Frankenberry

No. That doesn't work. If team A and team B queue for both WSG and AB the following will happen: Team A (strongest team) picks the bg they want to play in. The one with highest honour per hour yield. Team B picks the other one. Both win and pugs lose 100% of the time. It's also the reason why you see so many 10 vs. > 4 and 15 vs > 5 games in WSG and AB. Essentially this is queue dodging all though it's not necessarily with the intend of dodging the result is the same. Opening BG's that players don't intend to play is the main problem. Also as a sidenote removing multiqueue'ing from groups doesn't work since you just group queue for one bg and solo queue for the other OR just solo queue both simultaneously and get into the same games that way.

TLDR: 1) respecc cost at 25g. 2) Don't implement queue'ing from around the world. It's fine as it is. 3) Give deserter if you drop a queue and make it impossible to queue both WSG and AB simultaneously. 4) Update PvP gear in 1.9 instead of 1.11 and release gear gained through rep with a BG-faction now. There is no reason not to release it now and 1.11 was too late. Hey there. A bit about myself. I'm alliance, rank 13 and played almost purely on premades. I'm done ranking and from now on will purely play PvP to help out friends / have some fun so I don't have any personal "ranking" interest in the end result of this discussion. I am of course interested in the overall well being of the PvP-scene on the server since it's in my opinion important and it keeps a server alive. Vanilla PvP isn't fair. It involves engineering gadgets, consumables and cheap tricks. Anything goes (without breaking server rules ofc). World PvP isn't fair. You kill one guy who was on low life only to be ganked by his 4 friends 1 minute later. It's not fair and it's not supposed to be fair. I think this is important to keep in mind when designing server structures around server PvP. I don't think it's a big problem that premades group up and smash less organized players. It's not fair and it ain't supposed to be. To address the suggestions in the OP suggestions: 1) respecc cost: Only having 1 talent specc and having some solidity to your character is part of Vanilla. I don't think talent respec costs should be lowered too low. However a cap of 25g seems in order. 50g was - in my opinion - too high in vanilla and still is too high today. I would prefer not to see it go lower than 25g though. I don't like it that characters constantly swap between speccs / setups / talents. Part of the server PvP community is to know which of the priests are shadow and holy. Which of the Paladins are Ret and which are holy. If the respecc cost goes too low (for instance 5 or 10g as often suggested) I think it will diminish the PvP-community. But yes. Lower it to 25g. 2) Queue'ing from around the world. This suggestion will make little difference. Even when you could only queue from Ashenvale (or barrens if you were horde) you could always have someone else queue you up as a group. It won't really make a big difference in terms of accessibility if you want to PvP. It does however make it easier to use battlegrounds as an escape from World PvP or ganking which I don't like. 3) reworking queue matching system. Wrong approach to solving the problem in my humble opinion. Premades - for the most part - farm honour. If you change up the system the players will just work around it. Rankers will start solo queue'ing at the same time to end up in the same game with group queue. Just as we did with AV and WSG when it was initially released with 4 man queue. What should be done is the following: A) You should not be able to queue WSG and AB at the same time. You shouldn't be allowed to queue AB while in WSG and visa versa either. B) You should get 15 min deserter for dropping the queue. What will this achieve? It will combat queue-dodging which will become even more rampant now premades have two bg's for honorfarming (I don't really include AV in this category). Say you have 2 premades - 1 on horde and one on alliance. If they both queue WSG and AB - which they will if they are farming honor - what will happen is that they will open up games for each other to join. The strongest premade will take the highest honor-per-hour option (usually AB) and end up in a premade vs pug (usually 15 vs few) and get an easy 5-cap win while the other premade will get an easy 3-0 in WSG. It isn't coordinated and it isn't purposely win trading but the result is the same. This server population isn't big enough to support a "premade vs. premade" queue priority system but if the two suggestions above are implemented it will force premades to face each other on a regular basis and give a better experience for everyone involved. 4) Update PvP Gear Earlier than 1.11. To give an incentive for players to engage in PvP I think the server staff should make some changes when it comes to PvP-gear update compared to how Blizzard did it back in when WoW first came out. Overall I think the staff should really consider this option because it's a positive incentive for players to seek out PvP instead of a punishing one which is how I view all the attempts in trying to shut down premades. First of all release all the rep items from BG's. The legging items from WSG are already semi-outdated and when they will not be used by anyone when they are finally released. The ring from AV is also useful for new players who just got into the PvP scene. There is no reason why these items were released as late to the game as they were. Second update the PvP-armor sets and implement the R14 weapons / offhands that hasn't been implemented yet at 1.9 instead of 1.11. The original 1.11 update was way too late and I think everyone who compares items from PvP with items from PvE at 1.11 can see this. Even if you don't clear content in Naxxramas the PvP gear is still (for the most part) just about on par with what you get from raiding in AQ. Bear in mind this is comparing R12,13 and 14 gear with AQ gear. Also keep in mind the gear is on par with AQ (and by the later stages of AQ subpar) which means it's not like we are giving a massive advantage to players with high ranking gear. Finally the blue set from R7-10 will be of increased value for both "casual" mains or maybe people who want an alt with some decent gear. Keeping this update at 1.11 will soon make ranking utterly useless which will be very harmful to the PvP-scene.

