This can be partly blamed on xrealm matchmaking. Thing is, you don’t have many reasons to PvP in Classic in this massive xrealm matchmaking. Everyone can always get a match at all times of the day.
So imagine realm-only matchmaking, with vanilla population figures. It worked fine once upon a time, there’s no real reason it wouldn’t work now.
If you want examples of how recognition affects behavior and teamwork as well as the possible enjoyment from BGs then check out this old thread:
So you’re doomed to pretty much just think of yourself in BGs. Because you’ll never remember players that you don’t meet up with often enough to leave a lasting impression.
For example, you’ll never really have those random friendships/rivalries build up because 1. why bother getting to know people who doesn’t even play on your server? and 2. you’re much more unlikely to recognize people when you’re queuing solo so you never get that reason to randomly form a teamwork with a stranger from getting queued up together over and over again that builds up over time. Because you pretty much never remember them even if you do meet up a lot.
The damage of not forming rivalries with the opposite faction is also bad, because you never get a random trivial reason like “he killed me last BG, so this time I’ll chase him around all BG just for the hell of it”.
You inevitably end up with only selfish reasons to play, which is centered around rewards.
People had social reasons as well as the rewards, to PvP in vanilla. In Classic, if you’re queuing solo, then you pretty much only have the rewards to play for.
Also, I love how you guys keep insisting it’s just “Alliance playing gud” whenever some Alliance player reports winning in AV here on the forum, but the reason you keep losing is always because of the map, like the map has any relevance whatsoever. PvP is what decides the outcome, always.