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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 6 of 6)
rightorleft Dec 18th 2009 1:23AM
I honestly hope this is bogus. I play on a PvP server where the Alliance outnumber us by an obscene amount. As a result every time Winter Grasp is up for contro,l the Horde ban together and we control it over 90% of the time as a pay back for all the ganking we endure while out questing. Now Blizzard wants to hand them Winter Grasp?!? Seriously. I heard how Blizzard favors the Alliamce but this nuts. If you're gonna make Winter Grasp favor the loses, then do it to ALL battle grounds...not just the ones that the Horde rule in (see the changes in Alterac Valley for an example).
Friday_Knight Dec 18th 2009 3:00AM
Despite what you may think this does little to solve the issue. I play Horde on Medivh and this problem is out of control. The only time we even have a shot of taking Wintergrasp is at obscenely late/early AM hours where the numbers become roughly equal. When I attempt to play a game with a 20 stack of tenacity I just don't bother anymore.
The "fix" they're talking about is just what they're saying. Somewhere between the little Horde camp and the Broken Temple Workshop I rank up straight to First Lieutenant (Rank 3 with access to all vehicles) without even making a kill. This does very little to even the playing field with how grossly outnumbered we are. During peak hours I would say we're outmatched at least 30:1. We all grab our siege tanks and demolishers right out of the gate and most times we don't even make it to the walls. My poorly geared mage has gotten well over 60,000 health via tenacity, but it does little good when you're swarmed by 20 enemy players at once. Yeah I do crazy damage and take one or two of them with me, but we still lose.
Every. Single. Game.
The only real times we pulled a victory out was when people used teleporting bugs to get into the fortress with breaking the walls, but now that's been hotfixed.
This is all in opposition to my Alliance server, Ner'zhul (where I play more often) where Wintergrasp reliably changes hands almost every game. One side or the other will occasionally get Tenacity, but only a couple of stacks and it makes little difference as both sides are positively swarming with players.
My advice to anyone suffering from this problem: transfer to a high pop server.
Sinthar Dec 18th 2009 10:11AM
Heres an idea,
Instance the WG battle. Balance the sides making the WG battle a BATTLEGROUP idea, same ppl on each side. Filling as many WG instances as possible. The winner would be the side that has the most WG victories (making sure that only odd numbers of instances spawn - preventing ties)
Move all the vendors/q givers to the losing sides fp, so there is accessability to obtain PVP gear.
Make VoA available to both sides all the time (via qing and teleport to dungeon).
The reasons for these,
This will balance the sides reguardless of the server inbalance. Balancing the battlegroup is far easier. It will lead to having fair (or fairer at least) battles for WG, to the benefit of everyones enjoyment. It should also prevent the locking out of one side for the vast majority of the time. The only real drawback is that you could end up winning your battle, but losing WG anyhow.
The vendor move imo is more realistic. If your side loses, atm your vendor dissapears, and for realms who have been locked out, means they have more problems obtaining the very gear to make it more even.
The last is because if people know they can use VoA anytime, they are not forced to PVP (badly usually). This should help to remove the 'noob' element from it (it wont eliminate it - but may well reduce it).
Lastly i would like to also plead that we need some other sort of moderation in it. There is one 'cheat' that means people log over to the opposing faction, make a catapult, then wander off and attack air. This is deliberate, and designed to bleed the attackers total no's of engines, so can we have a raid 'vote to kick' button?
AnotherWarlock Dec 18th 2009 9:30AM
The problem with Wintergrasp on unbalanced servers (which is one on my server) is that tenacity doesnt affect every aspect of combat. CCs in particular make it impossible for the underdog faction to get anything done. I often have more than 100k health (up from around 17 k normally) In WG due to tenacity and never make it past the flight point because the opponent just lock us down and burn through our hp. If we do manage to get a few vehicles in play, they last about 30 seconds.
Tenacity should reduce the effectiveness of ccs and vastly improve vehicle life AND attack power.
I get to do vault about once a month which is very irritating. This is the biggest thorn in my game right now, and I often finding myself wishing they would just remove WG from WOW altogether if they cant get it right.
