High level BG no fun for casual players.

[Fast Eddy]

I spent time at 47-50th level playing BG for a while and had a ton of fun. I play a rogue. I regularly scored in the top three for number of kills, more often than not was number one overall despite playing on alliance. I was usually on the losing team as horde is better in BG than alliance.

I tried the highest level BG last night with my rogue who's just about to hit 59th level. I was killed so quickly, so many times, it was sad. Horde won both games I played within 10 minutes, 3-0. In both games I had 5 deaths, 0 kills. I think that's about the maximum possible deaths in that time frame, lol. The rest of my teammates had similar stats.

All the alliance were at the bottom of game stats while all the horde were at the top. I felt I had no chance against any horde character be it warriors, priests, shaman, etc...I had absolutely no fun. I definitely won't be going back until I'm 60 with better equipment, if at all.

I'm assuming I was competing against opponents who all had end game equipment. I didn't see any horde of less than 60th level (then again I wasn't alive long enough to observe much). Virtually everything I tried was absorbed, resisted or avoided through immunity.

I guess the purpose of this post is to express frustration about the fact that BG isn't really an option for me or anyone unless they get super serious. I understand I have the option to play but I can't see it being any fun unless you have an organized group with a carefully laid out strategy of all 60th level characters with end game gear.

I might get that serious at some point but many players will never have BG as a viable option after level 50.

[Tufriast]

I'll state this much matters: Orginization.

1) Have a guild that loves to PVP, and is willing to get PVP gear.
2) Know that yeah, a lot of people have been playing WoW for a long time and PVP gear is essential to winning.
3) Don't be upset about a loss in Warsong Gulch. You are there to get honor. Join the raid group, and kill people. That's the whole point. Losing the CTF match is painful, but you can get a ton of honor still.
4) You can get gear by doing PVP a lot. Simply getting honor non-stop means you get an officer rank, and being able to purchase the gear from the PVP store in Stormwind. Most of that gear is 58+ usable. At level 60 you can get rank 14, Grand Marshal, and get the Epic PVP weapons you need to win a lot.

PVP guilds (which I'm dying to join) definetly PVP a lot. They know that pvpings is a great alternative to raiding all the time. It is very frustrating to get into a guild, and not have PVP support - believe me I know.

Groups make more honor than solo. Organized groups get the MOST MOST MOST honor out of all the groups. 1 Healer, 1 War, 1 Paladin (or another melee), 1 Rogue, 1 Spell damage dealer. That's a winning group. Stick close together, have your main tank call out targets, and just watch the honor roll in. A guild called DOOM on my server rocks our Alliance arses all day long with this formula. I know it, but no one on the alliance side likes PVP. They love farming items, and gold like pansies.

Yay.

[DrunkCajun]

Unfortunately, depending on the balance of your server, this is indeed a problem, though I would note that it isn't 100% of the time.

For example, on Llane, Alliance outnumbers Horde by some ridiculous number, like 3 or 4 to 1. As a result, there are far less Hordies queueing for WSG than Alliance, and they can easily dictate the number of games running at a given point in time. If only 10-12 Horde are queued, only one WSG will run. If 30ish Horde are lined up, we'll have three running on my server. Either way Alliance faces hour-long or worse wait times, which never seem to be consistent with the estimate. The best thing to do if you're determined to get in is queue and grind.

As a result of this system, it is damned near impossible to get in WSG as an Alliance group. Every time, we get in as a pick-up of 10 folks who likely haven't played together. Usually 2-4 of us know each other and have run together, and the rest are random people who may have never run WSG before, have no idea what to do, and refuse to listen when someone makes an attempt to organize us. As a result, when we wind up against an organized Horde team, for example (or worse, the Horde all-star team, with all 10 of them being guilded, on TS together, and all holding ranks 10-14), we get pounded. If we're exceptionally lucky, folks will listen and we'll manage to hold them off for 15 minutes and maybe even cap a flag. If we're not, we're down 3-0 in 10 minutes without any kills.

