So I’m sure you all are aware that Alliance aren’t doing too well in epic BGs atm.
Most epic BGs are Horde-dominated, with Alliance only achieving some sort of balance in IoC.
But I was wondering, “why” is this the case?
Why do Alliance do poorly in epics?
Is it because the Alliance faction is just bad at epics (nature)?
Or is it because Alliance is being led by terrible leadership in BGs (nurture)?
Do individual Alliance players simply play badly, or are they being led by leaders who don’t know what the hell theyre doing?
To find the answer, I decided to run an experiment.
As many of you know, I lead premade epic BGs, and thus, I consider myself a very good leader.
For my experiment, I decided to merc so that I’d queue as Alliance, and run not with a premade, but mostly pure Alliance PUGs, and see if I’d be able to use my strategies and lead the Alliance to victory, or if they’d play too bad to follow a winning strat.
So, what happened?
Well…take a look!
I recorded the whole thing live!
Good video. I’d be interested in seeing the same thing for the rest of the epic battlegrounds, particularly the ones where before the game opens it is already going in Horde’s favour (due to morale and maps).
Ive been in Epics where strats were called and majority of Alliance paid no attention.
Then when the few see that the majority aren’t going to go along with the strats called, they give up and follow the majority instead.
Then it leads to a loss, with rage in chat blah blah blah
I’ve had around 1 win per 12 epics. On this character (playing them in BfA) I’ve had 0 wins in Alteric Valley and Ashran. None of these were close either - they were all losses by a landslide and pretty much the same scenario played out in all of them.
Show me vids where strats were called and followed through for Alteric Valley and Ashran that lead to consistent (or close) wins and I’ll be convinced that it isn’t to do with the map design that give Horde a considerable favor.
Aside from that the lag in epics makes it unplayable for me. A lot of others have complained on here as well. It’s a terrible experience all round
Yes definitely advantageous to whoever is on defense. I would be interested in seeing AV and Ashran because those maps have less linearity; there are more routes to victory and getting people to follow any sort of instruction is like herding sheep.
It’s not impossible to win but you are starting from a losing position before you throw in player morale that kicks in once those loading screens show up.
So I would be keen to see what someone who primarily plays Horde suggests Alliance players do and watching it in practice in both of those maps.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started AV with some basic advice- at least five people per tower, try to back cap if the opportunity presents itself, we can afford to have one tower up before we engage with the boss- but people ignore every piece of it.
Basically, the alliance- I’m guessing the Horde has the same issue but maybe not to the same degree?- has a bunch of bots. Both in the literal sense, and people who are not paying attention and are only performing the bare minimum to not get an AFK kick because they’re only interested in the 425 gear for their fresh-to-120 character. With absolutely nothing to do but wait for the two FW towers to cap people wont even bother climbing the things to make sure it stays capped.
Unless Blizzard rolls out intelligent reward systems- basically your reward scales to your contribution in the BG, including raw stats like DPS and healing done, points captured, etc, and soft stats like your active presence in hostile areas- that concedes that someone can do poorly enough that they merit no rewards other than honor points, this problem is going to persist. If people are rewarded for not bringing their “A” game, their “B” game or even their “C” game, they’re not going to bother with them.
It’s not like Alliance pugs don’t have strats - I often see plenty of discussion in the AV starting cave on strats, what to do, what the plan is, etc etc.
Then when the match starts, Alliance pugs just sort of “do their own thing” and the plan is quickly forgotten Instead of the agreed-upon-plan from the starting cave, you will see Alliance pugs…
randomly dismount to PvP on roads
randomly dismount to fight road NPCs
cap Snowfall GY, when explicitly told not to in the starting cave
stand around in large numbers at IBGY doing nothing (???)
slowly trickle in 1 by 1 into the towers, get picked off, and end up respawning at Stormpike GY… rinse repeat until 20-30 Alliance are dead and sent like 300 miles north
My theory is that they are much more consistent in IOC because IOC is a simpler map with a simple/idiot-proof objective (“get hangar”). So there isn’t many things to “screw up” in IOC, and it’s fairly easy to herd/convince the Alliance pugs to go hangar.
In the more complicated epic bg maps (…basically every other epic bg besides IOC), Alliance pugs fall apart pretty quick left to their own devices/left to their own ways.
But as the video shows, a good leader can make all the difference in these more complicated/technical maps. As long as they have a decent leader telling them what to do in the more difficult maps, Alliance pugs can do just fine.
Don’t know about bots, but there are definitely waaaaay more afkers in Alliance epic bgs.
Due to the +50% bonus honor buff, Alliance epic bgs - on an Alliance character (or an Alliance alt) - are the undisputed, #1 place to afk-leech if you are farming honor. As long as you “get away with it”/don’t get called out by your teammates, you can farm 500-800 honor per loss.
It’s no surprise that virtually all of the multi-boxers flock to Alliance epic bgs/hang out in Alliance epic bgs - it’s the best honor/per hour for afkers in the game. Multiply that 500-800 honor per loss by 3 or 5 characters, and even just afking thru losses is very efficient for the multi-boxer.
Wins are even more lucrative for them, say you get 1300 honor for an Alliance epic bg win. Multiply that by 5 toons, and they get ~6500 honor for a single match.
Whenever I look up/armory the pugs saying “just pull drek”, I don’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Bots would have like 0 gear - the people I look up are usually 450+, so obviously there is a human being behind these characters (…or else they would be fresh-120 levels of gear).
Instead of the agreed-upon-plan from the starting cave, you will see Alliance pugs…
