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WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Submitted by Abalieno on April 21, 2006 - 09:35.

Gaming Steve has friends at Blizzard. And he doesn't skip an occasion to repeat it.

So here some largely anticipated guesses about the cross-server battlegrounds that some of us were expecting and suggesting since beta:

Blizzard is hard at work right now creating new enhanced Battlegrounds servers. These servers will no longer be regulated to a single realm, but cross-linked across Realms to create an diverse PvP experience! Right now they are planning on linking 16 realms together per Battleground server for massive PvP action. You could imagine how this can really help out the Battlegrounds situation, not only will the queues go much faster but you'll finally get a chance to fight across Realms.

And the best part? This enhancement is going to be released very shortly; most likely by patch 1.12 or 1.13 at the latest.

Then he starts to rave about worldwide tournament when I'm still waiting Blizzard to back up the claims during beta:
After the european launch we'll give you the possibility to choose where you want to play.

The european launch was one year and a few months ago. The european servers are still inaccessible with an american account. And vice-versa.

Of course the problems of WoW's PvP aren't just about the queues. But to understand that you would need to have a clue.

P.S.
Interesting to notice that he says the expansion release could slip to early 2007.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Asimo (not verified) on April 21, 2006 - 09:56.

Yeah, but the queues sure don't help...

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Dom (not verified) on April 21, 2006 - 14:27.

I'm still not entirely sure how much good the cross-server battlegrounds will do. I mean, unless they very carefully select which servers share the BGs, then surely nothing will be accomplished? I mean, with exception to a few servers, the Alliance:Horde imbalance is a factor mirrored across the whole game. So let's pick numbers out of the air and say that there are 4,000 Alliance players and 2,000 Horde players on every server. If you link 16 of those servers together like Gaming Steve said, then you've just got 64,000 Alliance and 32,000 Horde. The ratio is identical, and so the queues would be identical. Sure there'll be twice as many Horde to play with, but there'll be twice as many Alliance to play with them too. The only benefit I can see from cross-server BGs is if they're hand-picked to try and narrow the faction split, as well as time zone differences.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Rovest (not verified) on June 5, 2006 - 00:56.

I get what your saying man, But Every BG is a Queue limit, Theres no more then This many players per side in ANY GAME. SO sure there may bel thousands able to after this idea is worked in to the game. This means that therel'll Actually be a 40 on 40 AV or full Parties in WSG with consistancy. Unlike now.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Alibabu (not verified) on June 5, 2006 - 18:12.

Perhaps you are missing something....
Couldn't we see BG with levels of 10-14 and 15-19 instead of 10-19? Wouldn't that make gameplay more even?

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Stranger (not verified) on June 20, 2006 - 22:36.

What I'm curious to see is how they will handle trading in a cross server BG. If they allowed trading then you could transfer items/money between servers. If they don't allow trading then drink/water will have to be traded before a BG which would be kind of lame.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Simple anwser (not verified) on June 21, 2006 - 13:31.

They would only allow you to trade, drinks, foods, heathstones, soulstone's and may be a small amount of potions.

They would flag all other items as not tradeble.

My two cents...

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Stranger (not verified) on June 27, 2006 - 18:23.

Even if trading was allowed, I would have to guess it would be pretty hard to transfer something to a buddy on a different server.
1. You have 16 different realms linked together for the BG, This means the possiblity of you actually getting into the same BG as your friend is slim to none. I'm not saying its entirely impossible im sure someone could try and accomplish it, probably wouldn't be worth it though.

2. I agree that they would probably only allow you to trade certain items, could you imagine getting in a battleground and seeing someone spam the General Channel with WTS "blahblah".

3. Yes the imbalance will probably always be there, until they bring out bloodelves anyways then you may see horde become a little more populated (who wouldn't want and Elf Mage!!!!). Having alot more people around to queue for bg's though may help. You usually don't see BG's pop early in the morning cause there are few people online. Well If you have 16 different servers there is a better possibilty that you can actually get into a BG early, instead of having to wait till afternoon or night.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

Stranger (not verified) on July 14, 2006 - 13:31.

Actually by increasing the size of the potential pool of players you are more likely to get a battleground sooner. Look up Erlang C which is how call centres staff for call demand. A similar thing applies.

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Re: WoW: Cross-server battlegrounds

boredguy8 on July 14, 2006 - 19:12.

I'm very much opposed to the idea of cross-server battlegrounds. Do I hate queue times? Ehh...depends on. Having a queue allows me to go out and do other things while I wait on the battleground to pop without having to worry about missing a battleground (and thus miss ever-critical honor).

Farewell, friend!

One of the best elements of battlegrounds is knowing you enemey. "Selendra has the flag, she *always* runs ramp-side!" "Oh crap, Brenghis is on me I'm screwed!" "Oh great, it's all people from that graveyard camping guild, I'm just going to /afk now."

None of that is possible with a pool 16 times larger. There's also a loss of forum taunting and trash-talking. This is especially critical. One of the best things WoW's done is have their message boards. Each BG server should have a message board, too - specifically designed for that community building that takes place there and only there.

Crap gear or crap queues

As far as I can tell, WOW can balance the BG servers in one of two ways: player balance or progression balance. In the first, they try to match up servers with high horde PVP involvement to servers with high alliance PVP involvement. It would suck being on a server where everyone is still trying to open the gates, and then to suddenly find yourself going up against people who have been clearing Naxx since it was on test. This will solve queue times initially, but if one side is furthur progressed than the other, one side will stop queueing. On every server I've been on, balanced queues are the result of balanced progression. One of the few remaining servers with balanced progression (and literally 8 minute queue times) is being destroyed by guilds transferring in, ruining that balance, and crushing the PVP spirit of the other side.

The other option is to balance for gear. This would match up servers with similar progression against each other. But this does nothing to solve queue times. I don't think I need to go into much more detail here.

Honor Explosion

I don't even want to think about how this will affect how much honor you need to rank up. For most people, getting rank 14 is far beyond being out of the question. With the amount of honor that people will be getting with constant BGs, I feel sorry for the people who just wanted rank 10.

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