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Rinnhart · 07-15-2006, 05:04 PM

Pardon if this is a repost of anything in the existing patch threads.

Battlegroup 9 FTW. Blackrock is going to own us all so hard it'll leave marks.

Drasca · 07-15-2006, 07:00 PM

Battlegroup 3 represent!

MongoJerry · 07-15-2006, 07:32 PM

Quote:Battlegroup 9 FTW. Blackrock is going to own us all so hard it'll leave marks.

Nope. Tichondrius will pwn all!

Icebird · 07-15-2006, 09:37 PM

Quote:Nope. Tichondrius will pwn all!

This is going to be interesting. I rerolled a character on Aman'Thul - one of the new Oceanic PVE realms. With Battlegroup 9, there is a clear effort to match realms in the Oceanic timezones (all the official Oceanic realms, plus Proudmoor and Blackrock, which were the unofficial Oceanic realms for a long time).

The downside is that my AT character is going to be at a *severe* gear disadvantage vis-a-vis players on Blackrock, Tichondrius etc. One, maybe two guilds are going to MC so far (not bad for a month old server) vs players armed with Naxx gear.

The other downside is the dilution of the community aspect of playing against people on your own server. I'm levelling with a friend so when I'm on and he's not I go to the battlegrounds. There is such a small player pool in my bracket (30-39) that I get to know both the alliance and horde players who show up in every game. Seeing familiar faces is going to become a lot less frequent.

However I just have to look at the situation on Malygos (my other realm), where the Alliance outnumbers the Horde 3 to 1 or more. Alliance queues vary between 30 and 60 minutes; Horde queues are basically non-existent.

One certainty I can tell you: Teams are going to dominate pick-up groups even more than they do now.

Chris

MongoJerry · (This post was last modified: 07-15-2006, 09:53 PM by MongoJerry.)

Quote:This is going to be interesting. I rerolled a character on Aman'Thul - one of the new Oceanic PVE realms. With Battlegroup 9, there is a clear effort to match realms in the Oceanic timezones (all the official Oceanic realms, plus Proudmoor and Blackrock, which were the unofficial Oceanic realms for a long time).

Oh, interesting. Tichondrius has a big aussie community, too, so that may be one reason Tich was included in this group.

Quote:The other downside is the dilution of the community aspect of playing against people on your own server. I'm levelling with a friend so when I'm on and he's not I go to the battlegrounds. There is such a small player pool in my bracket (30-39) that I get to know both the alliance and horde players who show up in every game. Seeing familiar faces is going to become a lot less frequent.

I have a feeling that after the initial "who the heck is that?" reaction during the first couple of weeks, people will start to get to know each other. 14-16 servers will be enough to have smooth battleground queues, but it isn't so big that you won't see the same faces if you play a reasonable amount. Also, since the 30-39 battleground community tends to be small as it is, that bracket will be even easier to get to know.

Quote:One certainty I can tell you: Teams are going to dominate pick-up groups even more than they do now.

But, there will be more pickup groups, too, so in between getting stomped by teams, you should find some good games.

Bob the Beholder · (This post was last modified: 07-16-2006, 04:31 AM by Bob the Beholder.)

Myesss. I used to play on Laughing Skull, before I rolled on Gorefiend. This, of course, being the server of the Pals for Life, who made the Leeroy Jenkins video. Back when I was playing my tauren hunter on there they used to claim Sun Rock Retreat as P4L territory on a daily basis. And now they are in my battle group.

I will destroy them, for great justice.

Concillian · 07-18-2006, 04:36 PM

Quote:One certainty I can tell you: Teams are going to dominate pick-up groups even more than they do now.

Teams will always dominate PUGs, but the cross server system will have a tendency to bring more PUGs to the battlegrounds and a similar number of pre-mades.

- Consider off-hours when pre-mades can get into a BG but there aren't enough to make a PUG on any individual realm (or if you do you end up 5 vs 10 and get owned quickly).
- Consider the single guy with the no-queue effect when seeing no BGs open at all. Having several realms sharing queues will make it much less likely that no games at all are running.

