Fixing TBC's PvP shortcomings

As we all know, there are some shortcomings in the way TBC PvP works. The ones that I would like to address in this post are:
1) New 1500 rating teams - people with much higher skill and/or better gear are meeting people that are no match for them, often resulting in boredom on one side and frustration on the other.

2) Dodging/sniping in arenas - since there are only few places that you can join arenas from, it is possible and sometimes even easy to dodge or snipe specific people in arena. (Especially obnoxious in combination with a new 1500 rating team.)

3) Jumping between BGs - because you can join three BGs, get in one and then go to another, there are sometimes multiple BGs running, without any of them being actually full or at least even in numbers on both sides.
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Suggestions for resolution(or at least an improvement):

1) Basically a brand new matchmaking system for arenas, based on personal rating. Each player would have their personal rating "soulbound" to them, without the possibility to reset it by leaving a team. To match two teams against each other, an average of personal ratings of the players(two, three or five) joining for a game would be used. Since items still require (or rather will require) both personal and team rating, there is nothing to be gained by purchasing a new team, since you would have 1500 team rating, but would still be matched against people of your actual skill level and be still locked out of buying rating-restricted items. If you were to join an arena with a partner where the rating difference would be over a certain amount, for example 100 rating, only the higher one(two or more for 3v3/5v5) would be used.

2) Removing the necessity to join an arena queue via an NPC. If you are in a party with your team mate, the party leader would be able to join an arena match using ingame command, for example .arena2 for 2v2. This would only work in capital cities, giving you the option to hide somewhere within the city, so you can not be as easily sniped or dodged. Second part would be to also hide the actual position of the player, so that once you enter an arena you are not visible in "Nagrand Arena" for example, but in the city that you have joined from.

3) Third point is fairly obvious. Simply lock a person from entering another Battleground, once there is already an invitation (the "Enter Battle" window) shown. You would still be able to join three different Battlegrounds, but would also be required to commit to a specific one. Denying the invitation(leaving the queue, not hiding the window) would unlock the other Battlegrounds to "proc" again.
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I don't want to claim this to be my idea, this system was used elsewhere a few years back and proved itself to be working very well, though on a realm approximately half the population of Outland. However I believe it's effect wouldn't be diminished by the higher population.

If you got this far, thank you for reading my post. Please share you opinions below!

Really great feedback, especially #3. I'm new to the forums (but have been playing for a few months), so I'm curious if they will actually entertain ideas this complex.

Other notes: you'd be able to game the system in #1 by tanking PR of players A and B, while C keeps winning easy games. Diminishing returns would definitely help, but you could also easily maintain a high rating by playing 10 easy games a weeks and coasting. I dunno. It's more complex than it seems. Just taking the average PR might not be enough logic.

That should be partially solved by using only the higher rating if the gap between players is too big. So if you intentionally lose rating on players A and B and then try joining with player C who's only been winning, you will be matched according to player C's personal rating, instead of the average. You could try maintaining the gap so that you are as low as possible, while still using the average, though. This can never be solved completely, but with the right "maximum gap" setting, it should have very little benefit for the players trying to exploit it.

the #1suggestion should be : just to add MMR please,
so most of the toxic/bored players would be annoying no one. really.

MMR system on TBC is super needed. It's just frustrating to grind +5 in 10 games just to face counter comp 2 times in a row and lose all rating gained. It should be done like on Blackrock tbh.

The BG jumping is realy a huge problem in TBC. Everybody keeps jumping from one BG to another until he finds the BG with the highest win chance.
It leads to a very unbalanced and poor BG experience.
Either implement what the OP suggested or give deserteur when leaving a BG.

A nother crucial thing that should be changed are the game breaking LoS mechanics in BGs or in other words, the absence of any out of line.
U have to see how deffending a tower in AV looks like. Mages can aoe everybody inside the tower by spamming blizzard from miles away. Melee can hit through the wall to dmg deffender inside the tower.
U need to add our Wotlk Los mechanics to TBC ASAP!

yea, idk why we can't use any los in BG, this is so lame
bu there's tons of lame features on the server aka : dynamic DRs (yep, u do blind sap, and u're still having cheapshot DR) / dynamic offcombat (req to tryhard to successfully handle that cuz if u dont u can just be stuck in combat for almost 8sec, lolz) / massive amount of rng (resisting everything, stunprocs etc)
beside of that the experience is very nice, but there's still lot of things to improve to make the pvp experience great imo.
but addind mmr would be a good start =)

I'm against MMR simply because I want to be able to play with my friends (who aren't as experienced) without having to worry about dropping my MMR. I am sure many others would also worry about not playing with "the best" in order to not ruin their stats.

Sorry, but this is a very poor excuse and makes no sense. In the current system, if you go with your "not as experienced friends" in a new team, you lose all your rating, including the one that is used for matchmaking (Team Rating currently) and you lose it instantly. In the personal rating system (or other MMR based), you lose only a portion of it and only if you lose a match. So you obviously just want to be able to farm people that are no match for you. Make a new account and come up with something reasonable please.

