Hello everybody,
This is going to be pretty big and long post about the state of pvp on Warmane, where I'm going to discuss a few issues that I've seen and some possible solutions to said issues and how it can benefit everyone playing on this server. And I want to say this fairly early in this post - this is aimed at creating a better experience for everyone playing, and to help sustainability and retention of the pvp community on the best WotLK server that has ever existed. This game has a special place in my heart and that's why I'm taking my time and effort to create this post, in hopes of creating some positive change.
First, a little about me - I've been playing WoW since 2007. Retail TBC is where I started my journey, played retail up until Cataclysm and then found Warmane (Then named Molten-WoW) and I have been playing on the WotLK servers pretty much ever since then, with a few breaks here and there. Throughout this time most of my time has been spent playing battlegrounds, which will be the focus of this post, since I see it as the "backbone" of the pvp in this game, arena is aspirational and world pvp is a fun community clash, but battlegrounds really is where most of the people that see themselves as pvp players spend most of their time. And like I said, this is where I spent most of my time, and by now (wait it's 2025 already?) I have a few thousand, if not ten thousands of battlegrounds under my belt. I'm not going to pretend to be an authority because of this, but rather that I've picked up a few things throughout the years, and hopefully I can give a good overview of the issues we face, along with some grounded solutions.
Lets begin - I've identified 3 issues that I see plaguing the battleground pvp community right now and that's causing people to enjoy the game less and has a net negative effect on the whole community.
Here they will be listed, in order of importance:
1. Hk farming (graveyard farming)
2. Consumables (FAP, LAP, Class buff consumables)
3. Deserter/group queueing
Lets start with 1. Hk farming
Which in my opinion is the biggest offender. First, lets define what I mean by Hk farming, so everyone is on the same page. Hk farming is something that has gotten more and more popular on recent years, and is the reason why playing "real" Alterac Valley or Isle of Conquest on Warmane is near impossible. What this tactic aims to do, is to push a group of players to one of their graveyards to trap them in a spawn camping loop, while purposely not capping the flag of the graveyard, to not end the spawn camp, and as such, instantly killing anyone that respawns and not giving them any chance to escape anywhere.
While this is a "real" tactic and will end up winning you the battleground because the enemy team runs out of reinforcements, the cost of these kind of battlegrounds is hard to define in terms of time wasted, frustrations accumulated and fun that has been missed out on. First of all, the real issue with this is that the people who get spawn camped have no possibility whatsoever to do anything about their situation, effectively having the options of either leaving the battleground or getting humiliated on the graveyard over and over. Anyone that has played Alterac Valley or Isle of Conquest on Warmane recently knows that the amount of people that leave on a team that has lost the fight and is heading for a graveyard farm is immense, and even more people will join and see what is going on and leave as well. This really causes a lot of frustration and anger to a lot of players. What also tends to happen, which is a secondary kind of damage, is that people who are looking to play a battleground with big 40v40 man fights, get relegated to standing afk at the graveyard as well, since there's no people around to fight, everyone is dead getting camped, or hiding somewhere as to not end up with the same fate. Not only does it grief the players getting camped, but it also ruins the fun for everyone on the "winning" team, a.k.a the Hk farming team. And god forbid, someone caps the graveyard while people are "farming", you'll get a ton of abuse thrown your way in whispers, battleground chat and everywhere in between.
While I understand that some players find it very entertaining to farm people that have no chance of fighting back, I think that most people, if they think a little about it, realize that this is wrong. While I'm not here to be a moral police, I think that anyone who finds themselves enjoying graveyard farming could do well thinking about how much fun they would have being on the receiving end. "But then just leave the bg" Yes, you can leave the battleground and escape it. But why do we have to resort to leaving the battleground when we clearly queued up to play battlegrounds and have some fun doing so. If the only option for the losing team every time is to leave the battleground, this is not a very healthy way of playing, for anyone. Every time you're on a winning team you grief the losing team to the max by exploiting it. Every time you're on the losing team you just leave the battleground. That's basically where we are today, and if you ask me, that's quite sad. We should be able to create a better experience than that. For all of us, since no one is on the winning team every time. You might think it would benefit someone else at the cost of your fun if you're one of the people that enjoy this, but it's simply a case of making it more fun for everyone. We're here to play the legendary game that is WotLK, not to grief each other for arbitrary numbers on a screen.
