Nerds at Play

You wouldn’t join an Alterac Valley two minutes before the Horde kills Vann.

That happened to me today. I waited a little over fifteen minute for the queue to pop. I got in and saw the Reinforcements count: 150 to 250. That doesn’t bode well…

The Horde were gathered in DB getting ready to pull Vann. The Alliance were down in FW, with one tower in conflict and one tower still belonging to the Horde.

The game was over about two minutes after I joined it and I got a whopping 0 bonus honor. Woot! Glad I sat through that queue…

Queuing Multiple BGs

When I go into a BG, I typically queue at least two. On the Alliance side, I can be reasonably sure that an AV will turn out in my favor and net me a couple hundred honor. Anything else could be a win but will more often than not be a loss… sometimes with little or no honor.

Solution? Queue up for one BG, i.e. Arathi Basin, along with Alterac Valley. After fifteen minutes of the Basin, the AV will pop. If AB is going well, I’ll stick it out for some tokens and/or honor. If not, I jump over to AV. It’s a pretty standard strategy, and you’ll often see Basins lose 4-5 Alliance members as they all jump ship for a Valley.

How frustrating would it be, though, to leave a close Basin where you might get some tokens in the long run for a Valley that you’re going to lose in a matter of minutes? Grrr…

Should People Be Pulled Into Losing BGs?

When this happens, I can’t help but think - should people be pulled into losing battlegrounds?

At some point, a BG is lost. No matter how hard you try, your team just can’t salvage it. In Basin, if you’re down 1800-200… you can give up. In EotS, if you’ve been 4-capped, it’s a matter of time before it’s over.

If you’re looking to win (for example to complete the daily or to get the maximum number of tokens for your time), it can be very frustrating to join these games late. Sure, you’ll get a token, but you’ve wasted some time and a chance to get a win.

It would be nice if there was a cut-off point, after which no new members would join a BG. Think of it as a mercy rule of sorts.

Or, you could allow people to “preview” the game before they head in. They could see the score - victory points in AB/EotS, flags in WSG, or Reinforcements in AV - before they choose whether to stay or hide. If you’re looking for one quick token, you can jump into the losing game. Otherwise, you know to hide and take another queue later.

Or… Stop People From Leaving Early

Of course, one reason there are so many openings in these losing games is that people leave.

You can’t very well make people stay. If they want to quit and become a deserter, then that is there choice.

More often than not, though, these openings come up because of AV. Alliance members play 15 minutes in a Basin and jump ship - creating 5+ openings for newcomers to fill. Usually, these games are hopeless, or else they would have stayed instead of taking the Valley queue.

You could easily remedy this. Once you join a battleground, you get dropped from all other queues. You’d still be able to queue for multiple BGs and join whichever popped first. However, you wouldn’t be able to wait in an AV queue while simultaneously playing in another BG.

The only problem is that Alliance players in my battlegroup (and players of one faction or another in most battlegroups) will have to wait around for 15+ minutes with nothing to do in between Valley queues.