the split that happened in original wrath with the separate queues of xp-on and xp-off.
There aren’t enough tourists in low level brackets to find matches as it is with RDF enabled. Splitting the brackets further will result in furthering the gap in finding matches, battleground queues are paused while participating in RDF dungeons. Now that tourists have a streamlined path to achieve the most efficient rate of exp gains while leveling through RDF, those tourists are going to be in dungeons much more than they will be in matches at low level brackets. Fun has nothing to do with their reason in queuing RDF repeatedly over on end and never touching battleground queue. Running the same low level dungeons over and over again on alts when it feels like doing anything else to progress is inefficient is far from fun.
From my experience, in classic wrath there’s just as many, if not more XP-off players in low level brackets as there was in original wrath.
Your whole premise of participation increasing due to how fun the bracket can be is flawed. If there are no matches, there won’t be any fun to be had.
It doesn’t matter if the tourists are only facing tourists, or if there was no power gap. The core players that are in those lower level brackets are the majority. They aren’t there for the miniscule amount of exp gain that the tourist are there for once they get bored of questing/dungeons/grinding. The core players are there because they enjoy those brackets. The idea that splitting the brackets further will somehow increase participation has no basis. Of course if you ignore the fact that classic wrath has 20x less the amount of players than original, then you might end up ignorant to this realization. In-fact, simply observing results from the most recent splitting of low level brackets, RDF, has proven otherwise.
Do you believe tourists queue up for dungeons more because they find them fun, or do you believe tourists queue up for dungeons more because there’s guaranteed exp gains at a more efficient rate than queuing up for battlegrounds in low level brackets?
Doesn’t matter what the power gap a tourist may face, they aren’t the sole player on their team; the outcome of the match doesn’t rely on them solely. But to even get to that point there has to be a match in the first place, and without tourists AND xp-off players both queued up, there will be little to no matches now that RDF is enabled when you consider the pool of players that actually queue for low level bracket pvp. Further splitting this already dilapidated state of low level brackets will result in dead brackets at launch at worst, a few matches a day for a month or two before dying at best.
I know reading comprehension is a little hard when there is more content than you’re used to, but do try to at least correctly state what other people post when you do decide to tell those people what they themselves have said.
In WotLKC right now you can’t get into some (most?) BGs in most low level brackets outside of the bonus weekend, and sometimes even that has a longer queue. I didn’t try in the lowest brackets, but the AV queue is always unavailable wait time when I try it outside AV weekend for example. In the 79 bracket you also have twinks with 20k hp two shotting people with less than half as much.
I think more people would do low level PvP to level and honor cap while leveling if they scaled everyone to the max level of that bracket like they do in retail and maybe scaled their item level up to a decent minimum so the xp off twinks aren’t 2x+ as powerful as everyone else (especially an issue where higher levels in a bracket have gear from the next expansion and lower levels in the same bracket do not).
Level scaling would also fix obnoxious issues like the fact that I can’t mind control people in BGs at 71 because it has a level range limit to 73. That might be different in Cataclysm already, I didn’t look into it.
A random BG queue with a bonus might be nice too so you always had a bonus to level with besides CTA.
I’m all for more activity in low level brackets, changing how they are played is a step beyond that though.
Now that RDF is enabled, there is no reason to queue BGs outside of wsg weekend. I wonder if they would just increased the xp gains for wsg, ab, & av to be on par or higher than RDF xp gains, maybe then we’d see more people opting in to that avenue of character progression. Solely queuing up for battlegrounds outside of wsg when RDF is available slows progress when talking about xp gains when you compare the two, RDF is clearly the more efficient path by a long shot so much so that there are no matches available in majority of low level brackets now as there were before RDF.
You can queue as a tank or healer in RDF and get instant queues all day while passing those low level brackets within a few hours of RDF spam each. Doesn’t make sense to queue up for wsg at lower level for exp gains since it not only isn’t guaranteed in wsg, but it is a much lower amount gained as well as takes much longer than your average dungeon most of the time, especially if the game ties before timer ends. For AB, i believe the xp gains is even worse as people don’t even queue up on ab weekends for low level bracket pvp any longer. AV doesn’t happen below level 71, regardless of AV weekend or not; just not a big enough pool of players that are queued into battlegrounds rather than RDF now.
It does seem like what you described would attract more tourists to low level brackets though and i think a more even playing field like that might be good for the health of lower level bracket pvp.
I do believe if the incentive to progress your character in lower bracket pvp was more in line with what RDF offers in terms of exp gains, or slightly higher, then maybe people might be more tempted to choose battlegrounds over RDF at that point.
Random BG queue for lower level brackets with bonuses similar to RDF would help participation greatly, the gains from battlegrounds simply does not come close to what RDF offers.