Add to this the absurd amounts of wintrading and boosting that goes on, this about sums it up
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I played a ton of Blitz during the very long “testing” phase. I had high hopes for it going into its first rated season.
But I’m afraid that new car smell has already worn off for most.
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I still don’t understand why so many wanted the mode if it’s never their fault for not progressing, it’s always everyone else or blizz’s system that’s wrong.
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The people who wanted the mode were not those who normally play RBGs, just like the people who wanted RSS didn’t normally play Arena.
They’re the ones who were unable to get a group in LFG.
There’s probably a good reason they couldn’t get groups and it wasn’t other people gatekeeping rewards from them.
I’d argue that it was the people who mostly did yolo/no voice RBGs (not technically the same thing) like myself who wanted Blitz.
Had more to do with getting repeated games in due to the high turnover rate in LFG when someone is forced to assemble the group yet might not actually be that good at doing so outside of trying to fulfill a semi-arbitrary “meta”, thus limiting the ability of people to play off-meta specs that are otherwise perfectly capable of participating.
Mostly boiled down to the word “meta” and whether or not you farmed invites on friends lists, really.
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Let’s talk about win-trading in Rated Battleground Blitz, or as I like to call it, The Art of Losing on Purpose While Pretending to Try. Now, is it happening? Sure. There’s always someone out there gaming the system, treating the competitive ladder like it’s their personal Monopoly board. But let’s be real—it’s not as rampant as the forums would have you believe.
Oh, the forums! A magical place where conspiracy theories about win-trading are crafted with the same precision as Blizzard’s matchmaking algorithms. You’d think every other game was rigged by shadowy cabals of boosters lurking in Discord servers, cackling as they queue-sync their way to glory. But here’s the truth, folks: win-trading is real, but it’s about as common as a Warlock casting Fear on their healer. It happens, but not nearly as much as your average forum warrior thinks.
The Reality of Win-Trading
Let’s break it down. Win-trading is most likely to happen in the shadowy hours—late-night queues, high MMR matches, the kind of times when most people are either asleep or too busy arguing about loot in guild chat. Why? Because that’s when the boosters and their clients can sync up their queues without the riff-raff getting in the way. It’s not a constant thing, though. Less than 1% of games actually have a win-trade going on. Yeah, that’s right—less than 1%! So, if you think every loss is because of a fix, you’re not just paranoid, you’re giving way too much credit to the average BG player’s coordination skills.
When It Feels Like a Win-Trade… But Isn’t
Now, let’s talk about those games where it feels like you just got win-traded. You know the ones. Your team collapses faster than a house of cards in a wind tunnel. Bases mysteriously fall, flags vanish into the ether, and the scoreboard looks like a cruel joke. But most of the time, that’s not a win-trade. It’s just good old-fashioned incompetence.
Sometimes, people don’t vibe with their team. The rogue guarding the base gets distracted by a squirrel, the healer forgets how to heal, and before you know it, half your team is hanging out in the graveyard wondering what just happened. Or maybe someone looked away from their screen for a second—long enough for the enemy to ninja cap a base that should’ve been spinnable until the heat death of the universe.
Coin Flips and Luck-Based MMR Inflation
Then there are the players who hit the jackpot on Blizzard’s great cosmic coin toss. They’ve been carried by lucky matchups and team compositions, and suddenly they find themselves in high-MMR games they have no business being in. These folks aren’t win-trading; they’re just out of their depth. It’s like throwing a toddler into a calculus exam—they’re not failing because they’re trying to lose; they’re failing because they have no idea what’s going on.
Why It Matters
The problem with all this isn’t just the occasional win-trade or the clueless player who somehow made it to 3k MMR. It’s the perception. When every loss feels like a win-trade and every bad game feels rigged, it erodes trust in the system. And trust me, Blizzard’s matchmaking doesn’t need any help eroding—it’s doing just fine on its own.
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With matchmaking attempting to vary specs on a team, playing a popular spec is likely going to increase your queue time more often than it doesn’t. That is just a symptom of the diversity cure players asked for(including me).
There is no defensive for the myriad of game bugs. Fixing game bugs should be and possibly is a very high priority. This is easier said than done, but must be done.
The gameplay if your lucky enough to have a not so popular spec that is somehow not badly buged and tuned and designed well is likely great, if you can turn a blind eye to the game bugs that affect everyone.
Solo BG as an idea is fantastic. MMR causing wins to grant no CR and the other issues mentioned do matter and drag the community perception of the content down.
