Blackrock Stream! Crossrealm and features

[Dkunknown]

Alright lets address a few things

First of all. Icecrown and lordaeron will not change anything on their server. So no point in arguing in balance changes or 3.3.5b since any changes would directly affect those realms because all servers are connected to the same battlegroup server.
So Shadowmourn will be usable in arena and we will not touch anything regarding the proc.

Regarding shadowmourne on blackrock we will look into a way to introduce it to the server.
It will not be in shop before it can be obtainable in game

For Solo queue im only requesting extra rules for the system to follow to pervent toxic players.

Try keep "blizzlike" in mind as much as you can

I totally understand the "furstration" for the "oh no they got shadowmourne" but try look at it from both perspectives.
Not eveyone on icecrown have bis gear and blackrock have by default better starting gear than many of the icecrown players even have obtained yet... Especially Lordaeron players
For the start it wont be optimal. but after we introduce shadowmourne on blackrock i believe things will get "balanced out" in terms of server vs server

about solo que : how bout not letting us play with the same players for more than 3 games in a row for example or maybe use the ignore list like we cant get teamed with players in ignorelist but we cant ignore more than 1 player every X minutes , this way maybe and i say maybe we can avoid trolls / toxic player or at least we wont play same comp for aegis but at the same time there is not much players queing at high rating
atm i have 2 dks at 2.3k 1 at 2.4k and an other at 2k and i can tell u i was mainly playing just one comp dk ele like 80% of the time and almost everytime its against either lsp or tc it gets boring and frustrating rly quick especially when losing like you dd want at least to try with an other comp but no jk just 5 ppl queing

[Auren]

I personally cant understand this whole idea that Soloq must/should be competitive or took it in a competitive way tbh, soloq is just a skirmish 3s with the opportunity to get gear from it.

I think a good point that @Malaco and the staff should try to figure out is to actually play soloq in order to get better at their class and get easier in touch of similar exp players and be able to start rated 3s.

With the releasing of the crossrealm they should increase the rewards in 3s (Not just the rewards quality, but the amount of ranks able to get titles, making things such as Rival easier then just top10 material in order to looks more "obtanaible" with a proper effort) and lower or even remove soloq rewards, in my opinion people are already getting more then enough from queing alone and hope in a good matchup.

[seriouslyguys]

Yeah, I agree. Trying to balance too much soloQ might affect 3s. SoloQ should only be here to improve and obtain enough gear to 2s/3s.

[Jakkre]

@Malaco
Is it decided yet if soloq gonna be merged with 3s or only duoq?
Guess that would be important to know for the further discussion.

[Dastus]

I personally cant understand this whole idea that Soloq must/should be competitive or took it in a competitive way tbh, soloq is just a skirmish 3s with the opportunity to get gear from it.

Why not? Soloq is a unique and fun bracket which tests your ability to play in any comp against any comp. Your ability to adapt to situation and carry your teammates. Even though luck is involved in matchups, it's statistically impossible to have "bad luck" over hundreds of games in the same way it's impossible to get carried every time. The whole probability of getting a good/bad matchup gets averaged to roughly 50%.
In the long run, you are the deciding factor and your winrate is derived from whether you constantly bring your team down or help them win. As you move up the ladder, you are matched with better and better players and the same logic applies. Thus, soloq is competitive by definition.

Now, it might not be as competitive as 3s, but it certainly is infinitely more popular for many reasons - you can queue at any time, you don't need to synchronize your timetable with your partners, you don't get bored of it, because you are constantly presented with new situations and people.
In my opinion, soloq is the only thing that keeps people playing on Blackrock if I don't count the random battleground heroes. Which brings me to your second point that I strongly disagree with.

With the releasing of the crossrealm they should increase the rewards in 3s (Not just the rewards quality, but the amount of ranks able to get titles, making things such as Rival easier then just top10 material in order to looks more "obtanaible" with a proper effort) and lower or even remove soloq rewards, in my opinion people are already getting more then enough from queing alone and hope in a good matchup.