And please understand that we're all part of a community here on Warmane, the pvp community on Warmane isn't huge, even if it's healthy enough to sustain itself for many, many years now and I foresee it will for many more years, but the reason I'm doing this post is just that, to do what I can to ensure our community survives and thrives. Because in my opinion, this is something that causes damage to the community, it fills people with hopelessness and frustration with the game. Just put yourself in the shoes of someone new (or returning) that is excited to experience the pvp in this game, just for them to end up on either the receiving end of a humiliating graveyard farm for an hour or standing afk at a graveyard on the opposite side doing nothing. We need to take care of each other, because the day where enough people have quit that we cant play battlegrounds anymore, or the queue never pops, the 1,467,823 hks that you've racked up farming graveyards will disappear with the server. It might seem like Warmane will always be here whatever happens, and the opposite has never been proven, but I think we all can agree that we should do what we can do to create a pvp community with as many people as possible, for the sake of fun, for all of us. It's in everyone's interest.
I could drag on about how unfair and malicious hk farming is, or how we need to care for the community, but I'm going to stop here to not make this post too long and arduous (it will be anyway) and lets instead discuss some solutions.
My suggestion to this issue will be quite simple and shouldn't be that hard to implement. What I suggest is to have a damage immune zone (Wintergrasp-esque) on a radius around every graveyard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in later expansions, graveyards have this, and as earlier mentioned, Wintergrasp has it as well. The older battlegrounds just didn't have it yet in WotLK, which is a shame, but it didn't seem needed back in the day. For the record, I think Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest should be the only battlegrounds with these changes, but going forward, if needed, and if successful, I think all battlegrounds could have this feature(Which graveyards to have the immune zone it would have to be handpicked, for example the beach graveyard in SotA would do great to have it, the graveyard further up where you drive past with demolishers would be a bad idea). Now, is this feature perfect in every way and will fix all issues and wont give birth to any new problems? No. Not at all, but it's a step in the right direction definitely. There's a reason that all new (and most old) games have spawn protection. It's not fun for anyone to get spawn camped and griefed. With this feature, people will at least get a chance to res together, buff each other, and try to do something about their situation. There will still be ways to kill people on graveyards (Let them res, cap the graveyard and kill them when their immunity is gone) but at least that will be a one time thing, after that the graveyard is capped and the situation changes. Instead of the same people being killed instantly 17 times in a row as soon as they res without any chance of retaliating.
There are more possible changes to do about this, but I feel like most of them are very invasive to the game and the way people play the game, but with this feature it's not changing the way people play the game in a big way, more than simply trying to prevent something that causes players a lot of frustration. I'm all for doing as small changes as possible with the most positive results.
Lets move on to our next issue 2. Consumables.
Now, I'm pretty sure everyone already knows what I'm going to say here, because everyone who has played battlegrounds on Warmane have experienced this. Free action potion is the biggest offender here. This potion is so absurdly strong and what it really does is just water down the pvp completely when it's used. Since more than half of the CC abilities in the game stop working when you pop one of these, it just becomes a game of popping a fap and running at your target doing damage. This ruins any sort of class identity, where you have a rogue who can no longer stun a target, or a mage who cannot be slowed, or a warrior who cannot be rooted. This just cheapens the pvp interaction between classes completely. And it also gives players completely unreasonable power from just buying something with gold. There is no doubt in my mind that if we made this potion unusable in battlegrounds, it's a net win for everyone. Then we would have CC actually be used and be effective in pvp again. Like the game was meant to be played, all classes have their own unique kits with some classes having more cc and others more damage, and it's no secret classes with more CC abilities and less damage are generally underperforming in battlegrounds. I know there was a change made recently where Warmane increased the prices of Free action potion on Blackrock specifically, which was a welcome change. But I'm advocating for removing the possibility of using it in battlegrounds at all. Just imagine how absurd it would be if you brought Free action potions to ICC to be immune to PP's tear gas, or Lady's mind control. Would water down mechanics completely, which is exactly what it does in battlegrounds as well.
