Possible way to fix the current state of PvP

Hello everybody,

As many of you have noticed there's an issue regarding battleground strickly connected to a faction and a gear imbalance. Since the mercenary mode got implemented for blackrock, all alliances from blackrock get to play as horde whenever a BG pops or atleast 90% of the time. For multiple reasons this system is clearly not working out, we encounter numerous problems such as Alliances sabotaging the Horde team by either demoralizing the whole group, refusing to ressurect or boycot the BG objectives like PvP with demos, sink them in the water, not capping flags...etc.

We also have a wave of fresh players that have never played this game or a specific class and they join the battlegrounds without propper gear, gems, enchants and without any clue of what they are supposed to do, resulting in a fatal defeat.

This along with other reasons have turned BG's into a farm fest for icecrown alliance and something unfun, demotivating and infuriating for the rest of the realms, obviously icecrown and lordaeron horde and also blackrock alliance.

It has become rather usual that players make posts or comments on the forums showing a clear discontent with the current situation. A lot of damage has been inflicted, however it's not late.

Here are a few suggestions that I would like to share:

Suggestion #1 -Add relentless gear for vote points and relentless gear vendors replacing the furious ones on both Lordaeron and Icecrown.

Suggestion #1 Why?: Blackrock, the realm with the most numerous players in the pvp scene start with relentless, while ICC/Lord horde starts with nothing and has to farm furious through either achievement points or honor points, the latter has become a rather tedious task since the win ratio is awful and it has become practically impossible to gear up as horde, taking 4 or 5 times longer than a regular alliance. Let's say that you need to play atleast 300 Bg's to obtain the majority of gear while an alliance is full furious after 100 Bg's or less. This would put Icecrown and Lordaeron Horde players on a more competitive level when it comes to both arenas and BG's.

Suggestion #2 -Keep the crossrealm but remove the mercenary mode for all realms.

Suggestion #2 Why?: Before this was implemented alliance were complaining about long queues and horde were complaining about being graveyard farmed (It hasn't changed much for Horde). Though the effect of this implementation was rather expand the farm targets for alliance players than to fix an already present balance problem. Since alliance gets to win the majority of BG's and they happen to be already geared, I think it was a good idea to keep the queues long for them so atleast they would consider switch factions if the queues got too long; In my oppinion this way and maybe some generous free transfers from Alliance to Horde would have balanced the factions in a healthy way.

Suggestion #3-Make BG's factionless.

Suggestion #3 Why?: At this point there's no need to lie, mercenary mode may be present on Meme for Azeroth but it was never a thing in wotlk retail, hence after all the custom content added already I think hiding behind the "Blizzlike" card is not valid anymore. We must also agree that WoW was a game on constant evolution and not everything that was blizzlike from the start remained blizzlike in the end. I'd personally be totally against this because it would **** up other things such as economy, RPG immersion and it would seriously affect the "Blizzlike" pedigree. Though very quote on quote because we know that transmogs and a store with ingame items are examples of a not very blizzlike experience, and although it doesn't affect the gameplay too much it would be hypocrite to say that is 100% blizzlike.


I have been playing on this server for quite a few years now, and I have plenty of confidence that we will eventually go through this difficult moment, we have done it in the past and we will do it this time aswell, I'm sure of it.

I would like to get a feedback from the playerbase to edit/extend or elaborate more on this post so it remains visible and an objective reference to what we would like to suggest instead of turning this into another rant thread that degenerates into stuff like human racial or too many donors from icecrown etc...


TL;DR: Read the suggestions directly, there's no other TL;DR.

These are the first suggestions that someone actually put some thought into instead of venting about being stomped once or twice.
#1 - yes, why not. I doubt anyone's ever bought relentless item with coins, anyone will spend another 2 or so coins for the wf one. Maybe put a higher price in the shop, like 30ish per item so it's not completely instant like BR, but reasonably fast. About changing the vendors that's a maybe, it seems like a nice catch-up thing.
#2 - Whole mercenary mode is kinda odd, only blackrock gets it and they're almost always put on the horde side to fill the BG requests from Icecrown alliance side. Honestly, it's the reason why I'm also jumping ship and leaving horde with multiple characters after so many years on the horde side.
#3 - I don't like, but if there's a thing that I'm missing and it would make things more "balanced" then I'd be fine being teamed up with any race, I'm not, like, racist or anything.

#2 is the big deal here, #3 is to compliment #2, actually might have some future.

You want some good pvp bg and arena ? We just need to limit the stuff at 264 max. Then you will have more horde player due to bad trinkets, more interesting bgs and arena and an easier way to farm stuff for ice and lord.

Pretty much what Deuxe said would balance out the situation. Much more than any custom technical solution.

However, it seems balance is not even a point here, so sure, mercenary mode for all (factionless).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xzqy

Pretty much what Deuxe said would balance out the situation. Much more than any custom technical solution.

However, it seems balance is not even a point here, so sure, mercenary mode for all (factionless).

