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Battlegroup changes in anticipation of complete merger
Recently, players from the Emberstorm and Whirlwind groups have been noticing that they're being grouped in the dungeon finder with each other. This isn't a bug; the matchmaking system has been changed to allow those two battlegroups to be matched into dungeons and BGs with each other as part of the overall goal to eventually merge all battlegroups across a geographical area (think Europe or North America) and allow matchmaking across all of them. CM Lylirra announced these changes and addressed some bugs to the process that are making it impossible to queue for BGs, which will hopefully be straightened out. Still, bugs aside, the first step of eventually allowing an entire region to be selected from for PvP and PvE seems really exciting to me and very positive overall. Finally, I'll get to farm all the disparate old friends I have on like 20 servers! A frabjous day, all told. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
15 Minutes of Fame: Premade players QueueQ for battlegrounds wins
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. I participated in one of their runs yesterday. It was freakin' amazing. Well run. Their Vent had two full AV premades going, with an additional 60 (players) in the waiting room. In the heyday back during June, they fielded five full AV premades with more on the waiting list. It wasn't uncommon for them to have an 8-hour wait list. -- Matt Low of Raid Rx and self-proclaimed "world's worst PvP priest" on QueueQ Premades The Bloodlust battlegroup appears to be home to more than its fair share of PvP enthusiasts. Arena participation outstrips that of other battlegroups by orders of magnitude, and as for battleground enthusiasts ... Well, BG enthusiasts on the Alliance side have QueueQ Premades. Players who sign up for QueueQ's cross-realms premade battlegrounds service enjoy 85 percent win records on average -- with zero resilience, gear or achievement requirements. The atmosphere is clean and professional: no exploits, no inappropriate chat or Vent chatter. "QueueQ" himself, aka Revash of Kil'Jaeden (US-A), has been running QueueQ Premades for a little over a year now, developing winning strategies designed for fast wins with maximum honor.
Arena teams hit 3k
A pair of 3v3 teams from the US Bloodlust Battlegroup -- aka BG9 and reputed to be the best US Battlegroup -- recently hit the 3000 rating, the hard cap for Arena ratings. A few other teams following closely behind at 2953 and 2949, making it likely that they, too, will hit 3000 before Season 6 is over. This has caused a bit of a stir in the Arena community, although it's not entirely unexpected considering all the changes that had been made to the Arena system since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. In fact, some had predicted that this season would see teams hit 3k legitimately (unscrupulous win-traders have hit the ceiling before).The two teams, big furious joke and sup fresh our turn baby, an RLS (Rogue, Warlock, Shaman) and a RetPR (Retribution Paladin, Priest, Rogue) respectively, are composed of members who have performed consistently well through different Arena seasons. The Rogue of big furious joke, Nutzz, is rumored to be the legendary Neilyo, who grew to infamy with his popular series of PvP videos. Its Shaman, Douja, formerly played pro for Team Pandemic. The other team's Paladin, Euneek, topped his Battlegroup last season using the Holyplay (Ret Pally, Priest, Shaman) comp. None of these guys are slouches and aren't likely to have win traded the way teams in the past have in order to reach the hard cap.Their recent achievement has brought the current Arena system under scrutiny, as Blizzard has stated before that they never intended for players to reach the rating ceiling. Considering the system has undergone numerous changes in the past few seasons, it's not unreasonable to think that it's due for another overhaul. Regardless of the system, a 3k rating is an incredible achievement. Congratulations on jobs well done.[Thanks to cigarillo for the heads up!]
Retaliation battlegroup down again
For the second Tuesday in a row around the same time (9:00-9:30 pm EST-ish), the US Retaliation battlegroup has crashed. Blizzard has confirmed that it's performing urgent maintenance on the hardware of the affected realms, and they'll provide an update at 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if whatever caused last week's crash was accidentally rolled back during server maintenance earlier today.The following are the affected realms: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh. My guild's on Retaliation and has consequently found itself without something to raid for the second Tuesday running. Last week their solution was to take off to Mug'thol and do a level 1 Hogger raid, complete with designated tanks and healers, damage meters, and -- to top things off -- a bonafide ninja looter of the Malachite drop. Our server might be down, but our hallowed traditions remain.
EU battlegroups experiencing language problems after mergers
Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.