Removing the rewards is a great way to kill the last remaining active bracket on Blackrock and finish off the server for good. By removing the rewards, you will successfully take away the very thing that motivates the majority of the players to queue in the first place. You probably think they will be forced to move to 3s, but most of them won't. Instead, they will leave the server. It's never a good idea to force players into something and it will always generate a backslash.
To illustrate, out of the average of 50 players that are active in soloq at any given moment. 30 will leave, 10 will keep queuing until the bracket inevitably dies of the lack of popularity and the remaining 10 might try to do 3s. But they will need to find partners and synchronize with them to be able to queue. So in the end, you might have generated perhaps one or two active 3s teams at any given moment. And I wonder how long will it last before they find out the bracket isn't active at all and leave as well.

I guess it's alright to increase rewards for 3s such as more frequent flushes, less rating for gear and so on. But don't do it on the expense of soloq and don't make the rewards bracket-specific. We've seen it with wrathful shoulders, now we are seeing it with pve shoulders and heroic weapons. It just doesn't work.

[Lypto]

Why not? Soloq is a unique and fun bracket which tests your ability to play in any comp against any comp. Your ability to adapt to situation and carry your teammates. Even though luck is involved in matchups, it's statistically impossible to have "bad luck" over hundreds of games in the same way it's impossible to get carried every time. The whole probability of getting a good/bad matchup gets averaged to roughly 50%.
In the long run, you are the deciding factor and your winrate is derived from whether you constantly bring your team down or help them win. As you move up the ladder, you are matched with better and better players and the same logic applies. Thus, soloq is competitive by definition.

Now, it might not be as competitive as 3s, but it certainly is infinitely more popular for many reasons - you can queue at any time, you don't need to synchronize your timetable with your partners, you don't get bored of it, because you are constantly presented with new situations and people.
In my opinion, soloq is the only thing that keeps people playing on Blackrock if I don't count the random battleground heroes. Which brings me to your second point that I strongly disagree with.


Removing the rewards is a great way to kill the last remaining active bracket on Blackrock and finish off the server for good. By removing the rewards, you will successfully take away the very thing that motivates the majority of the players to queue in the first place. You probably think they will be forced to move to 3s, but most of them won't. Instead, they will leave the server. It's never a good idea to force players into something and it will always generate a backslash.
To illustrate, out of the average of 50 players that are active in soloq at any given moment. 30 will leave, 10 will keep queuing until the bracket inevitably dies of the lack of popularity and the remaining 10 might try to do 3s. But they will need to find partners and synchronize with them to be able to queue. So in the end, you might have generated perhaps one or two active 3s teams at any given moment. And I wonder how long will it last before they find out the bracket isn't active at all and leave as well.

I guess it's alright to increase rewards for 3s such as more frequent flushes, less rating for gear and so on. But don't do it on the expense of soloq and don't make the rewards bracket-specific. We've seen it with wrathful shoulders, now we are seeing it with pve shoulders and heroic weapons. It just doesn't work.

Give this man a medal. I would not say that better way.

[Unreally]

By going MCH you're killing off burst classes in favor of slower games and already strong classes.

Dastus, your first paragraph is exactly why I think an MCH format would be boring. You will have strong setups and bad setups again, but this time there won't be any cleaves to take care of the strong setups, and over time the bracket will become repetitive. SQ needs a little chaos in order to have balance if you ask me. For example if you have a warrior on the other team and your melee has no MS, say is a DK, you're already at a disadvantage. And let's face it, if there are 10 melee characters queing, at the very least 5 will be warriors. It's the most popular class.

It would lead to a stupid, boring, 3's like environment that completely takes away from what I find fun in SQ, which is the complete randomness. You can have MCH face cleaves, cleaves vs cleaves, and so on. Otherwise you're strictly buffing the strong MCH casters such as affliction locks, ele shamans, warriors. They are fine as it is. There may be 1 or 2 rogues that I see pushing hard for MCH, but in Wrath the class simply isn't that competitive, making the entire bracket boring might make it easier for the rogues, but there's all kinds of fun classes who are currently playable in a cleave meta that that will become obsolete in a MCH meta. Some examples are - enh shamans, BM hunters, all DK's, balance druids, destro warlocks, retribution paladins.

Mages, priests, rdruids, eles, aff locks, warriors will dominate, rogues will be bottom barrel as always, hunters won't feel the change. I don't see why you would want to buff already strong classes by going MCH. The chaos with everything facing everything helps bring everything together, in my opinion.

