Forum post of the Day: The Death of PvP Guilds
by Amanda Dean 
Mar 28th 2008 at 1:00PM
Laij of Laughing Skull believes that the new battleground matching system is a blow to PvP guilds. He said, "The new patch and matchmaking system has just nerfed the hell out of any pvp guild. Why run BG premades anymore? All you do is get matched up with other premades that are going to drag games out extremely long." Unsurprisingly, this was not particularly well received.
What is notable is that the thread has elicited a response from Drysc who said "Fair and challenging gameplay? The horror..." This comment opened Drysc (as a Blizzard representative) up to both criticism and support from readers. Some cheered him on for calling out the whining of the original poster, others said that class imbalance makes battlegrounds imbalanced.
The original poster's main complaint was that it takes too long for a premade team to win now. I have to disagree with this sentiment. The most fun I've ever had in a battleground was an Arathi
The thread is flame bait, but it's an interesting read. Has the new system improved PvP?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Forums, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
pheral Mar 28th 2008 1:11PM
I welcome the change with open arms. The thing that always frustrated me about facing premades was not that it was incredibly tough (Read: Near impossible) to be a well organized, geared, communicating team with a random group of people only using text chat. It was that I knew a lot of people people on the premade team had this exact mentatlity.
You just had to learn to adjust what your goals were for each game. Instead of the ultimate "win", you had to settle for simply "killing that one healer". I look forward to my first BG weekend with some fixed queues :D
Devant Mar 28th 2008 6:08PM
I would rather spend 5 minutes losing then 30-45 winning. When you add in the fact that org AVs will net you about 500 honor every 10-15 minutes. Throw on top the extra hour or two it takes to queue. This situation is dumb. I don't need to stroke my epeen. There is no such thing as a challenge in this game anymore. Just how much time you are willing to spend to get what you want. You can't do it fast or you can do it slow. PvP is in a slow death.
Welcome to the World of Boredcraft.
To bad it is the only game out there right now.
Mitch Mar 28th 2008 2:19PM
@Devant: If you would "rather spend 5 minutes losing then 30-45 winning" then you are doing it to get honor and better gear. PvP guilds arena and already have great gear so they don't need honor. They're doing it to win and have competition. It would behoove me to believe this would be a welcome change to make more challenges rather than just a quick romp over under-geared/non-communicative groups.
Now for you who just happen to get into the battle with pre-mades against each other, oh well. Just take the 15 minute debuff, do a quick daily, and then head back.
People get so worked up over this stuff. It's a game!!!!! If you don't have fun playing 'World of Boredcraft' then stop freaking playing and QQ on some other game's boards!!!!!!!
Devant Mar 28th 2008 6:09PM
I hate how at some point any criticism at all became qq.
"PvP guilds arena and already have great gear so they don't need honor."
How do you think they got to the point where they could be competive at arenas? I seriously doubt most people reach 1800+ rankings starting with greens and blues. It's close to impossible if you don't have any pvp gear to compete in season 3. I don't care how good you are. Resilience, AP, and + Spell damage out perform skill.
Assuming awesome performance of 1500 ranking in greens and blues you get ~300 points. Getting around 300-400 arena points a week would earn you an epic item about once every five and a half weeks, of season 2 gear. By the time you earn a full set guess what, it's now months into season 4. You're still 2 seasons behind.
The current state of pugs vs. pugs on MOST battlerelms is a joke. One side consistantly steam rolls the other. Unless you are on that winning side you are out of luck. The only way to be competive in situations like that is to organize a group prior to entering.
People play the game at level 70 to get new stuff. Bottom line, that is the only reason. Warcraft is based upon an effort = reward system. You work at it you level up, get better items, and get deeper into the lore. Gearing up is the main reason of joining a PVP guild.
Think how many PVP guilds you have on your server. How many do cross faction world pvp daily? Often? When was the last time a faction leader was downed on your server? Not recently I bet. There is no reward in it. A lot of work and it's PVP, but no one does it. It's fun, but no one does it. No one does it because there is no reward.
To get competive enough to earn that reward people organize. They always have. The problem is that what used to be a fun and efficient part of the game for alot of people was just broken. That makes people upset. It would make sense for the minority of people who used to play for compition to be happy, but they are not. Queue times are too long.
The only people who profit of this change are the LAZY ones. The people who just want their WELFARE EPICS. The same ones that AFK in the tunnel during AV. It takes at most 30 minutes to get together 10-15 people for a battleground, form a strategy, and get in. Once a few people start running them it gets even easier to get them formed or just jump into one that still needs a couple people. But it is just so much easier to do nothing. Or even better tell those who are upset about this change to stop with the qq. Blizzard has slowly been taking the effort = reward and turning it into Lazy = reward. Hence the growing complaint of Welfare Epics.
