Tol Barad =/= Wintergrasp?

Q u o t e:
I'm just curious here. Is there a new design being considered as far as how many people are allowed into the new PvP area at once?

I'm a bit concerned seeing as how, even in primetime on the servers I play on, we're outnumbered 10 to 1 in WG.

Sure, tenacity is a good idea on paper, but even with 100000 health in caster form, my druid just isn't going to survive a 10:1 ratio.

Are there ideas in the works to keep things even, or should I faction transfer if I want to see content in Cata?

Keep in mind Tol Barad is still deep in development, but we do have plans to implement more stringent faction balancing measures than those which exist for Wintergrasp today. We want to have the queue system try to create a battle with as close to a 1:1 team ratio as possible. In other words, if 40 Horde and 150 Alliance players are in the queue, it's going to make the battle somewhere close to 40 vs. 40. There will be a maximum cap of players allowed on each side as there is with Wintergrasp, but there will also be a minimum cap as well. Since the system will be looking for a 1:1 team ratio, the minimum cap will be designed to ensure a battle can't be thrown by a faction if no one shows up. So, say if the minimum cap is 25, there is a chance the battle could be 25 vs. 5.

Because of this new design, it'll be much more beneficial to play on a realm where the faction balance is roughly equivalent rather than seeking a realm where your faction dominates. For this reason we'll continue to monitor faction balance on all realms and work to ensure players enjoy the best gaming experience possible.

Q u o t e:
I've never understood why we can't let people play in a 'gated' fasion: if you let 20 alliance in, you only let 20 horde in. If 3 alliance leave, no more horde can come in until you're back up to 20 alliance. Then you can let them in together in groups of 5, say, in sortof "mini groups" to get added to the BG.

This is essentially the concept behind balancing populations in Tol Barad, unless the total number of participants on one side is below the minimum cap.

Q u o t e:
Wow, I actually was looking forward to Tol Barad. Guess I will be able to maybe play once a month if the stars align and I make ritualistic sacrifice to the RnG gods cause of my choice of server. Suppose players on the dominate side of a realm will have to dish out 25 bucks to just participate in that part of the game. Me thinks Bobby Kotick needs some more stock options.

I just hope there at least isn't rewards only available through participating like WG trinkets.

Horde side Mal'ganis not being too fond of faction equality... weird huh?

Okay okay, cheap shots aside, the rewards haven't been determined for Tol Barad yet but I won't be surprised if they are very similar to Wintergrasp. Also, like Zarhym mentioned, we will be keeping an eye on realm population and ratio concerns and try to provide options to help any particularly problematic situations.

Q u o t e:

Q u o t e:
Ironically, doesn't this mean that (assuming you want to do TB), your best chance of regularly doing so is to go to a realm with a severe faction balance against your faction?

Yes, but then you have behavior that equalizes factions, rather than further aggravating the imbalance.

This. Right now the issue with Wintergrasp is it actually encourages the behavior of selecting a realm where your faction dominates. If the reverse becomes true for Tol Barad, that only serves to help improve faction balance rather than further impact it. In Cataclysm it will be more beneficial to be on a realm where your faction is underpopulated (which will lead to a natural trend of balancing out the population), or be on a high-population realm where the maximum Tol Barad cap is reached, or close to reached for each battle.

Q u o t e:
But we've been having these sorts of problems for over a year now with WG. The only solution we ever saw was the losingest faction starts with more workshops, which doesn't seem to impact most games. If Tol Barad's balancing just isn't quite right, do we need to wait another year?

If the factions were always equal in participants (so no tenacity right away), do you think there would still be a heavy imbalance in wins on your realm?

Q u o t e:


Curious to know how you'll address realms that have a balanced population, but less active players, or less people interested in world PvP. From a past post by Bashiok we've seen how you're numbers oppose what we see in the game.

For the most part if a realm is balanced overall, the significance of the issues on that realm are pretty small and we are focused on the realms with the bigger issues.

Note: This is a generalized statement and doesn't mean we will not do something if we feel the situation calls for it.

Q u o t e:
I hate to ask, but would you explain again how the maximum and minimum caps work, or shall I say how you think they are going to work? I'm a bit confused. :x

The maximum cap will essentially work the same as it does in Wintergrasp. If there are hundreds of players in the queue for Tol Barad on both sides, the system is not going to overcrowd the zone and make it unplayable. It will create an even match with up to a certain number of players on each side.

The minimum cap is intended to prevent griefing from factions which are extremely underpopulated. For example, if it's 3 in the morning and the Alliance have a very low population on a realm, a single Alliance guild could decide to boycott Tol Barad. If there were no minimum cap with the 1:1 ratio queuing system, this could lead to a situation where Tol Barad ends up being a, say, 3 vs. 3 battle leaving many Horde players locked out. So if we set the minimum cap to 25, it means in this scenario that it would be 3 Alliance vs. 25 Horde. In other words, the underpopulated faction on an imbalanced realm can't fully dictate the battle size of Tol Barad all the way down to 0 participants on either side.

Q u o t e:
does this apply to wintergrasp too? I'm gonna miss pwning the alliance....

I just got word that we are planning on implementing this new balancing mechanism for Wintergrasp sometime shortly after the next Wrath of the Lich King minor content patch. So you'll get a chance to see it in action and provide us with feedback prior to the launch of Cataclysm!

Q u o t e:


I am so effing confused.

So in cliff note form: With the minimum cap is 25, if 25 Horde que and 150 alliance que, the battle will be 25 vs 25.

And if 25 Horde que, and 10 alliance que, will it then just 10 v 10 or 25 v 10?

Sorry but I suck at numbers.

Your first example is correct.

For your second example, the battle would be 25 Horde vs. 10 Alliance.

Q u o t e:
Zarhym, two questions if you don't mind good sir:

1) Will Tol'Barad flag players between battles on PvE servers? Please say yes!

2) Will flying mounts be disabled in the zone when the battle isn't taking place?

The current plan is for Tol Barad to function like Wintergrasp with regard to your questions. So it will be a PvP zone at all times and flight will be disabled once the battle begins.

Correction: we do not plan to force a PvP flag on players on PvE realms when the battle is not in progress. I've clarified this here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24630543156&postId=246285777047&sid=1#244

Q u o t e:


Ugh, why would you set up our daily hubs in a pvp zone even on pve servers? If we wanted to pvp while we did our dailies, we'd have rolled on pvp servers in the first place.

I have a slight correction on this. The current plan is to only forcibly flag players for PvP in the zone when a Tol Barad battle is in progress on a PvE realm. We still plan for Tol Barad to be a major daily quest hub when battles are not in progress and do not want this to force PvE players into PvP in order to quest there. I apologize for the confusion.