Wintergrasp defense / offense on unbalanced realms

The faction hording of Wintergrasp happens particularly often on unbalanced realms. Because the faction imbalance can be so extreme in some cases, the smaller population faction has virtually no chance at winning back the Wintergrasp fortress and obtaining the heirlooms and PvP items, nor any chance at accessing the VoA bosses. This can cause frustration on the part of players in the smaller faction.
In this mechanic, which we presume is live, Wintergrasp zone mechanics will make it easier for the offense to gain access to siege vehicles if the opposing faction holds Wintergrasp more often. Blizzard is not specifying how long the opposing faction must defend Wintergrasp for the the offense to receive these significant buffs, but one can assume there is some sort of threshold.
The full Blizzard statement after the break.
From Bornakk:
We wanted to address some of the confusion we often see regarding the Battle for Wintergrasp. We will not provide exact details on how the system works to try and avoid abuse of the mechanics, but there is a system in place that can change how the battle plays out.
When one faction defends more than the other, the system will give advantages like the ability to use catapults or siege tanks faster to the faction that is on the offensive. On realms where one faction is often able to defend the fortress and the other faction rarely defends, the system tries to help this balance by providing bonuses to the faction that rarely succeeds at defending.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 6)
shibumi Dec 17th 2009 1:17PM
this is different than Tenacity buffs for offense?
Ringo Flinthammer Dec 17th 2009 1:15PM
Of course, them sticking with the current system leads to Master of Wintergrasp being unobtainable for half of each server, since there's no way the side without tenacity will ever kill 20 mounted players with a cannon.
Since it's effectively just a non-instanced battleground now, just make it so that only the same number of people on each side can join the battle. That would resolve the perma-winner situation as well as eliminate the need for the stupid tenacity hack.
hiphophomies Dec 17th 2009 2:20PM
Yes. Preventing people from playing won't cause an wow riot.
Greg Dec 17th 2009 1:16PM
I hope this can make a difference. The horde own WG in Nordrassil, and I think Alliance stop showing up out of frustration.
Rhabella Dec 17th 2009 1:24PM
It's partly because any intelligent Alliance players have long abandon Nordrassil. It was my first server, and I played on it as long as I could but it was miserable. After some research and reading a couple of guild recruitment posts, I was able to find another home for my toons.
It cost a chunk of cash, but it was well worth it because Nordrassil seems to lack some of the more experienced yet friendly players other servers have. They are either experienced or friendly, rarely do you find someone who is both on Nordrassil in my expereince.
Rohannor Dec 17th 2009 2:03PM
I'm on Nordrassil, and despite a few recent Alliance wins, the Horde has WG probably 80% of the time or more, especially during prime times. It wasn't quite this bad earlier on, but a lot of players have given up because of doing other content and/or because the battles have gotten so lopsided. Personally, I'd attribute the Horde's success to several factors based on what I've seen. At least on Nordrassil, the Horde PvPers in WG seem more organized, work together and generally take PvP more seriously than Alliance in general. Thus they are better geared for it. Also, the Alliance has always suffered from a lack of organization and a significant percentage of what I'll call the "idiot factor" in their ranks. People just doing stupid stuff in battle, etc. Not whining about it, in fact I tip my hat to them. Wish Alliance could get its act together but I don't see it happening.
kokot_dreveny Dec 17th 2009 2:09PM
You guys talking about Nordrassil EU or US?
Stephen Dec 21st 2009 9:36AM
Good new. on my server Horde has defended WG over 600 times while Allys (Me :( ) only 60.......
Krabork Dec 17th 2009 1:16PM
There's such a fascination with the turnover of the realm because of access to Vault of Archavon. But what gets lost is that actual (gasp) PvP that goes on. When the clear intent of the system is to promote turnover, why would I go and waste my time in the BG? When the attacker gets instant tanks, how is that fun?
Avan Dec 17th 2009 1:45PM
Have one group hold each of the workshops for the entirety of the battle. For this tactic to work, the groups will need to pre-emptively be in position to take the shops before the battle actually starts.
No shops, no tanks.
Rhabella Dec 17th 2009 1:18PM
This is a question, and potentially one where I might be completely incorrect in my original understanding, but how are some servers so imbalanced it creates problems?
Since the reduction of 100 players on each factions allowed in the battle and the tenacity buff, I would have thought this would balance it as much as possible. Would it be ignorant to believe even on servers with huge population disparities that a 100 people aren’t participating in the battle?
McDie Dec 17th 2009 1:27PM
Yes it would be ignorant to assume that there are 100 people in the battle. On Smolderthorn Alliance side it is fairly common to see less than 40. Even with Tenacity x20 I still die pretty quickly when 15 people focus fire me.
crschmidt Dec 17th 2009 1:35PM
On Malygos, even the (5x imbalance positive) Alliance side often doesn't get a full three raids during off times; we'll sometimes have two or three, but rarely have the full 120. Tenacity stacks are largely unaffected by the 3.2 changes to force a limited number of players in the zone on this server.
Jay Dec 17th 2009 4:52PM
On Wintergrasp-US when I play it is often very well matched, always very close to 40 players per side. We don't seem to have much imbalance at all and both sides seem to win pretty much evenly.
100 people per side? I doubt that has ever happened on our server.
Jay Dec 17th 2009 4:56PM
Blergh no edit button, Whisperwind-US.
I think I have Wintergrasp on the mind as I have spent the last two weeks being hardcore PvP trying to get the full armour set.
Cobalt Dec 17th 2009 1:24PM
Faction "hording"?
While that does happen a lot on my server (thank goodness I'm Horde), isn't the term "hoarding"? =)
frozndevl Dec 17th 2009 1:28PM
I can say for sure that this is happening on Cho'gall. Often the Alliance will roll up to the keep with 5-6 siege engines within 30 seconds of the battle starting.
Skadja Dec 17th 2009 1:31PM
Yeah, but to be fair...that's the entire alliance population of Cho'gall =(
Greg Dec 17th 2009 1:40PM
Hey - I resemble that remark. I consider myself an intelligent Alliance player. I've got 12 toons between my wife and I. Ain't no way I'm moving, unless I win some sort of lottery.
jtrack3d Dec 17th 2009 1:42PM
Well, Alliance holds WG on our server the most often and we too have seen what appears to be "hacking" to get siege early. From a players' perspective it seems an obvious and unfair advantage through mechanisms or not.
The true question I'd have would be the objective of WG. Is it more fun to have them "auto-balance" the sides to ensure more even chances at winning or to give each side the exact same treatment and "may the best faction win" as it goes" Which is "right" and which is "most fun"?
If the WG vendors and instances weren't bound to the result of the battle, fewer people would care who wins, but then again, fewer would also do it as well. It seems to me that their manipulations help keep it "fun" even if it obviously isn't equal treatment.
I think if they continue to imbalance WG they should try to subtlety hide the ways in which they do it such that the players can't obviously scratch their heads and say... "HEY, WHAT"S UP WITH THAT.... THEY CHEATED". Things like stronger siege, weapons, hidden tenacity / resistence, etc.
HOWEVER, it shouldn't be so obvious as to have a single player on one side able to level 20 on the other side. It is all about subtlety hiding the advantage.
If they removed this "balancing" I'd fathom fewer people would play WG because it'd just get dull losing all the time.