Can we summon Proterean to this thread to get like general Warmane's opinion on this matter?

Are there any plans in the future for QoL improvements for TBC PVP?

I can live with 2 and 3 but 1 is total bull****. You can't bound personal rating coz you would ruin the game for alot of people. 2 with avarage of 2100 doesn't mean playing no voice first time for the lulz should place them on 2100 and so on.

Well the current system is already ruining the game for a lot of people. If someone with 2100 rating goes with a new partner he doesn’t become a 1500-level player. This way you have to go up at least 400 rating and ruin the game for other people before you meet your match. Of course, it’s a lot of fun for the two 2100 players, but no fun at all for the 100 people they meet on their way back to their actual rating.

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Originally Posted by Jelenarozgax

Can we summon Proterean to this thread to get like general Warmane's opinion on this matter?

Are there any plans in the future for QoL improvements for TBC PVP?

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Custom changes are of concern, and most likely to be declined. I wouldn't ask for him to come here unless you're prepared to have the suggestion(s) shot down.

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Originally Posted by Mercy

Custom changes are of concern, and most likely to be declined. I wouldn't ask for him to come here unless you're prepared to have the suggestion(s) shot down.

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Thank you for bringing your attention to this thread.

We already have some QoL custom changes such as dual talent spec which is greatly appreciated and loved by the majority of players. I haven't seen yet anybody complaining about it. Also, we have Vanilla PvP titles on their way, also small custom change which brings something more to mindless bg farm.

Now to get some extra QoL changes I'd like to see here are:

1) Disable BG hopping. If it is needed I will provide you videos/screenshots of both horde and alliance bg experience. I played around 20 bg's yesterday and without exaggeration 13 of them at least were 1 sided. Let's take WSG for example, 8 horde vs 1 alliance player, 2 times in a row.
I did easy 2 flag cap to secure win even if alliance would have joined but bg ended after 5 minutes mark for missing players. Same things happen on alliance character. Meanwhile, during that bg, 3-4 alliance players joined but instantly left since they're allowed to swap bg. If that option was disabled we wouldn't have the 8vs1 situation in the first place.

Arathi Basin - most of my joins were already when an opposing team had 4 caps and gy camping because people can simply leave as soon as new bg pops.

What I suggest here is to simply disable BG hopping. When you enter specific battleground you are unable to swap into another one. (I did it myself dozen of times and realized that any bg I'd join was still a losing one so now I just stick to the first one and give my best to carry)

2) MMR system in arenas.

I'll give you an example from my experience but it applies to any new team trying to grind some rating.
A few days ago I've been playing 3s on my alliance character which is poorly geared. (Mix of battleground blues and offset epics). Same with my teammates which have ~2 s2 pieces.
We've started on ~1600 rating. First game 4 seconds queue time we face 1850 team. -16 rating. Okay, they were probably sitting in the queue for few minutes, let's queue again. 6 seconds into queue time, 2nd game 1900 team -13 rating.

We've played around 30 games that day and went like 8-22. Most of the games were versus 300+ rating different teams which are obviously far more ahead of the gear than a freshly created team.
On my horde main character, same things happen, but vice versa. On 1800+ I face 1500-1600 teams and simply crush them because my team simply outgears them hard. It is no fun for me and it is no fun for them since they get -15 rating.

Rating gain/loss ratio is not rewarding especially for new teams trying to get bigger cap/have fun in 3s while pushing some rating.

Playing 2s/3s on Wotlk's Icecrown feels so much rewarding when you play on ~1700 mmr vs equal mmr team. You win +15 rating, If you lose -6.
Playing 2s/3s on TBC feels like playing Blackjack. ~1600 rating, face counter in 2s -20 rating, win +10.

What I suggest here is to use Blackrock's mmr script system for TBC. Or Icecrown's even tho it is far less scripted than Blackrock's one.
By implementing that, you will help new players/freshly dinged players/players wanting to try 3s far better experience than the current one.


If I didn't prove ****, my bad. I tried to explain difficulties I've come across while playing tbc for the first time, which I assume every TBC virgin have experienced as well.

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Originally Posted by Jelenarozgax

We already have some QoL custom changes such as dual talent spec which is greatly appreciated and loved by the majority of players. I haven't seen yet anybody complaining about it. Also, we have Vanilla PvP titles on their way, also small custom change which brings something more to mindless bg farm.

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Those points are irrelevant. If you want the suggestion to be approved, it needs its own validity. Not be supported with "But these other changes were made!" The staff has their own ideas as to what is an acceptable custom feature to the realm. Taking the approach that you are now will only get the response of "Give them an inch and they will take a mile". Trying to argue for suggestions with this sort of logic will only get them shut down. So, I'd suggest that if you really want a suggestion to see the light of day, then you should make arguments to support the validity of the suggestions themselves, and not argue with a precedent as a reason for validity.