Rarely, though it does happen, we'll wind up in an evenly-balanced match. This usually means a lucky draw on Alliance side, with a handful of ranked folks who know each other and have played together before, as well as some cooperative randoms, and a pick-up of Hordies who are new or not well-organized. These matches tend to go on for a long time and are evenly matched.

Ever rarer, we'll get a draw of all experienced PvPers on one side, and actually manage to give even the all-star team a run for their money. Unfortunately on my server when this happens, the Horde tends to AFK out. The "all-star" team would rather farm CP, and it's faster to AFK, requeue, and get back in against a worthless team in 3 minutes than it would be to duke it out with real competition for an hour and possibly lose.

At any rate, WSG is fun as hell, but it takes a lot of patience and a willingness to lose, and badly.

[Pin]

This is something I'm concerned about too. I'm not a casual player and my rogue is about to hit 60. However, in a week I go back to uni and become a casual player. My gear is far from awesome for a level 59, weapons are the Thrash Blade and Lifeforce Dirk. My blues are quests rewards and instance drops no higher than ST. I'm more green than blue.

I've really enjoyed battlegrounds at every level i've been in at so far, but haven't been in after 50 because I didn't feel like getting killed inside 3 seconds. I am willing to listen and work as a team though, but I suppose one extra person doesn't help that much. I play Horde though and while we do have a better reputation, on my server we are the higher population side (something like 57:43, H/A). Looks like I should get a game when I want one though, there seems to be at least one WSG running for the 60s all the time, sometimes up to 3. We even had some AV running the past couple of weeks.

I'll see how it goes though, maybe if I get few blues from the level 60 instances i'll be ok. No guild to help though, my guild is all level 40 ish >_>

[Gaza0469]

Dont join pugs.


I pug is an old term for "pub players" basically casual gamers who log on at internet cafes... random term but there you go.


Basically a Pug is a bunch of random players.

If you join as a pug you will get obliterated.

My guild does level 60 WSG all the time and we win at least half.

We all join at the same time and use team speak this is the key.

If we play against pugs ( random horde players ) then we win within 10 minutes 3-0 every time , you just slaugher them.

If we play against another horde guild its a 50-50 contest as both are organised.

Also level 59 is too low for Battlegrounds, you need to be at least level 60 and I would recomend that you have at least 4/8 of your tier one rogue set and have at least 3 or 4 other blues from strath/scholo/ubrs and dire maul.

Again - Level 60 is the minimum.

I dont have uber gear, just most of my tier one set as does most of our WSG combat team, none of us has special gear, its jsut that we work as a team with team speak that the key, not gear.

[NocturneNight]

I know it, but no one on the alliance side likes PVP. They love farming items, and gold like pansies.

Yay.

Haha that is so true! They love sitting on their epic mounts and showing off their epic sets and weapons, but you could easily kick any one of them in the butt in a real PvP scenario. It's sad. Even though killing Ragnaros can net you fantastic items, noone in the big-shot-guilds ever PvP. I fail to see why they are even on a PvP-server in the first place.

It's just sad to see Nightslayer rogues standing around dueling. :scratch:

Back on topic:
I loved WSG at lvl 40. I loved it at lvl 50. I HATE it at lvl 60. People are not nearly enough organized for it, atleast on Alliance. We also had an "Allstar" Horde guild owning everything in WSG. Ultimately Alliance simply stopped playing. Just to get owned even harder in AV. It sucks.

[Gaza0469]

We have these four horde guys on our server that can kill any 10 man alliance group. They leave 6 defenders at base and send these four bad boys in who are able to own the entire joint within minutes.

They have nick names like "Freight train, steam roller etc" They can pretty much all one or two hit kill most alliance pugs.

here are the profile rankings Horde Shadowmoon top 50 (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/index.html?r=Shadow+Moon&faction=h#top)

Arm has 100,000 plus kills from memory which is more than our top 3 alliance guys put togeather.

As soon as alliance see these guys they usually just all quit and walk out =/

[DrunkCajun]

Dont join pugs.


I pug is an old term for "pub players" basically casual gamers who log on at internet cafes... random term but there you go.


