We need to talk about Battlegrounds on the WOTLK realms.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

I found one blue post on world boss griefing and that seemed relevant to Warmane. Didn't find a single piece of evidence that someone was banned from it, but Warmane seemed willing to ban for that. Simply because the blue post was made at the time of that expansion. So it seems timing of the blue post is the question, not whether bans happened. As far as I know anyway Blizzard didn't run around handing out bans to their paying customers all that often anyway.

The question that needs to be answered though is if the game was intended to have 40 man premades dominating battlegrounds and unbalancing these games. We know that Blizzard at one point had raid queue for battlegrounds and removed that. They created a 5 man limit. Logically any method to circumvent that limit would be considered exploiting a game mechanic.

So that being said I don't need a blue post because I can just cite the WoTLK terms of service. "Using or exploiting errors in design, to obtain a competitive advantage over other players". As I've said the issue wasn't prevalent back then, but it is now here apparently on Warmane that seeks to emulate the original game.

Now we look at this blue post from 2007: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ned-blue-posts

It says, "In our continued efforts to support fair gameplay in World of Warcraft and to provide a positive experience for players, we are currently taking steps to ensure fair and enjoyable competition in the Battlegrounds." While this is in regard to AFK players, Blizzard was clearly on a mission to create fair competition in battlegrounds. Would a 40 man coordinated team vs a bunch of randoms be considered fair?

So that's all in that era right? That's the information you have to base your decision off of according to you. But let's look at this "hollow" post and era of when they enforced it in 2012.

Here another blue post: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-losing-BGs-OQ

"Any addon that enables a full, organized Battleground group to queue against a randomly assembled group is creating a scenario where that coordinated group has a huge advantage. That is not in the spirit of the experience we want to provide in the normal Battleground queue. Playing with friends is fun and important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the spirit of the game nor the fun of others.

The normal Battleground queue is for players to jump in and play against other players in a similar situation. We realize that it's not a perfect system, and we're still looking at ways to improve normal Battleground queues further. Regardless, it's not meant for organized groups to "pug stomp" and get quick Honor. We have built in outlets for players that want to organize--if a competitive, social experience was really the goal, then there are clear ways to achieve that.

The ultimate effect that this kind of queuing has had is to drive players away from PvP. Perhaps it's been a long time since you've been in a random group, but a lot of players will see that they're up against a premade and simply quit. At best, they suffer through it. To an extent premade groups count on this. Heck, one of the popular addons announces opposing players that appear to have rage quit.

Addons aren’t really a viable solution for botting issues, but we do take those issues seriously and we'll continue our work on improvements to the Battleground system, including better ways to deal with botting and other exploitative gameplay."

And then we see here: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...d-Exploitation

The above posts #3 and #5 outlining that players did in fact get banned for bypassing the 5 person premade restriction.

I think they outlined quite clearly the environment they were trying to create. I think the game design was purposeful at that time. I don't see any proper argument that would support a 40 man coordinated team stomping a team of randoms as being fair or be supported by the version of Blizzard that existed back then. If there is a counter argument suggesting otherwise I'd like to see that.

[Obnoxious]

Are you essentially saying that in decades of running the game they were so, so focused on not letting premades groups queue together and end in the same match... but never managed to and it still happens? Either they are absurdly incompetent... or you're too biased to see they don't care a fraction of a percent of the amount you really want to believe they did/do. Just like you seriously believe that last link and two posts saying that could be the reason for a ban proves anything. I'm sure I can find a post somewhere saying retail is ran by lizards from the Moon or something of the same level if I cared.

What you seem to be missing is that you "don't see any proper argument," but the reality is arguments aren't needed. The fact is they never created any mechanism to keep people from doing it, nor truly took any actions to curb it besides write words. Actions, or lack thereof, speak louder than words, as they saying goes.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

Are you essentially saying that in decades of running the game they were so, so focused on not letting premades groups queue together and end in the same match... but never managed to and it still happens? Either they are absurdly incompetent... or you're too biased to see they don't care a fraction of a percent of the amount you really want to believe they did/do. Just like you seriously believe that last link and two posts saying that could be the reason for a ban proves anything. I'm sure I can find a post somewhere saying retail is ran by lizards from the Moon or something of the same level if I cared.

