Patch 1.12 Battlegrounds

[Qklazsiqh-alexstrasza]

how do you enforce that?

Queue on the overpopulated side to prevent the difference becoming too large.

[Fesz-cenarius]

Cross realm sure would help queue times just like it did back then when they released it.

It did. It also killed any chance of pvp guilds doing anything other that pug stomping. By the end of the day 1.12 came out my pvp guild had a well oiled set up: queue pops. the preassigned ‘scout’ goes in the bg. If he/she sees a bunch of the same guild name on the other side, he dodges and everyone cancels out of queue. He/she gets a 10 minute break and another ‘scout’ is invited to the group. If its a bunch of randoms, then game on. except not really a game. more like 5 minutes of camping alliance in their starting graveyard while we 5-0 them in AB. We quickly got to the point where we were annoyed if we could only 4-1 because it took so much longer. And there was no repercussions, because these people weren’t on our server. They don’t matter, they are just honor to be extracted as quickly as possible.

Now pre 1.12, we had knock down drag out AB’s for hours every night. The pre 1.12 AB games are my fondest memories of WoW. Post 1.12 it was a brain dead honor farm. But you’re right, we got into games hella fast.

Convenience versus community.

That is the crux of this issue, no matter how those who favor convenience above all else try to disguise and hide that fact.

[Satisfy-skywall]

Agreed. I strongly feel like if they are going to introduce future content, they should keep single realms around for the long haul. Once Blizzard turned everything into cross realm, it killed the game in my opinion. Subscriptions after WOTLK dropped dramatically.

[Discodeeps-malganis (Discodeeps)]

Yup, cross realm BG’s are 100% needed due to massive faction imbalances. Plus it was in patch 1.12.

[Proxy-gorgonnash (Proxy)]

Yup, it’s 100% needed. Plus is was in patch 1.12.

100%? You already know beyond a shadow of a doubt how the server distribution is going to go? That’s some impressive foresight. Also, sharding and loot sharing were not in 1.12, so that argument really doesn’t hold water.

If crbgs are in then fine i guess, but it definitely came/comes with severe repercussions in terms of the social aspects of the game.

[Bamber-thunderhorn]

The only thing crbg in 1.12 did is

1. You had 5-8x the names to remember if you wanted to
2. No more waiting an hr to que up on the dominant faction on your server.

That is a very good trade.

[Proxy-gorgonnash (Proxy)]

The only thing crbg in 1.12 did is

1. You had 5-8x the names to remember if you wanted to
2. No more waiting an hr to que up on the dominant faction on your server.

That is a very good trade.

You either weren’t playing in 1.12 or are woefully naive if you believe that’s the only thing crbg did. I’m not typing it all out again, so I’ll just put this here:

By the end of the day 1.12 came out my pvp guild had a well oiled set up: queue pops. the preassigned ‘scout’ goes in the bg. If he/she sees a bunch of the same guild name on the other side, he dodges and everyone cancels out of queue. He/she gets a 10 minute break and another ‘scout’ is invited to the group. If its a bunch of randoms, then game on. except not really a game. more like 5 minutes of camping alliance in their starting graveyard while we 5-0 them in AB. We quickly got to the point where we were annoyed if we could only 4-1 because it took so much longer. And there was no repercussions, because these people weren’t on our server. They don’t matter, they are just honor to be extracted as quickly as possible.

To further clarify this a bit though: It no longer made sense to play a competitive game from a time perspective. Why play a 30 minute AB when you could dodge that one, and queue for and play 3 5-0 games against pugs in the same amount of time?

The queue’s did go from 15-30 minutes (Not hours long, that’s just flagrant hyperbole) to about 1-2 minutes, that’s true. But with those faster queue times and the fact that 7/8 people you’re fighting aren’t even on your server there’s no reason to do anything other than stomp pugs to churn honor as fast as possible. pre 1.12 you played who you were given because if you dodged you’d be sitting around waiting. the queue was a natural deterrent to dodging competitive matches. Also, there was a matter of your guilds reputation on the server.

I personally think that crbgs and battlemasters are the first clear examples in WoW of the unforeseen and unintended massive negative impact “quality of life” changes can have on an MMO’s ecosystem

[Apprehended-dalaran (Apprehended)]

Is noone going to bring up why they switched it? Most servers were very unbalanced by faction. If you were on the high pop faction you could be in que for an hour or more. They made server groups putting together servers where the high pop factions were opposites creating a more even # for each and much lower que times. Do we want 1 hr que times for the popular side of that server for real?

This is why I am on the fence about cross-realm BGs. I played the low pop faction on my server and I had near instant queues for BGs, whereas the high pop faction had to wait quite a while to get in. It made BGs very inconvenient for the higher pop faction.