The Colosseum: Drwhy of Burning Legion
The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.After a short hiatus, your weekend Colosseum interviews are back with an interview with Drwhy, an Arena Priest on Burning Legion. Working in 2v2 with Nostalgia, a Blood Elf Rogue, Drwhy is currently striving to excel at the end of Season 4.Drwhy talked to us not only about how he's been doing in the Arena to date, but also about what he expects to see with the approaching end of season, and Wrath's future release.Check out what Drwhy had to say after the cut.
The Art of War(craft): Of Duelists and cupcakes, a farewell to Season 3
In the end we fell short. Last night, our team played its last Arena game of the season after an hour-long wait only to win 1 rating point. It had been that way most of the season, and in the end, it took its toll. We close Season 3 likely to fail in attaining our goal of making Gladiator, falling just outside of the projected 0.5% of our Battlegroup. Scheduling conflicts precluded further games for the week, and as the hours whittled down and everyone was getting tired and sleepy, we mustered enough courage to call it for the season. We thanked each other, logged off the game, and turned off Vent. For what seemed like a long time, the only sound I could hear was the drone of my computer's fan before I finally headed off to bed.It had been a wonderful, if ultimately disappointing, experience. I love PvP. It's my favorite thing to do in the game. These past few weeks, I dreamt of Arenas every night. Our window was closing and we couldn't find the schedule to grind the final stretch. Last week, we only managed 12 games on a Monday prior to maintenance to scrape by on the minimum requirements and, with wins of 1 or 2 points each, didn't manage to get much closer to our goal for end-of-season rewards. Despite having won hundreds of games with a win percentage of around 81%, we ended up frustratingly short.
US battlegroups Cataclysm and Frenzy to merge
Drysc has announced that Blzzard is planning on merging the smallest of the US battlegroups. At present, Cataclysm contains 5 realms and Frenzy contains 7 -- while the next smallest battlegroup contains 12 realms and the rest of the battlegroups contain 15 to 20 realms. All in all this is probably good news for PvPers on the realms Shattered Halls, Azuremyst, The Underbog, Auchindoun, Coilfang, Blood Furnace, Terokkar, Exodar, Blade's Edge, Velen, Area 52, Zangarmarsh (hey, that's us!), and The Scryers, who should look forward to shorter battleground queues. However, one thing this does tell me is that Blizzard isn't planning on adding new realms in the future -- or at least not a lot of them. These smaller battlegroups were obviously designed to give Blizzard room to grow, but the move to merge them suggests that Blizzard isn't planning on needing that room. As it was, to bring them to the size of the smallest existing battlegroup (the 12-realm Emberstorm), Cataclysm would need 7 more realms and Frenzy would need 5, for a total of 12 new realms. And to bring them up to size of the largest battlegroup, Cataclysm would need 15 additional realms and Frenzy would need 13, which would mean a total of 28 new realms. As it is, the merged Cataclysm/Frenzy battlegroup will contain 12 realms -- based on the size of the largest existing battlegroups, there's still room to grow, but it seems that Blizzard isn't planning on massive growth in the future.
Breakfast Topic: Favorite Battleground
With all the recent news and speculation about coming PvP changes - both in patch 1.12 and the expansion - it seems only fitting to have a breakfast topic discussing everyone's favorite source of honor - battlegrounds! So which of the available battlegrounds is your favorite place to slaughter the opposing faction? Of late, I rarely venture outside of Alterac Valley - which, with the rate at which AB and WSG groups loose on my realm, seems to be the best source of honor. I remember, vaguely, a time in which I used to enjoy Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin matches, but this must have been long ago - all of my recent experience with them have been nothing but quick and harsh losses - with the players of my own faction spending the entire match yelling back and forth and disagreeing about what best to do. (Trust me, such battleground runs are not entertaining.)
EU Cross-Realm Battlegroups Announced
Battlegroups - groups of realms that will share players in the cross-realm battleground system that will be coming in patch 1.12 - have been announced for the EU servers. English language battlegroups are listed here, German here, and French here. Some of the English battlegroups look especially odd, with both very large and very small groupings - battlegroup 1 contains 18 realms and battlegroup 9 contains only 2. However, since these assignments reflect hardware settings (server clusters), there's probably not a lot of room to tweak the individual battlegroup configurations.
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]