We already had MCH before, we don't now. There had to be a reason for that and I don't see why we should fix what's not broken, just so we see why we removed MCH in the first place.

My 2 cents from biased PoV.

[mookdaddy1234]

What about T2 PVP weapons only from 2200+ Soloque and keep the 277PvE/284 Heroic LK weapons in a seperate vendor for 3v3 2200+ only. LK weapons are still BiS so donate incentive is still there, there just wouldn't be such a large difference between 264 and 284.

[alexC123]

Hello will the ladders for all three servers be merged into one giant ladder? Or will the current system remain the same where there are 3 separate ladders, one for each realm?

Also, if you are going to merge the ques between Soloq and 3s (which I think could be a good thing for the server) you have to set soloq as 2 random dps + healer. Otherwise, if Soloq is switched to MCH, cleave teams will just dominate the ladder.

[Auren]

Why not? Soloq is a unique and fun bracket which tests your ability to play in any comp against any comp. Your ability to adapt to situation and carry your teammates. Even though luck is involved in matchups, it's statistically impossible to have "bad luck" over hundreds of games in the same way it's impossible to get carried every time. The whole probability of getting a good/bad matchup gets averaged to roughly 50%.
In the long run, you are the deciding factor and your winrate is derived from whether you constantly bring your team down or help them win. As you move up the ladder, you are matched with better and better players and the same logic applies. Thus, soloq is competitive by definition.

Now, it might not be as competitive as 3s, but it certainly is infinitely more popular for many reasons - you can queue at any time, you don't need to synchronize your timetable with your partners, you don't get bored of it, because you are constantly presented with new situations and people.
In my opinion, soloq is the only thing that keeps people playing on Blackrock if I don't count the random battleground heroes. Which brings me to your second point that I strongly disagree with. .

I definetly understand your point of view, and actually yes, u’re right in several cases.
Altho i’m not talking about how a bracket is harder/easier then another or simply more/less enjoyable, the point of my previous post was about the opportunity for warmane to provide (with crossrealm) a new fresh air to the “WOTLK experience” , adding the fact that giving the correct plus to a bracket that is supposed to be the main one, and giving some “minus” to a soloq bracket . You’re definetly correct about “test your ability” and so on, but thats on another side compared to be “competitive” from just my opinion of course, as there is a step that you avoid by queing soloq, the team grouping and the effort you need to put in order to have a solid ,active and competitive team. You definetly need to be good in order to get high rating in soloq, but in the same way , you lack of the WOTLK feelings about look for a 3s, test the comp, see if you’re fine with the team you created and so on. While, with the soloq system people can just log in,que, win or loose without type a single word in chat, dropping off the communication factor that i personally always loved about 3s, and the reason behind i think Blizzard never implemented anything similar to that, tho they allowed to not make the team, in order to play with different players that you group up it, which is quite different.

Removing the rewards is a great way to kill the last remaining active bracket on Blackrock and finish off the server for good. By removing the rewards, you will successfully take away the very thing that motivates the majority of the players to queue in the first place. You probably think they will be forced to move to 3s, but most of them won't. Instead, they will leave the server. It's never a good idea to force players into something and it will always generate a backslash.
To illustrate, out of the average of 50 players that are active in soloq at any given moment. 30 will leave, 10 will keep queuing until the bracket inevitably dies of the lack of popularity and the remaining 10 might try to do 3s. But they will need to find partners and synchronize with them to be able to queue. So in the end, you might have generated perhaps one or two active 3s teams at any given moment. And I wonder how long will it last before they find out the bracket isn't active at all and leave as well.

I guess it's alright to increase rewards for 3s such as more frequent flushes, less rating for gear and so on. But don't do it on the expense of soloq and don't make the rewards bracket-specific. We've seen it with wrathful shoulders, now we are seeing it with pve shoulders and heroic weapons. It just doesn't work.