What you seem to be missing is that you "don't see any proper argument," but the reality is arguments aren't needed. The fact is they never created any mechanism to keep people from doing it, nor truly took any actions to curb it besides write words. Actions, or lack thereof, speak louder than words, as they saying goes.

It wasn't a problem in 2008. I'm not sure you can find a post from that time period complaining about premades. The staff at that time were very responsive and involved in the issues. Can't say the same for the Blizzard of today. The exploitation of large scale battleground queue and AV enabler eventually became popular and they addressed it. That's just what happened.

Nowadays is a different story. I type in Warmane premades and I get pages of complaints. You can do the same for Blizzard and it's everywhere. Players are just at a place of pushing the game to every possible limit and at the same time neither Warmane or Blizzard are very responsive to these issues. I suppose you can only dismiss these topics for so long though until it really does destroy the game for enough players. But we will see.

[Brutone]

How about forced mercenary mode when you queue for a BG while beeing in a raid?
That would screw any premade with more than 5 players up because they'd end up on both sides of the BG.

[omrazzz]

These are the issues. Enforcement and prevention. Queue syncing by itself can be done outside the game for one thing and it isn't something I can just pull up and track and narrow down the intention. Monitoring battlegrounds on a wide scale is also an impossible task. Enforcing something like that for Blizzard has challenges.

Prevention is what we all talk about including the idea from the OP. Things that lead to other issues. In theory though for Warmane it could be just as simple as forcing mercenary mode on players doing specific queue on AV and IOC. That's what these players do right? Regular players would select random battlegrounds and go into those battlegrounds with their normal faction, but players doing specific queue could be on either team. That would destroy that dynamic and actually help queue times. If your rebuttal was for them to queue random battlegrounds and wait for queue to pop at once that might suggest they would enter a 40 man which is more difficult, you could easily add a 2 minute debuff for canceling queue pop. May not be necessary though.

Forced mercenary mode for larger groups is an awesome idea. Also maybe if there are more than 2 or 3 5-men premades of the same faction qued up for a specific battleground - same thing. I’m not a dev, but I can’t imagine this being too diffucult. You decline a que pop for a BG - 3 minute deserter. Less than ideal solutions, but ones that will help for sure. I am a PVP player, ideally I’d spend all my time playing battlegrounds if I could. I don’t mind losing, but sure as hell I’m not keen on spending my time running around as ghost not spawning on purpose until they vote-kick me with the only alternative being afk-spawn-die-repeat until it ends. Warmane might be free to play, but I am a customer of Warmane who has donated a lot of money and spent a lot of time here. There are many just like me who are having diffuculty enjoying the game and again, we’re probably the layer of this community contributing the most through donations - players with limited time to play. I have to say, the responses we’re getting, and the ones we’re not getting - it’s kind of dissapointing.

[ArchShykidz]

how about applying "tenacity" buff like in WG
when killed consecutively > 2x, the buff start stacking (assumption : being camped)
last till target can kill 1 enemy (must deal most damage or last hit) thus removing buff

[Shred]

how about applying "tenacity" buff like in WG
when killed consecutively > 2x, the buff start stacking (assumption : being camped)
last till target can kill 1 enemy (must deal most damage or last hit) thus removing buff

Making players stronger because they are outnumbered is fair, making them stronger because they suck is not.

[TutellaF]

Why even require blue post or official statement from Blizz from back in the day when we can look how Warmane handled similar situation years back?

There used to be raid of characters that possesed "unfair" advantage over regular folks.

The advantage allowed these characters to do similar things these premades are doing. Like locking down zones to the point ppl rage quit / unstuck out, farm HKs almost without chance to be killed, etc.

This advantage was never banned by Blizz back in the Wotlk days, yet due to change in circumstances Warmane decided that the advantage is too OP and banned / limited it here.


This could be taken as precedece to look past what is or isn't Blizzlike and examine the impact these premades make on the regular playerbase.

[Shred]

What you are talking about was a bad move and a bad precedent, but it is unrelated to the topic at hand, because in that case the victims were low players who were outnumbered and were there only to do pve, whilst in this case we are talking about players of a similar gear level that are not outnumbered and that signed up to do pvp.

