Wintergrasp Rant

[LavCat]

When access to Wintergrasp was unrestricted, it was fun for the Alliance. It was so much fun that it brought all of Northrend to its knees. Rather than improving the infrastructure, the response was to limit participation to make it fair. How epic! Bring back the flavor of the old battles between Southshore and Tarren Mill when Stormrage was not one of the most imbalanced servers in the world according to WoWCensus. The current state of Wintergrasp does not bode well for Tol Barad. Whatever it is, it is not world PvP unlike the 100 vs 5 "world pvp" matches Wintergrasp was pre-patch when players are excluded.

There, fixed that for you.

A couple of issues:

My recollection is that Wintergrasp battles on Stormrage were more evenly balanced before the number-of-player restrictions or level restrictions were imposed. I also remember that the player caps were imposed because of the lag caused by large battles, not because of numerical imbalances on any given side.

I could well be wrong on this. Do you have a source?

I would not have called Wintergrasp anything close to world PvP for a long time, if ever (though I feel it was closer at the start). Certainly not immediately prior to 4.x. It is Blizzard that calls Wintergrasp world PvP, not I. You are putting words in my mouth on this one.

Alliance won 95% of all Wintergrasp battles on Stormrage. It was ***stupid***. Every game ended up camping the Horde graveyard with the 5 Horde players who stuck around to get camped. This wasn't fun, enjoyable, interesting, or challenging.

Well, it could be interesting and challenging if you were solo capping a workshop and two horde with 16 tenacity came to take it back.

The problem isn't Wintergrasp. The problem is that Stormrage as a server is fundamentally broken. Since Blizzard adamantly refuses to try to fix the problem, it will continue to get worse. What incentive possibly exists to bring Horde to this server?

Here's the kicker. If Blizzard ever decided to do something intelligent and offer free Alliance -> Horde transfers on Stormrage, Critical Mass would take it in a heartbeat. So would a bunch of other guilds. Why they don't do this is a continual mystery to many of us.

I've seen people asking for free transfers on the Blizzard forums. It sounds like it might help to me. None of my characters has ever had a haircut, let alone a faction change. Rather than ask: "What incentive possibly exists to bring Horde to this server?" [Answer: ask Ynir.] I would ask: "What incentive caused Horde to leave in the first place?" I've had Alliance friends whose guilds have left for greener pastures, but I don't understand it.

What I do know is that I'm listening to Indigo Girls with a few glasses of wine at the moment, rather than playing in Wintergrasp.

And Stormrage wasn't my idea, blame it on the Basin.