Exactly the opposite, as we stated before, we’re not talking about the removal of the whole gear removal from Soloq, but , for the reasons i stated above , limit the amount and the quality of the gear you can get, keeping it for example similar to the 2s rewards on Blackrock, in order to give out something in both ways, and only after, if you’re willing to get “BiS weapons” you’ll be forced to get into 3s, or donate, while PvE realm players will have the point to get them by PvE, which means getting in a guild , and all the farm/luck needed for each item. While as i stated above, allowing soloq rewards such LK25hc weapons (and even BiS HC items) just avoid the whole concept in “farm or donate”, as you definetly can get in a bunch of days full BiS offsets just by queing soloq and reach 1.8 rating or ask to being boosted in 2s.
About the rewards from 3s, wasnt even close about what you say to be honest, my point isnt about making it similar to Blackrock (Less rating for gear, frequent flushes etc”) but about increasing the amount of title distribution at season ends, giving title such as Rival,Duelist,Gladiator,Challenger just from 3s, but increasing the % and not keeping it as it is now from just top10.
That kind of title distribution and the opportunity to get BiS weapons just from that bracket will for sure create more interests about put some effort in the 3s ladder for who want to be competitive, while, who want some casual PvP and reach a good amount of gear before step in 3s, will que soloQ and 2s.
Also consider that giving out soloq rewards will make on a long-run Blackrock players dominate whole bracket gear-wise, as in the currently state, the starter gear of Blackrock and the time needed to obtain non-donation BiS items, makes a way superior start compared to who didnt donated or isnt farming gear themself on Icecrown/Lordaeron, having the top PvP set, 1 season behind Blackrock and PvE gear depending on donating or how much effort he put on PvE aspects of the game.

To sum it up:
- 2v2 4/5 s8, access to 264 items equal to ICC10man HC
- 3v3 solo q 5/5 s8, access to 277 items equal to ICC25man HC
- 3v3 5/5 s8, access to whole 284 items equal to RS/LK HC.
- Larger distribution of titles from 3s ladder
- Maybe keep the soloq title
- Removal of 2s seasonal rewards as people will have other 2 active bracket where obtain title with.

I'm doing this assumptions cause i dont think Warmane will give anykind of PvE vendors for Icecrown and Lordaeron (for obvious reasons i guess) so there must be figured out a system that doesnt give any advantage to any of the three realms above others. Blackrock will have the opportunity to get faster items, cause is only PvP oriented, altho it will require a bit of effort in this way, same thing, as people from the PvE realms have to get into HCs , hope for the weekly drop, and hope to win the items that they need.
Before stating Shadowmourne, keep in mind that some have farmed it "legit", others bought it for 150coins or more.
But getting the Shadowmourne from coins wasnt meaning be istant 80 with a decent starter gear. While in case they would release Shadowmourne for donations on Blackrock in this currently system, would just be "Ok donating for Shadowmourne and then not gonna use a single more coin, as Blackrock will provide me all the rest of gear, without even that much effort, same goes for professions)

Or donate....XD

The gear distribution is cause in my opinion the way for any newcomer arena player would be: start 2s and soloq to get better and get a good amount of items in less time, then he will be 277 geared with 5/5 s8, so he will be completly fine in compete to reach the 284 gears from 3s, if he is willing to group up and so on.
Remember that back in S8 blizzard wasnt giving out shoulders/t2 weapons in 2s, while with this option people will get it even from soloqueing.

[Lypto]

@Auren everything you said was based on the fact that classic 3v3 is supposed to be the "main" bracket in your opinion.
Last few seasons 3v3 teams were not rewarded for their way superior skill but mainly for their patience. If this is what you are up to we just won't agree with you. Because most of the arrangements you suggested end up this way. I will try to describe this logic below. Some servers already killed their PvP by such changes. Most their people came to AT back then.

Your opinion is based on belief that 3v3 is the main bracket. Personaly I don't see a reason why this obsolete bracket should be the main one. Obviously neither do people you discuss this with under this topic. In fact both brackets were eligible at the time when soloque was added and people chose soloque over the classic 3s. This is the main reason why is 3v3 bracket dead. If it gets merged together 3v3 teams will simply gain the advantage of team synergy which will possibly reward them with better rating as well as shortened wait times so they get their own benefit. From my point of view this is the rightful benefit for people that spend time and energy on making 3s team which is ofc. more demanding on time, synchronising timetables of team members etc.

