Do I have to think of everything?

Interesting quote of the day from our friend Ghostcrawler.

With regard to Wintergrasp dailies, there are a couple of reasons why we’re implementing this on the 3.1.2 test realms:

1) Lake Wintergrasp is seeing an overabundance of players resulting in poor realm performance during peak play times; and 2) doing Lake Wintergrasp once or twice a day to get all of the dailies done is becoming a more convenient, efficient way of obtaining honor than signing up for battlegrounds. The change to make quests there weekly is being implemented in the hopes it will better stagger the participation in that zone throughout the week, as there are no quick or easy solutions to address realm instability that is due simply to having far too many people in the same zone at the same time; and we hope to see more players queuing up for battlegrounds. We’re working on other ways of improving battleground participation as well right now

(full source at MMO-Champion Here)

Now, I think I can see where he is going with this. I understand the server stability issues. Unfortunately the way I read it is this:

1. Lake wintergrasp is hugely popular. Lots of people enjoy it, and as it is not instanced it is effecting server performance. In short, Blizz made a battleground a lot of people like. Grats to them, beats the shit out of Haala and turning towers in Hellfire.

2. Since lots of people go there it is a good place to gain a good amount of honor fairly quickly. Also there is the opportunity to complete dailies for cash and a short (usually) profitable raid afterwards if you win. In short it is a much more fun encounter than the standard battlegrounds. Oh, and the marks of honor and spirit shards can actually, um, buy things an 80 would like to have. I almost forgot that part.

2a. We would really like it if people used the instanced battlegrounds more than they do, and used wintergrasp less. It makes it easier on us. In an effort to make this happen we will find it is much easier to screw up wintergrasp than to fix all the other battlegrounds. I suppose that’s the route we will take. (note carefully, he does not say “improving battlegrounds” he says “Improving battleground participation”.)

I still can’t get over that part. “Too many people like this, lets break it so they will go do something else.”

 

I am going to sound like a complete loot whore for a few minutes now. I am not, I am just looking at the reasons why I think Wintergrasp has been such a remarkable success.

First in my mind is the availability of really good epics. Not just from the bosses in VOA but from the quartermaster as well. The only ways I can see to curb this are to remove those epics or add a way to get comparable ones from the instanced battlegrounds. Particularly PvE rewards that some folks have trouble getting any other way.

Don’t tell me “just go grind honor in (insert BG you prefer here) and buy them for honor!” Yes I know that’s already in place. Lets look at that for a minute shall we. We will look at a easy to get armor pieces as an example.

For honor I will use gloves as my example. For just over 30,000 honor I can pick up a pair of decent gloves. Not bad till I consider that even if I got 1000 honor every time I stepped into a battleground I would have to run over thirty of them to pick up one piece of gear. Lets be nice and say 15 minutes per battleground and 32 fights to get it.

Thats 8 hours of grinding for one piece of gear. Sorry, I’ll go do something else with my time.

Next lets consider a pair of boots. Yours for 15 wintergrasp marks of honor. I get 1 mark for a loss and 3 for a win just like everyone else. In the interest of guessing I will figure on winning 50% of the time and call it an average of 2 marks per battle. My guesstimate would be 8 battles at 15 minutes a piece, or right at two hours. Best case is 5 battles taking 1 hr 15 min, worst case is 15 battles taking a bit under 4 hours. Oh, and I still get honor I can use for yet more stuff.

Two hours or eight for one piece of gear? Plus extra honor on top of it? And stonekeeper shards?

Duh, I can add. See you in Wintergrasp.

Next is the access to the VOA raid instance. I can go into VOA and with a reasonably competent PUG that will clear the two bosses in about 30 minutes. This gives me 2 shots at epic loot drops, a bit of cash to cover my repairs, and some badges that I can spend later on even more loot.

Believe me, I understand loot is not everything.

It’s not everything, but it is something.

If I am choosing between to very similar activities, and I am not running with a group that may have other preferences, I will take the more rewarding choice every time.

Blizz, the problem with battlegrounds is not Wintergrasp. The problem is that the battlegrounds are not being rewarded nearly as much for a similar time investment.

Fix the battleground rewards system and Wintergrasp will take care of itself.