I want to start off by saying I HATE CROSS REALM BATTLEGROUNDS. As someone who lived threw the first time they were added to the game I saw pvp communication break down, and faction pride fall.
My compromise is to have cross realm battlegrounds turn off be default. After waiting 15 minutes let the player choose to get bumped into a new queue with a pool of players from other servers who are looking for a battleground. This way healthy servers can still have faction rivalries, but if the queue gets too long players can still find a match. Blizzard uses this type of match making for when they can’t match a good comp in Heroes of the Storm. But in heroes of the storm the wait time before bumping into the new queue is too short. Even if you have a tank and a healer you still show expanding group options warning after 5 seconds.
I do think blizzard will fumble this up a lot. I rather not have cross realm battlegrounds at all, and if a player really wants to pvp badly enough they can reroll to a server with a healthier faction balance.
If anyone is trying to save themselves from that mess by rolling on the right server ahead of time, I have 650+ players heading to the same north american PVP server on classic launch. This is a cross faction group with goals of making sure the server stays high population and 50/50 faction balance. we are aiming for 2000 players before launch
https://discord.gg/Q5wWZa9
I also believe based on what was said in the Classic PvP Content Plan Post, that the game won’t have cross realm battlegrounds.
It sounds like Honor Contribution will be only within one’s realm
6 Likes
I think that’s a fair idea, at least as a start.
My first character was alliance on Scarlet Crusade (US); the queues for WSG were 50-70 minutes long. Even then, I still queued with my PvP guild. Enemy horde would just AFK out since they’d get an insta-pop after deserter wore off.
I’d rather wait 20 minutes for a server-only game than a cross-realm game, but getting past that mark is when I’d regretfully accept cross-realm queues.
I mean, even if it tried putting the same realm together, that’d be nice…or at least it’s neat to think about, even if it’s only those from your faction.
3 Likes
You took that as no honor contributions? I take that as you are ranked based on your realm. Not ranked against other realms.
Can I opt into the cross realm queue immediately? It would suck always having to wait 15 minutes for a queue if you’re on the dominant faction of your server.
Also, here’s a different idea: enable crossrealm BGs for 10-59 since those brackets will be mostly dead anyway. Let level 60 BGs (and 51-60 AV) stay realm locked.
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Isn’t that the way it was done in vanilla, even after CRBGs were put in?
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I had pretty good times with twinks before cross realm battlegrounds. I think on smaller server that would also be a problem
It’s a nice idea, though i would raise the time to 20 or 30 mins, and or make it short for lower level ques.
Honor Contributions can hurt though,
Though due to the Dogma of no changes i’m against my own idea, but it’s interesting idea none the less, and see how the rest of the folk around here feel about it.
If anything this should wait a bit until after AQ Phase or something, or only enabled on low pop realms.
I miss old Illidan PVP - throwing an IRL party whenever Team Red actually won AV…
Now the ridiculous queues and timers are just additional pains in player v. player asses.
I remember illidan always being like 90% horde. even in classic they were like that
That would make sense since that’s still how it worked in 1.12 w xrealm bgs.
Honor contribution were always with one’s realm. It never had anything to do with cross-realm BGs.
The BGs will be very busy when they go live in Phase 2.
Doing BGs against people 100% from your server is amazing, and I’d hate to see people who never experienced that get cut short for a problem that doesn’t exist.
Until queue times are persistently in excess of 15 minutes there is just no need for CRBG.
2 Likes
We still don’t have confirmation on how the basic server structure will function, ie: population cap. Its entirely possible that we could get servers that easily accommodate numbers high enough, of each faction, to sustain BGs without the need for CRBG or Battle groups. But,… we shall see.
15 minutes in the queue isn’t long enough, to me, to justify switching to a CRBG system. We waited for an hour or so to get into AV back in the day and it was fine because we were out doing other stuff in the world. I don’t think waiting an hour is too much to ask.
When we reach the point where it’s many hours in queue and people just never even have a shot to get in…which is exactly what happened for a lot of people in Vanilla, necessitating the CRBG system in the first place…then we’ll talk.
4 Likes
CRBG’s were introduced in the last 6 months of Vanilla, to combat long queues and under populated or faction biased servers. Classic is likely to see the same issues in the later parts of the content release cycle. At least some form or CRBG needs to be included.
Perhaps as an alternative, if faction PVP participation is balanced on a server, say 40% vs 60%, CRBG is unavailable. Some days will have long queues, other days they won’t. If one faction is far outweighing the other though, only the heavy pop side will have CRBGs. The weaker side will always face groups comprised only of Local Server players.
That way:
a) The weaker faction always sees local opponents.
b) The stronger faction regularly sees local opponents (maybe 50%)
c) The stronger faction still gets BGs for points, just against other high pop servers.
d) The Battle Ground experience can be extended out for longer, because people aren’t giving up due to long queues etc.
It’d have to be a compromise only for long term viability, because CRBG’s are the solution that Vanilla took, and it did generate far more active PVP. The argument can be made that because 1.12, the patch it’s introduced in, will be permanent immemorial the CRBG’s will be needed because Vanilla had no other solutions for long queues. It’d be a bit of a franken-patch, but a complete removal of CRBGs will destroy the long term viability of the game.
mean I wish we had server info like that. Basicly I calculated that less then 1000 players can be farming the max level zones at one time before there is not enough of anything to go around. Once you take this into account we can see how large the servers can get before players get in each other way.
I posted something like this a couple of days ago but I think 15 minutes is too long. While I vastly favor same realm, I think the re-roll on another server vs a 10 minute or so queue would be better. Other than that agree.
EDIT: If Blizz starts getting peoples information prior to start (people can pre-select a server prior to launch, etc). Blizz can do vast amounts to level things as they can choke-point making more X faction characters if the balance goes way too far one way or the other.
2 Likes
Interesting concept. Submit to Blizzard your faction, PVP/PVE desire, region, and who else you want to play with (Battle Tag wise), and let them level out the servers for long term players.
this is why I have started a prelaunch group to make sure the server we join remains even faction balance high population. at launch we will try to get people to use it as a server discord. one thing at a time though.
Blizzard has always had the stance they will not force balance the factions they are not going to not let someone role a toon on a server with their friends even now in retail you can make a toon on a full server even if you none on it.
I wish they would show faction pop on servers so we’d know it’s 80% one faction and might not want to role that faction on that server.