And to your statements about the gear requirements. Lets assume 2 possibilities. First one that 3v3 gets merged with soloque. People that manage to beat 3v3 teams as soloque definitely deserve their gear if not even more than 3v3 people (if we consider the situation where soloque gets matched with 3v3).

To demonstrate the second possibility lets assume that 3s and soloque are divided and crossrealm is active. Based on the numbers of current active 3v3 teams and active arena players on all servers 3v3 maybe is not completely dead but if you get over 1900 rating there will still be these gaps that make teams wait long time and farm by +2 on low teams. This is definitely not the state enjoyable to majority of players of this server. There are simply still not enough people on all servers to make 3v3 completely active on all levels again. This is also the main reason why people decided to play soloque over 3v3. You can't force them back just because you consider the classic 3v3 to be the superior one for most people it was certainly not if they didn't consider it worth creating team and logging for better equip then. It won't get better now. And as I said last few season v3 teams were not rewarded for their way superior skill but mainly for their patience.

[kolibrukk]

Auren, why you force people to play 3v3 if they don't want to? I think almost everybody here because of soloq. Why the biggest part of the community should bend over some peoples who want to play 3v3 ?
"Remember that back in S8 blizzard wasnt giving out shoulders/t2 weapons in 2s, while with this option people will get it even from soloqueing." So what? i can't understand why everything on warmane should be "blizzlike". S8 wasn't really balanced.

[Auren]

Auren, why you force people to play 3v3 if they don't want to? I think almost everybody here because of soloq. Why the biggest part of the community should bend over some peoples who want to play 3v3 ?
"Remember that back in S8 blizzard wasnt giving out shoulders/t2 weapons in 2s, while with this option people will get it even from soloqueing." So what? i can't understand why everything on warmane should be "blizzlike". S8 wasn't really balanced.

More like you dont even bothered in understand my post tbh,
I never said that i want force people who enjoy soloq to play 3s, altho i'm sayng that soloq should not be rewarded in the same way as 3s.

I think almost everybody here because of soloq. Why the biggest part of the community should bend over some peoples who want to play 3v3 ?
"Remember that back in S8 blizzard wasnt giving out shoulders/t2 weapons in 2s, while with this option people will get it even from soloqueing." So what? i can't understand why everything on warmane should be "blizzlike". S8 wasn't really balanced.

People play soloq cause yes, it is enjoyable, but als is the bracket that requires less effort or close to 0 when talking about communication and/or gathering a group. Being lazy isnt supposed to be an excuse.
The same people who are top ranks in soloq, are the same that are r1 in the 3s ladder when they willing to play with their team. Soloq is something that must be saw just a time-fitter, i repeat , there is a reason why Blizzard didnt even took in consider such kind of bracket, or actually it did...calling that skirmish.

I think almost everybody here because of soloq. Why the biggest part of the community should bend over some peoples who want to play 3v3 ?
.

Is an assumption, for example viceversa everyone i know would definetly ignore soloq as soon as there would be an active 3s bracket. keeping queing soloq just as warmup or when alone online

So what? i can't understand why everything on warmane should be "blizzlike". S8 wasn't really balanced.

Thats how the realm is designed and always been, thats why Crossrealm is not using 3.3.5b stated by Malaco.

I personally think that people (i swear, no offence) are just looking for the easiest way to get to their goal, while missing that WoW itself is supposed to be a mmorpg so you've to interact with people in order to progress in any aspect of the game; which soloq just kill it mostly of the times as you can get to any rate without any interactions towards other players in your group.

@Lypto i've read your post but right now would make another wall of text to answer you, and im at work so i cant. Would just say that the last season people reached also 2.4 rating in 3s (Next,Sumic,Machine) , but the problem isnt the ladder, was the fact that not many players were playng it on Icecrown and the few that wanted try it out, were meeting BiS top gear players majority of time.
Releasing crossrealm will increase the 3s ques by so much, there isnt much to discuss about that.
Soloq helps kill the 3s or reduce it? Yes definetly cause it's a lazy way to do the same as 3s, but just by clicking join soloq and wait, at any hour you can log-in and play.

I think almost everybody here because of soloq. Why the biggest part of the community should bend over some peoples who want to play 3v3 ?