To rank. If it becomes too much for you make a premade =)

We have the most fun when facing other premades. WoW is not really that type of game imho. There is a big difference a game such as Starcraft (I game a myself enjoy very much) or LoL on the one hand which are build around the competition and a game like WoW which is an MMORPG that includes players having better items than others. Part of MMO's is that "epic" geared players get to use those superior items on players who are worse of. It's not fair and was never meant to be so. The server is even close to being big enough to completely separate the queue's. Premade prio is fine. Complete separation goes against game design and is will do more harm than good to the pvp scene. Again I want to try and get this message across to the horde: You guys on horde are on average way more interested in PvP than Alliance players. This is due to the strong pvp racials on horde and the notion that Horde is stronger in PvP and Alliance is better at PvE (a notion I don't agree with but it's there for sure). Besides us in Kamuflasjefylla most other guilds don't care at all about ranking or PvP'ing. There isn't a big player pool that aren't queue'ing because they lose too much in pug vs pug games and need help from alliance rankers to "step down" and pug games with them. Again: It's not gonna happen. What you will achieve - and I know this because I talk to the other rankers among alliance - is that they will quit pvp'ing, maybe finish if they only have a few weeks left or entirely quit the server and wait for Fresh Lightbringer. Personally I don't really have that big stakes in this. I'm done after this week and after Tuesday I will purely play to help out my friends or just have some fun and play with them. If I can't do that I'll just focus purely on PvE instead like the rest of the alliance. It doesn't even have to be a full premade but queue'ing solo is just no fun at all.

You think this will be the result but I can tell you that I find it highly unlike this will be the outcome. Some time ago when they announced there would be no premades at this server (the day before they released the bg's) several of the alliance top pvp'ers (aka, the most active pvp'ers) were ready to leave the servers. They however quickly found out they could play together through queue'ing at the same time at getting into the same games that way. So they stayed on this server and after a while they removed the cap so you could group up as more than 4 persons. I can tell you for sure that the several of the most active pvp'ers on alliance - myself included - will not play if we are forced to play with pugs. I want to play with my friends and I want to play with good players. Hell I wouldn't even have started pvp'ing on this server if it had not been because I could play with friends and later on join a full premade. Premade vs. Premade prio system is fine. It's funny to play against other premades and it creates server rivalry and competition but if you make a system where you strongly encourage pugging to get rank you will kill the alliance pvp-scene for good. PvP'ing is fun and all but at it's core WoW is a social game. The best part about being in a premade is the relations you form with your teammates. That you get to know them, that you talk to them on discord, socialize, joke around and so on. Forcing players to go pug vs pug would harm the pvp scene on this server. Not help it. Who in their right minds wants to sit in pugs all day? Also honour caps has little to do with this system. It was there when people could only join as 4 man groups as well. Premades or very active pvp'ers will always farm more than the more casual players or players without a premade. Caps are just a way of pvp'ers agreeing to a cap. It has little to do with premades in general.

They probably update it around 1.08 or 1.09 instead. 1.11 is way too late.

I still fail to see how removing premades or making it a premade vs. premade priority system will encourage more alliance players to queue up which is the main the problem. That and queue dodging. How would it result in more alliance players starting to queue up? I can see why it would maybe encourage more horde players to start queue'ing but that isn't really the problem, is it? I can only speak for myself but doing this will result in me never setting foot in a bg ever again as soon as I hit my rank 13. I want to play with my friends. Not random guys from the server. And I know a lot of other rankers (which are basically the only guys queue'ing atm) feel the same way. This suggestion could actually do much more harm than good to queue times.

Why would this encourage more alliance players to queue? It's not like there is a high risk of facing a horde premade.

I hate to break it to you but the alliance NA players that are interested in PvP play EU / Asia times. Generally there aren't that many NA players left on Alliance side. A few days back one of the few NA guilds left disbanded even though they cleared BWL =( And it's definitely has nothing to do with alliance premades at that hour because we don't at those hours. We are sleeping ;) If you want to play PvP as an NA player you kind of have to what our NA players do: play at hours that are not optimal for you to get decent queue times. That's just how it is on a server mainly populated by non-NA players =(

Sounds like NA queue times. When we finally have premades playing us they often face us with instant queue's (3+ games in a row).