Basically a Pug is a bunch of random players.

If you join as a pug you will get obliterated.

My guild does level 60 WSG all the time and we win at least half.

We all join at the same time and use team speak this is the key.

If we play against pugs ( random horde players ) then we win within 10 minutes 3-0 every time , you just slaugher them.

If we play against another horde guild its a 50-50 contest as both are organised.

Also level 59 is too low for Battlegrounds, you need to be at least level 60 and I would recomend that you have at least 4/8 of your tier one rogue set and have at least 3 or 4 other blues from strath/scholo/ubrs and dire maul.

Again - Level 60 is the minimum.

I dont have uber gear, just most of my tier one set as does most of our WSG combat team, none of us has special gear, its jsut that we work as a team with team speak that the key, not gear.

One problem with that Gaza. On my server as alliance, trying to get in as a group means a guaranteed wait of several hours. Joining alone means 1 hour or so.

[Gaza0469]

One problem with that Gaza. On my server as alliance, trying to get in as a group means a guaranteed wait of several hours. Joining alone means 1 hour or so.


1 hour.

yikes thats not much fun. What about during prime time? or is that prime time?

[Kashin]

Just wanted to input something that ya probably already know, but I didn't see it anywhere in the posts so thought I'd add it: They are going to change the ranges in the new patch so that lvl60s have their own WsG groups and the rest are 50-59, 40-49 and so on...

And Gaza, I always thought pug stood for pick-up group... :happy53:

[Ablamar]

1 hour.

yikes thats not much fun. What about during prime time? or is that prime time?

Yup, that is one of the reasons I have left Llane for now and that I play Horde. The Alliance has it really hard in PvP, because the population imbalance works in favor of the Horde. I wish they could do something about the fact that guilds /afk out when they finally face a good team on the other side. Maybe you should get a no-join timer, when you type /afk or leave through the portal. The honor system in this game is causing this to happen, because it gives guilds (especially on the faction with less players) an advantage. As a small group or solo player, you can hardly make an impact in PvP. Guilds can and are dictating the highest ranks in the honor system. I hope that Blizzard will figure out a way to fix this. There is at least one thing they can do that helps a little, auto-join raid group when entering the BG. At least that stops people from asking for an invite, since nobody seems to be willing to take the lead.

[Lord_Shinnok]

Of course i've been only doing WSG for one day but last night the que for waiting wasn't that long. In one hour i had 4 matches and went 2 and 2. After that i had one more match but that a brutal beating of which i won't speak of.

I find the alliance on our server either goes for it or gives up from the start based on who is on the other team. If say, Demonseed or Gauss (who now singles me out, the bastard) is on the other team they just say "screw it" and we don't bother. Now we still kind'a work as a team but we don't have a real plan to win.

[Tufriast]

I personally don't know what to do on my server, really I don't. If you like PVP just stay away from Dalaran.

Anyway, back on topic. I think the new PVP level structure will do nothing at all. If you think that getting a group was hard before, imagine it now. You have, by default, fewer level 60s on a server. That means you must wait for more level 60's to join a queue. If your server has long wait times as a 60, expect it to go up as a 60. If your server has short wait times as a 60, expect it to go up as a 60.

Everyone else might see a nice shortening though. But then again, pre-60 PVP doesn't really matter. It just doesn't.

I feel like puking sometimes b/c of the lack of skilled people on my server on alliance. PVP speaking. If I could transfer to a PVP server I would. Gaza's good reccomendation about getting 60, and not doing pick-up groups is ideal. But for us people on servers with bad balance of players it's not possible.

My server is majority Alliance, and very PVE friendly. I would move to a balanced PVP server if I could. Can't now though. It will be months before this is possible, and will cost me money.

I am really lost as to why PVP is something farmers disdain so much.

Killing people has brought me more joy than anything else in this game. Without murder I'd have quit a while back. Starting Crossroads raids has been real fun. I plan on camping that spot more too.

