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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWintergrasp defense / offense on unbalanced realms
by Adam Holisky 
Dec 17th 2009 at 1:00PM
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
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
Arras Dec 17th 2009 2:46PM
seems like a good thing for the underdogs...but I wonder what will happen when the other side decides to take WG back.
I don't play WG a whole lot, but I'm thinking that if your side outnumbers the other by a large factor and can field more vehicles, then the battle won't be much of a battle....
Alveredus Dec 17th 2009 2:51PM
Well, as the ONLY Alliance who showed up to a couple of Wintergrasp matches on Area 52 recently, let me say...
1 Alliance vs. 40 Horde has no prayer of winning, even with 20 tenacity. But, MAN, it made getting Santa's Little Helper easy as I proceeded to tear through a couple hundred encounters with Horde, one-shotting them. I felt like a raid boss.
Like I said, there's really no chance of me winning even with all the tenacity in the world as the only player Alliance-side. But it's nice for HK farming at least.
Personally, I think they should have a system where:
- Tenacity increases by 5 for the offense, every consecutive loss. No cap. Maybe at a certain point, player AoEs can affect walls and destroyable structures.
- Vendor prices go down by 5% for the defender every consecutive win, up to 50% off. After that, maybe open up tiers of cosmetic rewards like a new pet, mount or tabard for every consecutive win.
This encourages defense and makes the rewards greater and greater in the face of greater and greater challenges.
Alternative thought: Each consecutive failed offense/successful defense reduces the number of defenders allowed in the raid by 2.
GrumblyStuff Dec 17th 2009 3:36PM
I could see a couple other things. Increased vehicle movement speed, reduced GCD for vehicle abilities, and increased CC resistance (reduced durations and effects of CC).
Miri Dec 17th 2009 2:59PM
Horde hold WG at least 95% percent of the time on my realm. I guess this explains those odd times that we pull the map up and say "WTF? How did we LOSE WG?"
Trade flares up when we lose it too--rather amusing too--it's usually stuff like "how much suck on the Horde side went to WG and managed to lose it for us?"
I don't think the Alliance got to see Koralon for 2 weeks when he appeared in VoA--we were doing some serious defending of the base to keep him for ourselves.
Interesting though that they have stuff in place to prevent the control of the zone by one faction.
Miri Dec 17th 2009 3:03PM
EDIT: According to Curlyearly's link, we hold it 96% of the time...I was close!
Leviathon Dec 17th 2009 3:15PM
I think this system has been in game for quite some time and is just Blizzard trying to cut down on everyone screaming 'exploit' when they see the attacking side (Alliance on my realm) suddenly have 16 siege within 2 minutes after we (the Horde) defend all the time.
wow Dec 17th 2009 3:22PM
This explains why our opponent had 16/16 vehicles within 1 minutes of the match starting...
bojangles Dec 17th 2009 3:22PM
^^ The problem here is that this could occur during off-hours, such as very early in the morning when very few people are playing. If a group of players are there to physically take WG from the opposing faction, then as soon as they have control those trade spams for VoA groups will pop up.
Lantokk Dec 17th 2009 3:59PM
Despite the extreme imbalance on US-Garona in favor of Alliance, the first few months of Lich King had possession of the fortress at roughly even, which seems fairest. Then exploits became better known and vehicles scaled, and next thing you know Horde held Wintergrasp most of the time even though they were WELL outnumbered--y'know when Tenacity is at 10+ and the Horde has 16 vehicles before the clock counts down to 29 minutes, there nearly impossible to stop.
Then came the recent patches that finally cleaned up most of the exploits, or at least mitigated them. Unfortunately they came at roughly the same time as faction switching and being able to mail account-bound items across the faction line. Since then it seems like Alliance almost always has Wintergrasp and rarely fails anymore to take it back immediately. My theory is that a lot of Horde players simply gave up for the time being and are playing Alliance to earn the heirlooms and top gear. Whether the intent is permanent or not, I don't know.
I welcome further mitigation of the imbalance. I have both Horde and Alliance but I'm usually playing my Alliance toons, yet I believe that despite any gross imbalance in player populations, each side deserves to have Wintergrasp half the time. There are no limits on the number of players who can run Vault or spend shards, so there is no fair reason for either side to suffer in vain for their effort put into the battles. As fun as the battles are now that Alliance has finally learned to work for it (Horde always played more wisely in the past), they still should have to lose more than once or twice a day.
Nemu Dec 18th 2009 12:17AM
As I stated elsewhere, I rolled onto Garona from Cho'gall and it's very light and day as a Hordie on Garona. (And, honestly, Cho'Gall was boring BECAUSE of the overwhelming majority of Horde. Hard to have world PVP with no Alliance. :( )
Anyway, I don't mind losing in a fair fight. I hate having no chance. When Blizz gave us the player cap in WG it got better for a while, but now it's back to sheer luck when we win--luck that the people participating aren't wearing buckets on their heads. I hate to suggest it, but maybe the cap needs to be LOWER, then again...even when we have VOA, it's hard to fill more than one raid for it. Meh.
WTB: more Horde
rmcarthur Dec 17th 2009 4:31PM
Wintergrasp has always been a little off . On Stormrage, we never, ever got Tenacity and never had a shot at getting that achievement to win while having it.
