We have met the enemy, and he is us
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 29th 2007 at 4:00PM
I've said before that I enjoy Alterac Valley. Even with my somewhat limited PvP abilities I've managed to rack up thousands upon thousands of HK's in there, ground up enough honor for the HW sword before the expansion came out, and have continue to play through the AFK'ers and into the dawn of this new, glorious age where AFK'ers get much less out of it. In all that time, I've listened to my fellow Alliance complain that they can't win in PvP and I've listened to my fellow Horde complain that they can't win in AV.
The two characters I primarily run AV on are my Tauren Warrior and my Night Elf Warrior. And both have probably won and lost AV about the same. People complain about choke points, about AFK'ers, about terrain and NPC's and Windsor only knows what else sometimes to the exclusion of playing. I can remember one AV where someone was so incensed about people spending their time in the cave that he actually went into the cave and counted them all while the Alliance was making their big push on Drek'Thar.
Quite honestly, I sometimes wonder if the factionalism of some players makes them blind to reality. If you're so invested in the Alliance and how it does in each BG that you don't even bother to play in the first place, you've actually managed to defeat yourself. One of the reasons I hate taking my NE warrior into Arathi Basin isn't because the Horde win all the time - in my experience whatever side I'm not on is usually a Tier 6 premade who stomp us like pacifists at a 'We love to kill people' rally - but because there's always that one guy (could be a woman, to be fair) who drank the I'm the best general in the universe and you must execute my order like the Ghost of Patton gave them to you Kool-Aid before signing up. I won't take my tauren in because I can't get through doors on him sometimes. (Hey, try running BRD on a tauren, it's a miserable experience.)
I understand that the game is based around faction animosity to a great extent, but behind all the trash talk and ego preening, the player base for each side really isn't at all different. Having played multiple 70's here, I can assure all of your Horde who cling to the idea that the Horde is more mature, you're living in a completely different fantasy world than Azeroth. And for you Alliance who sneer at the Horde as the goth kids wanting to play monsters to feel cool, it's simply not so. Are there individuals on each side who live up to those stereotypes? Sure. But having done raids, done PvP, leveled and quested as both Horde and Alliance, it's frightfully easy to forget you're even playing on the other side. People will always remain people.
The BG's aren't perfect, but in the time I've been playing them, I've never experienced a day where the Horde or the Alliance dominated them. Perhaps my battegroups are rare in that extent, but I do have to wonder how it's possible I can actually win on either of my toons at least 50% of the time if one faction has such a massive advantage over the other. How much of this can possibly be reality, and how much is just people going in believing the hype?
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Analysis / Opinion, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave Sep 29th 2007 4:09PM
Your results are a small sample size, nothing more.
aggregate the results over hundreds of thousands of BGs, not just the ones you contribute to, and you'll see a statistical pattern emerge.
your tiny amount of games played (and even a thousand games played just by you would be statistically insignificant and subject to a very large margin of error) is essentially meaningless towards getting an accurate statistic on wins and losses.
And getting killed at AB by T6 people is why I play with twinks in BG's. At least then everyone can achieve the cap for gear with minimal effort that doesn't require raids and 24 other people. It's still a remarkable amount of fun, and a "pure" BG rather than the huge chasm of gear imbalance that is the 70BG's.
Matthew Rossi Sep 29th 2007 4:20PM
Never mind statistics for just one moment: we both know that raw numbers are almost useless and a good statistician can make them mean almost anything by how he or she phrases them.
Do you play both Horde and Alliance in all four battlegrounds? What's your actual *experience* of play? I'm not asking you what some site or another grabs from win and loss reporting, much less asking HOW they gather that information. I'm just plain asking you, and anyone else who reads this: do you really lose or win every game? Or, if you were being totally honest with yourself, do you win about as much as you lose?
My experience is that I do. Not because of any awesome ability to play, not because either of my factions is superior, not because of map imbalances... I win and I lose about as much perhaps because of all of these factors, or perhaps because of none. Maybe I just stop playing when I'm on a bad streak, I don't know. But I do know that I have the experience of playing in all four battlegrounds, on both factions, on various different characters, in two different battlegrounds.
All I can report upon is my experience. I don't aggregate data in the BG's, I play.
Blacksabre Sep 29th 2007 4:40PM
I'm in a small, friendly, stable guil;d. We run Kara and spend a lot of time helping each other with whatgever goals we have. We don't spend our lives chasing T6 gear, and we don't play the BGs for any reason except to get required rep.
