Zarhym speaks on Battleground queues and uneven team numbers
It seems to be a complaint that comes up quite often lately: Many people on both sides of the aisle are finding that when they queue up these days and get into a battleground, one side or the other starts at a distinct disadvantage, numbers-wise. Whether it be a 15-7 Arathi Basin, or a 10 to 3 Warsong Gulch, I'm sure most avid Battleground PvPers can tell you that it is extremely hard to recover when you start at a great imbalance in numbers like that.
Zarhym chimed in to offer his own view on the situation on a recent forum thread, and to tell us that Blizzard may still be open to a bit more tweaking to try to solve the problem.
Zarhym first clarifies how the system works: A match only begins when an equal number of people on each side are plucked from the queue and chosen to play the match. However, they are given a grace period before entering the match. If they don't join, but don't decline the invitation to the battleground right away, the server must wait for that decline or for the grace period to expire before they can invite a replacement, even if one is ready and waiting in the queue. Of course, by that time, the match will have most likely already started. But, as he said, most of us know this, he just wanted to make sure that we knew he knew.
The problem, says he, is that if they simply left the gates closed until both sides had the full complement, they would risk lagging people's game time incredibly. It would not be fun to sit behind a starting gate for 5 minutes waiting for people to get in if multiple people in a row leave a battleground invite hanging on their screen. Because of this, Blizzard isn't convinced that simply suspending the game indefinitely until both sides have a full team is the right thing to do to fix the problem. At some point, Zarhym says, a lot of people will likely prefer to just "get through the match and move on with their gaming."
However, they are not satisfied with the queue system as it currently stands, and Zarhym has promised to watch the thread for suggestions, even if it can't comment on every specific one. So if you have some ideas of your own, this thread would be a good place to start.
Me, I'm honestly thinking that saying that some people just want to "get through the match and move on with their gaming." sounds a bit cynical. I think if you're truly there for a good, challenging match, waiting an extra minute or two to make sure the teams are fair isn't that bad. Of course, if you're just there to farm marks, maybe you really do just want to be on the losing side of that 3v12 Eye of the Storm, just to get it over with so you can queue again and get another mark. Still, I'd hope we could be optimistic about people still playing Battlegrounds for the fun of them. I know I still do. Then again, waiting 10 minutes behind a closed gate for the teams to get equal might dampen the fun too. It's a tough balancing act, I suppose.
And a final word to the conspiracy theorists: No, the queue system is not different for the Horde and the Alliance. It's the same one. Seriously.