[ArchShykidz]

Making players stronger because they are outnumbered is fair, making them stronger because they suck is not.

yeah they sucks
and also crying out loud like toddlers having angry-poo² moment
that's why we tricks them giving away "candy"

[TutellaF]

I had mass multiboxing in mind when I wrote that.
And I do think it is related as it was attempt to balance stuff regardless of the original Wotlk.

Something that wasn't an issue back in original Wotlk because of how rare it was due to HW and subscription requirements, so there were no actions required by Blizz.
Even if such boxer reached 80 there was just not enough time to get geared and throw the pvp balance off for whole evenings.

But 3-4 years ago with the Ryzens/Threadrippers being relatively affordable + shop + char trade + STATIC Wotlk patch mbxing became serious issue, thus Warmane adopted the 5 char limit, even tho Blizz didn't.

My point is, even tho Blizz didn't make a move against AV enabler and raid premades at the time, it doesn't mean circumstances didn't change for that to be reconsidered here.
For sure, due to short patch life Blizz didn't anticipate that the premades will be consisted exclusively of (near) BiS players.


So again, please look past what is or isn't Blizzlike and examine the impact these premades make on the regular playerbase.

[Obnoxious]

Why even require blue post or official statement from Blizz from back in the day

Simply because he brought up the "nOt BlIzZlIkE" thing.
That was the only reason, since it's a fact they never did anything concrete against it.
This had no bearing whatsoever on things being changed, it was simply discussing that specific pseudo-point.

[ogWG]

For the sake of input from someone whom recently suffered 'retail' (everything in this country is fed to us - we get the Canadian version of 'blizzard'.. It's like paying for a private realm - I sh!* you not) - It's all bots, cheaters and has the exact same issues you're presenting here.

It's an issue with the game's queue system or player ability. Not much you can do there.

A well-maintained game to play is what I'm looking for. One that isn't designed to break down or directly degrade you. Get rid of the whole 'blizz-like' thing. They're so starved for input they're now scraping their own private servers (no names to mention). They used those for input so their AI and lazy team of robo dependant devs can write more story lmao they're all out of ideas.

I had a discussion about this whole thing way back in the day, vanilla era (07/08?). Someone even chimed in to name all of the drama and servers showing up, today, 2025.

Existential crisis' aside there's that age old necessity to learn how to play the game that heavily weighs on the outcome of PvP content - hopefully there's no sneaky gear/data bonuses for specific players on here. That and outright cheating brutalizes the paid version of the game. 'Blizzard' does that on 'retail'.

I wonder if WM will end up in the news highlights as being sued by a company that doesn't exist when you try to sue or investigate them? The internet is what it is, lol.

[ogWG]

** A great way to beat the roll-over matches, especially regarding conquest and wintergrasp is coordinated rivalry. Queue system bugging you? - Build up some enthusiasts guilds or a discord channel and queue up at event times. Uses the problem in your favor, does great things for World PvP too!

[zyppa]

I type in Warmane premades and I get pages of complaints.

Welcome to the realization that unaddressed imbalances do degrade the game.
Maybe now you understand why some of us don't appreciate the "it's not a problem until it affects me" mentality.
Be careful now though, don't go speculating with all those "pages of complaints."
As Obnoxious clarified not long ago, it's just a "bunch of people"/about 5% of the players at most.
He personally counts each complaint using his left hand while typing dismissals with the right.

Jokes aside, you're pissing against the wind here.
The same way it's pointless to play into premades, it's pointless to argue this on the forums.
The "Leave Battleground" button exists in-game for a reason, as a friendly advice consider using its forum equivalent and saving your energy.
This fight was lost by default before it even started. :)

Queue syncing has been occurring for years now in retail and Blizzard has done nothing about it.

Clever how you left out the "minor" details like player population being 100x larger, ranked battlegrounds existing, and the fact there are many different type of queues and PvP content to do.
The chance of facing premades, unwilling to play against other premades is considerably lower than in Warmane and people still complain about it.
But yes, keep talking your nonsense and we keep hallucinating.