I think there will be more PUG on PUG action and a similar amount of team on team action. Mixing realm rulesets will have some of the effect of balancing factions. PvP realms will see longer alliance queues, and Normal realms will see shorter alliance queues.

MongoJerry · 07-18-2006, 05:41 PM

Quote:I think there will be more PUG on PUG action and a similar amount of team on team action. Mixing realm rulesets will have some of the effect of balancing factions. PvP realms will see longer alliance queues, and Normal realms will see shorter alliance queues.

Everyone's queues will be shorter on average, because until 1.12, faction imbalance has not been the limiting factor, except under rare circumstances (prime time on a especially loved battleground holiday weekend). It has been the small population size queuing up for battlegrounds, which allowed for the possibilty of massive bottlenecks. With a larger pool of players queuing up for the same battlegrounds, the bottlenecks will be removed.

Concillian · 07-19-2006, 08:55 PM

Quote:Everyone's queues will be shorter on average, because until 1.12, faction imbalance has not been the limiting factor, except under rare circumstances (prime time on a especially loved battleground holiday weekend). It has been the small population size queuing up for battlegrounds, which allowed for the possibilty of massive bottlenecks. With a larger pool of players queuing up for the same battlegrounds, the bottlenecks will be removed.

Well, when one faction faces these bottlenecks and the other doesn't I think it can be attributed to faction imbalance. If you grouped a bunch of Normal servers together you'd still have long alliance queues and short horde ones. alliance queues would be slightly shorter due to there being less "remainders" (2 matches + 3 horde x 8 servers turns into 18 matches + 4 horde), but the queue times would still be longer for the higher pop faction. It helps, but the overall issue remains.

Mixing PvP and normal ruleset realms helps in both ways.

I think perhaps you underestimate the queue length differences on normal servers. If I want in a WSG or AV during normal playtimes (weekends, afternoon --> midnight-ish) I can expect to get into an instance before I ride to the bank from the battlemaster. From reading the realm forum, and talking to Stormrage folk, it seems alliance can expect to make it somewhere and get some solid solo farming time in while in queue. That is not a low pool size issue, that's a pop imbalance issue. These circumstances are nowhere near "rare" on a Normal server.

Kevin · 07-19-2006, 09:45 PM

Quote:I think perhaps you underestimate the queue length differences on normal servers. If I want in a WSG or AV during normal playtimes (weekends, afternoon --> midnight-ish) I can expect to get into an instance before I ride to the bank from the battlemaster. From reading the realm forum, and talking to Stormrage folk, it seems alliance can expect to make it somewhere and get some solid solo farming time in while in queue. That is not a low pool size issue, that's a pop imbalance issue. These circumstances are nowhere near "rare" on a Normal server.

Yep Average queue time for my horde on Terenas (which is about 70% alliance vs 30% horde just like Stormrage) is like Conc said about 1 minute. Alliance side on Stormrage, it's about 2 hours. So 120 times longer for alliance. Yes it technically is pool size, but the problem is that even if all the horde queued up, and only half the alliance did, you would still have longer queues alliance side. So the issue really is there simply aren't enough horde, at all, to make the groups.

Watto44 · 07-28-2006, 08:38 AM

I do wonder what affect cross-server BGs will have on the community feel of PvP. However, a server's PvP community has already been through multiple "shocks" when its size has dramatically increased - from the Honor system right through to city queuing - and remained strong after an initial jolt. In the end, the communityies will adjust and evolve. As long there's somewhere where a battlegroup can go to talk rubbish and tell lies everything will be fine.:D

MongoJerry · (This post was last modified: 07-29-2006, 06:01 AM by MongoJerry.)