[ChaosTree]

I think it's also very dependant on your server. Me (druid) and my rogue friend had no problem making a difference as lvl 56-58 players, in the WSG, and may I add, my equip sucks. Of course we stand no chance agains the premade alliance teams, who use teamspeak and potions, including FAP's (Free Action Potion's), but really the lvl 60 horde players, in hi-end equip doesn't either.

PS: I play on EU-EarthenRing (rp server)

[Seunghee]

wow.. people still play WSG??

not on my server.. it's all AV.. and getting in as a team on alliance side is next to impossible so we all just play pickups

non-60s in BG = annoying

I think next patch AV is going to be dead like WSG and everyone will be in Arathi Basin.. everyone is sick of AV =P

[theHide]

You can play EndGame warsong without Epic Gear. What you need to understand though is that while your getting to 60 alot of these players have been there for sometime and they know how to play their characters. On equal terms the EPIC PVP equipped player will beat the Non Epic equipped the majority of the time. However equipment is not the be all and end all of PvP. Decision making at various stages makes up for a large proportion of the PvP success tree.

[sasja]

I'll just stand up for the pugs - I'm a casual player without a guild (I don't have time to join a good one, and I'm not interested in joining a bad guild), but I'm not stupid. I know the basics of my class, from reading and practice, and I'm willing to listen and learn. But if all the good players avoid me like the plague, I'll end up grouping with morons and eventually stop enjoying group play (be it pvp or pve), and finally stop playing. The community is one of the great things about wow, and if all the best players confine themselves to their guild and other power gamers, I think we all miss out. I understand the frustration with pick-up groups, and if you can do most of your grouping within your guild, that's great. But once in a while a pug won't kill you :)

[helidul]

Why not have two separate queues for WsG, one for ppl who join in a full group and another one for individuals. That would balance things up because we would have pickup vs pickup fights and Allstar vs Alstar fights.

[moopy]

1 hour.

yikes thats not much fun. What about during prime time? or is that prime time?

If the wait were only an hour on my server, at the best of times, people would be in transports of joy.

[InTheNight]

Wow I didn't realize anyone played WSG over 51 at least not on Stormscale. That could be the issue as WSG you may have a game last 1 hour. The best I have ever done in WSG is get 70 kills. AV lasts whole while longer. I have been in games that have lasted over 4 hours so in that way it can be a pain but I usually get over 250 kills up to 700 in 1 game. Plus AV you can have up to 40 people per team. Makes for some fast pace crazy action. Also in AV you get bonus NPC's and NPC's to help guard resources you control.

The other great thing about AV is the bonus honor. The best you can hope for in WSG is 700 bonus if your group captures all 3 flags. In AV, you get so much more. You get bonus honor for capture/destroying certain resources such as Graveyards and towers. Bonuses reach the 7000, yes 7k if you capture all resources and take out the opposing players main NPC.

At 59 I wouldn't even spend the time in WSG. You are better to try AV and if you don't have the time (some games end in a hour though those seem to be rare. Now it is possible that you just hope in few minutes or an hour then leave. Not sure how bonus works on that. You may get bonus for just the time you were or none at all. I do think you get bonus though even if you don't stay), you are better off simply hunting done and killing opposing players out in the game (provided we are talking PvP server).

[Fast Eddy]

You can play EndGame warsong without Epic Gear. What you need to understand though is that while your getting to 60 alot of these players have been there for sometime and they know how to play their characters. On equal terms the EPIC PVP equipped player will beat the Non Epic equipped the majority of the time. However equipment is not the be all and end all of PvP. Decision making at various stages makes up for a large proportion of the PvP success tree.

It has nothing to do with understanding how to play one's toon. I would put myself up against anyone with identical gear. I'm not saying I'd win every time but I understand how to play and set up my character. I also understand that an average or bad player with really good gear will get beaten by a good player with poor or average gear.

You could assemble the 10 best players on a given server (if that were possible to determine) and throw them into a pick-up group against one of these teams and they would get destroyed. There isn't even time to discuss strategy before they are on top of you.

The fact is, end game BG simply isn't any fun in a pick-up group against an organized team. For everyone but the most serious, pick-up groups are the only option.