The battleground system is there for the DOOM kiddies...kill, kill, kill...and buy whatever gold you need to get T6 so you can kill. The rest of us have to put up with it, and go in and die, because Blizz requires everyone to play BGs if they want the rep.
The people who play nothing but BGs in Wow might be a majority, or a minority, but you'll seldom see them running quests, or 5 man instances, and Blizz needs to separate the BGs from the real world of Warcraft. It's a totally disconnected and unpleasant part of what is otherwise an enjoyable game, and the people who play it exclusively in their immortal gear shouldn't be allowed to beat on the more normal rest of us.
I'd love to see the BGs change to a loot your kills system, where if you kill someone on the other side, you can loot the corpse, and take one or more gear items from them. It'd make a level playing field, eliminate twinks, and put playing skill back into things, instead of "uber gear FTW!".
I'd love to see those T6 people fighting in whites or greys.
Arnold Sep 29th 2007 5:19PM
Matt,
in response to your question--is it just hype or is there some basis in reality? I don't know. But here is my experience--In my battlegroup (Rampage), Alliance and Horde tend to win fairly evenly in Alterac Valley. Alliance probably slightly more on a 65:35 ratio in my experience (but since the patch this week the alliance has lost every AV game I've been in...).
However, in the other battlegrounds, I have seen all through my leveling from 15 to 70 that Horde wins approximately 90% of the games. (Yes, I did my first match of WSG at about lvl 15 when I was new in greys and a few quest greens (woot!)--and was mercilessly slaughtered over and over the whole game...). Now, I have not done any premade BGs, so all my experience has been from BG PUGs and I play a druid, not a lock, so that might have something to do with it, but it strongly appears to me in my Battlegroup at least that Horde wins a LOT more.
Now, is this due to a greater level of maturity on behalf of the horde? I seriously doubt it. What it could be? I don't know.
Just my bit.
Ian Sep 29th 2007 6:50PM
@ Blacksabre: "I'd love to see the BGs change to a loot your kills system, where if you kill someone on the other side, you can loot the corpse, and take one or more gear items from them. It'd make a level playing field, eliminate twinks, and put playing skill back into things, instead of "uber gear FTW!".
Somehow I don't think this will help. So, I'm getting started in AV, I'm terrible in PVP but learning and I get killed a lot... does this mean that they get to loot the gear that I'm struggling to build up when doing solo PvE? According to your argument, all those people in Tier 6 will continue to kill people and amass any items (discarding them in the process) from their kills, leaving the game even more unbalanced. It won't be the Tier 6 in whites and greys but us poor newbies thrown into the battle. Great idea.... not.
Belthasar Sep 29th 2007 7:28PM
"I've said before that I enjoy Alterac Valley. Even with my somewhat limited PvP abilities I've managed to rack up thousands upon thousands of HK's in there, ground up enough honor for the HW sword before the expansion came out, and have continue to play through the AFK'ers and into the dawn of this new, glorious age where AFK'ers get much less out of it."
You enjoy AV because you are bad at PvP. AV is not a PvP combat zone and everyone that enters will get those HKs and honor that you feel like you earned. AFKing is just as prevalent now as it was before, they just sit at GYs instead of the cave. It's not a new, glorious age.
RaydenUni Sep 29th 2007 8:14PM
In my experience Alliance dominated most of the WSG games I played. I've played more than a few games that ended with 0 (yes, that's ZERO) Horde kills because the Alliance was so overwhelmingly dominant. But then again, I once went 7-1 in AB one night.
Its more a matter of how well geared the other team is than which faction they are on.
Shintar Sep 29th 2007 10:09PM
See, for me the cliché of the differences between Horde and Alliance in battlegrounds has only rung true so far.
I played Alliance before Horde and never really got into the battlegrounds because they were too damn frustrating and we lost almost every game (including AV). To this day I find it rare that we win and then it's only after a tough fight.
Then I levelled up a Horde character on a different server (and in a different battlegroup) and it was like a completely different world. Suddenly battlegrounds were fun - who knew you could win WSG and AB? Then I reached the AV bracket and was sobered up a bit since yes, in this battlegroup the Horde did lose AV more often than not.
I'm guessing clichés exist for a reason - maybe the win/lose difference isn't as large as some people make it out to be, but I'd be very surprised if it really was equal.
stg_andy Sep 29th 2007 9:58PM
I just want to say the Patton is the best General the US has ever had. Way better than Bradley. ;)
Sielanas Sep 29th 2007 11:36PM
I don't mind AFKers so much anymore, it's the puggers who don't know what they're doing. Trying to get things done is impossible now with people trying to force turtles. I haven't lost an AV in a while as Alliance, and that counts just running randomly. I'd rather have AFKers ejected.
awa64 Sep 30th 2007 3:54AM
I've NEVER won a Battleground. EVER. My team has gotten *one* capture in Warsong Gulch exactly once. Every other match has been a shutout.