Concillian Wrote:I think perhaps you underestimate the queue length differences on normal servers. If I want in a WSG or AV during normal playtimes (weekends, afternoon --> midnight-ish) I can expect to get into an instance before I ride to the bank from the battlemaster. From reading the realm forum, and talking to Stormrage folk, it seems alliance can expect to make it somewhere and get some solid solo farming time in while in queue. That is not a low pool size issue, that's a pop imbalance issue. These circumstances are nowhere near "rare" on a Normal server.

Gnollguy Wrote:Yep Average queue time for my horde on Terenas (which is about 70% alliance vs 30% horde just like Stormrage) is like Conc said about 1 minute. Alliance side on Stormrage, it's about 2 hours. So 120 times longer for alliance. Yes it technically is pool size, but the problem is that even if all the horde queued up, and only half the alliance did, you would still have longer queues alliance side. So the issue really is there simply aren't enough horde, at all, to make the groups.

You have correct data, but you are both coming to the wrong conclusions. The conclusion from the data you have presented is that the problem is that the number of players queuing up for a specific battleground at any given time is not large enough. The problem is not the overall ratio of the population imbalances. Allow me to explain with some numbers.

Let BGLENGTH represent the average length of a specific type of battleground match, then in an large population scenario, the queue length for various Alliance/Horde ratios of players queuing up for that battleground will be (Alliance/Horde - 1)*BGLENGTH:

Code:
Alliance/Horde Ratio&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Queue Length

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;0

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; .2*BGLENGTH

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; .5*BGLENGTH

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; .7*BGLENGTH

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BGLENGTH

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1.5*BGLENGTH

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;2*BGLENGTH

The smaller faction will have instant queues. Let's now take some real numbers. Let's say that WSG and AB on average take around 20 minutes -- some matches are pug-stomps that only take 5 minutes and others are real nail-biter grudge matches that take longer. Then the table becomes:

Code:
Alliance/Horde Ratio&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Queue Length for WSG/AB(mins)

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;0

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 10

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 14

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 20

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 30

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3.0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 40

Now, find the Alliance/Horde ratio that corresponds to your server. If you ever experience wait times longer than what is shown in the table, you are experiencing a problem caused by bottlenecks created by the small number of people queuing up for battlegrounds at the moment you are trying to play and not a problem caused by overall Alliance/Horde ratio. The table above completely accounts for Alliance/Horde ratios. Let me say that again. If you experience wait times that are longer than what is shown above, you are not experiencing a problem caused by the overall Alliance/Horde ratio on your server.

Allow me to illustrate the point with a hypothetical but realistic story of a WSG queue on a typical evening. Because integers are easier to work with, let's say that you are on a server with an extreme Alliance/Horde imbalance with a ratio of two Alliance players for every one Horde.

The story of WSG queues on a typical weekday evening:

The evening starts out with 20 Alliance players and 10 Horde players queuing up for WSG.
Average queue time: 20 minutes<>
An Alliance team decides to form up and do some WSG.
Average queue time: 40 minutes<>
The huge queue time drives 10 Alliance players away.
Average queue time: 20 minutes<>
A Horde team decides to form up and join WSG.
Average queue time: Instant!<>
The call goes out to various guild chats, "The Horde have come to play! I'm getting instant queues here!" Two Alliance teams form up to play.
Average queue time: 20 minutes<>
The Horde team and one of the Alliance teams get in a hard pitched battle with one another. The match ends up taking an hour and a half to resolve. The remaining 30 Alliance players and 10 Horde players are left to fight with each other during this time.
Queue time: 40 minutes<>
After such an intense game, the Horde and Alliance teams decide to log off and take a break.
Average queue time: 40 minutes<>
One of the alliance teams gets sick of the long queue and quits. Average queue time: 20 minutes<>
It starts getting late. 5 of the Horde players go to bed. No games pop up for a while for all parties. Finally, a Horde player decides to join and a 6v6 WSG that everyone hates comes up. More Horde players leave.
Average queue time: Infinity<>
[st]The story of level 30-39 WSG
1. Three Horde and six Alliance players queue up for level 30-39 WSG. At one point, a Horde twink team signs up and a 10v6 twink vs pug game happens that is over in 5 minutes. Alliance players quit and no other game happens for the rest of the evening.
  Average queue time: Infinity<>
  [st]What can we expect in 1.12?
  
