You’re basically saying you want there to be an incentive to keep these premades from trying to bypass such a limitation, yeah?
How?
In Russian realms for example (retail), it became a social hierarchy based on how many HKs you’ve got on a character, even though it was meaningless in the game. This alone kept them from sticking to RBGs for a challenge, to actually prefer stomping pugs in the unrated matchmaking pool.
However even this isn’t as popular as it used to be for many years, because many of them grew tired of it.
Germans were infamous for turtling in retail BGs, doing the same premade trickery as seen now. They didn’t do it for the HKs in the same sense that the Russians did though, it was just for the sake of winning. Just for that difference in the loot box at the end, and a little more honor points.
You’d need a way to completely remove the motivation to perform the premade trickery for it to work. Which would make the non-premade queues too meaningless.
This doesn’t work, it’s literally the same thing that has been used in AV now. Basically, with the trickery to create premades, why would premades aiming for more honor choose to only face other premades when they can do the trickery (if the circumstances allows it with the pool-size), to only farm pugs?
It’s the chaos that keeps it fair in the end. And the setbacks serves as a social motivation. As simple as that.
Or just make “1 for all and all for 1” - if 1 accepts queue, everyone does.
Need to afk? No problem, leave it, PUG guy will join or maybe duo/trio will join. W/e, if you need afk debuff for leaving bg isn’t a problem
I dont know actually perhaps the joy and feelings that u won and defeat another great team and after time to get yourself well known and feared by others. To know that some other premade trains hard and hoping to one day be as good enough to be able to overcome yours. Or dunno. I might sound retarded now but all my nostalgia and loving memories from back there are a result of premade vs premade games that i played when we could face only ppl from same realm at the begining . The feeling to feel your enemy almost like a friend sort of things. I dont know how to explain what i mean ,but it was SO GREAT <3 ! Even enemies were friends cause they knew … they knew ur good and u win or lose was so much nore than a score or a reward. The they shattered everything with cross bg i couldnt see my favorite enemy friends anymore and i felt really sad. I remember this was the most breaking moment for me back then.
But yeah, it’s not impossible to limit the formation of premades in queues not intended for premades, however for small BGs like WSG and AB I’m against it from a social perspective.
In AV however, they should either allow full raids to queue or to put in some hardcore non-randomized pattern recognition algorithms to prevent premades from being able to farm.
Because anything less, and it’ll be circumvented. It’s inevitable.
And imagine all the fun of premades representing servers, so it’s like a server war.
Beats this nonsense.
Vanilla, in its very core, was designed to be a socially immersive game. There’s no reason to strive for pleasing the solo players, when retail is already optimized for that.
Id never forget my alliance enemy FRIENDS on Emeriss!
Hydra priest, bobthedog - dwarf paladin , Zorrisima- human rogue and Athene … and Ranger elf hunter and so on … so much memories! Tnx for your shared post! So bad most ppl dont even know the feeling and will never do!
because todays servers are nowhere near the same size has vanilla
Todays “top gamers” make alts accounts in opposite faction and then Mind control to receive a faction buff.
How f’ed up is this?
Min/maxing
This was never in Vanilla
… It was.
I’ve never heard of anyone MCing for the buffs back then, that might’ve come from pservers, but min-maxing was always a thing in vanilla. Just not as widespread as it is now.
Also, some “top gamers” back then had a 2nd account to check if a premade they didn’t wanna face was playing by checking with /who. It’s nothing new.
perhaps the joy and feelings that u won and defeat another great team and after time to get yourself well known and feared by others. To know that some other premade trains hard and hoping to one day be as good enough to be able to overcome yours. Or dunno. I might sound retarded now but all my nostalgia and loving memories from back there are a result of premade vs premade games that i played when we could face only ppl from same realm at the begining . The feeling to feel your enemy almost like a friend sort of things. I dont know how to explain what i mean ,but it was SO GREAT <3 ! Even enemies were friends cause they knew … they knew ur good and u win or lose was so much nore than a score or a reward. The they shattered everything with cross bg 
i couldnt see my favorite enemy friends anymore and i felt really sad. I remember this was the most breaking moment for me back then.