There’s a misperception from some Horde players, that they are outnumbered by Alliance at assaults because of a failure in the design of War Mode. I’ve seen plenty of assaults where either side dominated, or no domination.
As an example of an Alliance dominated assault in Tiragarde, I showed up early and saw how things unfolded:
At the start, factions were visually balanced, gathered in center of assault area.
Horde lost a fun battle and then dispersed. They were still visually faction balanced in the assault area, but spread out. Their choice.
For fun and not reward, I formed a small lfg raid to help Alliance. Without this lfg effect, both factions would have been closer balanced.
Then the Horde got picked off and eventually not many Horde. But Alliance quester numbers were maintained, because no opposition.
Horde attempted to group up only when Alliance had multiple bounties. Again, their choice.
The above scenario is awesome, and really fits in with the concept of faction war. One side won the initial battle and reaped the reward. Controlling the assault area, allowing their faction to complete quests faster. We don’t have official capturable objectives. But assault and world quest subzones are the closest we have.
So that’s an example of Alliance dominating, and it’s not as simple as Alliance getting extra rewards causing an issue. There was faction balance at the start. Horde willingly gave up the balance, and allowed Alliance to dominate. The Alliance 25 kill questers no doubt completed quickly. That is an imbalance quest, but not relevant at the start of this particular assault. There was balance in numbers. Once a side dominates, it’s not easy to stop them. You need to have sufficient numbers and co-ordinate. It’s all under player control, just not easy. Good, don’t want easy WM.
Regardless of extra rewards, on this occassion, there were roughly equal numbers of Horde and Alliance at the start. Choices made by both factions allowed Alliance to dominate. Not any perceived failure in WM. Player choices. That’s WPvP.
Edit: Yes, this is one example. It’s gonna be different situations. Right now Alliance are highly motivated. But I have seen both sides outnumber. Horde in general are not outumbered all the time. Just like when many Alliance perceived they were all outnumbered all the time pre 8.1, it was a misperception.
1. Attacking healers, or not.
That’s a major reason for success or failure in a fight. You can be outnumbered, but if your side are attacking healers, and the other isn’t, you have a great chance to win. And that situation happens a lot.
2. Retaliating, or not. Staying grouped together, even if not in same party.
Once the initial battle is lost, choice to give in and just try to complete quests, or retaliate. This time, Horde just wanted to quest. Fair enough, but that is their choice. They chose to be farmed.
Those two choices are probably the main reasons why, on this occassion, Alliance dominated. And once in a dominant position, it is expected to be a big challenge to remove the dominant faction. In past assaults I’ve seen Horde dominate. And the dominators ofc deserve the benefits, like unhindered quest completion. Completely fair.
Yes the reward system plays it’s part. But you can see how the begining of the assault potentially affects the faction balance. And that’s just WPvP, fun!
Different assaults will go different ways. Gonna try and be at the start of more of them with a raid, and see how it pans out.
WM is failure and that’s it. Fact that alliance can turn WM on, get 25 kills and then turn it off (most ppl I know do exactly that) is what’s killing WM (on top off insanely retarded sharding system).
Make it so once you enable WM it stays on for a full week = quite a bit of problems solved.
Ye, it’s good to have ideas, but always pros and cons. If wm is forced on for one week, that character will be prevented from playing with non wm enabled characters. I wouldn’t mind, but many would.
WoW is a complex game, with many aspects to how different players enjoy it. Making changes is very tricky. With the reward system, Blizz have gone down a route of least worst solution, for the issues of regional wm faction imbalance and a % of war moders not wpvping.
Goals for promoting wm faction balance and wpvp activity
Decrease participation of Horde not interested in wpvp.
Increase participation of Alliance in wpvp.
Increase wpvp activity for those in both factions that enjoy wpvp.
Eventually achieve a more acceptable faction balance in wm.
The above goals are in progress. The reward system, though not perfect, is part of achieving the above goals. There is no perfect solution for these goals. This is least worst for now, unless they come up with something better.
Any ideas I see on forums, including mine, usually have too many cons, for what Blizz is trying to achieve with wm.
Edit: Just did Nazmir assault. Horde had upper hand in our spot at times, mostly alliance had upper hand. Raid member left to check for chest in their shard, it was overrun with Horde. This proves you cannot say Alliance always outnumber Horde at assaults. WPvP is happening
Well you did Nazmir during EU Sunday Raid time. That means PVE focused alliance that turn on warmode to do incursions were on their raids. There are A LOT of alliance that abuse war mode ONLY to get the 400 ilvl reward then turn it off again since they don’t care about warmode, only about the heroic level loot. This isn’t a solution tbh.
Last 6-7 days i can’t even get close to an incursion without getting 20alliance:1horde ratio. Still Alliance get the against overwhelming odds, like WTF is going on.
The point was, not all shards are gonna be the same. If you see lots of opposing faction, you might think omg. But on another shard, more of yours. I’ve seen plenty shards where one side or other is dominating, or just general wpvp happening.
