Years ago I created my characters on PvP servers. I knew what I was doing and understood the consequences of that decision.
Some players complained, but we had no sympathy for them because their situation was a consequence of their own decision.
Plus they had a way out via transfer or creating a new character on a PvE server.
Last night I could once again not do a simple thing like hand in an emissary before it expired to to Horde numbers we couldn’t match. I’d had enough.
I realized that if I wanted to play the game at all, I’d have to switch WM off, and unlike the previous mechanism, there are no other PvP servers I can transfer to or reroll on.
I’m essentially stuck on a PvE server which is not what I signed up for.
I play this game to have fun. I’m not having fun.
This is not a “voting with my wallet” post. I’m not trying to threaten anybody with something as insignificant as my sub. Even as costly as it is for me in our terrible currency.
I just want to make Blizzard aware of my position, so they can keep people like me in mind when they make design decisions or do testing.
It’s gotta be difficult to design a system all will like. I personally am very happy with WM, and I know many others are too. But ye, lots are unhappy with WM.
Regardless of what the player could do in game to improve their situation, it’s about expectations of paying customers. I think expectations can be boiled down to those that want equality, and those that want random carnage. Those are two very different things, how to cater to both?
If the new extra bonus doesn’t help, I think the only way to fix it for affected players, is to have two versions of WM. One version would be the current version, with all bonus removed (wpvp’ers don’t need it). The other would be an easy mode version with population restrictions, and current bonus system (pve’ers want it). Switching between the two modes, could simply be a case of selecting the bonus or not, when enabling WM.
What easy mode would involve can be worked out, but basically attempt to replicate the easiness of RP WM shards. For whatever reason, RP WM shards are generally easier. For easiness, on easy mode shards, reduce the shard population by 50%, and enforce faction balance more strictly with extra phasing of players in each subzone. Also, disable grouping with players not on your WM shard. Disable raids as well. Just for easy mode.
This way Blizz can design each version of WM for two different sets of expectations; 1 equality, 2 carnage.
Apparently just putting the evidence down is too hard, I have to spell it out for people.
I had random carnage before WM, on both my Alliance and Horde characters.
It was called PvP Servers and CRZ.
I’m asking Blizzard to learn from history. CRZ logic worked better than their WM logic. Look at your CRZ logic and see if it can help you make WM better.
That is a problem, and it’s the only real problem 99.9% of the time.
IMO, 99.9% of the solution would be to give something much more meaningful to War Mode as a reward system. But Blizzard still thinks % PvE bonus is OK…
Not true. At least right now.
Defias Brotherhood / Argent Dawn - RP servers. Defias is much less RP if it’s not your thing.
No matter time of day or night, no matter day of the week - I never had problems as sever as “hand in an emissary before it expired”.
Biggest problem I had since War Mode started is waiting 10-15 mins to gather a counter raid to wipe Horde from Fort Victory.
You can always join any other server group with LFG. Add to that a few PvP/WPvP communities and War Mode is a constant fun.
You can transfer to another PVE server and turn warmode on to find other alliance players. Another solution is to search through communities where you have pvp players with warmode on. Basically the issue is that no matter the rewards, alliance players simply do not want warmode on.
I tried turning it on on this character, which is my main alliance one, back in September. After getting corpse camped, I turned it off. On my horde main I have it on all the time and hardly see any alliance or when I do its about 10 horde killing the poor person over and over again.
The new 30% increase in rewards is not enough either to entice alliance to turn it on. What needs to happen is that there needs to be safe zones around summoning stones to dungeons and raids, near flight points, and perhaps there could be warmode areas where anything goes, no matter the faction, where everyone is just killing everyone for rewards. This might entice people to turn it on.
I am complete agreement with Ysbeer. Horde dominate Pvp/WM. My guild moved from a totally horde dominated server to Grim Batol only to find ourselves in the same boat -.-
As far as I can track it alliance have gone downhill since the change to ‘every man for himself’ now the strongest racials are horde. Nearly all the top pvpers are horde so its natural that pvpers are drawn to horde. Random BGs are horde dominated (with the possible exception of IoC} horde have got to be idiots to lose an AV since the changes ( but very occasionally they are tehe).
This leaves the alliance in a very poor second place.
The fixes? Easy.
Only allow equal numbers of WM players on any server.
Have another look at the racial abilities.
Finally ‘Deserters’ . When I queue for a random BG I Know I have to take the rough with the smooth so I don’t desert …. many other alliance players do and they make a bad situation into an impossible one. A i15 min debuff clearly isn’t working as they simply log another char and queue again… and in many cases desert again no doubt-.- How abot a change Blizz? Make the 15min debuff account wide, keep a sta odn number of desertions so that those lfm for rated bgs can see what they are inviting and introduce a system similar to the football/soccer yellow card system so these wretched deserters have proper suspensions and are deterred from ruining the game for others?
I’ve heard the RP realms are more balanced. But why should I spend money and move away from my friends when I didn’t do anything wrong?
I signed up for a PvP realm, not WM. WM does not replicate what the PvP realm gave me, and if I switch it off it turns into a PvE realm which is also not what I signed up for.
Apart from that there are also issues with transferring, like I’d be doing it on faith, I’d be ruining the experience for the actual RP’rs and nothing stops Bliz from changing the logic again which could put me back in the same position.
Also, as you mentioned the PvP component isn’t the only problem. The low population also brings a whole lot of other issues with world activities.
I’m talking about the whole experience of a PvP realm, its not only the WPvP aspect that was ruined.
The irony of course is that the people who did not deserve it got the benefit, while the people who did got screwed over.
Guess I’ll just edit this post since I cant make two in a row…
I disagree with this. These hubs are where conflict usually occurs and its fine, as long as it fluctuates and the same faction isn’t always the dominant one.