We tend to have Wintergrasp 90 percent of the time. The horde might overwhelm us once but it's a rare occurrence to see them successfully defend the place.
Tenacity has always been a bit goofy. In one on one situations, it gives a major unfair advantage to the team that gets it. If you run into a 10 stack tenacity person in a corner of the place, you have two options, try to run or stand there and take the death. Also, you can still be out-maneuvered if you don't have enough players. Even with tens of thousands of hp, a limited sized team can't work at the fort and still cover all the field.
Also, all players are not created equal under tenacity. A 100k+ hp bear tank or paladin can be near impossible to take down unless you have multiple groups of people attacking them.
Tenacity really should max out at a lower number like maybe 7 and too bad if you can't manage more players on the field.
I think a couple of solutions to the problem might be easily managed. One might be to kick out the losing side guy who sells stuff for marks and shards to the losing entry base.
Another might be a smart Tenacity system that reacts to player number changes faster and gives tenacity based on localized areas of the battlefield. I'm not really sure how feasible those kind of changes would be though.
The last option I considered was to have instanced versions of wintergrasp that have equal teams. I'm not really sure how they'd hand out wins and control though.
uncaringbear Dec 17th 2009 4:39PM
I really enjoyed my first month or so of playing Wintergrasp. The battles were fun and it felt fresh. As time progressed, I started to hate fighting against tenacity and the advantages, referred to by Bornakk, given to the other side became more and more apparent.
Right now playing WG is not a PvP battle against the other faction's players. It's a fight against the background mechanics implemented by Blizzard. These days I join in WG to do my WG quests, kill the VoA bosses and that's it. What a shame, because WG used to be heaps of fun.
uncaringbear Dec 17th 2009 4:41PM
I would rather see Blizzard address the faction population imbalances on the realms before introducing silly mechanics like tenacity.
Hoggersbud Dec 17th 2009 7:18PM
Exactly what would you have them do?
uncaringbear Dec 17th 2009 11:12PM
They could start by offering incentives for people to transfer to under-populated realms. Having balanced populations is actually a good thing, and benefits everyone.
zaababy Dec 17th 2009 5:08PM
I think this is nice. It would be horrible if my faction never won a Wintergrasp on my server. Thanks Blizz.
bethsheart Dec 17th 2009 5:18PM
On Winterhoof about the only time we Alliance players win is around 2am when all the hordies are in bed for school the next day. I do feel this mechanic will really help out.
But i do feel that YES, they do need to do something about player logging in on top of towers. It is a massive cheapshot thing to do as no one can get LOS on the guys to stop their attacks on gun emplacements.
Also something needs to be done to make the PVP numbers of factions more even. On our server a lot of allied players have given up as when they do show it's 3:1 or worse odds..
IE: about 4 nights ago 15 to 45 odds.. People are screaming to go defend the south towers, but it was kill or be killed and get as much honor as you can because We arent winning.
It's also kind of pathetic when you do get high numbers and out of 45 players 30 ding their defend wintergrasp achievement at the same time, because we always lose on defense due to the odds and cheats.
Hoggersbud Dec 17th 2009 7:05PM
>But i do feel that YES, they do need to do something about player logging in on top of towers.<
I agree. This is clearly an exploit, as Blizzard prevents it from being done by players to mobs, but I don't know what they could do to protect the cannons, which don't move. Maybe add some similar pathing thing for them, and if it's engaged, put them in their own evade-mode.
Or even to make it really painful to do, increase all the damage done by every cannon and decrease opponents tenacity.
See, I don't mind tenacity as a concept, but when I see somebody running around where nobody can get to them, I know they're exploiting the limitations of the game engine.
And that's just not right.
Rokkitgrrl Dec 17th 2009 5:37PM
So would this mechanic prevent a 40-person offensive raid team from dropping in right on the front steps equipped with 55 Saronite Bombs and 25 Goblin Sapper Charges from cracking into the Vault, completely by-passing all of the siege equipment and R.P.G.G.'s?
jslim419 Dec 17th 2009 5:42PM
I just wish they would give a notification before the "free win for the loser faction" match so i would know not to waste my time even queing up.
basically it goes like this. when your on defense and you see the attacking forces have all four southern siege workshop's it's basically an automatic loss for defenders unless only 5 defenders que up for that WG.
while it makes it so that even if your on the losing faction you still able to get a shot at vault a few time's a day, and that is a good thing otherwise you would have everyone on the losing faction calling for developer blood. it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like being told to lose to your sister to make her happy. yeah i would be pissed if i was horde (on my server) and never won a match. but i still feel like blizzard is telling me "you and your faction is pretty good so we're going to penalize you". these days with the cap of how many people can que up for WG on both sides i think this mechanic is a bit much. even if one faction has more players than the other i don't see how one side can lose due to being outnumbered when only 100 people can que up for every WG unless it's 3 in the morning.
imo the only mistake blizzard made with WG was making access to VOA determined by who held the zone. thus them making it so it had to be fair for everyone, even if that meant "handing" the weaker (in skills, and supposedly numbers) faction free wins.
so again i ask. if they are going to give the weaker faction on a realm free wins in WG. give the stronger faction a notification when the free win match will be. because contrary to popular belief on my server my time is indeed valuable. but i'm not so cold hearted not to think of our no skill having enemies. give them a notice next to the WG timer if the next match will be their free win also so they know when to get it. there everyone is happy.