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So one post saying "277 is op, give em 264" is a better suggestion than a whole wall of text someone thought through?
Giving everyone 264 is just a dick move. Some people did the whole ICC HC just to get 284 weapon, farmed months for the SM quest and you'd tell them "well lol, you shouldn't have bothered"? That's an ok idea from someone who has 264 gear I suppose.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deuxe

You want some good pvp bg and arena ? We just need to limit the stuff at 264 max. Then you will have more horde player due to bad trinkets, more interesting bgs and arena and an easier way to farm stuff for ice and lord.

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I agree that the 264 meta was the best one, an ilvl that allowed all classes and specs have some viability while 284 is a stagnant meta that consists in warr/hpal basically. However this is something that can't be implemented in here, basically because there are another 2 realms that are PvE oriented and you can't force the hardcore ICC raider to not be able to join full heroic pve in a battleground. First of all because battlegrounds are not supposed to be competitive in wotlk and secondly because if they got their gear either legit or as a reward through donations they have all the right in the world to test them or enjoy them on battlegrounds.

However when it comes to arenas anyone that has played enoug arenas regardless if you main warrior or frost mage you know that the 264 meta was the absolute best. Maybe limit it for 3vs3 permanently or make it something seasonal? Let's be fair, this game is almost 10 years old and we've been stuck in the endgame content for a long time, maybe having a season per year with a 264 meta and a prize pool from time to time (within the 264 meta) would be a refreshing and good idea.

What do you guys think?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by grobain161

So one post saying "277 is op, give em 264" is a better suggestion than a whole wall of text someone thought through?
Giving everyone 264 is just a dick move. Some people did the whole ICC HC just to get 284 weapon, farmed months for the SM quest and you'd tell them "well lol, you shouldn't have bothered"? That's an ok idea from someone who has 264 gear I suppose.

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Seems To be a full 284 icecrown player who can't get 1k5 in arena.... please let people who realy play arena talk thx.

If you farme your smlol you can use it in pve and thats all or even in bg but actualy arena is very bad and we have 0 fun playing in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deuxe

Seems To be a full 284 icecrown player who can't get 1k5 in arena.... please let people who realy play arena talk thx.

If you farme your smlol you can use it in pve and thats all or even in bg but actualy arena is very bad and we have 0 fun playing in.

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Well first of all, I don't think that making assumptions is something that contributes to the discussion, so let's try to put aside these things; We both know that arenas are not what they used to be and even myself having achieved a decent rating in past seasons I'm havin trouble getting above the warr/hpal wall over 2k.

Back to the topic, I agree that it should also be removed or even limited in arena, but you should still be able to use it in BG. I mean, really BG's are not intended to be competitive in this patch, that's why in example you can use army of the dead and lay on hands plus potions, flasks, food, scrolls etc...

Limiting to only BG's wont happen either, but as I said maybe if out of the 4 yearly seasons we had 1 season where it was limited to 264... Maybe, that would be a good idea. 3 seasons to faceroll with 284 and 1 competitive season limited to 264, what could go wrong? That's what I was trying to ask you guys, let's keep this constructive in an attempt to atleast be together in something that could benefit us all along with the server, competitive arenas = everyone happy.

another good thing might be allowing character transfer from alliance to horde on icecrown for free until the pvp is balanced, at this point horde can't do anything in bgs, it's just unplayable, soon people will get tired of getting farmed and icecrown will have the same fate as Neltharion

As a newer player who hasn't played WoW since 2014, this whole PVP rape was a tough pill to swallow however... One thing I'd love to know is truly how the algorithm works in terms of how players are matched up. Is it by gear score, item level, honor point experience or something different? In terms of the balance... listen, most of the battlegrounds are team games, I've noticed that there's a large majority of times that Horde simply put don't work together, below are what I've noticed.

In terms of gear, I've purchased 2 coin pieces, my bis weapons and that's it - I'm going to grind / farm for the rest. With that being said, I've done a total of 46 battlegrounds, 0 arenas and about 2 - 4 solo world pvp kills. I have two PVP gear items purchased from the PVP Vendor and I have about 4 pieces of crafted pvp gear. Do I wish that gear was obtained faster? Sure do, however it's not out of the realm of obtainable within reason... I think what hinders the pvp on the server, for me at least - would be the full coin gear folks, they grind me a bit but it is what it is - I signed up for that on this server.

Reasons Horde Lose :

1. Lack of Teamwork - Commonly, I find that horde players don't work well together in terms of capping and defending, the times that we do - we commonly prevail.

2. Overall Toxicity - My ignore list is longer then my friends list at this point as it's incredibly irritating when you join a battleground, get inspected by someone and told you're a noob, you're useless, just go stand in the graveyard and all these other great moral boosters. Not to mention these are commonly then the people who complain the most because the team is losing as we're not working together.

So how can we fix this issue? To be honest, I'm not sure however - if I recall correctly at least on Icecrown there's a server wide message that indicates the new update of Mercenary Mode and that it is opt-in only. Not sure yet if that's a pro or a con?

Just voicing my probably unwanted 0.02 cents :)