Patch 3.2 gives Wintergrasp a queue
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jun 20th 2009 at 12:00PM
Here's a change that will probably be by turns amusing, exasperating, or a relief, depending on who you are and how you play: In a new section recently slipped into the official 3.2 PTR patch notes, Blizzard revealed that they plan to add a queue to Wintergrasp in Patch 3.2. In short, you can queue up by visiting a Battlemaster or entering the zone within 15 minutes of the game start. Only 100 people will be allowed to fight on each side of the battle, to be chosen randomly from the battlemaster and from the zone, with level 80s receiving highest priority.
When Wintergrasp was first introduced, even people who otherwise disliked PvP found it fun, and some old-timers found it be about the closest thing to the fabled world PvP battles of old in Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, and other such places.
Unfortunately, Wintergrasp has found itself the victim of far too much popularity. The fun factor aside, it's also one of the easiest way to grind honor, heirlooms, and epic gear you'll find in game, and it got so overcrowded that it would often destabilize whole servers when a battle was active. Blizzard tried numerous ways to combat these problems, including preventing lowbies from afking in zone to gather free honor and reducing the daily quests to weekly quests.
Apparently, none of these measures have worked to their satisfaction, and instead, they've simply placed a hard cap on the whole zone, arguably turning it into just another battleground that happens to occupy the same space as a PvE farming zone. While Wintergrasp may have been first meant to be a break from battlegrounds or an attempt to give people back the epic World PvP they remembered from the old Hillsbrad days, it seems Blizzard's found the whole concept a bit too overwhelming.
On one hand, it's a bit disappointing to see these changes. It's a lot of fun to get into a good chaotic PvP melee and do some damage. That may be one of the reasons the old hours long version of Alterac Valley was one of my favorites battlegrounds. On the other hand, if it means less lag overall for everyone, it may just be a sacrifice worth making, even if it will suck when one is not chosen for the battle.
Besides, 100 people is still an awful lot, more than, for example, those old 40- person AV days I was waxing nostalgic over a few sentences back. It'll be interesting to see how balance works out on this change, mostly. Will 100 vs. 100 show any glaring flaws on the offense or defense? If nothing else, it'll be a handy excuse to use when you lose, I'm sure.
For your convenience, here's the notes on the system as they appear in the most recent official patch 3.2 PTR notes:
Wintergrasp
To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.
- Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
- Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
- The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
- Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
- Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
- The queue will accept up to 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 200 players at a time.
Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
yokumgang Jun 20th 2009 12:04PM
Laaaaame.
thebitterfig Jun 20th 2009 1:17PM
that was my first instinct, too.
then i wondered about my server, and maybe it's just the moderately small population, but i don't know if there tend to be many more than 100 people per side in there to begin with. i'll have to see it in implementation before i totally trash the idea, but it doesn't sound too hopeful...
WoWie Zowie Jun 20th 2009 12:25PM
omg rejoice!
wg is so broken as is. its not fun to run in and try to cast something, wait 5 seconds, then be dead and see o ya there were 10 people shooting me... get my drift? ie, lag was murdering wg.
sorry this change is NOT "laaaaaame" this is freaking perfect!
200 people is a hella lot, you won't notice the difference in fun i promise, except for the fact that you'll be able to actually function now. yaaay!
Ed Jun 20th 2009 12:38PM
Second the LAME!
What's this going to do to raids that form up beforehand? Its common place on my server for 1-3 full raids preforming and prepping for battle. Does this mean a bunch of people from each raid will be denied access? If so I guess we can chance to form up right after the battle begins inside WG.
Bob Jun 20th 2009 12:37PM
100 people per side is plenty. Horde on my server can barely muster 40, sometimes we get half of a second raid going (those are the good battles). I think that we'll mostly love it, as the Allies on out server frequently have more than 100 on their side, so it should even things out and make you rely on tenacity less if you are on the underpowered side of a WG match.
Posi Jun 20th 2009 1:52PM
Yep, I agree, this is stupid. What it essentially does is change WG from an open world PvP zone to just another battleground. It would really be nice if Activision could just get their crap together and make it work. It seems making this game work properly seems to pose too difficult a problem for Blizzard to resolve ever since Activision came on board.
Sonicandtails Jun 20th 2009 2:07PM
Posi: OK well, the day you have CCNA's and understand how hundreds/thousands of connections to one server can cause extreme lag, then you can tell Blizzard how to "resolve" things. It's not like they are missing the magic programming button that fixes all lag and solves all their problems.
Urza Jun 20th 2009 4:27PM
Very lame.
