Remove Cross-realm and Mercenary Mode

**Drunkuser** · November 1, 2020

1) Most pvp players and guilds switch to alliance thanks to mercenary mode, imbalancing wpvp and making being horde meaningless. Which raise the question, why was it implemented in first place?

2) Mercenary mode is avaiable only for alliance---> horde. This means that EVERY premade, alliance or horde, is always into the horde side. This make bgs for alliance solo players, hell.

3) Most Blackrock players who plays BGs, are testing/trying a class or pvp for their first time, and it's obvious. Most of them are alliance, and will be in the alliance team. This combined with point 2, make bgs double hell.

4) Not everyone likes mercenary mode, not everyone want to play a different race. Someone likes being into a faction, the lore, and a healthly rivalry between the horde and the alliance. So the solution is not "just activate mercenary mode".

5) Mercenary mode brings some bad side effects, like bugged pvp achievements, and some of them are very difficult to revert; not knowing what to expect while fighting in bgs, things like a Tauren shadowmelding, expeting the silence from a belf which he doesnt have because human, and so on.

6) About Cross-realm, I have yet to meet someone who actually likes it. Icecrown players never needed it, and now they have to deal with BR noobs in bgs and BR scripters in arena. The vast majority of Lordaeron players seem to be against it, and for good reasons. Blackrock legit players also were more happy with their own server, 264 meta, transmog system, and so on.

I'm thankful and I respect the hard work that Warmane surely have done for implement these systems. But unfortunately, they bringed more problems than anything. Please listen to the community feedback and be open to reconsider some changes, either enhance or (better) remove cross-realm and mercenary mode.
Because the general consensus is that the pvp scene was way better before.

**Thorbjorn** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

1) Most pvp players and guilds switch to alliance thanks to mercenary mode, imbalancing wpvp and making being horde meaningless. Which raise the question, why was it implemented in first place?

Actually, PvP players switched to Alliance because of free trinket, not because of mercenary mode. It was implemented in the first place because of long BG queues for Alliance.

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

2) Mercenary mode is avaiable only for alliance---> horde. This means that EVERY premade, alliance or horde, is always into the horde side. This make bgs for alliance solo players, hell.

And how did you get to that conclusion? If there's 2 players missing on the Horde side to fill a team, it will fill 2 Alliance->Horde, not a whole team. This is blatant lie. I routinely get **** on by Alliance premades in WSG and i'm on Horde side.

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

3) Most Blackrock players who plays BGs, are testing/trying a class or pvp for their first time, and it's obvious. Most of them are alliance, and will be in the alliance team. This combined with point 2, make bgs double hell.

Most players who want to try PvP will choose the best ace for PvP. What a shocker. Mercenary mode only helps here by transfering some of them to Horde side when needed.

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

4) Not everyone likes mercenary mode, not everyone want to play a different race. Someone likes being into a faction, the lore, and a healthly rivalry between the horde and the alliance. So the solution is not "just activate mercenary mode".

Disable mercenary mode if you are STILL into the rivalry thing. Problem solved.

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

5) Mercenary mode brings some bad side effects, like bugged pvp achievements, and some of them are very difficult to revert; not knowing what to expect while fighting in bgs, things like a Tauren shadowmelding, expeting the silence from a belf which he doesnt have because human, and so on.

I can see why this is confusing and I agree with you. Although I have to say that's it's just a minor thing, since it is just a racial and it's a BG.

Originally Posted by Drunkuser

6) About Cross-realm, I have yet to meet someone who actually likes it. Icecrown players never needed it, and now they have to deal with BR noobs in bgs and BR scripters in arena. The vast majority of Lordaeron players seem to be against it, and for good reasons. Blackrock legit players also were more happy with their own server, 264 meta, transmog system, and so on.

Agreed completely.

IMO Mercenary mode should've stay and crossrealm needs to be removed. The whole point of Mercenary mode was to reduce queue times to which community agreed and then on top of that crossrealm was forced upon us which reduced the times even further but completely unbalanced the PvP scene.

**theborg9** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by Thorbjorn

IMO Mercenary mode should've stay and crossrealm needs to be removed. The whole point of Mercenary mode was to reduce queue times to which community agreed and then on top of that crossrealm was forced upon us which reduced the times even further but completely unbalanced the PvP scene.

I disagree, without X-realm BGs Icecrown would get longer queues, while Blackrock and Lordaeron would get much longer queues and BGs like AV/IoC may not even start at some hours. Also, in what way would X-realm have "unbalanced the pvp scene"?

About mercenary, I don't quite see the issue; players end in the faction which has less players queued at that moment so that a BG can start; I play in the Ally and sometimes I get matched with Horde, sometimes with Alliance.
Also players of all realms get mixed together so randomness takes care of unbalancing between individual players, on average.

The issue I actually see is actually with premades, since premade teams (especially pvp guild premades) have normally more chances to win against non-premade teams. This is the main issue with BGs, because not everybody likes to premade BG all the time, but not for this one should have a lower chance to win, imo.
My counter-suggestion is thus to give premades a higher chance to fight against other premades in BG, so that solo players have a higher chance to fight against other solo players. I don't know if it's feasible with addons like preform AV, though.

**Thorbjorn** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by theborg9

I disagree, without Xrealm BGs Icecrown would get longer queues, while Blackrock and Lordaeron would get much longer queues and bigger-team BGs may not even start at some hours. Also, in what way would Xrealm have "unbalanced the pvp scene"?

