What Do Cross-Realm Battlegrounds Solve?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 17th 2006 at 3:15PM
This question seems to be getting more and more play on the forums recently - and I can certainly see where this poster is coming from. When I played Alliance myself, I rarely participated in PvP battlegrounds for the same reason - queues tended to last about an hour and I always seemed to think up more interesting things to do than wait around. When I started playing Horde, I found myself doing battlegrounds much more frequently - and would consider ten minutes to have been a long battlegrounds queue. However, if most realms have higher numbers of Alliance than Horde, won't the problem be the same, only on a larger scale? CM Nethaera explains that "some people may see their time go up, others may see theirs go down" - as populations and queues are averaged across many realms. However, Nethaera also notes that cross-realm battlegrounds have not yet been tested on the test realms - and, in my mind, any test realm environment still won't give us a good view on how this will impact the live realms.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Duwanis Jul 17th 2006 4:00PM
Cross-realm battlegrounds really only solve one problem - whereas before on a server that didn't have enough of one side in queue to start a game, you couldn't play, now you at worst have to wait, unless for whatever reason there aren't enough people on one side in an entire 'battlegroup.' I'm not looking for it to improve queue times - you're going to be screwed on queue times if you're in that last group that has to wait to get a full team no matter how many people are in the queue - but it will increase the pool you draw from, which means that if you queue up, your chances of playing (not immediately, but eventually) go up tremendously.
Luka Jul 17th 2006 4:22PM
they should allow us to play with Asia, since there is more Horde than Alliance there :p
Brian Jul 17th 2006 4:39PM
Actually, the queue times seems like they might drop some across the board. Assuming each server has the same number of people waiting in the queue, the difference is that with more games going, there is a higher chance for one to let out and you to move in.
Think of it as a checkout counter in a store. If there is 2 people working, we have to wait on those two. If one of them has an issue with, say, their ATM card and holds up the line, then it seems like a long backup. However, even if the lines are longer, with 10 checkout counters now open, all it takes is a couple fast transactions to really speed up the whole line. Also, that one slow guy impacts everyone less far less.
On the battlegrounds, often there might be only 3-4 battlegrounds in progress. I cannot tell you how many Warsong matches I have had that lasted over 30 minutes. We don’t get much honor, but it is a lot of fun when two teams square off that are both great at PvP. Now, if there are only 3 WSG matches going on the server, well, talk about backup for everyone else waiting for the opposing faction to free up. I am thinking that we will see lower wait times. In fact, the well organized groups that pile over the PuG groups will almost be a boon. They will speed up the line, clear the PuGs from the queue quickly, and for those who are looking not to face up again and again to the same killer group, they have a bigger chance of finding new opponents.
Duwanis Jul 17th 2006 4:51PM
The checkout analogy isn't quite accurate - you'd have to modify it to say that "OK, assume that you only have one checkout line, but the person at that line won't start checking people out untless there are between 10 and 20 people in line" (or 16 and 30, or whatever number you're looking for...). Of course it's still more complicated than that, because you have to have the factions balanced... so "at least 5 but no more than 10 women and at least 5 but no more than 10 men" replaces the original constraint. Now you can see where the waits get heavy - what if your 'battlegroup' is horde heavy, like most of the ones containing newer serers will likely be? Then you have an even more disproportionate amount of horde than you had before, which causes horde wait times to go up (e.g. trying to satisfy the gender constraint in the above example by waiting for enough women). Even if they're perfectly balanced, you may still have to wait for one of those 30-minute games to finish, because you're one of the last 4 alliance to queue, so you don't have enough people to start a new instance. So increasing the potential draw pool doesn't necessarily imply shorter waits - it just increases the chances of getting through the line, so to speak.
sollaires Jul 17th 2006 5:20PM
I'm hoping that cross realm battlegrounds may solve at least one of the BG queue problems - the tendency of losing teams to stop queuing. Whole brackets disappear for extended times because of this. It's no fun when 10 horde play 5 alliance, so those alliance stop queueing, there are fewer games, and the ones that do pop have another 5 alliance, who stop queueing...
Hopefully that cycle will break. Maybe the 50-59 AB and WSG bracket might spring to life again.
From what I've been reading, it also sounds like "Join as Group" might be capped to 2-4 players in a group. In that case, every group is a PUG of some sort, so that will possibly make games more even in the sense that you won't see as many PUG v Guild games.
If nothing else, I think that while queues may not be better across the board, it is more likely that people will play more given that they aren't guaranteed to run up against the same gulid group over and over again or be grouped with the same idiots on their own team (I know I've left queues or tried to skip a round because of that reason).
Grendalsh Jul 17th 2006 11:12PM
It would help if Blizz added some sort of preview interface to the BG's, so you could see which servers are full, which ones need more players and how many of which faction, what chars/class/levels are in which groups, etc.. Kinda like BattleNet. That way you could see "ok, there's only 4 in this group, but they're all x9, and the opposition is all x1-x5, so it'll be a good fight.." and pick that server. Would end a lot of whining if folks could SEE why they're waiting for a battle.
Relmstein Jul 18th 2006 11:22AM
I think battle.net is exactly what Blizzard might be going for with some of the changes in the Battlegrounds. Now if only they could put a meta-level ladder system into the game so that epic raiders didn't get the chance to farm honor off blue wearing pug teams.
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