Merc mode is terrible for the game and does nothing to improve the experience of battlegrounds

PVP Battlegrounds
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The whole purpose for Merc mode to be in the game was to allow the huge imbalance of one faction to have quicker queues and and make the pvp experience more fluid with more time in a battleground.

What this has actually done is actually made the problem even worse because of the “against overwhelming odds” buff (or whatever its called. You know the one. Give’s 50% bonus honor from battlegrounds? yeah that one).The massive amount of honor gains from this has actually made it so that all of the horde players merc mode for the bonus honor in battlegrounds. It’s terrible for the game to incentivise players to merc mode for bonus honor for an essence when the VERY purpose you put merc mode into the game was to combat one faction dominating pvp.

When you make it so that one faction gets huge bonuses for farming a currency used in getting a great essence, you incentivise that faction to become dominant in pvp. Not by people faction changing, but by merc moding. Clicking on an NPC and getting the same benefits as an alliance player.

One of two things MUST happen.

  1. Merc mode removed from the game. To get the against overwhelming odds buff (the 50% bonus honor buff, you know what im talking about) needs to be an actual alliance character.

  2. Merc mode can remain, but horde players cannot benefit from this buff if they are using merc mode.

All in all, the entire system is garbage and only makes the faction imbalance worse. If blizzard would simply MERGE all faction queues together, there would be no faction imbalances in pvp. Just good and bad teams.

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Well the strange thing is that there are two system in place to try and balance things. They seem to be working against one another. I think only one should remain.

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What does merc mode have to do with a wpvp buff?

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I think he meant the enlistment bonus. That’s what I catered my reply to. Doesn’t make a lot of sense for the enlistment bonus to be a thing if their queues are full of mercs. They seem counter-opposing.

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How does it make faction imbalance worse?

Merc mode is only even available if one faction is outnumbered by a specific amount.

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You could transfer back to Alliance for another 24 hours.

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Agreed. Preferably, remove merc mode entirely, so there’s some incentive for actual faction balance again. There’s absolutely no excuse for mercs benefiting from the enlistment bonus, though. They get the shorter queue time, which is what merc mode is there for; it’s not there to give Horde all the benefits of Alliance along with all the benefits of Horde, both.

At least, I hope it’s not, though it sometimes feels that way.

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Oh. Well, that’s part of playing as Alliance.

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Oh boy, another “horde mercs” complain thread, these really are a dime a dozen on this forum :roll_eyes:

Merc mode is fine, end of discussion :stuck_out_tongue:

@ OP, not to call you out or anything… but weren’t you the guy that faction changed to Alliance, had “buyer’s remorse” after a bunch of bg losses (you even made a thread about it), and then asked for a refund from customer service so you could come back to Horde? :joy:

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There is the Merc mode and there is the Alliance enlistment bonus…

The fact that both of these things are in existence, to me, seems that there are just not that many people PvPing anymore.
The systems are trying to get people to PvP, or at least… keep them PvPing.

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Which are?

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Merc Mode is fine … the extra bonus is to give horde incentive to play with the side where it’s harder to win so that the extra honor can be used for cosmetic rewards . The essence thing is new and within couple of weeks will die down …

However if the dev continue to have important use of honor other than just for cosmetic rewards then yes , merc mode should not give you the enlisted bonus , just the faster queue time .

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Innumerable.

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You don’t have a victim mentality? That’s a big one… :joy:

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End Merc mode now! End Horde favoratism!
#changes

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Not talking about ‘horde has more mythic groups running in LFG’ nonsense.

In an instanced battleground, what advantage do we have? Are we just better, or…?

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For example, often in Epic BG’s horde usually has 4 or 5 healers pushing the horde scrum forward. Alliance, not so much. The perception is that since the horde faction has more healers that alliance randoms are at a significant disadvantage.

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No advantage just someone for alliance to blame when things go south … was mercing in a WSG today morning . Horde capped and chat goes like this … ‘I cc ed the healer , how come you could not kill the EFC, you suck , horde mercs suck’… well the 2 mercs in the group ( both were top 3 in damage at that point ) could not kill the EFC because we were outnumbered and did not have a healer nearby… I afked after that . That BG was only going one way

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NO the purpose of merc mode is to keep the queue times balanced, and keep horde queue times from getting up into the 45min - 3 hr range. Removal of merc. mode WILL put the queue times up there and bring pvp to a screeching halt.

Again NO; the purpose is to balance the queue times. The extra incentive helps balance it further, and brings more of the better players to the alliance side; which DOES balance the factions in the BGs a tad bit more, contrary to your delusions.

Are you saying that ONLY alliance should have access to the extra honor and rewards? That would make lots of horde players QUIT the game and make the queue times worse, and bring casual bgs to a complete STOP.

All that said however, they could add things to address the faction imbalance without changing merc mode in any way whatsoever.

An ongoing buff that gives one faction a + to damage and healing or overall health that changes very slowly over time and caps at maybe +20% to +30% might be a good solution.

BUT PLEASE merc mode is NOT the problem its part of the solution. Some of the glaring problems are:

  • Alliance pvpers (not the mercs) seem to have lower gear levels in BGs

  • Alliance pvpers have no patience whatsoever and will quit at the first unfavorable turn of the score and/or map

  • It only takes a few quitters to completely imbalance the game and with a few quitters on the alliance side every time unless the bg goes their way from the very beginning its no wonder why the horde is on such a huge winning streak.

  • Alliance players don’t play for the team as much as horde players do.

  • All of the above are made worse by the SHORT queue times on alliance side which makes it easier for alliance to take a loss and just requeue or jump on an alt.

  • In epic BGs in particular, losing seems to create a cycle of losing as no one on the losing side is learning what strats. actually win the game (well not nearly as much as being on the winning side)

  • Alliance players don’t have the boldness that horde players do in epics. (Don’t agree with this?) Then explain WHY in AV horde players run across the FoS on the east side (between the two entry points) and alliance players go AROUND the horde on the west side. 100% its because the alliance players don’t want to have the brutal FoS clash and want the short quickie win; while the horde players just take the advantage that alliance flat out hands to them without contention!

TL;DR: the problem is not the mercs it’s primarily the alliance players.

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