Blizzard takes a stand against pre-made battleground groups
Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri has been very active in the past 24 hours in a topic on the patch 5.1 changes to battleground queues. He's been responding to criticism of these changes, and, at the same time, being characteristically forthright on the issue of pre-mades.
if you break it down, what does a full oQueue premade bring to the table that is unfair?
I'll try to break it down as clearly as I can:
Any addon that enables a full, organized Battleground group to queue against a randomly assembled group is creating a scenario where that coordinated group has a huge advantage. That is not in the spirit of the experience we want to provide in the normal Battleground queue. Playing with friends is fun and important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the spirit of the game nor the fun of others.
The normal Battleground queue is for players to jump in and play against other players in a similar situation. We realize that it's not a perfect system, and we're still looking at ways to improve normal Battleground queues further. Regardless, it's not meant for organized groups to "pug stomp" and get quick Honor. We have built in outlets for players that want to organize--if a competitive, social experience was really the goal, then there are clear ways to achieve that.
The ultimate effect that this kind of queuing has had is to drive players away from PvP. Perhaps it's been a long time since you've been in a random group, but a lot of players will see that they're up against a premade and simply quit. At best, they suffer through it. To an extent premade groups count on this. Heck, one of the popular addons announces opposing players that appear to have rage quit.
Addons aren't really a viable solution for botting issues, but we do take those issues seriously and we'll continue our work on improvements to the Battleground system, including better ways to deal with botting and other exploitative gameplay.
It certainly seems hard to argue that a pre-made, organized group, communicating over voice chat or other methods has no advantage over a group of random strangers with little communication. Even a modicum of organization helps in random battlegrounds.
As a PvPer myself, I heartily support any move taken to remove pre-mades from randomly matched PvP. As Daxxarri rightly states, the place for organized pre-made vs. pre-made play is rated battlegrounds, or wargames, and this is where pre-mades should be, not facing off against PuGs. All premade vs. PuG battlegrounds do is serve to discourage and frustrate the PuG team: this isn't "true PvP", as advocates of pre-mades like the "Rath Strat" like to assert. Yes, there are disparities in gear and the like that make for imbalance, but two wrongs don't make a right, and pre-mades only worsen the problem.
Daxxarri's second post addresses a couple of other prevalent complaints.
Posted by Xaeva
Now let us be honest, due to these addons and people like Rathamus and Tiny, regular Battleground PVP had picked up and was growing by leaps and bounds. That is what alerted you. More and more people were turning to the "coordinated" PVP and fewer and fewer "random groups" were being formed. The BG's were no longer sitting idle.
False. That is neither what 'alerted' us, nor were Battlegrounds ever even close to sitting idle.
What is true that there's been an increase in pre-made groups disrupting the PvP experience for other players, though. Pre-mades in the normal queue, however they are formed, are not something that we've ever been particularly fond of. It had become more of an issue of late, so we addressed it accordingly.
Perhaps this seemed to be your personal experience, but I assure you that this was far from generally the case. Regardless, what of the games that you played that weren't against other pre-mades? Just hapless casualties to your fun, I suppose?
Based on your enthusiasm for "true Player vs Player" combat, I'm sure that you'll find War Games and Rated Battlegrounds quite compelling.
You gave us everything we needed, including the idea, but then turned around and slapped our hands, pointed a finger, called us a name and said, this is NOT for you, it is for the REAL players.
You've made the assumption that all those things were accomplished expressly so that you could queue into battlegrounds as an organized group against disorganized opponents? That assumption is mistaken. If you want organized PvP against organized opponents, as you claim, that experience is readily available.
No one's wrist was slapped. There have been no suspensions over this issue. We're just making our stance on the subject clear, so that there's no room for misunderstanding.
Fix the bot problem and you'll see the premade "problem" fix itself.
Bots are a separate problem, with a separate solution. Please stop conflating the two, because, and I'll say this as respectfully as I can: this is complete nonsense.
Put simply, this argument is a red herring. For as long as there's been Battleground PvP, there have been players looking for a way to destroy their enemies to quickly and easily get fast rewards with a minimal time investment. That's the bottom line here, or the variety of other options available would be more compelling.
Bots aren't an issue in War Games or Rated Battlegrounds.
I hope that Blizzard's team continue to closely monitor the pre-made situation and continue to take steps against it. Perhaps the return of the skirmish system, or a similar system for pre-mades to take on other pre-mades without the pressure of rating would help to alleviate the complaints?
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