US battlegroups Cataclysm and Frenzy to merge
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 8th 2007 at 4:36PM
However, one thing this does tell me is that Blizzard isn't planning on adding new realms in the future -- or at least not a lot of them. These smaller battlegroups were obviously designed to give Blizzard room to grow, but the move to merge them suggests that Blizzard isn't planning on needing that room. As it was, to bring them to the size of the smallest existing battlegroup (the 12-realm Emberstorm), Cataclysm would need 7 more realms and Frenzy would need 5, for a total of 12 new realms. And to bring them up to size of the largest battlegroup, Cataclysm would need 15 additional realms and Frenzy would need 13, which would mean a total of 28 new realms. As it is, the merged Cataclysm/Frenzy battlegroup will contain 12 realms -- based on the size of the largest existing battlegroups, there's still room to grow, but it seems that Blizzard isn't planning on massive growth in the future.
Filed under: News items, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rich Jun 8th 2007 5:09PM
With the new gear matching system, it would make more sense to merge more of the battle groups together for a total of 4 or so. This will help shorten queues and open up competition.
Paul Jun 8th 2007 5:25PM
Yeah, if they would merge more of the battlegroups, they could break up the battlegrounds into 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, etc instead of 10-19, 20-29,etc. That would be even more gear matching right there, and with the larger battlgroups, this wouldn't increase wait times.
I have no idea how servers work, but I would love if blizzard eventually got to a point where they had extremely stringent gearmatching, but only one battlegroup (all the realms) to pull pvp'ers form.
Dracula Jones Jun 8th 2007 5:58PM
Thank god. I'm in Frenzy and I've never been able to get into BGs consistently. I could sit for hours in primetime and never get in. I just stopped trying after a while.
Coherent Jun 8th 2007 6:03PM
Pretty sure WoW population has peaked, or is near peak.
I've been pvp'ing 20-29 on Feathermoon, and while we always have a million Warsong Gulch matches going, sometimes you have to wait a half hour or more to get an AB match, especially late at night.
So personally I wish they had dynamic battlegroups, so there would always be lots of people available. I guess this isn't likely for technical reasons though.
10pound Jun 8th 2007 6:10PM
Hey its me too....Area 52. I think its good news.
Terrant Jun 8th 2007 6:26PM
Psst... Cataclysm has six realms, not five.
Vellon Jun 8th 2007 6:52PM
The problem with merging all the realms together is the overall imbalance between horde and alliance population. If they merged everything together there would be a ridiculous imbalance with the alliance dominating. This would lead to even larger queue times for the alliance.
So, they keep the battlegroups split apart trying to balance as well as they can the over horde pop servers vs the over alliance pop servers.
UFTimmy Jun 8th 2007 6:59PM
@ 7 -- that doesn't make any sense. If, as you claim, the battlegrounds are balanced over all, then if you merged them all into one super battle group then they would stay balanced.
Plus, merging them reduces the number of people who are waiting. If you have 10 battle groups, you could have 8 alliance and 8 horde on each battle group waiting for that 9th person to join to create a new AB match. That's 8 * 2 * 10 = 160 people waiting. If you had one battle group, there could be maximum of 16 people waiting. That's a great savings.
I'm not sure why they don't have one large battle group, as they could increase the strictness of gear matching and reduce everyone's queue times.
Vellon Jun 11th 2007 2:04PM
I'm not claiming they are balanced overall, but I am claiming that if they merged them to one battlegroup they would be worse.
The disparity between alliance and horde has historically been around 2:1 in favor of alliance. wowcensus.com is down atm so I can't link to the exact numbers.
If all the servers merged together, there would be twice as many alliance players queue'ing for BGs vs the horde. 2000 alliance players and 1000 horde players means that half of the alliance players are waiting for horde to finish their games to start the next round.
Obviously there are many servers were horde outnumbers alliance despite the overall trend. Blizzard more than likely used these servers to attempt to balance the ratio as much as they could in each battlegroup.
Or maybe they didn't, I've never actually seen a blue comment on this, just my 2c :)
Hudson Jun 9th 2007 1:46AM
Very nice! This should make getting my 30 AB Marks of Honor and 30 AV Marks of Honor (down the road) easier.
Bill G Jun 9th 2007 3:15AM
I agree with #4. Based on available evidence, WoW isn't growing in the US/Europe/Oceania market.
Asia, who knows. Subscriber counts there are not an apples-apples comparison with the rest of the world and TBC has yet to be introduced.
I think that Blizzard has announced [or hinted at] a Spanish language version. That should produce some additional growth.
UFTimmy Jun 9th 2007 8:00AM
@ 9 [The disparity between alliance and horde has historically been around 2:1 in favor of alliance. wowcensus.com is down atm so I can't link to the exact numbers.]
Well, if they're already unbalanced, how will will merging them affect it negatively? If there are already 10 battle groups that are 2 to 1, merging them into one big battle group where it'll still be to 2 to 1 is bad how?
Heraclea Jun 9th 2007 3:43PM
I have done so few BGs since moving most of my characters from Lightbringer to Azuremyst. We were thrown in with five other Horde-dominated PvP servers, and it's even less fun than it usually is for Alliance. This is good news.