This is a long winded post, but I'm attempting to address all of the major issues that I feel contribute the most to the poor PvP experience on Warmane. I've played on this server since 2010, and honestly, I can say that each year, its gotten slightly worse. It makes sense that with time, the playerbase will get better gear and get better at the game, but a lot of the changes are misdirected and it's coming time that it's in the best interest of the gameplay experience to drop the idea of keeping the server 100% blizzlike. Minor changes to spellpower coefficients and talent tweaks would be inconsequential enough to still call the game blizzlike, when you consider how bugged every blizzlike private server truly is as a whole.
With the multiple non-blizzlike features already implemented on the servers, there isn't much sense in using this reasoning to prevent positive changes from improving the overall experience.
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Multiboxing
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The elephant in the room is multiboxing, and there have literally been hundreds of topics created as a result of it. I've offered the suggestion that /follow be removed from Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp to prevent multiboxing abuse and help to fight AFKing, and this change would perfectly fall in line with Blizzard's own changes, as this was done for battlegrounds in future expansions. There is virtually no negative to this change, but my post was removed from my recollection. This would fix multiboxing completely ruining Wintergrasp for everyone else, and prevent boxers from ruining BGs for people as well by not following objectives and camping for HKs. This doesn't address multiboxers completely ruining the gold market, but it would be a step in the right direction.
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3.3.5a Balance
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The second biggest issue honestly lies in patch 3.3.5a itself. We all know what the strongest race/class combos are, and people tend to follow the path of least resistance. The diversity in PvP is absolutely abhorrent. It's at very minimum 60% plate wearers despite plates only being 30% of the class choices, not only because their gameplay mechanics are easy to grasp and are forgiving, but because the plate classes have access to shadowmourne. Patch 3.3.5b was a great step to improve gameplay diversity and experience for everyone, and I am positive that I'm not the only person who's completely sick and tired of facing nothing but holy paladins, arms warriors, and unholy DKs in 2v2. The gameplay for each class is fun and engaging in Wotlk, but the balancing really needs tweaking. 3.3.5a was never balanced with the intent of being played 10 years into the future, where everyone is already making characters entirely to cater to the meta, and everyone is nearly BiS. 3v3 has been dead since 2011ish from my experience, as I recall being able to easily queue at 2k MMR on the old Warsong server when it was 3.3.5, and it would be pretty simple to revive. There are no incentives to play it as it currently stands, as with the donation structure there's no real need to grind 2k for the shoulders or 2.2k for the t2 weapons, and the end of season rewards are worse than retails were by far. Challenger title is a title given to people that were like 1600-1800 rating, but it's give to only the top 10 or less teams here. Why bother playing 3s if you cant even get a chance at any of the titles, even the ones that were designed to be accessible? Mirror Blizzards title system (blizzlike), and offer unique rewards like mounts or toys, maybe increase the drop rate of scrolls, and more people will participate in 3s.
I think it would be wise to allow players with very high credentials to fill an application to help Warmane staff develop an improved 3.3.5b, and if possible, could make it only applicable to BG and arena instances so it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on the PvE experience. I also firmly believe that it's in the best interest for Shadowmourne's stats to be reduced to a 284 equivalent item whenever in an arena instance, as the statistics can back up the fact that it's almost a complete necessity to have in order to be competitive on the current bracket if you play a plate class, and it's an extreme challenge for all the comps that suffer vs warriors and DKs, like warlock comps. I have a 6.2k warrior and have gotten almost every class between 2k-2.4k, but I don't even play my warrior anymore, because there is no way for me to keep up with the pressure of a mirror with Shadowmourne, and it feels like a chore to even make it to 1800 since the entire bracket at every MMR is just as saturated with those teams.
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BG Brackets
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The third and final part of the puzzle is the BG bracket system. I understand the idea behind the changes, but its mostly been negative. It punishes players for gearing their characters and forces them to play against completely unfun teams every game. Since the new bracket change, I have not enjoyed a single BG on my 6350gs rogue. I have not won a single AV as alliance in probably 2 months. My last BG was a WSG with 4 healers and everyone else on their team was plate, and it wasn't even a premade. Hearing people say "make a new character on Blackrock and you get to have fun BGs" is really sad, because the whole point of an MMO is for you to progress your character and feel the power creep. Random BGs were far better on all 10 of my 80s between 5.8k-6.4k gs. Sometimes you faced premades and got corpse camped, sometimes half the enemy team was all new players you could 1v3 and feel like a god. It's easy for me to do 5 BGs in a row now and not have even gotten 100hks because nothing dies with all the BiS healers running around. Brackets should be reverted and if there is to be any split, try to make it a 2 part split between people below around 5.5k gs and above. It makes a lot more sense, and keeps BG diversity more interesting and entertaining.