"Fair and challenging gameplay?" -Drysc
Seems Blizzard can only try to get one right. Remember one side always loses. It will never be fair. Right now you have both wrong. Right now if your faction loses in BGs it is imposible to get better. Impossible gameplay is a far cry from challenging.
Oriion Mar 28th 2008 1:14PM
That thread is almost a year old and people have been bumping it now and again to get the flame war going again. (See page 21, post 412: "Arise, my champion").
Still fun to watch the flames fly back and forth :)
Malachi154 Mar 28th 2008 2:49PM
05/25/2007
Oh damn. I thought Blizz had actually done something to promote fair play by making Premades fight other premades, but alas, it was not to be. IIRC, Blizz weakend the system because of all the QQ'ing over queue times...
Cerelith Mar 28th 2008 1:18PM
Oh noes. S3 geared teams cant beat up on people just starting arenas. How terrible.
ringu0 Mar 28th 2008 1:52PM
Oh they can and do. Ever heard of selling ratings/spots/teams?
Cerelith Mar 28th 2008 2:16PM
Yes and if they find that to be a problem they can start integrating the use of personal ratings more into that. But if you arent worth a higher team rating then you suffer cause youll get beat. If you have a high rating and you are on a lower team then you get to beat the system until its determined to be a problem.
blitzkrieg999 Mar 28th 2008 1:18PM
I'm with the Blue. Premade vs Premade is a helluva lot more fun than Premade vs PuG. If your guild is so crappy they have to face PuGs in order to have fun and/or do well, perhaps you have bigger issues than not liking the patch...
Tatar Mar 28th 2008 1:22PM
Not a bad post, but the thread (and Drysc's comment) is nearly ten months old.
ElCoronel Mar 28th 2008 3:02PM
"DrDiesel said...
Interesting thought but then no one would play WSG, AV would be flooded and even AB would probably take a hit."
And that would be bad why? Maybe it would actually motivate some real changes to the unpopular BGs.
Don't get me wrong, I find something to enjoy in all the BGs... AB/EotS - I pick a flag and defend it, WSG - I stay mid and work on keeping enemy flag carriers slowed/stopped, AV - the nice honor rewarded (and capturing towers). And with friends or, even better, a good raid group any BG can be a blast. But I think a little 'competition' between the BGs would push Blizzard to really make them all better.
Steve_S Mar 28th 2008 1:35PM
They still need to do more about WSG. Had a game last night go about 90 minutes, ended up with a fair amount of honor do to DR being removed but only one token. I just need tokens. If I could set it up I’d just loose 12 games in a row in 5 minutes each so I could get the hell out of there. They should get rid of the different kinds of tokens or make them exchangeable even 2 for 1. I have AV tokens rotting in my inbox I’d gladly exchange.
ThorinII Mar 28th 2008 1:41PM
/agree, we shouldn't have to play a BG we hate just to get tokens. Either let us exchange them and play the ones we do like twice as much, or just mak one honor token that comes from all of them.
DrDiesel Mar 28th 2008 1:44PM
Interesting thought but then no one would play WSG, AV would be flooded and even AB would probably take a hit.
infection Mar 28th 2008 4:51PM
Exactly, that is the point. Show blizzard that no one likes WSG and that no one is playing it. That's what needs to happen. We need new maps, not the same damn thing we've been playing with for 3 years now. Enough is enough. It can still be there for those qq'rs that are going to shed tears over wanting to play it. But everyone i've come in contact with hate wsg, can stand ab, hate eots and want change in our bg maps. Huge amounts of instances you have to choose from, but 4 bg's. Come on.
kenney Mar 28th 2008 1:40PM
It seems like the most efficient approach now is to randomly queue and hope that you win the lottery.
I LIKE the fact that premades face premades, but I wish there was an honor incentive to do so. 2 teams of well-geared players in strong communication with each other is FUN and CHALLENGING- but the games are close and take forever. There should be some motivation beyond simple challenge to take part in premades.
darian Mar 28th 2008 1:44PM
The fact that intense combat nets huge honor gains?
A lot of people don't realize that the removal of diminishing returns makes fighting the enemy as worthwhile as winning the game.
kenney Mar 28th 2008 1:46PM
good point =)
I am one of those people that hadn't realized that, but that makes sense.
Naturii Mar 28th 2008 1:45PM
Is this really true? I ran into two premades and I most certainly was not in a premade. If this is indeed true then it is great.