In the Tips interview the Classic developers made it clear that there will be Cross Realm Battlegrounds.

My opinion: Staying true to the single shard community experience involves building and maintaining internal server PvP rivalries. What do I care if I win a battleground against people from another server? They mean nothing to me. This will seriously degrade the PvP experience, especially the Honor Grind. These qualitiy of life improvements that began showing up near the end of Vanilla (to reduce queue times for example) are what ruined the game and makes me concerned about their overall decision making going forward.

Your thoughts?

Well you need it for to some extent negating premade dodging and to help people in less populated/one faction sided realms. I have no problems with that. It is quite helpful. In the best case scenario you would want to have realm only BGs but that will not work out in real life conditions.

Somewhat related: I am actually looking forward to having to run to the physical entrance of the BGs.

s1atan wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Well you need it for to some extent negating premade dodging and to help people in less populated/one faction sided realms. I have no problems with that. It is quite helpful. In the best case scenario you would want to have realm only BGs but that will not work out in real life conditions.

Need is a strong word. The way around the problem of premade dodging is to join a premade yourself. A PvP solution for a PvP problem. And the realm imbalance issue only creates longer queue times, so I stand by by qualitiy of life statement. Those late Vanilla quality of life improvements are the road to BFA.

I don't have much experience with PvP, but I watched that section of the video to get a reference of the discussion.

Tips Blizzard Dev Interview @11:56

Because Crossrealm Battlegrounds were a feature in 1.12 and were important for matchmaking we want to continue to support everything that existed in the game for 1.12, and that would include Crossrealm Battlegrounds

Seems to me that this is less about the feelings of server identity and more about recreating 1.12 as the starting point of WoW: Classic.

Default wrote: ↑

6 years ago

I don't have much experience with PvP, but I watched that section of the video to get a reference of the discussion.

Tips Blizzard Dev Interview @11:56

Because Crossrealm Battlegrounds were a feature in 1.12 and were important for matchmaking we want to continue to support everything that existed in the game for 1.12, and that would include Crossrealm Battlegrounds

Seems to me that this is less about the feelings of server identity and more about recreating 1.12 as the starting point of WoW: Classic.

I understand using 1.12 as a baseline for class balance, content and so on. But the Classic developers seemed to understand the value of maintaining server identity (by not doing phasing across realms, discussing having realm specific threads on the forums, etc.). I thought they would have had the good sense to keep everything separate. They had in fact said they would look at each of these types of features and make case by case determinations on whether to keep them in using the idea of authenticity as the key factor. To me, and to a lot of others, Cross Realm Battlegrounds, while added in 1.12, are not authentic to Vanilla.

Nayami wrote: ↑

6 years ago

<snip>

I thought they would have had the good sense to keep everything separate. They had in fact said they would look at each of these types of features and make case by case determinations on whether to keep them in using the idea of authenticity as the key factor. To me, and to a lot of others, Cross Realm Battlegrounds, while added in 1.12, are not authentic to Vanilla.

I see what you mean and I agree with your sentiments.


Let me propose another thought; if the matchmaking system for Classic is created now, that'd mean less work for TBC classic. So perhaps their design philosophy was that it was a feature in the build they're working on, and potentially need it in the future.

Default wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Let me propose another thought; if the matchmaking system for Classic is created now, that'd mean less work for TBC classic. So perhaps their design philosophy was that it was a feature in the build they're working on, and potentially need it in the future.

Could be. But even so, if they are building Classic based on what will be easier for a TBC2 that is its own mess of problems. The Dungeon Finder interface comes to mind. A TBC2 without one would be better. In fact I think they should roll back to pre-1.9 on the LookingForGroup channel and keep it local to each city. Another part of the Vanilla experience was everyone and his brother hanging out in Ironforge or Orgrimmar dancing, chatting and trying to form up groups.

Even though on some days the queue times were horrible. It was great and a lot of fun to have a real chance to face your "enemies" again at one of the next matches. With x-ream bgs it was more luck to see your enemies ever again. They should stick to same-realm matchmaking at least for warsong and arathi.

If it ever gets bad enough with very long queue times then I'd rather have them combining two realms where one is heavily horde sided and one is alliance sided than having them implement cross realm battlegrounds.

I remember being a kid and running home from the bus to queue for BG's because the wait was so long on my server. At times Queues could take upwards of 2-3 hours midday on weekdays. Faction imbalance will do this... I'm conflicted, because in a perfect world we could silo each individual server and play against our rivals which would be my preference. In reality, this just leads to queue dodging (as mentioned by @s1atan above) and a poor player experience.