The problem is not alliance turning on wm for wpvp quest. It was both factions turning it on for pve, more Horde. This solution is aiming for the goals; less Horde non wpvpers, more Alliance being active in wpvp, more wpvp happening, and the overall region wm faction balance improving.
Any solution can have holes poked in it, even this one. But it’s doing the job. Least worst solution, till there’s a better one. More wpvp happening is great for wpvpers.
Doesn’t matter reasons for turning on wm if doing it for wpvp. Turn it off after is by design. Player choice. It matters if turning on just to pve… that’s bad for wm.
Once again being corpse camped by 30+ alliance in horde lands. This is a daily occurrence now. Chased down solo by 30+ heroes dieing 10+ times before I get far enough away to rez and hit a flightpath. Game unplayable for 45 minutes. Yet again, a search of lfg finds only one Horde raid of around 18 players in the zone.
And all this time, while im struggling to stay alive for some 370 gear, alliance get free 400 gear AND 30% bonus.
Dont make the mistake of telling other players what they are experiencing.
I’m not telling other players what they are experiencing. In my opinion, there’s a misperception:
A. Horde outnumbered all the time in all shards? Not the case, I’ve seen both sides dominate, or just general wpvp. Right now though, Alliance are more motivated to kill Horde, one of the goals. A portion of Horde are intended to volunteer it off, that is by design. This can help faction balance, reduce outnumbered reward, and calm the Alliance angry bee wm parties.
B. Horde outnumbered is a failure of WM? See A . And, the changes are having the intended effect. The extra 400 item Alliance got is intended to increase wpvp on Alliance. It worked. Understandable if some Horde not happy about that. That’s how you shift the faction balance though, get one side incentivized. One gets something, the other doesn’t. Disincentivizing the other side. Resulting in pve wm’ers turning it off. Better balance, better wpvp.
Before 8.1 I saw plenty Horde outnumbering. I loved being outnumbered, a challenge to form a counter raid. It’s not supposed to be easy, wm should be difficult. That 18 raid you saw in H LFG was a good size, can get bigger fast. The Alliance usually only are in parties, so less co-ordinated. But, wm is a combo of random chaos and player/raid leader choices. It’s a multiplayer game. You can solo, but if outnumbered, allies are good to have.
Both sides can be outnumbered. The reward system is self correcting. A clever system of incentive and disincentive. Every system can have drawbacks.
Blizz admitted that giving a free 400 item was too much anyway. Imho it should be retro-downgraded to 385.
Don’t you think though that its rather sad that to get alliance into PvP blizzard basically had to give alliance players 30%+ advantage AND a piece of loot equal to a heroic drop from brand new raid content?
The 18 raid i saw stayed the same and the eventually lost players. I checked the raid over and over again while i was waiting out my 2 minutes rez time for the 6th time. While i was stood in ghost i watched the odd horde player getting farmed by alliance raids camping wq’s.
Solo play should be possible without having 30+ alliance players descend on me and camp me for half an hour. The very fact that they were camping me. desperate for the kill and their free loot shows just how many horde they could find at that time…
Oddly, although blizz has stated that the problem of horde outnumbering alliance in WM in europe as a whole has halved, theyre only cutting alliance bonus by 5%…
Ye, and it should go down, they expect it will. Retro downgrade may have crossed their mind, but imagine the complaints. Always pros and cons.
Ideally for me, only those that are really interested in wpvp would enable wm. But WM is not a pure pvp game mode. PvP first, but not all, and I love it as is. For all we know, actual wpvpers are faction balanced. But, because of that sharding issue at start of bfa, too many Horde phasing in, and Alliance turned off. Then Horde swiched on for free 10%. And more Alliance off. The result, was less wpvp than Blizz wanted. Something had to be done. Even without those early issues, faction imbalance in wm was still possible down the line.
The reward system is an auto corrector. Natural selection is happening. The 25 kill quest is demotivating the most likely to wm off, the Horde pve’ers. WM is not aimed at pure pve’ers, though they are part of the mix. Just too many Horde ones. The 25 kq encourages more Alliance to wpvp. Regardless of reason, that was needed, and further demotivates the most likely to wm off. As time goes by, and eu wm faction balance gets closer, those Alliance rewardists can become less. And less Horde pve’ers can result in a better balance of wm players; wpvpers, pve/pvpers, and there will still be pve’ers. We’ve seen suggestions like, just disable pve in wm, or disable pve rewards. But that’s not Blizz’s vision for a rich wpvp environment.
We’ll find out for sure soon if it’s heading in the right direction. If a closer eu faction balance, it will result in lower rewards for outnumbered. The Alliance will still be motivated to extinctify Horde, but presumably at least a bit less. Over time it could balance out somewhat.
It’s not always easy to group up. And solo play is fun. But it’s supposed to be difficult sometimes. We are at the mercy of what other players want to do. I find wpvp with my community much more satisfying. Not enough regulars to form even a small raid yet, but that’s the target.
