Before I go into the topic of today I just want to say I hold no grudges thats why I wont call names (for now), I write this sololy out of love for the game and nostalgia for an old lost healthy community.
Another reason I write this is in defense of the newcoming and casual players who are being bullied in the full definition of the word via unintended exploitation of game mechanics.
I want to make sure we’re all on the same page so lets get some thing straight:
Bypassing the games restrictions of number of 5+ players limit premade is disruption of gameplay and exploitation of game mechanics.
I know this has been in the past. But its toxic, loses people precious time, ruins the scene and ques are longer and its simply unfair and unfun. And we all pay to play this already time consuming game to at least get some dose of fun. And getting stomped by a premade group thats also on Discord is not what comes to my mind when I think of “fun”.
Such disadvantage gap gives space to potentially bullying and bullying should never be the source of fun nor tolerated.
Wooping 40 randoms players with all sorts of issues from lack of gear to macros and addons and skill with 40 premades who are mostly even done with gearing and so on is as easy as farming boars at Duratar.
It doesnt even look natural: Blue team = average honor level of 29 , Red team= average honor level of 700. Btw Red team is on discord.
Sounds absurd.
There are many cases where newbie players cant even escape the graveyard as premades tend to pin them to it and not caping it allowing them to respown again and again, getting farmed for HKs. An infomous way of farming The Bloodthirsty title btw.
Like you think you’d join a battleground and play PvP but you will get AOE farmed the PvE way pinned to the graveyard.
Last point. This is not really fun for either of the sides. Its just achievement/reward/honor grind on one side and complete dispair on the other.
There so many ways to fix this btw:
Banning those who promote or do premades above 5 people.
Make it so premading is disabled. Its random battlegrounds- there can never be true balance but this extra advantage comes at the cost of losing playerbase and slowing ques down.
Shuffling system that puts players in different teams no matter if they qued together or not.
Players could be shuffled by spec or/and honor level for extra balancing act.
Agree with a lot of what you’ve written.
Newcomers & casuals definitely need to be able to enjoy the game if we want WoW to thrive. Getting teabagged for 4hrs by some elitist jerk will obviously erode the playerbase.
It’s tragic that some players get-off by stomps/critter-farming, but I wouldn’t assign malice to everyone who premades, and bullying is just as easily done with 5ppl (or just one).
A lot of focus gets paid to premade leaders, but there’s a significant portion of the PvP community who enjoy premading.
Banning them all seems harsh (or hypocritical, considering Blizz has ‘let them’ for so long). Give them a legit place to form 40 premades, cross faction.
I play wow since AQ 40 Classic WoW, you need to understand that there was a NEED for premades as gearing back then was really harsh, objectives were critical but in the modern WoW, you dont really need to premade, BGs are quick, easy and honor, you no longer collect Marks of Alterac Valley or Arathi Basin etc so joining a premade has only 1 motive: to bully.
Why I think that ?
-Well, look to enter an epic battleground in such numbers requires some time to group up, then to synchronize the que (which happens by having a few seperate groups by 5 people, because again-> the limit is 5, and then you have to communicate the exact time you all get a que, so you know you’re called for the same battleground, and if not → then you wait another 5~ minutes for a new que.) So in order to get in a battleground together you spend around on average of 5-10 extra minutes to set things into motion and to synchronize the que.
I get that some people find it fun to play Premade, they gotta do it at the calculated scale which by set limits is 5 people total, not 10, not 15, not 25.
And my last point is- there many disruptive crimes that were not punishable before and are punishabale now, do you really think this is a proper argument?
One side is enjoying themselves on easy mode while other has not even the slightest chance not to even win but to have the slightest enjoyment → AOE camped, pinned to the graveyard and then complete refusal to ressurect.
There are legit places to premade → Rated Battlegrounds.
Most of these guys are total cowards when it comes to actual rated PvP though hense why they prefer to stomp casuals, new, undergeared and players without UI, addons and so on.
Another point I forgot to bring in my previous post is these Premade groups would often exploit the report player feature to get players kicked out of battlegrounds, usually pretty unreasonably.
Me and a few other people that I know been even Blacklisted which means that any BG I get in that has these said leaders, if they notice me → they will kick me.
Its just the same as getting kicked from the Mall because Stacy and her egirls are out tonight there and they dislike you.
Or just implement premade vs premade matchmaking which most modern games have. For example, if you queue as 5 stack team, you will always face 5 stack premade in the opposite team.
Hence, if players queue as a 5 stack, they can expect longer queue times.
This would lead to decrease of premades overall.
Because its true, join any premade community right now and if you inspect i guarantee you 90% of them dont even need honor nor conquest.
They do it for the luxury of achievements and bulling. Bullying is the main drive even if most people dont realize it. If it wasnt → Rated Battlegrounds wouldve been more active.
You’re right. I also believe premading in non-epic random battlegrounds should be limited to 2 people.
But Im talking about Rated Battlegrounds here.
Answer from a smart orc bellow:
As to answer Lavarage:
I do think thats the best solution too.
I dont think banning premade is the solution itself but I kinda also do because if you get into the mindset of an Mass Epic BG premade leader, they intentionally create a method to bypass the system which by community standards is punishable.
So im questioning weather these rules imply indiscriminately or they’re just there to wave a banner.
Because as far as I know i pay 60 euros for an expansion + a monthly fee, not only for the game but also for the moderation and enforcement of the frame of this game.
I dont think anyone here pays to sit 15 minutes dead in a graveyard unable to release or 15 minutes outside of what they want to do just so they potentially run into the same situation all over again.
Queue times. Imagine trying to find the correct amount of grouping for any given BG. Blizz can’t even manage to give Horde and Alliance the same amount of healers in a match-up.
Not true, in 10-15 random bgs the equal healer number is enforced by matchmaking, unless the matchmaker can’t find a healer in reasonable time (e.g. healer declined the queue, left the game, etc).
Groups of 2-3 are much easier to match than groups of 4-5. So to sum up, for smaller parties queue time wouldn’t be much longer.
That’s whole another issue, which I think blizzard will “solve” by introducing cross-faction random bgs - same as they intend to do with solo/duo rbgs.