There is nothing like having the time to grind rank and sitting down to do it, only to realize you simply can not because there is no queue. In this circumstance, you are obligated to join a premade to gain priority over solo queue players and then must abide by that premades rule set... You will be told what order ranks will be distributed in (you will be last), and what your weekly honor cap is (if you break the bracket, you're out of the premade permanently)... You will also be expected to participate in queue dodging or any other means to increase honor per hour as set out by the group. Outside of organized pvp you will be terrified to get any honorable or dishonorable kills... Remember, you cant break the bracket so you cant get honor kills... This means you spend your time in the world actively avoiding other players. Your alternative is to go back to solo queueing and wait in line for hours and hours only to be completely derailed by premade players earning 2-5 times the honor you are. This was my reality during vanilla retail while grinding ranks.

All of these issues will exist with or without cross-realm BG's, however on servers with faction imbalances these issues will be magnified drastically. You often hear mixed conjecture about the difficulty to obtaining rank... This is why. The reality of obtaining rank and the adversity players faced to get there was incredibly different on each server. Cross-realm implementation was an effort to mitigate some of that disparity, and it did help.

Cross realm battlegrounds is #nochanges for 1.12 - it could be added in later phases to more accurately align with release schedule of vanilla.

Cross-realm battlegrounds work, if realms have their own battlegroups, perhaps consisting of 4 - 5 servers, or less, depending on how many servers we get overall.

There will be a community within that battlegroup. Back in the days, I was in the Bloodlust battlegroup (EU) which consisted of Argent Dawn, Burning Legion, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Deathwing, Dragonmaw and Dunemaul.

I made quite a lot of twink characters, all from 29, 39, 49 and then stayed on level 60 even after Burning Crusade released. The point being; even within those battlegroups, I still saw the same people in these brackets even if they were from different servers, and there were a lot of banter and whatnot on the official forums, in the battlegroup forum.

It was fun, and the queue times were good too.

Firelord wrote: ↑

6 years ago

It was fun, and the queue times were good too.

There it is boys, wrap it up!

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

6 years ago

There is nothing like having the time to grind rank and sitting down to do it, only to realize you simply can not because there is no queue. In this circumstance, you are obligated to join a premade to gain priority over solo queue players and then must abide by that premades rule set... You will be told what order ranks will be distributed in (you will be last), and what your weekly honor cap is (if you break the bracket, you're out of the premade permanently)... You will also be expected to participate in queue dodging or any other means to increase honor per hour as set out by the group. Outside of organized pvp you will be terrified to get any honorable or dishonorable kills... Remember, you cant break the bracket so you cant get honor kills... This means you spend your time in the world actively avoiding other players. Your alternative is to go back to solo queueing and wait in line for hours and hours only to be completely derailed by premade players earning 2-5 times the honor you are. This was my reality during vanilla retail while grinding ranks.

I ran in premades both on Horde and Alliance. Never did I see any rule set other than "follow orders in the battleground". People would get kicked off the list if they sucked, but I never heard of anything like you describe. And we also never dodged queues.

Running into a premade is a fact of life regardless if there are x-realm connections or not. If you are going to pvp for fun, I suggest killing people out in the world. There won't be a shortage I promise. You can also build a name for yourself amongst your server enemies. My brother and I were regularly hated on by the alliance on the realm forums. Additionally, the "hardcore" pvpers from the other faction will be running premades and less likely to camp you in retaliation. Sharding is largely what killed open PvP anyhow amongst other things like daily quests, channeled storylines that people have to follow, garrisons, followers, pet battles and everything else that is a distraction/replacement for going out in the world to quest or make money killing boars in the forest. X-realm bg's will not ruin the simplicity that is inherent in/on specific realm communities.
If you are worrying about being "competitive" in achieving rank 10+ then your problem is not if you will have to join a premade with their own set of rules or whatever. Not all premades are guaranteed to win on either side. Your problem will be finding a guild that creates efficient groups. Then again most folks won't see those types of groups in the same way they won't ever see Naxx, because they won't have the time.
Time will be the #1 killer of those who are riding the fence on classic as well as those with aspirations of top tier gear from PvP and raids. The time it takes to level and gear are tremendous. The time to take to make money for gear repairs can be daunting for some. All the youngsters these days are worried about the wrong things.

Nayami wrote: ↑

6 years ago

To me, and to a lot of others, Cross Realm Battlegrounds, while added in 1.12, are not authentic to Vanilla.

So some authentic Vanilla features are less authentic to Vanilla than other authentic features, and it's up to you and your buddies to decide which is better - not for the rest/general community out there who disagrees.