I used to do some private server conceptual development in 2014 with 2 people who have/do work on your staff, and the server lead currently works at blizzard. When we were working on that server, these sorts of issues were already in discussion, and the problem has only compounded over the last 7 years. I think every single one of these individuals would agree with everything I have stated here, and I am very confident that your staff is more than capable of solving all these problems. It doesn't seem to me that the staff on Warmane is PvP focused, or really have the level of gameplay knowledge to make safe changes, so getting advice from the top 0.5% playerbase would be a really good way to gather good information that could then be sorted through and used to make good alterations to scaling/talents and bring the PvP experience back to life. It isn't a hit on your pride to look for external assistance. I hope that this post can generate some interesting discourse and that it isn't locked and removed, as I feel that it's a series of thoughts that I've had a decade to develop and experience from every angle, and as it currently sits, the situation here for PvP has been on a steady decline for years.
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Member
Is Anybody Content with the State of PvP?
Edited: March 27, 2021
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Forum Veteran
Agree that multiboxing and bg brackets have to go. I'd add that cross-realm also has to go. Not so sure about 3.3.5b. I think trying to re-balance the game would be very hard and would make everybody unhappy. Banning multiboxers and making shadowmourne unusable in pvp would be two great steps forward but cash is necessary to run the server.
As players become more and more jaded you start seeing "antisocial" behaviours such as everybody playing awar/hpal or multiboxers ruining wg and wpvp. Those two things were always possible but have only become a serious problem in recent years. The community is also to blame.
All in all I think it's better to resign yourself to the thought that the server and the community will never be what it was and live with it. It's way healthier than trying to elicit change.
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Member
The most hilarious thing is that you guys think the Staff give a damn about players opinions, or even bother to read these essay suggestions on the forum.
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Moderator
Yeah, I mean, all those things players in Frostmourne had suggested or complained about? Pfft who bothers reading or taking into consideration anything.
Spoiler:Show
Of course, though, those didn't involve expecting massive mechanical changes to the patch we decided to host, enough to make it unrecognizable for anyone looking for said patch, or come with attached "you don't know what you want for your server, stop being prideful and do what the people who know what you want better than you do tell you to do, I know these important unnamed people who agree with me and they are saying from their important positions that you should do it right now" comments, the sort that, personally, make me dully dismiss even the few tidbits I might understand the reasoning of.
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Member
I'm not sure why you frequently try to elicit a response from people that will result in a forum ban rather than trying to give reasonable discourse. Reducing spell scaling on certain spells like sacred shield and scaling down percentages on talents that are overtuned aren't even recognized by anyone by the most observant players. Nowhere did I suggest some mountain of a change that would even be noticeable on more than a deep meta level, aside from the instantly obvious improvements to arena and Wintergrasp. I listed some credentials and people that I've worked with in the past because it's been very easy to see over the years on the forums that most people's suggestions and opinions are treated like they have no value or merit; while I have experience in every place that would be necessary to come up with an unbiased and reasonable solution near or equal to the level of many of the staff members.
The feel of Wotlk doesn't change because Hpal/Awarr with Smourne isn't the only thing on the entire arena bracket and people want to tinker with all the other class and spec choices they hadn't considered before. If anything, it's far more in line with Blizzards actual vision than anything that we've seen in the private server community in years. If there's one answer I could get, I am really curious to why the staff here is so vehemently against positive under the hood changes. The reason given is always about the game being blizzlike, but when I examine the multitude of non-blizzlike changes that have already been made here over the years, it's hard to understand how making the gameplay healthier while retaining all the current playstyles at the surface is any worse than adding BG brackets, cross realm BGs with realms that have significantly different accessibility to gear, doing custom events, and allowing multiboxing to run rampant while thousands of people complain on general chat and on the forums about it over the course of years; the problem only progressing as more people adopt the mentality of "if you can't beat em', join em'".
