CrossRealm
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Blizzard MVPs create Cross-Realm Rated Battlegrounds site
First, we had a cross-realm raid group site. Now, Blizzard forum MVPs Eldacar and Cyaga have created The LFG List, a cross-realm group finder for players to get involved in Rated Battlegrounds. Part of the group's Battlemasters site, The LFG List is currently active in the United States only; other versions will be rolled out after the U.S. version has been running smoothly for a while. How do you get onto the list? Well, that's simple! If you are ready for a Battleground or two within the next hour, head over to the start page and choose your faction. That will take you to a page with an IRC window and an entry screen below it. Type in your realm and your character's name in the entry screen to retrieve your basic details from the Armory. You can add in notes and doublecheck that your main spec and off spec are correct. Note the IRC Name section -- this is where you fill in the name that you're using in the live IRC chat above. This way, you can give yourself an IRC name of your choosing and seek out Rated Battleground buddies with any character. Other IRC users will see your name in the list and can contact you directly -- and you're off! Your entry stays up for an hour, so if you're looking for groups further in advance, you can head over to the Battlemasters Forums and make a post. As an aside, the Horde chat seems currently rather more popular than the Alliance chat, hence the split channels. As a mainly Alliance player myself, I'm not OK with this! So I'm putting the call out to my fellow humans, dwarves, draenei, worgen, gnomes and night elves: People of the Alliance! Get on over to The LFG List and get involved!
More options for party communication
Our buddy Rufus from the WoW LJ brings word of a sneaky change in the recent patch: raid warnings (those warnings that pop up in the middle of your screen, created by typing "/rw" while leading a raid) no longer work in parties. Apparently you have to be in a raid to actually toss off a warning. Of course, that could have happened before this patch, but at any rate, it's in the game now. No more /rw in party chat. Not only is it a bummer because some people used to use it constantly to keep party members in line, but this also means that there's one less means of communication between all of these random parties forming out there on the realms. Sure, in a perfect world, everyone would know the fights and chat would be enough to make sure everyone was on the same page (or depending of your vision of a perfect world, everyone actually uses the in-game voice chat -- a quick survey of our staff here presumes that it works in cross-realm PuGs, but given that I've never actually seen it used on the live realms by anyone, who knows?), but we're hardly running instances in a perfect world. Sometimes chat is not the best way to get a complicated boss fight organized and ready.
Turn crossrealm BGs back off?
Perhaps people are just feeling nostalgic, but last week people were asking for 40 man raids again, and now they're asking for non-crossrealm battlegrounds.Are you serious? Did you all even play before 1.12, when Blizzard gave us the ability to join up to battlegrounds that were populated with people from other servers? We're talking waits into the hours, and some Alliance never even got to play (then again, that part wasn't so bad). No, X-realm battlegrounds were a hit back then, and they still are great today.Now maybe you're asking for a better way to play with people you know-- that's definitely a valid concern, and Blizzard is actually working on it: they all but confirmed guild vs. guild battlegrounds at BlizzCon. Building better and easier ways to play with your friends is always a good idea.But limiting the battleground population again? Bad idea. I'm starting to agree with the commenters in the 40 man raid post: people just don't know what they want.
Cross-Server BGs are a Hit
Considering all the trouble with the hardware the past few days, you may not have even seen them yet, but if you have, chances are you love the new cross-server BGs. I know a few commenters here said they didn't work out so well, but it seems like a good majority of forum posters can't get enough of them.Reports from the front are saying queues are almost instant, and up to 40-50 games are going on at any one time. A guidie of mine said he hadn't been able to get so much rep and HK in so little time ever. MBAzeroth loves them (and says it's wonderful that Alliance are lining up to get killed-- although they're working on getting better), and Kissedbyluck over on the WoW Ladies lj group says she actually lost her boyfriend to the BGs (since they used to quest together while he was waiting for an AV game).It'll be interesting, then, to see how this plays out with the new PVP system-- with rep and rewards so easy to get, will we see Blue hike up the requirements? Or was this how they originally intended the system to run? And for all the twinking going on, will we see more of it now since it's so easy to enter the BGs, or will it start to disappear as people get burned out quickly after playing the BGs for a few days straight? It's game on in the BGs-- see you there.
What Do Cross-Realm Battlegrounds Solve?
This question seems to be getting more and more play on the forums recently - and I can certainly see where this poster is coming from. When I played Alliance myself, I rarely participated in PvP battlegrounds for the same reason - queues tended to last about an hour and I always seemed to think up more interesting things to do than wait around. When I started playing Horde, I found myself doing battlegrounds much more frequently - and would consider ten minutes to have been a long battlegrounds queue. However, if most realms have higher numbers of Alliance than Horde, won't the problem be the same, only on a larger scale? CM Nethaera explains that "some people may see their time go up, others may see theirs go down" - as populations and queues are averaged across many realms. However, Nethaera also notes that cross-realm battlegrounds have not yet been tested on the test realms - and, in my mind, any test realm environment still won't give us a good view on how this will impact the live realms.
Patch 1.12: Cross-Realm Battlegrounds System
It's old news that we'll be seeing cross-realm battlegrounds in the next patch, however, Blizzard has recently let us in on additional information regarding how the system works. After 1.12, when you enter a battleground queue, you won't be entering a queue with players from every realm - simply from a select few. Each realm is part of a "battlegroup" consisting of five to twenty realms, and you will only compete with other players within your realm's battlegroup. There's already speculation on which battlegroup will contain the toughest competition, so place your bets now...![Thanks, obo]