Vinna Dec 18th 2009 1:50PM
When I played ally on a horde dominated server (Thrall) I wondered why sometimes as soon as the battle would start we'd get first lieutenant and be able to make siege engines right away, this explains it.
I've also played a bit on Ally dominated Proudmoore a bit, and I don't think I have ever been in WG there when ally hasn't won. While it's great to win, it kinda takes some of the fun out of it when there's no challenge and you're always defending (since they never seemed to lose)
jslim419 Dec 18th 2009 5:23PM
i would say that that one person going head long into 15 enemy players instead of gathering up 15 players of his own is a bad player.
this isn't 3.1 anymore when you can have 300 alliance and only 100 horde. you have 100 alliance, and 100 horde. and almost every battle is fought with maxed teams unless it's 3am. so you can throw out that "but we're outnumbered" crap right now.
any faction that loses WG consistently these days is mainly because the players in their faction sucks. it has nothing to do with which side has the most players.
jslim419 Dec 18th 2009 5:26PM
crap.. double post. ignore this one because it won't make sense without the previous posts.
Gothia Dec 20th 2009 8:04AM
The real problem is that 50 people against 200 have very little chance of success no matter how many stacks of tenacity your team has on them. The numbers are so overwhelming to the point that the other side just won't participate in the match and faction transfers have compounded this issue ten-fold. The only real solution I can see is to make sure that both sides are evenly balanced prior to the battle starting.
Rob Dec 22nd 2009 12:19AM
Ok so its a 3-1 ratio from alliance to horde on my server. Blizzard need to fix this bug the horde always do it usually whenever they can. One person logs right before the battle is over and then doesnt log back in until the next battle has begun. So he still have all the buffs and ability to make seiges right off, give them to friends and keep making them ect. They win in about 3-4 minutes and usually have 12 seiges when we are lucky to have catapults. Please fix the bug thanks.
alvl Dec 23rd 2009 9:19AM
anyone notice a difference after the patch or hotfix? I sure don't.
Cherry Dec 24th 2009 10:36AM
I have a change I'd really like to see, that would nearly assure that WG would change hands once in a while.
DON'T repair the fortress at the start of each battle! Let the previous battle damage remain, and surely the fortress would change hands at least once in a while, when every single outer wall has been beaten down
rightorleft Dec 29th 2009 11:36AM
I honestly don't see what the problem is. So one faction dominates WG. Okay. How many of the other battlegrounds are dominated by just one faction? I don't see what the difference here really is. Yes, I understand that if you don't control WG you don't have access to VoA, which, is really what the crying is about. Well, why don't you just /faction transfer? It's what I had to do in order to get a victory in WSG. Rather than beat my head against a wall and hope for a leg up from Blizzard, I joined the other side (finished it off in 2 days) and transferred back. I would be for whatever changes Blizzard had in mind to make WG equal. If and only if, they applied to the other battle grounds. Other wise you're just punishing the victors. To to the victors the spoils of war go too.
jasonkidd1234 Dec 31st 2009 9:38AM
On Zuluhed it's kinda bad.
Usually Horde get it, lose it once a day, and take it back the very next time.
There are of course times where the Alliance win, but it's so bad that sometimes they'll break 3 walls all the way into the courtyard, and because of the sheer number of Horde to Alliance, they can't get to the door. Makes you feel kinda bad. Especailly since most of the time on offense we get a 6 siege train and bust our way all the way into the courtyard, and then if we can't get it we can catapault rush it for 10 minutes if we can't get any sieges inside.
Glarily Jan 3rd 2010 1:11PM
This needs to be buffed. Alliance still can't win here on Duskwood. Instant sieges and 5 stacks of Tenacity and Horde still destroys the southern towers in about 4 minutes and after toppling the towers they'll come up north, push the Alliance (who are too dumb to go around) all the way back to their spawn point and farm them until they hearth from the immunity of the graveyard.
elvis Feb 11th 2010 11:35PM
amen, it just sucks to be gang raped day after day after day, on nordasil aside from Sunday morning we never win and frankly most alliance just stopped playing all together, seriously how is this a fun game