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.
Filed under: Patches, News items, PvP
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Reader Comments (Page 3 of 6)
ShadowPriest Dec 17th 2009 1:45PM
Im some cases though, the "wintergrasp Advantage" may not matter that much. Take my server, Ravenholdt. *Shout out to August Muse*. Alliance there can have 3 - 5 stacks of tenacity (5 with everyone coming back to the new content patch) and even with early seige builds you can simply be over run by not just pure numbers, but the mitigation of dmg isn't that great that even having 100K health from tenacity dosen't make you last that much longer.
Besides buffing tenacity, or maybe adding strong NPCS to the attackers & defenders of the tenacity team, can we see a more balance.
Naara
August Muse
Ravenholdt
John Dec 17th 2009 1:49PM
On my server, Alliance control WG for several days at a time. It is incredibly unbalanced. I haven't bothered to look at the log in the Vault lately -- it gets too depressing. The ratio has probably gotten to around 10:1 (or more) since faction transfers.
Getting vehicles faster doesn't fix the problem. Incompetent players are still incompetent and don't cooperate. Additionally, 27 disorganized players against 80 Alliance still equals fail.
I'm not faction-biased here, either. WG simply isn't fun for either side any more. No challenge if you're Ally, no hope if you're Horde. The zone is simply "broken" in terms of fun and needs some tweaking.
epik.phailure.gamer Dec 17th 2009 1:51PM
I really like the fact below the comment box it says:
Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.
Hrm, me thinks AOL may be opening it self up to a lawsuit here...
Just a thought...
Kylenne Dec 17th 2009 1:54PM
...yeah I'm going to nerdrage for a minute, because being in the minority faction on a stupidly imbalanced server, I can tell you that whatever asinine mechanics they have in place do jack crap to ensure a fair fight. When you are vastly outnumbered by the other faction none of this shyte matters. It doesn't matter what tactics you use or what tricks they put in when the other side outnumbers you 4 and 5 to 1 and can just zerg you, Tenacity be damned. I can't remember the last time I saw a Stone Keeper's Shard and let's not even discuss VoA. Alliance virtually owns WG 24/7 on Proudmoore.
And when Faction Changes went in, it just made it worse since most people seemed to go H->A instead of the other way around. Before then we might have gotten lucky to get WG maybe once or twice a week. Now? Frickin forget it. I don't know wtf possessed Blizzard to allow Faction Changes on imbalanced servers in the first place. Now they talk about WG? That's like treating the symptom instead of the disease that causes it. What they need to do is take drastic steps to fix the imbalances in the first place. Not just the half-assed free transfer thing. Offer free faction changes or something.
Tyr Dec 17th 2009 1:59PM
The only time Horde has a slight chance to win wintergrasp on my server is during raid times (roughly 20:00 - 24:00). The alliance is always hard capped on manpower while the horde side often has trouble filling more than one raid.
Tenacity doesn't do a damn thing if you get focus fired, and it's almost impossible to win back siegeshops if every one of em is guarded by 15-20 people. If we DO win, we almost never defend it successfully.
I've stopped doing wintergrasp almost entirely because I just get so frustrated every time I go in there. I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever this patch, we still get plowed.
Jeff Dec 17th 2009 2:12PM
Hey, you use gmail! I should gmail friend you! Then we could talk! Yay!
K Dec 17th 2009 2:12PM
I can't see why they couldn't enforce an automatic handover of Wintergrasp after it's been in one faction's control for, say, 5 consecutive times.
bean Dec 17th 2009 2:13PM
The one thing tenacity seems to completely fail to help with is cc - all us horde may get 120k health, but if I have a rogue, a pally, and a lock among the 5 that are fighting me, I'm not going to get to perform a single action before I die.
JFetch Dec 17th 2009 2:27PM
I left Area 52 because of this problem. The whole time I was there, we won WG one time while I was running it. I think the problem that needs to be addressed is the 10 to 1 unbalance in factions on the server, not just WG. If there were more Alliance, the WG problem would fix itself.
VSUReaper Dec 17th 2009 2:40PM
I have been preaching this for almost a year to anyone that will listen (and some that dont!) Blizz has all these servers that are locked or have large Que times to get into the game: why not just offer free transfers off of the highpop servers to the low pop servers where there is an imbalance!
Server A is locked. Sever B and C need an infusion of players on the Alliance side. Alliance from server A get free transfers to either B or C.
Or another option is to say Server D and E are inversely imbalanced, and are both low pop servers (one has a lot of horde, one has alot of alliance). Just merge the servers together so that it balances out! Instead of Blackwing Lair and Bronzebeard (just using random server names) you would have Bronzebeard Lair!