I like this server, I like the people I've met here, and I've been here a VERY long time. More than half of WoW's entire lifespan. This is an issue that I'd likely be bringing up on any other blizz-like server I'd have found a home in that didn't make changes to help remedy the inevitable issues with gear creep and meta abuse. I think all my suggestions are very helpful to fixing everything myself and many others have complained about since this server was still called Molten, and if the changes somehow were detrimental to the experience, there is nothing stopping you from having a backed up core with the older scripting.
Was a test server with much lower overhead costs considered for the purpose of implementing new features and changes like the ones I've mentioned? Maybe as time progresses and the population declines enough to warrant another server merge, it could be an interesting idea to consider a fresh server that did implement a patch 3.3.5c and make some changes that people have suggested over the years, as well as some of the issues I've addressed here. Lordaeron was a massive hit when it first came out because it was fresh, but slowly died because 1x rates discourages making alts, the content was hard for a portion of the playerbase, and the RDF prune ended up becoming more of a hassle than anticipated for many. A hypothetically improved 3.3.5 endgame experience would have more longevity and server health than a full blizz-like one if people saw how well it worked when brought into reality. OS Runescape is a good example of this, and the positivity towards 3.3.5b when it was implemented on Arena-Tournament was another good example.
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Member
No one is trying to elicit anything, if you get forum banned its your own words, stop blaming others.
Having said that, NO, no custom content, and no "balance changes" . I've been playing MMOs most of my adulthood (at least most of what i can remember). I've seen many games doing such balance chages that result in further disbalance.
You are totally right, Hpal and Smourne warrior is not the only option you have, thou it is one of the best available.
You are also correct on your understanding that WOTLK doesn't change. It doesn't in fact current emulation scene is trying to get it working to the best that they can, but it still won't change the Hpala and Smourne warriors.
You are also correct, blizzard has never introduced class and tallent pick restrictions (at least this was the case). This is totally forced by the same community that suggests balance changes. I wanted to play a frost DK tank for example, you know what, Warmane allows it, its the people i played with that didn't want a DK Tank because it is not on par, same happened with my Warrior tank - it wasn't pala or blood or Druid tank so it was bad.
What you are talking about right there is the playerbase mentality and their hostility against such things. If you don't do FOS POS on normal the moment you level to 80 is considered noobish.
If you are not playing Blood DK it is considered noobish.
Don't get me even going about the 2 option choice you gave - premade and win/ solo loose. That's exactly why hybrid classes aren't a thing, You guys go too extreme in your conclusions about stuff. Here is a suggestion - try Twinking. (not the 19/29/39/49/59/69/79 one. The 80 one. (but this i will leave for you to figure out how to accomplish, since it seems that you are after the sense of accomplishment)
Do you feel where i'm going with this. Its not a server issue, its a community issue.
No one is stopping anyone from trying new stuff, experimenting. Its people's own personal sense of competition that creates metas. And because people adopt that notion that if you can't beat something you should join it, is it the real reason why are you not having fun? Or you are from the opposite site, "If I can't beat it i can't have fun and they must nerf" type of guys? After all its a game, its a well known game in fact, and everyone who joined it (except all the new wow players) are perfectly aware what to expect.
Again, you can play whatever you want, do whatever you like, no one is stopping you. If you want to play some hybrid spec, do it. If its weaker then the streamlined main picks, well its weaker, nothing you can do about ti, but doesn't mean you can't have your fun with that hybrid spec.
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Now having said that i want to address the balance tweaks you might have in mind. Never forget 3.3.5 is a done deal. It is the last patch WOTLK got as a game in its lifespan. What you consider balance change may result in a never ending spiral of changes and tweaks and i presume this is the initial reason they would never consider that.
As I understand it, they are not against changes - Timewalking, morphing, all is considered a blizz-like as it is present in world of warcraft ( I hope i haven't misunderstood a replay from Obnoxious.) Their product is Wotlk, in all its glory and all tts failings. If they tweak paladin and nerf it too much, you will see another meta for sure, then people will start outraging against that other meta, new changes will be introduced and so on and on and on, vicious cicle.
Maybe someday we will see the implantation of 3.3.5c as you called it, once blizzard introduce it, as they did with 1.13 for classic. Maybe warmane staff have tried to do a custom balance and it didn't work, at the end of the day we don't know much about their development. As for Lord everything new and fresh is received well till the moment its not so new and fresh. I would say Lord has been doing a good job staying as populated as it is even if it "slowly died" (your words).