Faar Jun 20th 2009 6:48PM
Posi:
"Activision" (Blizzard, really, since Activision has no direct hand in the running or making of WoW) CAN'T just get their crap together. They've been trying for over six months now to get WG running smoothly and it just isn't possible in a completely open manner. Computer power doesn't always scale linearly with the amount of processors you throw at a problem, and even if it does, it makes no sense from any viewpoint to have perhaps dozens of expensive CPUs per realm that only ever gets used for fifteen minutes every two hours, yet still are chugging electricity constantly and belching out heat regardless of if they're needed or not.
This is one of the best friggin changes they made to the game. If only they'd change the weekly quests back to dailies now so I could earn some easy golds just by winning a battle once a day like I used to...
Posi Jun 20th 2009 7:22PM
Sorry bub... I work in the industry and it comes down to poor and fragmented code from doing so many halfass patches to the game over years of development and the utter disregard to attempt repair of this code because they figure the same addicts will stick around if they promise new content. Therefore all the R&D budget goes to this rather than fixing what's already broke. I gotta love all you bleeding hearts that defend poor maintenance of the game by sayin....ooooh, give them a break, it's really hard. Yeah, deal with it, It's hard to make a game that gross's 234 million dollars anually.
Janaa Jun 21st 2009 2:23AM
@wowzowie & kompressah -
Yes, it will fix the lag to a small degree. But how will you get to experience this since you'll have a reduced chance to actually get into WG? On my server, there are around 400 alliance per WG during peak times. That now means 3 out of 4 of those players are now gonig to be cursing blizzard for the fact they can't get into WG now. In fact, playing on my server, you've got a greater chance of NOT getting into WG, than getting in. "QQ moar - WG @ 3am" is not a solution for everyone.
slimj091 Jun 21st 2009 2:58AM
so basically this will turn into a lottery system. great idea. i absolutely love the idea of being denied entry into a WG battle because i rolled a lower number than 100 other people 12 out of 12 times each day.
better yet. why don't we just have everyone that logs into 3.2 generate a random number that states wether or not they will be able to do anything at all in the game in order to reduce lag. roll lower than a 30? sorry all of your toons are frozen in place until blizzard uses some of the cash that they wipe their backsides with.. to upgrade the freaking servers.
M Jun 22nd 2009 8:13AM
Or, Posi, it -could- be that there is -so- much server-side processing necessary to calculate spell effects, message notifications, temporary buffs and debuffs, AoE details, etc., raid-wide (instead of just group-wide) and in large areas that it just takes a lot more processing power than is economically possible for such a limited period of time.
Maybe, since threads are expensive (compared to non-threaded code), they group a few connections per thread, and the latency for one person affects the rest of the people in that group. I've never written a communications module for anything remotely similar, so I have no idea what tricks they have to use to pull something like this off on a scale this massive.
Or, maybe they actually could spend a lot of time and redesign the entire message parsing and combat engines for the game to make it more streamlined for a 20-minute battle every 2.5 hours. Who needs 3.2 or Icecrown when you can have battles 1000 vs 20!
None of us know what is going on with the server-side processing, or whether the code is ugly or beautiful, so none of us can really speculate whether they could have done something different. We can only whine that they didn't do what -we- wanted.
Life goes on.
ajkcupcrazy Jun 20th 2009 12:05PM
Baddddd idea.
I don't like this one bit because Wintergrasp was supposed to be an open PvP zone.
Plus battles are more epic when you have people flying in randomly and when you grab over 100 people...
Idk maybe this will be a good thing, but ATM it sounds really bad.
Drago Dracini Jun 20th 2009 2:05PM
one word. lag. maybe it will fix the HORRIBLE lag for the people there.
klink-o Jun 20th 2009 6:02PM
Yeah, and strand everyone else who wants to play for 5 hours. Yeah that's a lot better.
Gothia Jun 21st 2009 3:44AM
Lag destroyed Wg as it did with Warhammer. Blizzard should just instance this Bg instead of still trying to ride the world PvP train. Open the zone as a regular zone, put some quest hubs and new content in the zone and forget world pvp failed concept. My question is since this is going to be a controlled pvp area will battles continuously que or is this a 2 1/2 hours waste of time?
bobthomas Jun 20th 2009 12:05PM
just instance it, call it a battleground and get it over with. that's where it's heading anyway.
Camaris Jun 20th 2009 1:48PM
Isn't this exactly what happened to the original battleground, AV?
It does seem to be inevitable. I mean.. it's getting kind of silly to do everything to make it work like an instanced battleground, but not make the extra step of adding the portal and making it available to more people.
Darris Allen Jun 20th 2009 12:05PM
Oh.
Snap.
No they didnt.