More on the Battlegrounds Matching System
by Elizabeth Harper 
Aug 29th 2006 at 3:30PM
There have been whispers of some sort of battlegrounds matching system in the past, without any real information on what such a system would try to match. Today, Drysc responded to a post with some additional hints on the kind of the system we can expect. The system will only be viable with the new cross-realm battlegrounds system, due to the increased size of the player pool, and will attempt to match people with specific levels of gear together. It seems like such a matching system would be darned complicated, but if this really works, my Zul'Gurub-geared priest will be quite happy to not again be one-shotted by Ashkandi-wielding warriors. [Thanks, Tommy]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dahlaine Aug 29th 2006 4:14PM
This may cause 2 problems...
1. It will reincrease the time it takes from Queing to playing. If you ever played any of the games on Battlenet, depending on your rank, it could take quite a long time to find a suitable game as it slowly would allow greater and greater rank discrepencies the longer you couldn't make a match.
2. The matching program would likely burden an already burdened system. Many of us had horrible issues with lag when they instigated the x-server Bg's and that is persisting to today. Searching across realms for people who are in the same bracket could prove to be quite taxing on the hardware as well.
stapleboy Aug 29th 2006 4:43PM
Combined with cross-server battlegrounds, a good matching system is probably the best thing Blizzard could do to fix PvP. It's not coming until the expansion because of the hardware issues, most likely, and that's ok with me if they get it right. It'll be interesting to see whether they just compare gear, or if they match based on how many from each faction joined as a group.
If I have to wait 2 minutes instead of 2 seconds to get in to AB, that's well worth it if I know I won't be fighting a premade of alliance whose gear could beat me with or without them inside of it.
AcceptableRisk Aug 29th 2006 5:07PM
It certainly levels the field between new 60's and epic wielding juggernauts but it's also interesting way to eliminate the twink problems at lower levels as well. Those who want to blow hundreds of gold to outfit a level 19 in the very best can now do so with abandon and not offend anyone. Of course, they'll also no longer have such easy targets. I wonder how many people will give up twinking given their newfound competition.
Of course, this also brings up the interesting proposition of naked or near-naked Battleground matches. I suspect the balance would be way off with casters (and Soul Linked Warlocks especially) dominating the melee classes but it's a fun idea to consider.
Andrew Aug 29th 2006 5:07PM
What about the issue of premades?
Does that mean the premade has to wait for a premade of the same gear quality?
Duwanis Aug 29th 2006 5:14PM
@Dahlaine - To your first point: read the later posts, he addresses this. Or if you don't want to dredge through it, there's a summary here.
To your second point, I fail to see how it will affect battleground lag. All this calculation should be done outside of the battleground, since once you're in a group there's no need to do that kind of math again. Sure, it may still be laggy, but this won't add to that.
Duwanis Aug 29th 2006 5:15PM
D'oh, it ate my link...
http://wowpundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/matching-system-for-bgs.html
Dahlaine Aug 30th 2006 8:42AM
My issue wasn't with BG lag, it was with general server lag, which are both connected. When I was lagging in a AV yesterday, I heard my guildmates on Vent groan about a spike in ZG and the guys in Ogrimmar confirmed it. Its the overall increase in processes that are required in which to initiate a BG. If the server is now having to additionally scan thousands of players equipment at one time, and you add this to the fact that they have not be able to provide adequate processing power to feed the current deamnds, it leads toward a grim laggy future.
Ps. Don't try and tell me that hardware upgrades can solve this because I will just point you to the messages the Blizz reps sent out the first few months of the game concerning how they were going to fix the hardware lag issues. Its about 2 years later and the cart is still before the horse.
Duwanis Aug 31st 2006 11:58AM
Shooting themselves in the foot.
If they implemented something that increased lag and only led to marginal benefits in the PvP experience, they lose. I trust they're not going to make that kind of business error. Hardware and networking is something they don't have direct control over - that stuff is hard - but they can measure the load that a scan like that is going to put on the system, and if it's going to be that resource-intensive they won't do it.