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Balance didnt feel like a huge issue because most classes have something they bring to the table that can be beneficial.
Blizzards weird matchmaking system pre and post “upgrade” just makes it not fun for random binge gaming if you cant que at peak times, which are like middle of the AM hours.
I have a few paladins and once you hit a certain MMR its risky too play at the hours im available. Not to mention -200 cr disconnects with no mercy… why risk it after you get your seasonal goals.
It really sucks too. I love my characters and I wish that I could casually play the game like we were at the start of the season. There is no game like WoW for us but they really dont care about simple adjustments that could make the game healthier.
I logged in last night and played some random bg’s. Still had a good time but nothing is keeping me around, my sub just doesnt end for another month. That was my first login since October 13th.
Been playing League but character progression is whats missing for me… otherwise they blow our pvp mini game out of the water over there.
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I had a match with 8 Rets yesterday. 4 on each time. I was one of them and my queue time was only about 7 minutes. So I don’t know what the matchmaking is doing.
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If the algorithm is designed as I would expect, even it wont stop VERY popular specs from being in the same match due to the overwhelming numbers of a certain spec being queued up compared to the low participation in the game mode at the time. If 30% or more of the players that queued up in the previous 7+min were Rets, expect to see Rets. I love playing Ret when it isnt super bugged and is tuned favorable and I’m never sad to see Rets on either team. What I dont like to see as a Ret is a lot of enemies that can dispell my defensives, but that is another topic.
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You try to communicate strategy at the beginning and nobody talks. You get teammates who don’t understand how the BGs work. You get teammates who just want to teamfight. You get teammates who give up after 1 lost teamfight or flag cap. You get 20 minute queue times. You get lust classes that don’t lust when they should.
The list goes on. This is why Blitz is terrible and so many are done. It’s a 50/50 chance your “team” is guaranteed to lose and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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I would be ashamed to say that I am a professional PVP game designer for Blizzard and my achievements were adding duo queue in a solo game and that game victories give you 0 rating.
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Healers are too OP. 10 minute fights where nobody dies and the highest kills on the scoreboard at the end of the game is 3, is not fun.
The goofy rule changes. Why add super fast mounts and all the other weird changes? Just make it the same as normal BGs, 2 healers and 13 dps/tank per team.
Class balance. Nothing saps my desire to hit the queue button more than playing a warsong gulch against 2 mistweaver monks.
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laughs in disc priest
10 minute fights? You guys have more than auto attack?
Que times is a factor that killed a lot of my motivation to que. I’m not going to claim I’m a good player, really I’m quite awful but waiting 15-25 minutes for a game thats barely even going to last the amount of time it took to get into that game and where I’m probably going to enter another lose streak just kind of killed it for me. I was hoping to push this season but with being hard stuck and waiting those amount of que times? I just couldn’t do it.
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Q times are certainly not ideal. It’s not a fix everyone wants but I deal with it by doing other things. Farm players or work on quests, farm some war crates. Sometimes I just mine ore, other folks might be fishing or working on their profession while they wait. Doesn’t make the waiting fun, but it passes the time.
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i care about winning losing but the queues time since they tried to fix the system is simply not appealing, anyway whenever they try to fix stuff they usually make things worst
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Queue times are affected allot by player participation, all of this Premade matches where Boosters farm normal players for money working for websites, it runs the players off creating dead seasons.
But do you Blame the exploiters??? Because the parent company is not stopping them, we pay Blizzard a sub and they do not enforce their own rules. A report system in the game, thats like going to a restaurant and they tell you to cook your own food lol. Its NOT the players job to clean up the game, its the Company that makes record profits. Is all the cash going to the game and to the Devs to make better stuff? Or going into the game or into some Suits pocket???
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I just don’t like how serious everyone is there. DF Blitz was fun. Rated blitz is just a lot of misery.
Combat is also not fun to me. Nobody dies. Or only your team dies. Or theirs. It’s either a stalemate, or landslide. There are no comebacks. You feel helpless individually in team fights, there is almost no feeling of control over the outcome. It probably feels good in organized 3v3s or RBGs with target calling, but random solo queues feel bad.
Sometimes I almost want them to bring the old burst back. So that there is a chance of someone blowing up at least. In shooters there is always a hope of a lucky headshot even if you’re losing. WoW version of this is a lucky burst crit, and it’s needed to make random queue fights more intersting imo.
I don’t know what they did after DF Season 3, but DF S3 blitz was the most fun I had.
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Oh, the burst is there. It’s just that healers (without dampening) are strong enough to be able to counter it.
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