OK the game isnt a solo game, but what if my friends doesnt like what I like ? Quit because we like different bgs or go retail as you say ? A bit silly if you ask me. If I like classic and also like to do AV/AB/WSG I queue solo, and my friends can do whatever they like at that time.
1 Like
Yes playing solo is soloq.
https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/featured/ph18r8.htm
Naively tossing bodies at one another is not efficient social design.
There’s no practical difference between a bot and a player if there’s no social awareness involved.
The trap
Many past designs ignored Dunbar’s Layers and naively assumed “more is better.” They ignore friendship formation and assume “it just happens.” They ignore social groups and arbitrarily mash players together.
In reality, these assumptions are actively harmful and cause the following:
- Fewer in-game friendships . A flood of strangers swamp the reciprocation and proximity mechanisms that generate friends. Poor identity, persistence, reciprocity, and consent systems mean these strangers never convert into friends, so there are fewer meaningful relationships in the game.
- Increased toxicity . Large groups of strangers naturally breed toxic sub-groups. Players engage in violent rejection of out-groups in order to protect their experience and intergroup conflict becomes the cultural norm. Such communities are hard to reform and poison long-term retention.
- Scope creep . The additional systems necessary to manage large groups of strangers substantially increase the scope of your game.
Then you increase your social network to get other people together for premades. It’s not rocket science.
My mistake that I did not use the nerd dictionary
Why you consider, playing in a PUG, as solo play? They are not NPCs, you know? Real people, and you have to coordinate with them. And if the opposite team is of the same composition, it can be fun. Because you feel you can accomplish something.
Personally, AB is the main reason for me playing WoW. And I have no time for a premade. An average player is a total noob. Fighting between nodes, leaving flags unguarded, ignoring enemy healers, not reporting incomings. So trying to win a premade with a pug, is a frustration. I remember quitting Vanilla for this reason.
PS: “Go to retail” is not a solution to any Classic problem. It’s just an ironic comment.
6 Likes
Seems you never really figured out the difference between strangers and friends/acquaintances.
^ This is the real problem with “solo queues”, which can be seen in AV as well, and especially in retail all over the place due to the way they’ve ignored the social design aspect of the game for such an extremely long time.
Xrealm is also bad for this very same reason, because you get used to forgetting the names you play with/against, which in turn affects the way you behave.
So this anonymity nonsense, as stated in the quote from the report, increases toxic sub-groups.
This takes shape in ways like “Do X, then Y, but watch out for Z!” because that’s one individual’s or group’s perception of “the way to play well”, so when others doesn’t obey those “commands”, it breeds resentment because this creates the perception that the people not playing as “suggested” are actively damaging the success rate. So this quickly breeds toxic outbursts because they reject the out-groups of players that doesn’t share the same perception of the way to play it. Especially when things doesn’t go well because of the lack of successful coordination or simply playing worse than the opposition, this really fuels the fire quickly.
Then there is a separate problem, where you don’t even bother trying to create an identity in the content, so you ignore the chat completely and doesn’t even read what’s said if you even bother having it be shown in the first place. This creates an isolated gameplay experience, like the solo aRPG retail has become almost all over the place.
Same answer to this.
You can read more about why xrealm convenience is so bad for the matchmaking, and what we’re actively losing out on because of it, in this thread:
I’m not saying you can’t create social designs involving pugs. I’m not saying it’s inherently bad. But it’s actively harmful in this giant pool of anonymity, where you reduce your awareness to yourself while completely ignoring everything else and actively reject anything that you perceive is harming your own experience.
Weird perception of the meaning “solo”. If your team lose, you lose. No solo objectives either.
Read the link. It explains that part. You can also see parallels to retail’s “pugtastic” gameplay experience.
Mate, thats too long for a game forum. At least quote the key paragraph to enlighten us.
Learn to read. But fine, I’ll throw you a bone. Read the report if you wish to learn the context behind it:
Tips for increasing shared goals
- Share goals, not just shared rewards . Many game designers assume that if there is a shared reward, people will naturally align their activities. This might work if humans were hyper-rational, profit-maximizing automatons, but they are not. Instead, players benefit from clearly-stated goals and examples of how they might work together.
