Background:
When I was under Honor Level 30, queue times for Epic Battlegrounds were extremely long, anywhere from 1.5 hours up to 4 hours. After reaching Honor Level 30, queue times improved drastically. Now, I typically get into games within 15 minutes or less.
My Experience:
Since passing Honor Level 30, I’ve noticed that matches feel much more competitive possibly due to premade groups facing off against each other. Players often mention things in chat like “ABC vs. XYZ,” which seem to refer to known guilds or communities. While I’m not familiar with these groups personally, the frequency of these comments suggests that organized premade matchups are common.
This also leads me to believe that there are fewer players queuing in the Honor Level 30+ range, which could explain the prevalence of premade heavy games and longer backfill delays.
In several matches, I’ve seen as many as 22 teammates leave mid-game, and no replacements arrive for 8 to 10 minutes. This puts the remaining players in a difficult position. I often choose not to /AFK because I don’t want to make things worse for the team, but at that point, there’s usually little to no PvP happening, just standing around as the match slowly plays out. And when backfill players finally do join, many of them immediately /AFK as well, likely realizing it’s a loss and not worth their time.
My Questions:
Why are there two apparent brackets?
Because the Honor Level 30+ bracket is dominated by the same recurring premade teams, it suggests a relatively small pool of players in that group. At the same time, the very long queue times for players under Honor Level 30 also indicate low population there. Wouldn’t it be better to pool all players together to improve queue times and create more varied, balanced matches?
They’re separated so new players will fight other new players. If I had to guess I’d say there are many more players in the 30+ honor bracket.
Players are quick to leave due to the prevalence of premades and lack of balance. There’s no point in playing against a premade, you’ll lose 99% of the time. Better to just quit and go queue rated or hop on to another character. It’s usually very obvious if the game is going to be a one sided stomping after the first clash.
Some battlegrounds aren’t worth staying in even if it’s not a premade. Isle of conquest, for example, is almost always won by whoever wins the first fight at hangar. The other bases simply aren’t viable due to low vehicle hp. Again, it’s usually a better idea to just peace out and do something else.
Epics have not been kept up by blizzard and aren’t taken seriously by most players basically.
Thanks for responding! I ended up rephrasing my third question and combining it with the second one to make things clearer.
For new players, having to wait 1.5 to 4 hours just to get into an Epic Battleground to play with other new players, isn’t a great experience. I know this firsthand, as I often forgot I was even in queue while wandering around and exploring the world. On several occasions, I finally got into a match as a backfill after nearly 2 hours, only for the game to end almost immediately because someone decided to /AFK. Then back to waiting 1.5+ hours again.
So I’m honestly not sure how often new players are actually getting to play with other new players in Epic Battlegrounds. The frequency seems incredibly low.
In terms of playing Epic Battlegrounds after Honor Level 30, while I understand why some players /AFK due to the reasons you’ve listed and explained, it’s also making Epic Battleground unplayable. The frequency is quite high, so it’s like every other game.
I know Epic Battleground is not rated but premades exist and they play it competitively so it is taken seriously. The chat gets so crazy sometimes.
If you’re asking why they don’t pool the new players with the experienced to create shorter queue times then it’s probably just because they want you to play against other new players. With how few new players PvP sees these days then I have no doubt that there is probably a very small pool of sub 30 honor level people that are queueing for epics.
There’s probably fixes they can implement to reduce these times but it’s most likely just a very low priority for them.
The premades and the map design both contributed to the AFK problem.
Why waste 30 minutes of your time playing against a premade when your in a team of pugs ? Its a complete waste of time and if your not having fun in a video game why are you even playing ?
As a result multiple people afk, myself included. I’ll stay for the clash and see how we fare. If its going to be a loss with no hope of a turn around game. I leave. I don’t even need the conquest anymore.
I relog and re-q and more so than not get into another fresh game within 5-10 minutes. During that time I can study or watch tv etc. No need to mindlessly waste my time in a already decided BG.
They play it to fight pugs and dodge other premades. There is nothing competitive about 95% of the premades that epic sync BGs or BGs in general.
I guess I might be one of the newbies that made it to Honor Level 30+. That sounds so funny but it make sense. I’m just thinking about how many new players gave up already considering the queue times for Honor Level Under 30 for Epics Battleground.
It took me a long time to learn how to play my class because I couldn’t learn it in Random Battlegrounds due to the graveyard camping that happens every single game. I actually learn it by just playing Epic Battleground because the game would last long enough for me to play but having to wait 1.5 hours is just insane now that I think about it.
You are probably right, there may not be a lot of new players.
You’re fine, most people get out of the sub 30 bracket pretty quick. You’ll still come across many similarly skilled players as yourself.
If you get frustrated with random battlegrounds then try rated blitz sometime. Your first handful of games may be tough but the system will eventually try to place you into games with equally skilled players. Each team has the same amount of dps and healers and there’s gear requirements so the matches are usually of higher quality.