I've captured every location in Arathai Basin once, but I've never seen my team have more than four at once--normally, three at best, and usually just 1-2 feebly being retaken.
Following the "once" theme, I've seen my side reach the general in AV once. They still lost, but they got there, at least. Usually, we don't wind up making it all the way through to the general before ours is dead.
Believe it or not, I'm Alliance.
It might just be because I haven't hit 70 yet, and I'm playing in lower-level battlegrounds. But it's not due to battleground twinks--I've played matches where I've been able to kill any one given player on the field, and we've still lost.
agentaero Sep 30th 2007 3:07PM
lvling up my alliance guy, I started BG's with AB, we lost most of the time, unless there was a really good alliance team... or the horde only brought 10 people.. when I started playing WSG, it was awesome because we won about half the time, then I got to AV, and it was fun because we won about half the time, now.. after the patchm Ive won 1 out of 13 AV games Ive played this weekend, ouch.. but the reason is the horde on my server( antonidas) are skipping most of the stuff and going straight to van and killing him, so they are on van by the time we start pulling the warmasters.
Asu Sep 30th 2007 3:11PM
I use an addon to track wins and losses in BGs, so I actually know how many I've won and how many I've lost. It actually surprised me.
I'm alliance. AV is at 40%, AB and WSG are at about 20%. EotS I've hardly played so I don't have much data for. The interesting thing to me here is that I find losing at AB and WSG much more frustrating then losing at AV. I was under the impression that we actually won more AV games then we lost but this isn't actually the case.
Shilkanni Sep 30th 2007 9:15PM
I've only started PvP-ing very recently with a level 43 shaman and it's been a lot of fun. I'm Horde, Bloodlust Battlegroup, and in the 40-49 bracket I feel like we "usually win AB" and "usually lose WSG" (just in the last couple weeks). It feels like maybe the 40-49 WSG'ers are a little more geared up, less casual, maybe AB attracts the casual.
The only things that annoy me in BGs are people who are negative or rude to their own team (OMG you all suck! /quit). I think it's the peak of arrogance to assume that if you're losing it's everyone else on your team's fault. When people give suggestions/plans for a change of strategy I usually notice things actually improve - and I've seen games turn around, even if they don't turn into a win maybe it'll help if you're in the next game with some of those players.
Ladal Oct 1st 2007 12:54AM
There used to be some merit to the idea that one faction was better than another. It was because back in the day, Shamans and Paladins were stark opposites on the battlefield and Alliance had more casters while Horde had more melee (Warcraft anyone!!!). Generally, Horde owned AB and Alliance owned AV because of this. WSG was a toss up because of the different strategies that can be employed by both sides.
This class divide only added to the faction imbalance that was on every server. When players found a server they were outnumbered on they usually ended up rerolling on one where they were outnumbering the other faction, worsening the epidemic.
In a couple masterful strokes Blizzard changed all this and updated the Matrix. They gave both factions Shammys and Pallies. Horde got their Elf casters and Allies got Tauren. Most importantly the battlegroups helped fix the faction imbalance.
So now the only people crying/boasting about how one faction rules the other are the old foagies, like me, holding on to the "glory days". If you are Horde and you want to take a trip back in time then I highly recommend you take Snowfall on your next AV run. You will be reported, but it'll be like a shot of Viagra. Hopefully, you can stay awake.
Later
Urgele Oct 19th 2007 11:04AM
BGs have been a mixed bag for me (alliance), especially BG-weekends. I've given up all notions of grinding for PvP gear--I have too much fun with PVE content, and that's where my heart is anyway--so now I only go into BGs rarely, and then to just kill players and let off steam.
Generally, the problems with BG-weekends are three-fold: 1) people who camp for honor and don't do anything, 2) people convinced that the best way to maximize honor gain is to 'lose quickly since horde is going to win anyway', and 3) a general refusal to think of BGs as a team event.
I would like to win in BGs... but until I see more commitment by other players, I'll just grab some HKs, tyvm.
Jordan Oct 4th 2007 11:51AM
To Blacksabre...
In my opionion, if you aren't playing to be the best and have fun, what are you playing for? Once again in my opinion I think BG is the ONLY fun thing to do in wow. Raids and what not are boring as hell. Playing in BG and LOSING isn't fun, so you gear up and get the best gear to WIN, making it more fun for you.