Living action potion is similar, albeit not as oppressively strong. Still, it's a completely unneeded "get out of jail card" kind of potion, that also waters down pvp mechanics and breaks a few classes. We should remove the ability to use this is battlegrounds as well, pvp trinkets have one use every 2 minutes, and thats how it was designed. Not having a free pvp trinket in the form of a potion.
The third consumable I'm going to talk about is the pseudo-class buff items (Runescroll of Fortitude, Drums of Forgotten Kings and Drums of the Wild) while these consumables aren't in the same category as the other two (in power nor level of ruining play) they still have a net negative impact on the pvp. It waters down the buffing/dispelling game, where one click of these can easily bring 20 buffs on a bunch of people, essentially making people undispellable as long as a few people are spamming these. It also cheapens the real class buffs, as specific classes have specific buffs for a reason and it's part of their kits. If everyone can cast blessing of kings, what does it matter that you have a paladin to buff? And yes I know it's 2% worse, but it also just buffs everyone at the same time, compared to every class at a time, so it's usefulness is probably still even better. There's just no real reason as to why this should be usable in battlegrounds, if you want to buff people, you should do it the way the game intended it to be done, being the right class and having access to said buff, using mana and buffing one at a time.
To sum it up: Free action potion, living action potion and class buffing items - all having a negative impact on pvp as a whole and everyone would benefit if they stopped being usable in battlegrounds.
Now we move on to the third and last point 3. Deserter and group queueing
There's a few prominent pvp guilds on warmane (primarily on icecrown) that queue battlegrounds as small, medium and sometimes big groups. While this is not a problem per say, in fact it's a integral part of a pvp guild. The issue is this - some, if not most of these guilds use shady tactics to ever avoid having to face different guilds and instead face randomly generated groups from the queue. Queue dodging is the main culprit, where someone looks at the other groups queueing and seeing if they enter the battleground, so they can skip it. And after they requeue when they've dodged the real competition and face 15 random people with their 5-15 man groups. While I'm sure most of you have faced a big premade with a random group and beat them still at some point, I'm pretty sure you'll agree that the odds of a randomly generated group being able to beat a premade group are very low. Which leads to more of the hopelessness and frustration of people just queueing up to have a good time with some random battlegrounds, having to face a fully geared 10 man group. And to tie into point 1. Hk farming, this is mostly, if not always what the imbalanced group pairings end up with, premade groups farming random people trying to gear up on graveyards for the duration of the bg without any sort care for objectives or ending the battleground. And to remind everyone - this is bad for everyone. Bad for the people getting farmed that have no chance, boring for the people who queue in big groups, and in the end people have less fun playing, and so people have a bigger chance ending up quitting, leading to a smaller community, which means longer queues, less variation and less fun.
The main reason of queueing with a big group for a battleground should be to face similarly strong enemy groups where both groups can be competitive, not to completely **** on random people who are trying to gear up/have fun with some pvp in a battleground.
Okay so we have outlined the issue - lets talk about some solutions. First of all, the most reasonable and least intrusive change that can be made: Similar to how missing a RDF queue (and solo queue) works, lets make it so that when you miss a battleground queue, you get a 15 min deserter. This is primarily to dissuade big groups of skipping queues against other big groups in favor of griefing random groups. But it also gives more legitimacy to battleground queues. Small note, since it's possible to queue 2 different battlegrounds and that way it would be possible to skip anyway. Just make it so that when one of the queues pop, it removes the other one. Other than that, I think a good change would be that when you queue a bigger group than 5, the queue should definitely put you into some special queue, where the queue looks for other groups that are 5+ for at least 10 minutes before it gives you a pop against randoms, and obviously, if it finds another 5+ man group it pops immediately. I'm not sure if a similar system exists already, it does seem like it sometimes, but it needs refinement and needs to be tougher on the big groups, with a longer time penalty for queueing as big groups (5+).