  Why will cross-server battlegrounds in 1.12 make the queues so much better? Easy:
  1. The various bottlenecks will be wiped away so that the queues will truly only be limited by the overall Alliance/Horde imbalance as shown in the tables above. For most people, that alone will be a significant improvement.<>
  2. Extreme faction imbalances will be smoothed out. Some servers have truly awful faction ratios like 2.0-3.0. Meanwhile, some servers (like Tichondrius) actually have more Horde queuing up for battlegrounds than Alliance players do. Overall, it should smooth to something on the order of 1.3 Alliance/Horde ratio, which would correspond to a 6 minute wait time for WSG/AB for Alliance and instant queues all the time for Horde. I think most people could live with that.<>
  3. Games with great numerical imbalances should largely be eliminated. If people /afk out or disconnect, they will be quickly replaced. No more 10v6 WSG games!<>
  4. Low level WSG and AB games will happen more regularly.<>
    [st]Overall, I'm looking forward to how 1.12 will help battleground queues. Mind you, there are lots of other things to fix like the poorly thought out honor system, but I will be glad to see that the problems with battleground queues will be fixed.

oldmandennis · 07-29-2006, 06:31 AM

Playing with and against idiots is the big problem I have with BG's. I'm not the greatest, but if the system can't match me up against people roughly my own skill, the only thing it's good for is /afking your way to purples in AV.

Concillian · 07-29-2006, 05:13 PM

Quote:Allow me to illustrate the point with a hypothetical but realistic story of a WSG queue on a typical evening. Because integers are easier to work with, let's say that you are on a server with an extreme Alliance/Horde imbalance with a ratio of two Alliance players for every one Horde.

The highlighted comment illustrates the point I made in the previous post. You underestimate the pop-imbalance on normal servers. Your "extreme" example is not extreme at all... it is better than the typical scenario on Normal ruleset servers

Check the census sites... on a well balanced Normal ruleset server the pop imbalance is down to 2:1 alliance to horde. The average of all Normal servers is an activity ratio of 2.3 to 1, according to warcraftrealms.com. Alliance WSG queue times of 30+ minutes are normal by your analysis. Add to that that there are typically even more people who play BGs on alliance than horde due to the progression imbalance, at least on my server... there are 4 alliance guilds in Naxx and 8 in AQ40, while 2 Horde guilds have even downed Huhu. There are about 6 alliance teams that take advantage of their superior gearing and pretty much own anything but 2 horde teams. You can expect to get totally owned if you queue. This drives even semi-hardcore players (like myself) away from the BGs.

This is what I base my original argument on, that prime time queue times weill get better for alliance on Normal realms and worse for alliance on PvP realms and vice versa for horde becuase including all server types will have the virtual effect of balancing the factions. Your assessment that everyone's queue time will decrease is simply not going to happen, your own example, coupled with census data illustrates that point quite clearly.

Average for PvP realms is 1.2:1
Average for all realms is 1.7:1

I don't see how you can argue that alliance PvP realm queue lengths won't see increases.

Skandranon · 07-29-2006, 05:37 PM

Quote:The highlighted comment illustrates the point I made in the previous post. You underestimate the pop-imbalance on normal servers. Your "extreme" example is not extreme at all... it is better than the typical scenario on Normal ruleset servers

Just to add to this, last time I checked, Stormrage's activity ratio was roughly 7.1 Alliance to every 1 Horde.

MongoJerry · (This post was last modified: 07-29-2006, 06:14 PM by MongoJerry.)

