#0 - April 18, 2007, 10:25 a.m.
There simply aren't as many people playing now, from say when the new honour system had launched, and we would rather get players into battleground matches sooner than have them wait around just to match them with the people they were probably going to be matched with anyway.
We'll be continuing to tighten up or loosen how stingy the matching is as the number of players in the battlegrounds increases or decreases, respectively.
Bottom line is that with enough people in queue you're going to see some better matching, but in the lower levels where there's generally already slim pickings the chance you'll see a twink every once in a while is probably pretty good.
Updates:
Drysc 03/05:
Basically when you queue it's going to check all of the gear you own, average out how good the gear you have is, and then assign you a number. This all happens "back stage". Invisible to you or me.
In addition it's also going to check how many people are in the party you queued up with.
When it's trying to find others to match you against it's going to take your gear number, and party size, and try to find other people/teams that fall within your same gear and organization level. If you're in greens and playing by yourself it's going to try to match you up with others that are in greens and playing alone.
It's not going to be completely accurate all of the time, or even most of the time because we would rather you get into a game where the matching is a bit off instead of making you wait a really long time until the perfect match finally queues up. It's going to help though.
The benefit is taking out some of the skewed match ups that usually just don't end up being fun at all, and trying to place players and teams in situations where they're at least close to each other with their items and organisation.
Nethaera 03/05:
The matching is going to be relatively forgiving so that BG queue time shouldn't be a problem.
Also, if your group is comprised of multiple armour sets of different qualities, it's going to work on an average (or at least should). So, you and your friends will still be able to play together and you won't have to worry about making sure everyone has the "right" gear to go into the battleground.
All the system should do is help balance out the disparities slightly and make things more fair between teams. There are no "Brackets" involved. You aren't labelled as being a part of a bracket, it's just an average of values weighted against others going into the battleground.