[DrunkCajun]

See, on my server getting Alterac Valley up requires the magnanimity of one of the larger Horde guilds. When they're feeling particularly generous, they'll stop farming WSG for honor and create an AV game, sending a level 1 alt to IF to announce the fact. At which point every half-brained kid with a 51 who's seen the Ice-whatever Spear thingie runs for the queue, and wait times can top 4 hours just to get in. My first time in AV (two weeks ago) I waited 3 hours and 45 minutes, only to get in just as most of the Horde was AFKing out. I saw 15 minutes of AV action.

The second time in AV, I got in at the beginning because I happened to be lucky enough to be right by the battlemaster when the announcement came, and jumped right in. That match lasted 6 hours and 11 minutes. From 9pm until 3ish am in the morning. That was grueling, but a blast. Problem is, because of the fact that it takes so long and very few folks have hte stamina to stay in it, people drop out. As a result, on a server where very few hordes are interested in PvP on anything other htan their own terms (afking out against teams in WSG that look good, only playing against pugs they know they'll take down 3-0 in under 10 minutes), no one else joins on the Horde side, meaning the numbers eventually dwindle.

I wish AV were up on my server. Unfortunately WSG is the name of the game, and even then it's a pain. Over the weekend, 3/7 WSG games I entered saw the entire horde team afk out within moments. Once, they afked out after we took the first flag before them. Another time, they afked out but left a mage and shaman, who hid, and then dropped earthbind totems and frost novas on our flag carriers before running off, in a lame attempt to slow us down enough to prevent us from managing to get the three flag caps for the win. As we were down to 2 minutes left and on the third flag, we finally dedicated a team to take them out, but they afked just before dying.

Anyway, here's a screenie from the end of the AV on my server. Note the lack of real PvPers left on the horde side (Vaughn is the only name I recognize from my PvPing), and the fact that very few of the hardcore PvPers on the Alliance side are in there--Myia and Skinfaxi are the only two names I know on that list, and as you can see fom her standings, Myia didn't make it in until very late in the night. Vaughn's a priest, accounting for his low numbers--he was healing.

Pardon the enormity of the screenshot. I have a big monitor and not sure how to resize this.

http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/2041/screenshot0908050304416wg.jpg

[groovy]

Just wanted to input something that ya probably already know, but I didn't see it anywhere in the posts so thought I'd add it: They are going to change the ranges in the new patch so that lvl60s have their own WsG groups and the rest are 50-59, 40-49 and so on...

And Gaza, I always thought pug stood for pick-up group... :happy53:

Thats prolly for the good at my server agamaggan the lvls lower then 60 are killed mostly very fast.

And horde win most times :)

Im lvl60 mages and love wsg:)

[Footprint]

Dont join pugs.


I pug is an old term for "pub players" basically casual gamers who log on at internet cafes... random term but there you go.


Basically a Pug is a bunch of random players.

PUG = Pick Up Group .. not 'pub players' who logon at internet cafes. A PUG is nothing more then random people you group with, outside of a guild group. However you are right about one thing, PUGs suck.

[northernlights]

Theres a movie floating around somewhere called 'World of Roguecraft' that shows a Rogue with below average gear absoloutly decimating people in PVP.

Rogues dependancy on gear is overrated. Stealth as an artform is underrated.

Of the 20-30 Rogues I know, maybe 4 are truly great at stealthing. The class is all about picking your battles and making those first few seconds out of stealth count.

PVP combat rogues make me rotfl.

[durtvandutch]

I've pretty much given up on BG on FrostWolf. Only 40, but I haven't done BG since my 20's simply b/c no one queue's. Not in the 30's and so far not in the 40's either..
Even worse, when I try and get folsk together for a PvP raid or sum kind of organized attempt..no interest. Too busy lookin cute on epics to help. I even posted on the official asking to get sumthin together. Each response could be summed up in one quote "i'm not your babysitter"

(????) who asked that? Why play on a PvP server if you're not going to take part? Especially when you see how the horde runs in packs and just aptrols areas..Too bad Alliance on FW won't try that..at least not in areas like STV or SouthShore..