I replied in this thread https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic/63856-pvp-faction-imbalanced-caused-by-premades-is-killing-the-server/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-465643 but I'll also give my 2 cents in this one: Sure. Could work. In my reply in the other thread I wrote that the upcoming gear update would encourage more players to queue. 1.8 wouldn't be a big game changer so I don't see a big problem with this. Yeah. Not any lower though. There still has to be some amount of dedication to your character and your specc. I've seen players on the discord suggest 10 or 5g respecc cap which would essentially give you a dual specc and drastically change the feel of the game. Not a fan of that but 25g - yeah sounds about right. Just wait for the Token system and AB to be honest. I fail to see how this will change anything. It won't make more alliance players queue up (I try to explain this in greater detail in the other thread). Not a fan. I like that things are hard to achieve in this game and not everything is served to people on a silver platter. WSG is brutal but with the upcoming system it will make achieving rep with WSG easier - especially since the premades will move on to AB. Yeah. Coudl work. Some players would still "dodge" us by switching from WSG -> AV in the middle of a game but I guess that's only a small problem. I definitely can support this idea. -Lurpakken (ingame)

I suppose I should weight in here in this thread. I guess I'm one of the people who "Killing the server". At least according to the title of thread. I think some of the horde players here got one important thing wrong: If you make a premade vs. premade priority system I don't really see how that would solve anything for you guys. I'm not even against such a system but the problem is mainly that there is a gap between how many horde- and alliance players that are queue'ing for WSG. This is quite normal. Back in vanilla this was the case (at least on the servers I played on) and from I've heard from my teammates and guildies it's the same on other current private servers. You won't magically have more alliance "pug" players queue'ing just because you make premade vs. premade priority. Why not? Because alliance pug's lose bigtime vs. horde pugs so they are discouraged from playing and queue'ing. Another reason is that horde is the go-to faction for players interested in PvP. I don't know if it's due to the racials being a bit more focused on PvP for horde, the elemental shaman and his burst damage or if there is a different mentality when it comes to pvp for horde players. It's just my experience that more players on horde side care about pvp. So in my opinion I can't see how changes to premades would really make a difference for you guys. To back this even further up one thing I've noticed is that some people on the Nighthaven discord often complain about the queue's and ask alliance to start queue'ing up. It's mainly done when we aren't playing. Usually on NA times or on mondays and tuesdays. So it's not just a problem about premades. It's also about (almost) no american alliance players being interested in PvP which leads to horrible queue time at night (server time). I can say that we have americans playing on our team because Americans interested in PvP play when they have someone to play with.So when we play - according to this thread - we destroy the pvp-scene on horde and when we don't play - according to players on discord - we destroy the pvp scene on horde because of the queue times. So I fail to see how changing the status of premades on alliance will make more alliance players queue up (which is the main problem. Not alliance premades). Another important thing is that sometimes - often in fact - when we queue up we get dodged by horde premades (maybe they are full premades or maybe they are just 5 man queue'ing). Either way when you have some players who systematically dodge our team it does lead to other players facing our team more often which I can understand can be frustrating. A solution could be to give deserter to players who drop queue (They would still be able to switch from WSG -> AV though). This way you won't see player A never facing us premades and farming pugs while player B who plays straight up has a much harder time. As for other solutions: Wait for AB. It's not far away and there are a few important things about PvP in the upcoming patches that could help about this problem. A) In AB the losing team gains some honour. Later on you also get 1 token even if you lose. If you lose in WSG you gain nothing. This is important because - I think - it's one of the main reason why almost no alliance "puggers" are queue'ing up. In pug vs pug alliance lose the vast majority of games. If the pugs lose in AB they will still gain something and thus be encouraged to queue up. WSG (and the current 0 "tokens" for a loss) is a bit more brutal in that regard. B) The PvP is being updated soon which will encourage more players to try and farm it. Even the rank 7-10 items will become quite good for most classes and even useful in raids. Even before patch 1.9 hits it should encourage more players to queue up. C) BG weekends. Double the honour should mean that more people will queue at the same time. This means there will be a smaller chance of facing a premade OR at least a really good one. If there a lot of semi-good premades queue'ing up you should easily be able to make one yourself to counter it. You don't need a full rank 12+ team. A handful of guildies with some MC gear and a discord should do just fine. On top of that you get double honour. However with all that being said there is one there is one thing I have to get of my chest: Why are the people so interested in PvP on horde side not making their own premades? I simply don't understand this. The other night a few former alliance players that have faction changed to horde, quickly formed a premade and it was the best team we've faced in weeks. I'm not saying that alliance players - or former alliance players - are better than horde so I'm not trying to take a jab at horde players. I'm just wondering why it took (ex)alliance players to give us a fight. To me maybe part of the solution could be some of horde players stepping up, making a solid premade and playing to win? Even if you don't want to rank and play for hours every day. you could still play with a few guys on maybe 1-2 days a week for some hours. All it takes is some decent gear (blue gear and MC gear and some consumables is fine) and a discord. I rarely check these forums - in fact this is the first time so I apologize for responding slowly (or not at all) if someone will comment on what I've wrote. -Lurpakken