On the other hand though, single server BGs did wonders for the server community as you would consistently see the same names over and over again. Some groups actually didn’t want to PUG stomp, but wanted to face another premade, and if you are familiar with the names on the other side then you can tell when you’re facing another premade. Although this was possible on cross-realm BGs also because if you saw that the entire other side was from the same server chances were good that they were also a premade. However, since the pool was bigger the chances of recognizing individual names again was slim.

You could maybe solve this issue through use of an add-on that would let you track names of individuals and/or groups that you faced that you enjoyed playing against, and then remind you when you play against them again. Might not be perfect, but it would at least keep reminding you when you’re playing against someone(s) again that you enjoyed playing against before.

[Chanarach-area-52]

Before the cross-realm implementation every BG was full of familiar faces and names. People on my server that I would see outside in the world. People I had seen outside in the world, and fought with, or fought alongside. At the time I remember the complaints about queue times, lamenting my own 30+ minute wait times to get into a BG. But on the plus side, during these wait times I was often in the world anyway, questing, engaging in a bit of world pvp, or farming.

I am not convinced that because cross-realm happened to be implemented on this patch, that we should have that directly from launch, simply because 1.12 is all Blizzard could find files for. The authentic experience should be server-based battlegrounds. These are going to be new servers, populated with long-time fans of vanilla interspersed with people interested in seeing what it was all about.

Queue times may or may not be an issue. But if my opinion is worth anything in this whole exchange… I happily embraced the cross-realm change at the time for convenience. I am not prepared to make that horrible mistake a second time - I cannot support the concept of cross-realm BGs at launch for the sake of convenience. The experience of having your server community, on and off the battleground, was worth the cost.

[Blueekush-malorne]

Before the cross-realm implementation every BG was full of familiar faces and names. People on my server that I would see outside in the world. People I had seen outside in the world, and fought with, or fought alongside. At the time I remember the complaints about queue times, lamenting my own 30+ minute wait times to get into a BG. But on the plus side, during these wait times I was often in the world anyway, questing, engaging in a bit of world pvp, or farming.

I am not convinced that because cross-realm happened to be implemented on this patch, that we should have that directly from launch, simply because 1.12 is all Blizzard could find files for. The authentic experience should be server-based battlegrounds. These are going to be new servers, populated with long-time fans of vanilla interspersed with people interested in seeing what it was all about.

Queue times may or may not be an issue. But if my opinion is worth anything in this whole exchange… I happily embraced the cross-realm change at the time for convenience. I am not prepared to make that horrible mistake a second time - I cannot support the concept of cross-realm BGs at launch for the sake of convenience. The experience of having your server community, on and off the battleground, was worth the cost.

What this guy said 100000%.

I would gladly screw over my convenience for the sake of community.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

At the end of the day, whatever makes queue times work. If same realm queue times work, great. If it requires cross realm, that’s great too.

[Dish-executus]

Ranking is about setting low caps and coordinating with your faction. so queue times dont matter. If you have long queues you world pvp if you dont you instapop all day.

Only change they need to make is doubling the server pops or tripling them

[Mizterdots-gorgonnash (Mizterdots)]

Those with an instant gratification, convenience oriented mindset seem to prefer cross realm BG’s.

You want to play the game? You just want instant gratification…you don’t make this **** up.

Those who desire a truer classic experience (or who favor community over convenience) seem to prefer to see single realm BG’s.

LOL, do you really not see the hypocrisy in that statement? My man, queuing up to be auto grouped and teleported to an instance to fight players on your realm is the definition of convenience. If you’re that concerned with community and keeping the fight “personal” why aren’t you in the world on your server hunting down your rivals like animals? Now that’s personal, yet you’re worried about something that’s inherently less personal and if you’re so anti-convenience you obviously don’t like BG’s then therefor lets try to make BG’s more enjoyable playable for those who like them.

For the record, CRBG’s can still be plenty personal. At some point in modern WoW they did away with battlegroups which put multiple realms in the same pool, it wasn’t every one of them so it was quite common to see frequent players, even if they weren’t on your realm. Even more so I recall when I was still pretty new to the game any time I saw people from Illidan I knew we were in for some **** because that realm has/had a reputation for being home of some of the highest skill PvPers. Realm reputations were a thing when CRBG’s existed and that there made things I think even more interesting than just going against people on your realm. Once Blizzard removed battlegroups and everyone was in the same pool then sure you got a point it became less personal you likely weren’t gonna see those players again.

No, it would not be a change to have single realm BG’s, as cross realm BG’s were not always part of vanilla. It is every bit as ion keeping with vanilla to have single realm BG’s as it is to have cross realm BG’s.