Thanks for explaining the map design. Two days ago, in Wintergrasp, I saw two Horde NPC in the Alliance Fortress and it’s the weirdest thing because I’ve never seen it like that since Alliance played defense that game. Someone said it was AI.
The Epic Battleground is fun but I would say in Honor Level 30+, it has changed a lot due to premades, especially if reinforcement matter. That would mean you can’t go exploring, do something out of the norm from everyone else, or go solo somewhere for quest just because if you die, that’d be bad for the team. And so, sometimes the game just become super long that half the team starts to get bored or is out of idea of what to do. I had one where in Isle of the Conquest, our team destroyed the Horde gate but we all just couldn’t do anything more because the Horde would sit in their base defending and they won by reinforcement, regardless if we had all 3 workstation and even bomb their courtyard with Hangar, Demolisher, and Seige. Some players started to /AFK out so that the game can end. There was also a warrior who died 37 times just to help end the game too. And this one started as a premade vs premade, although I do not know if it ended as a premade vs premade.
Which means if premades also dodge other premades, that’s bad for the game. It just contributes the same as those who /AFK in mass.
At this point where the state of the game is terrible there’s no reason to separate based on honor level. Blizz just has to fix matchmaking overall, if they care - but there’s no evidence they do.
[edit]
Also, if solos are that concerned about “premades” then just play alliance. Odds are you’ll get in with a premade.
Pretty normal for them to leave if facing another premade. Have quite a few screenshots of this happening.
Would assume to give new players a chance at more balanced play, though I don’t think it functions how it should and likely made more sense in the past when it was implemented.
Yes.
If it’s normal for players to have hour + queue times for epics for sub 30 honor level, Blizz should absolutely remove it. That said, I doubt it’s even on their radar. Their involvement in the casual PvP community is essentially non-existent.
There is no reason to keep the entry level bracket separated. Epic BG’s IS the entry level bracket. We don’t need an entry level to our entry level…
Merge all the players, because the 1-29 honor level are picking up really bad habits (like going Glaives in IoC and actually winning because in 1-29 they don’t know you can kill glaives)
Then after 6 month-1year of casually playing in the 1-29 bracket, they get merged with the high honor level and premades veterans chaos.
There was a honor level 30 the other day trying to lead, he must’ve not noticed he changed brackets because he was rooting for those glaives.
Free the 1-29, merge the brackets. There’s no reason to split Epic BG players even more.
Edit: There’s also lots of smurfs in 1-29, it’s easy to create a new account.
I think the starter bracket should be bigger actually.
Wow is the only game I know that thinks it’s a good idea to just throw fresh out of the box new players against multi year veterans is a good idea.
And for epic bgs being the “starter bracket” it is mostly played by once again multi year veterans who have played them regularly for probably 5 years at least.
Low rated shuffle or blitz is your best bet as a new pvper but even that has its problems. So basically there is no space for a new pvper in this game.
There is a reason other competitive games don’t just throw bronze players against platinum even in quick match. It’s cooked.
no it isn’t. people say this because they think they can get away with hiding in a larger group while not contributing anything to the team. others also like to say this so they can feel better about getting a low rating in rated.
the best players in any bracket are going to be good no matter what you personally think of their bracket.
it is absolutely mean to put a honor level 1 in a game against someone who has been pvping for years. you also have to keep in mind that higher level players expect you to know how the maps are played and how to play your class, they don’t really want new players on their teams.
realistically if you have never pvp’d before, the best place to start is some dueling outside of a major hub, after that regular random bgs would probably be your best starting point into instanced pvp.
i think the main issue is modern gamers all expecting a cakewalk and avoiding anything they aren’t immediately good at. we need to bring ‘game over’ screens back, 20 years of unlimited lives and continuation without penalty has softened up the average gamer to the point they won’t try anything challenging.
You guys ever notice that when somebody other than myself mentions Honor Level - it becomes a ‘‘multi-year veteran,’’ and an ‘‘experienced player who expects you to know the maps.’’
I said it first - low Honor Levels should not be matched up against high Honor Level players… because opportunists like myself will use their Honor Level as a way to spot easy/free kills.
If honor levels don’t need to be separated in RATED content, then it doesn’t need to be separated in UNRATED content. It just creates more queues for everyone.
If anything low Honor Level players are safer in Blitz, because most players are focused on winning the games.
I don’t see people t-bagging in Blitz.
Randoms/Epics is just a hunting ground for weaker players. Why don’t premade groups just do Rated Battlegrounds? Because they’ll end up against good players, and get stomped. Why don’t I do Arena? Because, I’m not looking for competition. I’m looking for weaker players to stomp on 1v1. Aside from my daily - winning the BG is irrelevant.
I’m still stuck in the below honor 30 level bracket with this new account and I literally go in there doing triple the damage of every one because I’m fully geared and most of the time they have no gear.
I’ve always said they should reduce the bracket to honor level 15 at least