I do agree with your suggestion on PvP WQ’s though. Bareback and Black Rook was a lot of fun.
There are two types of WM player - those that like the current WM, and those that want fairness.
Changing WM and keeping both happy could be tricky.
My suggestion was to add a seperate easy mode to WM, with various restrictions to promote fairness… replicating the easiness of being on an RP WM shard, but more. For example forced 50/50 faction balance at wqs. Players that like current WM would hate that, but those that like fairness would opt in to easy mode and get that gameplay.
I don’t see why that would be a bad idea. And probably a simple solution for Blizz, rather than them needing complex shard balancing logic - easy mode logic would be easy, forced 50/50. And normal mode, just as it is now.
Seems doable, and both types of player could be happy.
Ofc, okay to have ideas, but Blizz know what’s what. They’ll do what they think will work best. I just hope changes to WM shard logic to please those that want fairness, doesn’t dilute what WPvPers like about current WM.
Apologies: I got a little obsessed with this idea and over posted hehe. Blizz are more likely to make changes that are easy for them, rather than changes like this that are more complex.
I get it. Situation is - you wait and hope Blizzard will change something to make WM more to your liking, or you can switch server to improve situation. From your previous statement
I assumed that server transfer is something you’re looking into as a solution.
Best faction ratio right now is on RP servers, and you can take your friends with you.
There is no getting away from that. Even Blizzard will never give you any guarantees.
No, unless you’d be seeking them out to do this on purpose. Defias is a lot less RP than what you could assume for a typical RP server. It was RP-PvP before.
Just like nothing certain about that situation on regular realms and how it would change.
Again, even Blizzard can’t give you any guarantees about anything that involves other players choices. No matter how much you want it, it realistically can’t happen. No matter how much Devs are going to improve algorithms, they can’t change how players behave, what faction they play, what Mode players select and what they do in that Mode.
Even if Blizzard would give all accounts free Faction Switch, it could take years for players to migrate in substantial numbers and only if Alliance has something really OP. Maybe new KulTiran racials would be really OP and many PvPers would switch.
That was changed/ruined/improved/whatever years before War Mode, with cross-realm. War Mode didn’t change anything apart from WPvP.
My dream scenario would be sort of hardcore pvp servers with no battlegrounds. So the only way to pvp would be to actually enter the World (of Warcraft mind you). That would bring back a lot of fun random encounters. And yes it would probably be a pain on unbalanced servers but I played vanilla on Stormscale where horde outnumbered alliance at least 5 to 1 and it was still such a rewarding experiance having to look behind every corner for horde before proceeding your journey.
I only really find lots of horde at azerite wqs I never really have a problem elsewhere. Last night we had a huge fight at zimbala it went on for hours but eventually we won and sat in horde base farming them till they disbanded or logged off. If they was such an imbalance then they wouldn’t of been that many ally to match the horde especially with it being in zuldazar aswell
They have the tools to fix this and they can influence player behaviour. We see it all the time. The point of the OP was just that I wanted to illustrate the mistake Blizzard made and ask them to be more careful in the future.
At the time I made the post, all my friends already turned it off, switched to Horde or quit, so my only choice was really to play with it off or quit as well.
I decided to quit, but play out my remaining time on my Horde toon, grinding rep to unlock Mag’har Orcs.
May reconsider quitting to just switching over though. As Horde doing every WQ in Kul’tiras I’m enjoying quite a lot of advantages:
Most of the time I don’t need to group because there are people at every WQ.
When there aren’t, there are multiple groups in group finder.
With only one WQ did I need to start a group and then it filled in seconds.
Didn’t run into problems with Alliance. We are either more than them or if numbers are equal the game phases us away to keep us safe.
I figure if I’m going to resort to PvE mode, I may as well do it as Horde and still enjoy the bonus/advantages for WM. It’s just amazing how much better it is than playing on Alliance. No wonder people are switching.
Just one thing though. I like my Night Elves, can we get them switched to Horde please.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizz discover a Horde allied race that looks suspiciously night elfy!
Well, main thing is to have fun. If you are having more fun, that’s the way to go. I’ve begun targeting Horde stealing our resources and hogging our wqs, so might see ya out there!
Hahaha, well if you do, I’ll try get a salute in before the other guys get to you, or at least mourn your death if you don’t manage to escape
So I’ve just discovered that Taliesin and Evitel play on Argent Dawn, WM on and having a good time.
If life has taught me anything, its that you can always trust hot chicks in DVA outfits.
Time to take that leap of faith and level my Glowing Goat there.
“Dost thou even hoist” and so forth
Argent Dawn is a full RP server.
Defias Brotherhood was a RP-PvP server.
AD and DB with other connected realms are phased together in War Mode.
Population is good, no matter what server you chose. But RP rules for servers could still be different.
Sometimes it’s a suicide mish! Ey good luck on RP realm WM shard. I was on Defias before, and was less Horde generally. Just don’t expect all the time, cross realm gank groups can still show up… but in my experience leave due to lack of victims!
Sure, I don’t expect exact balance, just closer to what I had with the Sylvanas PvP realm and CRZ.
Where unbeatable odds happened sometimes, Alliance usually outnumbered but still close enough to stand a chance, and then on occasion more Alliance than Horde.
Anyway, not seen any Horde yet, but I’m heading into STV so probably soon. That said, on my current realm the issue is only really at max level, so I wont have a fair report until then.
So far I can say that the overall vibe is pretty nice. I’ve only had minimal interaction with other players, but what I’ve had has been positive.
I even poked some fun at one of them, talking in my own language and he remained polite and patient.
At the moment my biggest worry is that I’m going to fall in love with this realm. Transferring my characters is going to cause some serious damage to my wallet… whats it now, 16 Rand to the Euro /cry
