World PvP is my most favorite thing to do in WoW. While the sharding system is a good idea with a lot of potential, it also has a lot of work to do.
Shouldn’t the sharded realms aim to provide us with as close to 50/50 experience in the world as possible? If not what’s the point of it?
Why when I join some group on other realm there are 40 people zerging for bloody tokens, but when I’m without a group, just on my realm there’s 2 horde and 10 alliance going for War Crate?
Could we work on World PvP as well? Aim for the shard to provide with populated 50/50 experience? I think WoW devs should hire an entire organization just to focus on PvP. This game has massive potential… lets go Blizz.
I think the main issue is the amount of people in the world and the ratio between ally / horde.
I think the shards should work in a way where they take a pool of total players and divide that as close to 50/50 as possible between multiple different shards.
I don’t think that’s the case today.
I have 0 people farming bloody tokens on my realm (Stormscale), but I joined some group doing that and it was the most epic thing ever. There were 50 ppl zerging each other.
My point is every World PvP instance should aim to have that with as close to 50/50 ratio as possible. I know exact 50/50 isn’t possible since alliance has OP PvP racials.
When I play on my horde I see quite alot of other horde players farming other things and doing something else while in warmode and they dont stop what they do just for a war supply chest or w/e.
And theres quite obv there will be shards that looks more empty than it is while some shards will be overpopulated due to alot of groups.
Are you suggesting that they split those groups into different shards if so?
Since theres no way they can have close to 50/50 ratio when groups are making them go into other shards unless forced to or denying groups for that.
Sure you can blame it on “Alliance OP PvP racials” or, what I do, blame the lazy ppl who have warmode on but just plainly farming and dont care about PvP in general taking up those shard slots.
For example, checking /who, Stormscale had 4 people in Zaralek Cavern. Kazzak had 49 (I logged on alt to check). While on Stormscale on my main, I was flying around the map with humanoid tracking (looking for alliance to kill). I think I’ve seen maybe ~20 people total (including alliance). So the maths doesn’t really add up to me there. While you have a very valid point, it seems you are suggesting the whole issue revolves around grouped up people. I am suggesting there might not be optimal sharding design for world player balance across shards, let alone optimized for 50/50 ratio.
I am pointing out the issue could come down to how people use the warmode function that dont revolve around PvP but also grouping puts you in a different shard, making one less person in that particular shard that could already be in a disadvantage.
Optimizing world PvP to make it close to 50/50 ratio either have to remove grouping and force the sharding to behave in a way where it will be more balance (No more shards / make ppl unable to enter warmode if not enough ppl for balance) etc.
Also have to force ppl to actually PvP while in warmode.
Lets say you are in a perfectly balanced 50/50 ratio shard.
One or more will enter groups for group world pvp content, resulting in them either being removed from your shard, or add ppl to your shard resulting it already moving towards unbalance.
So yes, the way sharding works I highly believe there will be no real balance, but its also quite hard to fix a fair system with the sharding.
It is indeed saddening to me that people prefer to mine ores and kill boring PvE NPCs instead of fighting the opposite faction and playing for world objectives like War Crate… but it isn’t the main concern of this topic. I’m simply looking at the amount of PvP tagged people in a zone, like Zaralek Cavern for example.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel right, because when I’m flying around there aren’t that many people and the ones I do see are mostly Alliance. I /who Kazzak and it had 50 people in Zaralek Cavern and that’s Horde only. These people must all see each other since they are on the same realm right? On Stormscale, we had like 8 people on /who and flying around, I didn’t see 50 people at all let alone Horde only. This led me to believe Kazzak realm players had better experience since they had more horde players on the realm in the zone, so I created this topic to discuss possible gaps in sharding design.
About your concern with the groups - I think the balancing logic should be focused primarily on solo people without groups. If there is a group formed on an already balanced shard, so be it - maybe there isn’t a perfect solution which would resolve every scenario. And definitely allow people to que in war mode
And maybe I’m just wrong here and the balancing of world is already as perfect as it can be. But it surely feels lonely in the world sometimes, or at least 1:3 in favor to alliance.
I can partly agree that its quite sad since it is war mode for a reason.
Issue here is, sharding is not server focused. Only time its server locked is like role play servers right?
Ive had horrible experience even in Kazzak war mode.
And theres def some gaps in the sharding.
I agree it should be focused on solo people without groups.
But should solo players be forced into other shardings everytime someone else enters a group even if they might be in a perfect shard?
Its alot of questions which most likely will never be answered by blizzard, since it would have been interesting to see how the actual sharding design is worked around and what their thoughts are to improve it for war mode.
So I’m on Stormscale doing War Crate and I invite this guy from Draenor. He says wow, there’s so many alliance on your realm, we never have that on Draenor. We lost the War Crate battle because it was like 10 alliance and 3 horde (it’s true that I think there were enough people in the zone, but they were busy farming rep…BOORIIIING). Anyway. He says as soon as he left my group and it sharded him back to his realm on Draenor, the war crate was still up with no alliance in sight.
So it really does seem like the realm you are on matters. I was specifically talking about this with him in whispers and he insisted that this wasn’t a one time only case, he said that war crates on his realm are basically free because of the lack of alliance.
I personally honestly feel like it has alot to do with mentality and server stability in certain ways.
Draenor is mostly PvE and I honestly cannot fully understand how the sharding works but my guess would be that at the start you will get into a shard properly for your server (if theres room) before you get put into another “shard”.
So servers could matter, or its just the mentality of the players in certain servers that is more driven? Not entirely sure.
This is what ive seen on Kazzak as horde, ive seen ALOT of horde players but 99% of them are busy farming and dont care about the war crate while the Alliance usually go for it.
So because there are so many ppl farming and the sharding is abit of an oddboll that tries to strive for 50/50 I think ive read, but because ppl rather farm than doing PvP activity it gets unbalanced.
So yea, server could potentially matter but it shouldnt what ive read, but it could also mean that person have been lucky quite alot xd