Dracula Jones Dec 18th 2009 9:39AM
Area 52 =\
I have gotten 100+ WG tokens. My WG wins achievement count is 8. God bless the Alliance who are still with us on Area 52. At this point, I can't remember the last time we've held it. It has to be a month now without the WG buff at any point other than 4am, if even then. This "fix" is meaningless when all 12 sieges are killed by the time we even cross the field on our way to the walls.
Ikillclothys Dec 17th 2009 2:29PM
This is funny. On my server, Ursin, the Horde clearly outnumber us. I thought the mechanics were happening for both sides. When we are attacking, I can make the tanks within 3 minutes of the game starting, and I'm a Healer Shammy.
Doc Dec 17th 2009 2:34PM
What a great idea!!! An automatic WIN or FAIL based on the realm win/loss history!?!?!?
OMG!!! i cant wait to AUTO-FAIL in WG so the terribad Alliance can finally feel good about themselves for AUTO-WINNING!!! WHOOOT!! I know I would be so very proud to finally AUTO-WIN something in a video game. GG
Q. Why even have a WG battle at all when what we really need is a coin toss every 2hrs right Blizz?
Renn Dec 17th 2009 2:52PM
I too am so happy that the Alliance will finally get to AUTO-WIN. Cheers Alliance!! Losing just shouldn't be allowed in WoW...
Janelle Dec 17th 2009 2:35PM
Our server is REALLY bad with this. Alliance ALWAYS lose which really sucks. We used to win sometimes in the beginning but now.. never. I think horde have controlled WG for the last 2 weeks straight!?
VSUReaper Dec 17th 2009 2:35PM
I think that this might be helpful, but heres the thing: on some realms (mine for example is BWL) the loosing/underpopulated faction doesnt even bother to show up!
Last night was so bad, I logged onto a DK I use for pet trading and did a /who wintergrasp and found 2 people in the entire zone. Both of them said they were hiding somewhere in the zone waiting on the elementals to respawn so that they could continue farming...
And its like this almost all the damn time. Once a week, the top 2 raiding guilds (there are only 2 that are considered progressive) will go in and actually put up a fight, and barely win - full stacks of tenacity and using the old hack (logging in with full blown siege engines).
I personally believe that what they need to do is let the underpopulated faction be able to que from anywhere in the world, or at least Northrend, like they do the instances or BG's.
Ellie Dec 17th 2009 2:39PM
I don't think this is something that has been changed in the patch. I did a lot of WGs 3-6 months ago and there was much talk alliance-side about horde cheating, since they could get tanks 1 minute into the fight. Now I see that this mechanic must have been the reason.
These days horde owns WG 9/10 of the time on my server. I don't know why, the realm doesn't seem that unbalanced. Probably they're just better organized. I usually don't go there anymore, I've had to realize that I'll never be good at PvP. Yesterday and today I've done 3 WGs however (going for "With a little helper"-ach.) and we actually won once. We had tanks within 1 minute, so I guess the mechanic still works...
Curlyearly Dec 17th 2009 2:41PM
I doubt these changes will make any impact on the most imbalanced realms, which is where the real problem is. When you're outnumbered by that much, tenacity and quicker vehicles alone will not give you a chance.
I think a more dramatic solution is in order. Take a look at Cho'gall for this month. The alliance have won 8 games TOTAL out of 140 battles so far! (source: http://www.timeuntilwintergrasp.com/realm.asp?r=Cho'gall).
On realms like Bonechewer, there is a very good back-and-forth going on. I think there should still be value in fighting for control of WG, but at some point it really needs to switch hands. Maybe after multiple consecutive losses, the base health of all vehicles goes up (similar to tenacity health buff). Also, the WG towers/walls/guns all have slightly reduced health, proportional to how much the attacking team has been loosing.
The losing faction has lost 20 games in a row? Make the vehicles very strong and the fortress very weak. There would quite a balancing act as far as how much to nerf the WG defenses, etc, but this way it would give the losing team a fighting chance. Hell, even give the defending team an extra bonus if they successfully defend WG with their fortress being weakened.
Random ideas =)
Miri Dec 17th 2009 3:03PM
REALLY interesting link--and it backs up my earlier comment...Horde is pretty much always controlling A52's WG. I see Alliance with 6 wins this month so far...
Nemu Dec 18th 2009 12:11AM
Love that link.
While I used to play Horde on Cho'gall, I rerolled to joining friends on (ugh) Garona:
According to that site Horde are 38-103 v Alliance.
-_- Yay.