No, only one option is correct all depending on which patch they’re trying to replicate. If they were to add things to whatever version of the game they were to choose that was either made in the past or wasn’t made until the future, they’re effectively creating an addition, a patch to that version of the game.

The past doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is what was current during that patch of the game and unless Blizzard states otherwise their target is to replicate patch 1.12.0, not 1.12.0 with a patch to revert to back to features that existed in a patch prior or later. However, they are doing artificial content progression inside patch 1.12.0. Though technically it’s patch 1.13 since this is a new game which is in active development, but to make any changes beyond the patch they’ve designated would indeed be untrue to that version of the game.

So hey, if you don’t want CRBG’s until the artificial content releasing hits patch 1.12, fine, but at some point unless they’ve stated otherwise it’s gonna reach patch 1.12. I guess they could stop before that, but then we have WoW patch x.xx.x with changes from the future patch 1.12 and that’d be unfaithful to that version of the game.

cross realm BG’s destroyed that PVP community.

This is on the same logic of the people who think offending them should be a crime because “muh feelings” is more important than human rights.

When cross realm BG’s were added, any behavioral accountability went right out the window.

Someone on your realm is known as a BG afker…then what? People have always AFK’d, people have always carried 30 tonnes of salt when it comes to PvP. Joe AFK’s all the time in BG’s on his realm. Joe AFK’d in your BG, the only difference between cross realm and not is now you too can see Joe AFK instead of it being someone from your realm.

Once cross realm BG’s were added, the number of AFK’ers immediately skyrocketed to the point where almost any given BG had at least one or two AFK’ers, many more in AV

Oh heavens not that, good thing there’s a report feature in Classic. Report AFK, move on.

Players no longer worried about their rep because they were in BG’s with random people from other servers whom they would likely never see again.

I played the same game as you, this wasn’t true until…I wanna say MoP, when they did away with battle groups. When CRBG’s first became a thing several realms were categorized into battlegroups, while significantly larger pools, you always saw more than 1 person from the same realm.

[Satisfy-skywall]

I second what this guy said 100000%
I could not have said this better myself. Thank you.

[Proxy-gorgonnash (Proxy)]

their target is to replicate patch 1.12.0, not 1.12.0 with a patch to revert to back to features that existed in a patch prior or later. However, they are doing artificial content progression inside patch 1.12.0.

First off, A+ work on chopping that guys post up into little straw men. real pro move. This bit though ain’t right. They have patch 1.12 as reference, and they see it as the best foundation/starting point because it represents the most complete vision of vanilla wow, but they aren’t trying to replicate 1.12 specifically. Even if they were though, They are adding in shared loot, possibly some sharding, and as you said progressive content release, so already the “1.12” or bust argument is busted.

And I made alot of posts about why I’m opposed to crbgs. Why just pick on Fesz?

[Derka-wyrmrest-accord (Derka)]

But on the plus side, during these wait times I was often in the world anyway, questing, engaging in a bit of world pvp, or farming.

So you’d queue for a BG in a city, leave to go do stuff out in the world, get into your BG and then go all the way back to the city to requeue again eh? Since you could only queue at the battlemasters until Wrath, I’m sure that’s totally how you did it.

[Derka-wyrmrest-accord (Derka)]

Eventually, players are going to get to 60, they’re going to realize that the realm they chose is not as popular as another realm where the queues are much quicker because there are more games going at one time and they’re going to be here crying for character transfers so they don’t have to reroll…just like they did in Vanilla. Since we’re just going to make the same mistakes all over again because that’s what the WoW community does, you might as well start with single-realm PvP groups again before opening up battlegroups after the players kill a few realms off.

[Felshout-mannoroth (Felshout)]

“community” isnt that important for bgs. you can still queue with whoever you want from your own realm with cross realms

what happens if someone is a jerk or afks? you cant do much about it regardless of realm. cross realms will give much shorter queues which will lead to more people playing

once queues grow long, the chances of getting a 7 vs 5 game go way up

[Satisfy-skywall]

I’m still scratching my head is to why people want cross realm battlegrounds in Classic… Just for the fact of que times? Can’t you just play BFA to accomplish this? But, people still want it…? If you are looking for convenience, BFA has it, and a lot of it. Oh except for the whole gating thing, cause that’s a bunch of fun…
This kind of leads me to believe that Classic will indeed be non crossed realm, otherwise, what’s the point?

[Felshout-mannoroth (Felshout)]

bfa isnt nearly the same, so no we can not just play that instead and get what we are looking for

im surprised people are against it, wait times are very important. when the queue goes super long you usually get a 5 vs 7 game