Lets do a summary of the issues and possible solutions:
1. Hk farming
Issue: Graveyard farming griefers have a negative impact on battlegrounds
Solution: Give graveyards damage immune zones e.g. Wintergrasp to avoid excessive griefing
2. Consumables
Issue: Free Action/Living Action Potion give a ridiculous amount of power and make most mechanics in pvp redundant when they're used, and class buffs can be constantly spammed to rebuff whole parties
Solution: Make Free Action Potion, Living Action Potion, Runescroll of Fortitude, Drums of Forgotten Kings and Drums of the Wild items unusable in battlegrounds.
3. Deserter and group queueing
Issue: People queue with big premade groups, use queues to dodge other groups and then proceed to farm random groups instead of going against real competition
Solution: Make leaving or missing a battleground queue give you the full 15 min deserter, and create time penalties in the queue system to people who queue with 5+ people, where the queue will wait up until 10-15 minutes before it will pop against random people, and during that time it will search for and instantly match you against similarly big groups.
Like mentioned before, these solutions are made to be the least possible intrusive to normal gameplay while having a positive effect on everyone. I get that changing game mechanics in a old beloved game like WotLK can be controversial, and I'm FULLY with you on that, because I see this game as one of the best games ever made, and by far the game that I've sunk most time into in my life, so I get that people would be against changing anything. I don't wanna change anything about this game. But these issues and solutions that I've listed here, and mostly just small tweaks to make an old masterpiece of a game a little more suitable in the modern scene. Removing abused mechanics that are used to grief people won't make anyone lose out on anything positive.
Closing words -
If you've read this far - thank you for your time. I hope this post came across as it was meant to come across - as an attempt to give well thought out, lightly intrusive, universally beneficial suggestions to make our home (Warmane) a better place for everyone. And by better I mean less frustrating and more fun. I'm looking forward to seeing some reactions and responses to this post, from players on Warmane but also if we can get some official responses that would be great. If you're going to respond, please make sure you've read everything and take some time before you respond. Suggestions and critique are both welcome!
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Member
The State of PvP on Warmane (Battlegrounds)
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Member
This post exists because you're a victim. This is why the infinite number of PvP complaints since the beginning of WoW exist.
The actual issue is that other players are utilizing the tools designed as part of the game better than you are. Graveyard camping has always been a player created issue with a player solution. You are able to use consumables strategically just as well as the next player. AND fyi these consumables are used in PvE to cheese tactics. This game encourages the forming of friendships and groups to win. Premades are a wonderful thing that you are also able to create yourself.
The game is fair. The ability to win is given to everyone. And that's it.
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Member
The core issue is that there is no incentive for BiS geared players to win BGs.
The solution is to make the high gear BG bracket rated and give it seasonal vanity rewards that are otherwise not purchaseable in game. For expl a recolored Tmog set.
That would shift the PvP meta away from HK farming to competitve rated BGs.
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Member
You can see a glass clear difference on how BGs are played in the Wotlk mid-tier BG bracket and on TBC compared to how they are played in the end-gear bracket in Wotlk. When ppl have an incentive to win BGs because they need honor to gear up then you can experience quality BGs. When ppl are BiS geared and have no incentive to win they start HK farming, GY camping and all the other bad attitudes that come with it.
