The ridiculous abuses of mercenary mode have started once again. It’s one thing to queue as a mercenary just because Horde is on a losing streak. (And by the way, Alliance doesn’t have that option.) But it’s another thing entirely to join games just to rig them against Alliance players so that your friends can win.
There’s an entire Horde PVP Discord community that does this. They’ll put together a premade, and other friends in the call will be like, “Lul I’ll join as Alliance and do nothing.” They’ll start out helping so they don’t get kicked for inactivity and then will just sit at a base together to throw the match.
Example: Alliance was beating the Horde by 700 points in Arathi Basin, and then four Alliance players including two of our healers just went to the Farm and sat there showing off their rare mounts to the Horde players, who weren’t attacking them, while the rest of our team went on to lose without their help.
In an Isle of Conquest game, they got no less than 11 mercenaries on our team, who just went to the Horde base and AFK’ed there, claiming to be bombing the walls but really not doing a damn thing other than fighting pugs.
The moment I saw the tactics the Horde premade was using, I knew who it was and joined their Discord call where they were talking openly about it.
To be clear, I know people have been spying and rigging games since Vanilla. But with Mercenary Mode, they don’t even need to get off their mains. They get rewarded with whatever honor, AP, and boxes they can get from throwing a match on a character they care about. Spying used to at least require that you’d leveled something on the opposite faction to max.
It’s ridiculous that this is a feature only available to one faction that they can just use when they can’t win by themselves. Just remove Mercenary Mode. Anyone can level Alliance characters if they want faster queues. Blizzard can make more things account-wide like battleground achievements so nobody is missing out. If Mercenary Mode has to stay, then allow Alliance players to use it to queue as Horde. It would strongly discourage people from using the mode for nefarious purposes if Alliance players could just turn around and rig the Horde’s premades in return.
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Mercenary mode is to improve queue times. Anything else is a delusion.
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Still waiting to read facts here.
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I think there should be open queues for both sides in randoms, you should get put wherever works. No more their 3 healers to our none or premade vs random.
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Indeed that is the intent, however many horde blurted out time and again that they simply switch to merc side when they can’t get a win.
Anything else is a delusion …
Personally I’ve gotten to the point of supporting whatever allows me to queue with good players, so whether fair or not it has ultimately become irrelevant. Fun is as fun does …
Onward and Upward !!!
cheers 
They did when mercenary mode was first introduced. If another paradigm shift occurs due to racial abilities or another cutesy race being added or whatever then alliance will access it again while horde will not.
Report griefers- that’s all. Griefing isn’t exactly an issue specific to merc.
They tried that in WoD and it led to obscene queue times.
I would support them making random battlegrounds just put everyone on a random team without mercenary mode being a thing. You’d still play as your character rather than awkwardly race changing.
What I’m saying is they should just make teams and disregard faction, it’s the only way to hope for some balance.
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The vast vast majority of horde are mercing to avoid q times and it is basically why merc mode was implemented for.
You are not losing games due to merc mode . Horde also loses games in IOC because ppl are ‘running bombs’ inspite of being told explicitly at the start not to jump into the base . It’s not an alliance only thing .
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They should make mix-faction teams.
It would help with queue times, healer/tank imbalances, premades, etc.
Unfortunately, some players care a lot about lore or RP.
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Never heard of this.
As for the comment about 11 bomb-runners in IOC, it’s entirely possible it was just good ole “regular” Alliance players. I see a decent number of bomb-runners in most of my Alliance IOC matches - some pugs just never read chat apparently 
People accuse bomb-runners of being “bots”, “horde mercs”, “afkers”, and other… uhhh… less kid-friendly words all the time 
I agree! Never seen such a long losing streak on horde before. Everyone is mercing right now to farm Echoes with faster que times. Not fun losing to your own faction that chose to play alliance just for a faster que time.
We can have a separate faction specific queue if they think enough people wouldn’t want even healers and premade fighting premade. A lot of PvP is senseless from an RPG perspective, think about where a CTF BG or the arenas fit into lore, and they can maintain enmities outside of instanced content
I am always queing as a merc, and NEVER do I que to lose…
Those players being accused of being merc’s are usually just the average bad Alliance player.
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I support removal. It’s bonkers that the popular faction gets to pretend to be the smaller faction to take advantage of the one real benefit they have.
I’d much prefer they just mix the factions, but that’s probably never gonna happen.
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This is the correct answer 95% of the time.
Yes, occasionally there’s a legit Horde troll who does something like reset the boss “on purpose”. Or… that one Horde troll Priest that dropped fish feasts “on purpose” in the Ally starting cave.
Most of the time, Horde mercs are only there for the short queue times. Or blowing off steam or testing out different talent builds versus real players.
ill merc mode to kill every player from my team to punish them for playing poorly. its not about faction its about doing what daddy tells you.
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While I don’t think Horde are mercing to ruin your games, I do think merc mode should be expanded so that anyone can use it at any time and even join friends from the other faction in BG queues together so they can play together cross-faction using an improved merc mode.
It should be built into the UI like party sync on the PvP tab. Usable when solo also.
Also, there should be a merc NPC that lets you pick your merc race and appearance.
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