Don't see that much fuss about pre-1.12 talents being more authentic, or the more easier 1.12 brackets being less authentic than the old honor grind. Can't imagine why.

Nayami wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Those late Vanilla quality of life improvements are the road to BFA.

And I'm pretty sure by that logic marijuana is the gateway drug to meth, just like apple cider is for alcoholism.

You have no other argument besides "we want it this way". All this talk about authenticity is bullshit, because the change is authentic. All this talk about the community is also bullshit, because most people do/did want this change in the game both then and now. Everyone who's played back then recalls how stupidly long the queues were and welcomed cross-realm BGs being implemented.

Nayami wrote: ↑

6 years ago

A PvP solution for a PvP problem.

This isn't a PvP problem, it's a match-making problem. No competitive game would you ever match a premade with a non-premade. If your answer is just to premade back or "git gud", then you're turning PvP into "either find a premade yourself or instantly lose" and that's not why BGs exist, so that rankers can steamroll and anyone who's not a ranker can fuck off and die. And if they do join premades, they're just going to dodge that premade too because no cheesy ranker's going to want to fight against another premade.

Literary anyone except tryhard rankers are complaining about this change because it makes abusing the matchmaking system which would allow them to steamroll most of the games a bit harder. That is all this argument is about. There is absolutely nothing you can add to the benefit of anyone not playing in a premade that would justify this stuff. Laughed hard at the "sever animosity" argument, like you won't have a friend or an alt account logged in to see when/if the rankers on the enemy faction are queuing up (even if they appear Offline, you can just make an alt and park it at the Battlemaster/portal) just to avoid them.

I'm sorry, any system that makes it harder for all of you to abuse the honor grind and make queue times less of a problem for most of the server is a good system. Authenticity, server pride and so forth has nothing to do with it. You want server pride, go measure your dick in a capital city or BRM against another guild - it'll win you more notoriety than beating a bunch of uncoordinated losers in an instanced BG.

Idc about XR BG's. I just want to PvP.

Nymis wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Nayami wrote: ↑

6 years ago

To me, and to a lot of others, Cross Realm Battlegrounds, while added in 1.12, are not authentic to Vanilla.

So some authentic Vanilla features are less authentic to Vanilla than other authentic features, and it's up to you and your buddies to decide which is better - not for the rest/general community out there who disagrees.

Don't see that much fuss about pre-1.12 talents being more authentic, or the more easier 1.12 brackets being less authentic than the old honor grind. Can't imagine why.

I agree. WoW: Classic isn't so much about this hipster-sense of authenticity. They've stated its about snapshotting 1.12 and releasing it with modern fundamentals of content delivery and access.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know crossrealm battleground queues are within static realm pools. This means there is a realm community and a larger, "interrealm" pvp community. In my opinion thats not bad. I would compare that with living in a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone. Usually people only interact within this town community - but when it comes to [insert favorite sport here] your towns teams dont only compete against each other but also against the neighbour towns teams. That builds rivalry and offers additional challenges (more serious pvp groups to compete against). I think this is especially interesting for pve realms; when there is not a strong faction based rivalry.
Any thoughts on this?

I don't want hour long queues but I don't want cross realm. I'd like battle groups with official forums so there can be some community formed from therein

Firmly against this.

pan0phobik wrote: ↑

6 years ago

I don't want hour long queues but I don't want cross realm. I'd like battle groups with official forums so there can be some community formed from therein

this!

I was on a realm that got realy early matched with a lot of other servers (6 i think) and to this day i know a lot of the horde players from the other servers just from the bgs

Samaraner wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know crossrealm battleground queues are within static realm pools. This means there is a realm community and a larger, "interrealm" pvp community. In my opinion thats not bad. I would compare that with living in a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone. Usually people only interact within this town community - but when it comes to [insert favorite sport here] your towns teams dont only compete against each other but also against the neighbour towns teams. That builds rivalry and offers additional challenges (more serious pvp groups to compete against). I think this is especially interesting for pve realms; when there is not a strong faction based rivalry.
Any thoughts on this?

Spot on, I think as long as the battlegroups/cross-realm groups are created in phase 5 or 6 so that they can balance horde and alliance ratios and high and low pop servers it will be a fantastic reinvigoration to what may be a stale or lopsided BG scene on individual servers.

I just can't bring myself to support XR battlegrounds, as retrospectively it was one of the things which hurt the "community" feel of WoW.

IMO it's going to be one of those things that will be more appropriate to decide a bit further down the line.