Noone force you to get s8 shoulders and T2 pvp weapons then (Or End-game HC LK weapons....i dont remember if you can buy them from 2.2 in soloq or just from 3s on BR btw)

[Dastus]

I definetly understand your point of view, and actually yes, u’re right in several cases.
Altho i’m not talking about how a bracket is harder/easier then another or simply more/less enjoyable...

Alright, I’m glad we are beginning to understand each other. I think we can both agree that 3s has some superior qualities over soloq and vice versa. But as Lypto correctly pointed out, you automatically assume that 3v3 is supposed to be the "main" bracket. And I believe that assumption stems from your personal opinions and preferences.
I, on the other hand, believe soloq should be the "main" bracket. But I do not base it on my subjective feelings. I simply base it on the objective fact that it's the most popular one.
I certainly get the appeal of the whole social aspect and the blizzlike feeling of classic 3s. But let's be honest, it's a niche interest. Even on Icecrown, with 12k people online, almost nobody queues 3s anymore. I understand you want to resurrect that bracket, I do as well. But I think your approach isn't going to work. WotLK as a whole is on the decline and it needs more people. You aren't going to achieve that by focusing on what only a minority of players is interested in while discouraging the majority from doing what they enjoy.

Exactly the opposite, as we stated before, we’re not talking about the removal of the whole gear removal from Soloq, but , for the reasons i stated above , limit the amount and the quality of the gear you can get, keeping it for example similar to the 2s rewards on Blackrock...

Looks like we had a misunderstanding here. You said "lower or even remove", and since lowering the rewards already means removing some of them, I though that by "remove" you wanted to remove them entirely. Since this doesn't seem to be the case, let's disregard it. Unlike removing the rewards, just lowering them isn't a fatal mistake, but I still think it's a bad idea.

Contrary to what you said, you are actually increasing the rewards from soloq in your summary. The way things are now, you can't get any 277 weapons/pve shoulders from soloq. And this plays a big part in why I think it's not going to make a difference. Why, because we are actually seeing it in practice right now. 277 weapons are gamechanging, still, nobody really bothers to queue 3s. The activity in 3s didn't increase in the least ever since this was implemented (if we don't count wintrading). The people who really want those weapons are donating for them instead and the others do not care. I can't help but wonder what makes you think people will suddenly start caring after the merge...
As for your other suggested changes, I believe that the majority of people care even less about the titles than the weapons. The titles aren't even that prestigeous anymore, we already have some 1700 rivals due to how inactive the bracket is. If you make the titles easier to obtain, the situation can only get worse.

Based on what I've seen over the years, I don't believe these little encouragements to queue 3s and discouragements to queue soloq are going to change anything. In the best case, it's going to increase the activity slightly and in the worst case, it's going to damage the last remaining active bracket on warmane. People don't need a dead bracket with better rewards, they want an already active bracket. And to make 3s into an already active bracket, merging it with soloq is the only logical conclusion. This way, anyone who wants to queue 3s will get instant queues at any rating and you are not forcing the players into anything.
If I'm not mistaken, you already are in favor of the merge under certain circumstances. If that change happens and 3s becomes active again, is it really necessary to lower soloq rewards and force people into a bracket they don't want to play in at that point? I don't think it is.

Lastly, I think we both have slightly different priorities in forming our opinions. You, for example, seem to care a lot about the balance between the individual servers. I think both Blackrock and Icecrown are completely different worlds, people play on one or the other for completely different reasons and the servers should be treated as such. Making rewards harder to obtain on Blackrock, because it would be "fair" towards ICC players isn't going to accomplish anything in my opinion. It will only make it less enjoyable to play on Blackrock, because people play there in order to PvP without too much of an additional hassle. And it's not going to change anything on ICC, because all the high rated teams already have the gear either through hard work, or donations. Does it really matter whether your full-geared opponent got their gear on Icecrown or Blackrock?
I believe that trying to balance Blackrock with Icecrown in mind and the other way around will only result in the population of both the servers becoming unhappy.

[Sammy7]

Hopefully I didn't miss this somewhere, but. This doesn't mean there is going to be a transmog wipe does it? Just wondering if I should straight up stop working on my transmog for the next few days if that's the case, or contemplate my wasted time or something.