I won't launch into a super long rant, as anyone who is playing Horde right now knows what I mean. Instead, I'd like to summarize the problem and propose a simple solution for each:
BG Queues are Beyond Broken
1. Horde has to wait 2+ hours every single day just to get into AV. This incentivizes botting, as it's the only efficient way to obtain HKs.
SOLUTION: Remove any restrictions on Mercenary Mode and let Horde play AV against Horde players (and any Alli players that want to show up). The solutions to other problems listed below will also help, as they will speed up AV games.
BG rep PvP items are unobtainable
2. When in ANY battleground, the rep acquired is virtually zero. There are no marks, so we cannot farm reputation to obtain PvP gear. As such, obtaining any viable PvP gear requires reaching Warlord/HWL, which again incentivizes botting.
SOLUTION: Dramatically increase reputation in battlegrounds AND/OR bring back Honor Marks to be turned in for both honor and rep. This will distribute the number of players across battlegrounds a bit more evenly, and may help with AV queues as well by incentivizing winning the game for extra honor.
The above problems DIRECTLY incentivize botting
3. AFK botters are rampant in battlegrounds. Why? Because the queues are ****ING INSANE and most people can't sit at their PC 8+ hours a day hoping to get AV to pop. The queue times directly incentivize botting. Furthermore, the current AV meta is "turtle and farm HKs" which directly disincentivizes melee from participating in the brawl, as we die instantly in the choke points and get sent to the GY (which means we often lose out on HKs). As such, we sit back and let the ranged get the HKs so we can stay alive to obtain as many HKs as possible.
SOLUTION: Introduce reinforcements (but more than the 600 that gets introduced with TBC to make AV games longer than a few minutes) and introduce bonus honor to those who have recently assaulted a GY or Tower, to incentivize players distributing themselves more evenly across the map. Since HKs are what's needed for gear, this honor bonus should be significant enough to incentivize running around/past choke points. Anything to clear up the "turtle and farm" meta.
(edited to add:)
The Vanilla System is fun, but only when wearing rose-colored glasses
4. The whole system of obtaining a specific number of HK's to obtain the best gear is "similar" to the original rank system, but since we don't want people to have to maintain their ranks, a new system is required - one that will break the "turtle and farm" meta but won't break BGs the way they were broken in TBC.
**SOLUTION:** Instead of using HK's to obtain ranks, use honor. Players have to BUY ranks with honor earned. Each rank progressively gets harder and harder to buy (and we remove the 75k honor limit). Furthermore, we create large honor bonuses for assaulting GYs/Towers, capturing the flag, or capping bases in AB (and maybe extra honor for staying in the vicinity of the flags?). Changing some of these mechanics won't break the vanilla experience, but will dramatically improve the BG PvP experience.
When TBC introduced reinforcements to AV, it broke the turtle meta but it disincentivized any actual killing of enemy players. We need to preserve the "battle" in "battlegrounds" without forcing players to rush boss and ignore enemy players. Create short but powerful Honor bonuses such that if you are assaulting an objective with your teammates, while the objective is contested you get significantly more honor points. This incentivizes killing enemy players without immediately rushing the boss.
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I'm curious what other people think about these solutions, but I'm 10000% confident that every Horde PvP player is ***FURIOUS*** with the queue timers. This should be among the top priorities to be solved as soon as possible, because right now PvP is essentially impossible on Horde without no-lifing or botting.
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