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Member
I'm gonna give an example on another server (it does not exist, beed shot down for years) and I can't name it cause I don't know politics here, they had bonus xp for rbg win, so you could level all the way to 80 just by spamming BG's, so twink population boomed, they were in every bracket and it was terrible, so after a lot of complains, they did a vote, vote resulted in Twinks getting separated from regular leveling bracket and it killed twink scene, who would say putting twinks against only other twinks could kill twink community lol, same would happen to premade, put them to separate bracket and let's see how many premade and HK farming groups would be active when going against other premade 24/7, let randoms and casuals enjoy, I like burning towers and defending them in AV, and not getting farmed for 1h on gy while getting spammed with afk debuff every time I try to run to other gy and get kicked or running behind mbox just to farm some gy, it sucks, and after farming gy for 30 min mbox and his crew just swich to Ioc and we lose in 5 min cause we went from 40 men to 20 in a sec, lol what a joke.
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Member
You and me have the same chance of being a victim of getting graveyard farmed when joining a battleground, it's not a something that's picked from the start, either you're on the gy farming team or you're on the opposite team, which happens about 50% of the time. And I outlined the issues of being on both sides of the coin. So no one is a bigger victim than anyone else really, not sure what you're talking about.
I'm well aware that everyone can use consumables, which is exactly what the post about, that it's bad game design to be forced into spamming low level potions to be competitive and that it waters pvp down completely.
And nothing about my post said that premades shouldn't exist, just that they should be faced against each other instead of noob stomping random people.
Seems like you didn't read the post completely or your reading comprehension isn't that good. Thanks for your input anyway, buddy.
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Member
This isn't a bad idea on paper, but it seems harder to implement fully. First of all it's a lot of work for Warmane to create the armor sets, it's also very intrusive and can give the feeling that the server is some kind of spin off fun server when you start making custom gear sets. It also begs the question how often you would have to create new sets, probably once a year or something because everyone already have them, which is unsustainable in the long run.
More incentives for BiS geared players in battlegrounds isn't a bad idea, I just don't see a way of making it last. And it's no guarantee that it would help the issues stated.
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Member
You should be happy anyone read the post at all. That's an unhealthy amount of time invested on a topic that's been posted hundreds of times and shot down every single time. You should've known that if you actually did have history with this game.
Graveyard camping is a part of the game and a method to win. It is allowed. And it's allowed by Blizzard the game creator as well since always. It's a road to victory or defeat like anything else in a battleground.
There is no argument here. It won't change. So what you guys need to do is make some friends, build some premades, join a PvP guild and be the player that's camping and destroying everyone. That's the game.
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Member
I've got plenty of history with the game, if it's been brought up before as many times as you've said, then that's probably a merit to the issue.
Once again, no one said anything wasn't allowed, we're all aware that it's allowed. We're saying it's bad for the game, for the players and everyone involved. Why it's bad for the game was discussed. I haven't seen you put forward any sort of argument why it would be good for the game, other than making up stories about how I'm a victim, got no history with wow or no friends to play with. None of which are true.
You disagree clearly and you think that the game should be a coin flip between gy camping and leaving the battleground. Thanks again for the enlightening input, buddy.
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Member
Agreeing with this one, along with the original thread. Separate them from the rest of us, so we can actually go back to enjoying the game.
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Member
Disincentivize HK farming by capping it at 100k. It wouldn't impact the gameplay at all, and would only be a cosmetic change.
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Member
In short: Q.Q
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Moderator
If only the effort put into making this post were instead channeled into organizing a good group...
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Member
What about the ones that don't have the time and energy to actually bother and gather a group, join a guild and actually do any of this when you literally have the option to queue solo....? And maybe we don't want to wait 10+ min for a queue to pop when in a group.. I wanna log in after a long day queue one or two bgs and be done for the night, why do I have to "suffer" because a bunch of no lifers chose to abuse the system and ruin the fun for everyone?
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Member
It doesn't take that much effort. We make a group sometimes to **** on some farmers. But the point wasn't about if we can do it or not, the point was that it's boring and destructive to gy farm people. Maybe the point flew over your head. Happens.
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