Quote:Average for PvP realms is 1.2:1
Average for all realms is 1.7:1

I don't see how you can argue that alliance PvP realm queue lengths won't see increases.

a) Those census numbers you are quoting are notoriously inaccurate.

b) Problems that you describe with Horde players discouraged because they're "always" going up against teams with Naxx loot are again a problem with low populations of players. With a large population pool, you won't always be going up against the same teams all the time, so even pugs will get a chance to go up against pugs in between some thrashings by well equiped groups. The ratio of players going into battlegrounds should roughly normalize to the overall population ratio. Anytime you have to resort to server specific arguments like "Stormrage's activity ratio was roughly 7.1 Alliance to every 1 Horde" demonstrates an argument for why cross-server battlegrounds will greatly enhance the playing experience.

c) You merely need to read my post above to understand why even a 1.7 ratio with a large population of players is better than a 1.2 ratio with a small population of players. Bottlenecks are what drive queue times right now, not overall player imbalance. At the extreme end, if you log on at 3 in the morning, you won't get any games. At the less extreme end, bottleneck problems still occur in prime time. Please see my example above to get an illustration of it.

d) I never said that everyone's queues will get better. Obviously, Alliance on Tichondrius who are used to instant queues in prime time will get a shock when they have to wait 10 minutes between games in prime time. Then again, they will be able to play battlegrounds at all hours of the day or join battlegrounds on their twink alts, when they didn't used to be able to.

Skandranon · 07-29-2006, 07:28 PM

Quote:B)Problems that you describe with Horde players discouraged because they're "always" going up against teams with Naxx loot are again a problem with low populations of players. With a large population pool, you won't always be going up against the same teams all the time, so even pugs will get a chance to go up against pugs in between some thrashings by well equiped groups. The ratio of players going into battlegrounds should roughly normalize to the overall population ratio. Anytime you have to resort to server specific arguments like "Stormrage's activity ratio was roughly 7.1 Alliance to every 1 Horde" demonstrates an argument for why cross-server battlegrounds will greatly enhance the playing experience.

Oh, I never doubted that. I do feel a little sorry for the realms that we're inflicting our pop imbalance upon, though.

Mavfin · 07-29-2006, 07:41 PM

Quote:Oh, I never doubted that. I do feel a little sorry for the realms that we're inflicting our pop imbalance upon, though.

I'm awaiting the cross-server system, myself, as, if I don't have to wait 2 hours to get into stuff, I might actually spend some time in BGs...

Concillian · 07-29-2006, 09:18 PM

Quote:d) I never said that everyone's queues will get better.

alright then, I somehow misread or misinterpreted this statement:

Quote:Everyone's queues will be shorter on average

and you can ignore pretty much all my comments on the thread, because they were primarily directed at this statement you made.

MongoJerry · 07-30-2006, 08:20 AM

Quote:alright then, I somehow misread or misinterpreted this statement:
and you can ignore pretty much all my comments on the thread, because they were primarily directed at this statement you made.

OK, let me clarify. Alliance players on Tichondrius and other servers where Horde tends to queue up more than Alliance and who only attempt to enter battlegrounds on heavy prime time periods -- particularly on those holiday weekends that correspond to that particular battleground -- will experience a minor increase of queue length from instant queues to queues of 6-10 minutes. However, even their queues will drop precipitously for all other times, should they choose to play at any time other than prime time or in non-level-capped games, and the overall queue experience will be better for almost everyone. For certain, even though they will have a longer queue length then they are used to during prime time, they will still get to enjoy a larger variety of games and won't be fighting the same people repeatedly. Overall, I think the play experience will be better for everyone.

I do maintain that for those servers with a slight Alliance bias -- like the 1.2 Alliance:Horde ratio you mentioned -- the average queue times will be smaller after cross-server battlegrounds even though the ratio will increase. This is because bottlenecks will be cured. I can attest to how sucky such queues can be, because on Tichondrius, which has a nearly equal population balance but where Horde tend to be slightly more interested in PvP than Alliance, the queues are terrible for Horde. If you go by the ratios of players queuing up for BG's, Horde queues should be relatively short -- only a few minutes -- but instead queue lengths were as long as 30 minutes for AB/WSG and over an hour and a half for AV tonight at a time that should have been a popular time for PvPing.

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