Majority of this thread will circle around PvP because say what you want, it affects every realm and every player in some way.
Alterac Valley needs to be adressed accordingly, this premade hysteria needs to be over with. It is already creating extremely toxic behaviour alliance side, first few weeks alliance premades actually reporting active players as afk to remove them from the game, to try and slot in their premade teammates.
Ranking has never been as popular as now, because the meta of the game has been harvested over and over. Ranking gear makes for a big part of the BiS items until Ahn’Qiraj and this encourages everyone to PvP now, especially after seeing their favourite classic streamers rushing PvP-ranks.
However, Alterac Valley and PvP that comes with it is a doubled edged coin, right. Alliance has more controlled brackets and environment due to faction imbalance they can choose who to invite to large 40-man premades (sometimes even hundreds queueing together), where as horde it is pretty much down to who can sleep the least and/or world PvP the most inbetween queues.
— This and only this, has created the most unhealthy environment both community wise, but also physically for players that I have ever seen and I honestly hope that this is somehow helped before someone is seriously hurt.
Another point which is very alarming, premade VIP discords are charging 50€ a month for alliance players being allowed into these premades, who originally were created by these toxic alliance players vote kicking players. Only this fact is like what the, how can a serious company like Blizzard allow for this to happen? People are getting paid money to spam advertise threads on official forums to connect to the discord, encouraging players to pay the 50€ fee to get connected.
BlizzardActivision and their affiliates have shutdown numerous private realms, which is completely understandable, this is due to revenue loss and non-legitimate actors profiting off of Blizzard’s games. Now, why are these VIP-discords allowed to make tens of thousands of euros?
Changes are due.
Simply fix Alterac Valley farming, so that players who want ranking gear actually have to the PvP for it. Currently horde is quitting in rapid numbers due to being curb stomped by at least 70% of the games with these discord premades running things. I know it’s faction imbalance that allows for it, but it’s directly killing subscriptions to wow and it is outright dangerous.
No changes this, no changes that, some changes must be done as society is getting more and more competetive, this kind of ranking is going to have players killed out of lesser knowledge or out of pure neglect of their own health for the months required for Warlord, High Warlord, Field Marshal and Grand Marshal.
Another worrying fact of this game is botting and account sharing enabled in Alterac Valley-meta.
Currently ranking General R12 Rogue on one of europes most competetive honor brackets horde-side and I’am able to do the honor farming but that is only thanks due to my choice of class. I have friends whom have played private realms since 2010 and done multiple ranking carees on both factions, many of these are struggling and I’am seeing very dangerous behaviours rising up from ranking, and foremost because they are stubborn and competetive players not wanting to give up before they reach their goals, but because there are so many botters on horde-faction that are playing 5-24hrs a day before the actual account owner takes over.
If you chose a class like warrior, hunter or priest you are going to have a harder time reaching required honor for higher ranks than for example mages with high control or rogues with stealth - who can sneak into alliance cities to snipe honorable kills. What this makes, is that warrior and priest players now have to push themselves even harder to first outfarm legitimate players and then even more so by outfarming players botting.
I as a rogue can with tryharding on average make 7000 to 11000 honor per hour with maximum consumables and limited sleep, totaling to 140,000 to 190,000 honor a day.
One good example is one of my best irl friends who I have played vanilla with for many years, so he is veteran with the ranking and life that comes with it, but he plays warrior and I rogue. During 60 hours till today I have slept 12hrs and my friend has been doing constant world PvP inbetween queues, till he is physically unable any more and needs to nap inbetween queues. So in 60hrs I have slept 12hrs more than him and I’am still 100,000 honor ahead of him. This makes people who are competetive push themselves to the very edge. I’am already getting whispers ingame from people feeling ill and some people from the vanilla community reaching out on discord saying all sorts of things and even admitting they’ve had to account share due to crashing irl. This is very crazy and I hope this reaches the people it needs to reach.
I have farmed alliance cave and some games I have recorded 23 bots in the alliance team. Again tell me, how is this premade discord model so successful? Yeah, imagine joining a game where half your faction is made up of bots, you will either pay the 50€ OUTSIDE OF THE GAME to actually be able to join VIP premade discords and play the game, or simply you quit because the level of professional conduct of developers is just non existant.
Please, Blizzard for the love of peoples health, if not for that for the games longevity and subscriptions do some simple fixes.
Legitimatize competetive playing in Warsong Gulch, add Arathi Basin prematurely and add battleground weekends. Remove the ability to premade Alterac Valley by back-patching to harder versions of the game where you can’t rush and single pull Drek/Vanndar. Don’t break the battleground, but make it just enough so that it isn’t honor efficient for whole top guilds to be running a 120 man premade on discord. Add a deserter for missing/not accepting queues and alliance can’t force open empty games that screw pugs over and thus can’t premade with the discord systems. Not everyone is supposed to be reaching r13/14.
As it is now, alot of warriors, hunters, priests and warlocks that can’t PvP and gankg in alliance major cities are getting scuffed and not able to reach high honors due to botters or enough hours in the day. A legitimization of actual competetive play in warsong and arathi would bring class balance to honor gain and you would be able to control the amount of honor (the amount of hours players need) to push every week, which is so much more healthier than this drug abusing, account abuse, software bot-abuse that is going on currently.
Say what you want, changes from developers side are necessary to make it better for everyone. This is a game that is grind-based, but it is in a state that is making alot of people quit the game forever. I’am considering doing it too, seeing my close friends leaving because of pure loss of interest in the game.
What happens when every realms and respective factions community players and figures quit? Yeah, the friends and players around them stop playing, the guilds and realms will start dying.
That’s just my five cents, let’s hope this thread makes it around.
/Niko