**theborg9** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by Thorbjorn

Which is (mostly) a pile of nonsense.
Few examples: on Blackrock you can't even obtain 271 ilvl weapons, while on Icecrown LK25 is farmed weekly and it's easy and old content.
Icecrown also has many more PvP bis geared chars to which the average Blackrock toon is a no match, either in BG and arena, so Icecrown actually has an advantage against Blackrock.
About Lordaeron the situation is obviously different, and I think it may have a disadvantage both against Icecrown and Blackrock players, but again:
1) queues times would be enormously affected
2) in BGs players get mixed between teams so that the teams are more or less balanced (not counting premade vs not premade)
3) in arena, players of other realms get mixed only when there's no people on same realm available, so no match would be possible otherwise.

Cheers :)

**Thorbjorn** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by theborg9

Which is (mostly) a pile of nonsense.
Few examples: on Blackrock you can't even obtain 271 ilvl weapons, while on Icecrown LK25 is farmed weekly and it's easy and old content.
Icecrown also has many more PvP bis geared chars to which the average Blackrock toon is a no match, either in BG and arena, so Icecrown actually has an advantage against Blackrock.
About Lordaeron the situation is obviously different, and I think it may have a disadvantage both against Icecrown and Blackrock players, but again:
1) queues times would be enormously affected
2) in BGs players get mixed between teams so that the teams are more or less balanced (not counting premade vs not premade)
3) in arena, players of other realms get mixed only when there's no people on same realm available, so no match would be possible otherwise.

Cheers :)

I take it you then see that there is an unbalance between the servers and therefore in crossrealm. :)
As I stated previously, Mercenary mode alone would offer good balance between wait time and quality since old queue timers were largely because of lack of Horde queing.

**Drunkuser** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by Thorbjorn

Actually, PvP players switched to Alliance because of free trinket, not because of mercenary mode. It was implemented in the first place because of long BG queues for Alliance.

And how did you get to that conclusion? If there's 2 players missing on the Horde side to fill a team, it will fill 2 Alliance->Horde, not a whole team. This is blatant lie. I routinely get **** on by Alliance premades in WSG and i'm on Horde side.

Most players who want to try PvP will choose the best ace for PvP. What a shocker. Mercenary mode only helps here by transfering some of them to Horde side when needed.

Disable mercenary mode if you are STILL into the rivalry thing. Problem solved.

I can see why this is confusing and I agree with you. Although I have to say that's it's just a minor thing, since it is just a racial and it's a BG.

Agreed completely.

IMO Mercenary mode should've stay and crossrealm needs to be removed. The whole point of Mercenary mode was to reduce queue times to which community agreed and then on top of that crossrealm was forced upon us which reduced the times even further but completely unbalanced the PvP scene.

Before Mercenary mode, if you wanted fast queues you used to roll Horde, if you wanted anything else, Alliance. If there were to many Alliance players, the queues for them would start to become longer, thus pushing some ally player to switch Horde for faster queue. It was a natural number balancer between factions, which helped avoiding things like having a server with 11k ally and 1k horde pvp players.
Now, with Mercenary mode, you can be ally, with double trinket, fast queues, and horde model in bg. There is basically no reason to stay Horde, except for the lore lovers, if you want to pvp. That's why it brings imbalance, and ruins the game feeling (but thats just my personal opinion).

About premades, horde premades are always in horde side obviously, and most alliance pvp guilds activate mercenary mode to get faster queues, and ends up in the horde side as well. The system favours both faction pms to end up in the horde side most of the time.

**theborg9** · November 2, 2020

Originally Posted by Thorbjorn

I take it you then see that there is an unbalance between the servers and therefore in crossrealm. :)

Uhm? There is only one server. Besides read better, I said there may be a disbalance between one server and the other two, but even in that case there are mechanisms that compensate for that disbalance, and that its (Lordaeron) queues would be heavily affected without cross-realm. I guess it could be given an option to opt-out cross-realm on Lordaeron, but I think it wouldn't be be popular, once people sees how long queues will be.

Originally Posted by Thorbjorn

As I stated previously, Mercenary mode alone would offer good balance between wait time and quality since old queue timers were largely because of lack of Horde queing.

Mercenary mode can be even opt-out, so the measure it helps can vary. Also it doesn't help at some hours when EU players don't play, possibly resulting in dead queues at night.

**Keymouse8800** · November 3, 2020

FIRST :

Mercenary mode is something you opt in from the site, NO ONE IS FORCING YOU USING Mercenary , AND YOU CANNOT SPEAK FOR THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY AND DEMAND SOMETHING THAT IS OPTIONAL IN THE FIRST PLACE TO BE DISABLED CUZ IT DOESNT SUIT YOU.

That's souless ginger logic honestly.

About cross-realm, yes I agree things might not be fair towards new players, but no one is stopping you to change the server to Icecrown and farm the said Ilevel you are whining its not available to your instant 80 level realm.

**Drunkuser** · November 3, 2020

Originally Posted by Keymouse8800

FIRST :

Mercenary mode is something you opt in from the site, NO ONE IS FORCING YOU USING Mercenary , AND YOU CANNOT SPEAK FOR THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY AND DEMAND SOMETHING THAT IS OPTIONAL IN THE FIRST PLACE TO BE DISABLED CUZ IT DOESNT SUIT YOU.

That's souless ginger logic honestly.

About cross-realm, yes I agree things might not be fair towards new players, but no one is stopping you to change the server to Icecrown and farm the said Ilevel you are whining its not available to your instant 80 level realm.

Your comment makes no sense. I have mercenary mode disabled and it still heavily affect my gameplay, and the whole pvp scene. It is not like, example, SoloQ, where you can just "hide" it.

Yes, nobody stops nobody to leave their favourite server where they invested time and re-roll on the other one, which maybe they don't like. Again, bad logic. What about removing the problem in first place, which is cross-realm ?

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