- Public and private spaces . Large social groups are composed of sub-groups that require private space to reinforce vision and social norms as well as create opportunities for group bonding. They also need public space to display and reinforce the group’s overall identity.
- Group vs. group content . Conflict with other groups is a common method of providing a shared purpose. Meaningful rivalries can play out over the course of months or years. Games with PvP content can create very rich social histories if they can operate at this scale.
- Positive goals involving growth and support . Though it is easy to rely on competition in order to give your group a purpose, history is rich with high-longevity groups, usually in the form of religious communities, that exist to preserve a positive way of life. Consider how your game can be a positive refuge from the broader world. Many players will find this to be a worthy goal to dedicated their time toward.
In other words, your arguments follows the same flaws as depicted in the report. That “throwing bodies together” will automatically “make it better”, and that as long as there’s a “shared reward” then people will “naturally work together”.
Which the report refutes quite well.
The goal in a BG, is to win. Players in pugs, don’t want to win?
Its not black and white. Yes, a group of organized people, have more social elements. It doesn’t mean, that a random team is having non.
Do you play (Classic) in a premade?
1 Like
Seems you still struggle to understand its implications and meanings.
To start with, now you’re confusing goals for rewards. That is not a guarantee, not everyone has the same goal. For example, most players asking for a non-premade matchmaking segregation, claims they just want to have “fun”. Fun doesn’t equal winning, fun doesn’t equal getting the rewards.
While rankers who are only focused on the rewards, have the goal set for themselves to get the rewards. Then you have individual differences of competitive spirit, and desire to win is different in each one, and it’s always subjected to outside influences. For example, if it goes badly, there are many who will quit trying before the BG is over. This is due to many outside influences such as not caring about your fellow players and not caring about struggling “to the bitter end”, and a basic lack of ambition to fight an “uphill battle”.
Shared rewards does NOT equal shared goals. As the report explicitly states.
Read the quotes. Then read the report. It will do you better than to spout ignorant BS about things you don’t comprehend.
I apologize it’s not a topic that can be so easily compressed into a single twitter post. Sorry, not sorry.
I still don’t agree. The difference is in the degree each element is present in these groups. You believe (?) that in pugs, there is zero of whatever a premade has. I disagree with that. Use different term instead of “solo”.
Also, the goal is to enjoy this game WITH other players. And thats the only criteria to change something or not. Encouraging people to form premades, did not work in Vanilla, and won’t work in Classic. People already mentioned that they can’t afford to play in premade. Most Vanilla players are now about 40 (I believe) and have families and jobs. If I am wrong and we are the minority, Blizzard should ignore us and allow pug vs premade “fun”.
Remake a character and play in the 39, 49, or 59 bgs instead. No premades in those bgs and 59 bgs is basically like playing at 60 anyways. Bgs at 60 are a waste of time. Av doesn’t have much premades but its boring AF.
1 Like
It already has. How can people face so many premades if nobody was encouraged to form them? It’s just the crybabies asking for convenience because they got spanked who are vocal about it, the people in premades already are generally happy with it.
Very few Vanilla players play Classic. To assume the game was re-released for people who already played it is a big misconception.
Impossible to know if you’re a minority or not without official figures, but they obviously do allow it to continue. Vocal minorities are a thing.
No point, classic bgs made for casual premade rankers who cant even achieve 2200 in retail.
Dafuk I’m the minority then 
edit: on topic, then pls no changes and realm only Bgs hrhr
1 Like
This is completely false. Battlegrounds were not designed with the intention of “if you pug, you get annihilated every match”. You are straight up fabricating lies.
The vast majority of battlegrounds in vanilla (and other xpacs) were pug v pug. This was the intention.
Also, if premades are how Blizzard intend you to play WSG, then why have they implemented cross-server pugs yet premades are 1 realm only ?
4 Likes
You’re using a hyperbole in a very stupid way, and then calling me a liar for claiming I’ve said something which I haven’t.
You said that the game was designed to punish people for solo queuing. I do not bleieve this to be the case.