And for the end, as i feel you might feel this as some kind of defending the server, no its not, its the reality of things. Balancing someone else's visions and idea, might come down to changes few numbers here and there in the DB, but the result might not be what people expected.
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Side note:
Also I don't know where people take the 3.3.5b patch thingies since in the sources i found 3.3.5a is considered the last patch (officially released) for WOTLK. Can we see a changelog of that said patch?
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Forum Veteran
Patch 3.3.5b is what Arena Tournament called the modifications they made on top of 3.3.5a. Those modifications were scrapped when they "joined" Warmane.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141026...hp?f=9&t=16775
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Member
Thank you for sharing that, thou those don't really seem like balance changes to me, more like a quality of life changes.
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Forum Veteran
The whole reason there's so many "twinks" playing in the lower brackets on level 80 is because everyone wants to be the best and beat people who are worse, it's no fun when you play vs other good players.
I do agree with OP about a lot but it's also a big community problem.
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Member
Considering there are posts about bgs etc how they are right now with AV/IOC and all the mercanary mode things going on, infinite of them, and yet nothing has changed, so yeah the assumption is u ppl dont even read them. U do realise there is a vast majority that want to get rid of mercanary mode, u do realise there are countless of ppl making posts about it, and yet u touching multiboxer still, and nothing else. Mercanary mode has fixed one problem but created another from begin on. When do u guys think to "change" something there. Me for example could give less f-s about longer queues but thats just one thing.
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Moderator
Yes, and I probably have read all of them that weren't in a foreign language. But you have to realize that them being read, even the subject matter being passed over to the rest of the Staff, doesn't imply something will be changed. An example related to this thread? The "3.3.5b" custom patch. It was removed from Blackrock and its players asked, demanded and "suggested" that it be brought back a lot, sometimes it still comes up again, but if it wasn't aligned with what we want to host in our servers no amount of threads and posts will make it return.
Also, about multiboxers, you're out of the loop. The limit to multiboxing is getting lowered to 5 today.
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Member
Yes im aware of that thanks for telling me. So just to make that clear multiboxing was there from the beginning ppl complaining and u changed it multiple times gave them so do say orders blabla limitation, and lets be honest im almost certain if the cumminity still complains u gonna do something again, anyways. Even if u cant get rid of mercanary mode even if u dont want to u will have alot of ppl complaining on a daily bases and to a point where ppl are just unhappy and leave for example but thats abit exaggerated i guess. But one thing is interresting u guys implemented mercanary mode and now u saying that any amount of threads will not make it "better", but then again that says u guys gave us something and even if u guys dont like it we dont care etc. thats what it sounds like and thats what it looks like, as i said u fixed one problem and made created another one with it. How long has been mercanary mode out 1 year ? and there are threads over threads and nothing is seemingly to happen multiple communitys such like lord etc are complaining blackrock are complaining icecrown are complaining and they all say the same i dont know what else to say to this if all this wont open your eyes then lets make pvp the worse that has ever been and keep continue giving the cumminity the precious multiboxing changes they need.
Edited: March 29, 2021
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Moderator
No, you can even read it in one of Proterean's messages in the thread about the new limitation. Neither the first limitation nor the current one happened because people complained. Like you say, multiboxing had been fine for all these years and people have complained about them for just as long. We even have Forum rules about the subject because of that. The limitations happened to be in tune with something the people complaining wanted, it wasn't because of their complains.
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Member
"Happaned" in tune with something ppl complaining wanted, but wasnt becasue of their complains ah yes. Alright so im trying to be polite here but this doesnt make sense at all what u just stated and is obvious what u meant, staff members dont give that publicly price obviously that they made this becasue of the community only. And never have i said multiboxing had been fine, i can agree to a point yes that multiboxing is fine till they started blocking the VOA teleporter to farm hks, cause thats hilarious. My main point here is that ppl complain u give us something and dont think what could happen within the change, pvp wise such as mercanary mode. Excuse me if something offends you what i said.
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Moderator
Eh what both Proterean and I said doesn't require your belief to be true, so carry on complaining about Mercenary mode if you think that's what will cause it to change, I guess.
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