World PvP preview [WoW]

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by frott

No way, if those are substantial the group that's "small" in open world gets a massive bonus in the controlled spaces of the BGs.

Isn't that the point? The goal is not to only prop up the less-played faction, but also to encourage people to migrate there.

Just look at the honor system. Organized horde having a larger kill pool advance faster since they have less of a chance to fight the same people repeatedly. PUG alliance have the same chance of facing the 1 or 2 org groups that the org teams do. Gear saturates and that smaller pool ends up ranking faster due to less competition. Yay?

That's the goal.

On top of that, I don't know where you're looking but there are plenty of PVP servers that have near 2:1 alliance/horde ratios of level 60 characters who actively pvp. The best way of seeing this is just taking the split of horde/alliance on the pvp standings pages. The alts tend to get weeded out there and the discrepancies increase.

That doesn't say much. All the statistics available on WoW Census (Quick Facts, Server Ratios, Faction Activity Graphs, etc.) points to a ~56:44 Alliance:Horde ratio on PvP servers (51:49 on RP-PVP and 70:30 on PvE, which is about right). Are you telling me that this ratio is invalid because for some reason Horde makes a million more alts than Alliance? Come on. I go by anecdotal evidence and people say it's specific to my server. I go by statistics and people say it's invalid. So what do *you* have to go on that's so damn factual?

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Cad

US population frott. World population is like 6+ ? Alot in china/korea/europe.

is this your mathemagic?

6 million world population divded by 4 because there are 4 different WOW markets?

I am not sure I want to follow this level of retardation.

[Soygen]

In Cad's defense, he didn't say the other 3 markets were evenly split. Granted, I have no idea if 1.5 million is what the US subscription base is, but whatever.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by frott

1.5 million? Am I missing the joke? First off if you run through census and take the larger guilds, you can get more than 378k characters that are able to kill Ragnaros if they bothered.

Finally if you then add in the pugs/alliances etc you can ramp those numbers up again. Then, find some reliable data on # of 60s in an account and weed those out, or include them, depending on how you want to skew things, and you'll see those numbers continue to inflate. I'm not sure of the NA numbers (my server has a lot of canadiens), but just by taking a glimpse of my server and the people I know I would say less than 10% of the server population can't beat rag at this point, level 60 or under.

I'd sure love to see the # of accounts owned by someone who has access to killing Ragnaros: including shared accounts, one person owning multiple accounts, etc. With each vector, that cuts down the number of casuals. Yes, my bank mule account that I've taken over from a friend will never kill Rag. Zzz.

Between my pool of friends and I we have control of 27 level 60s, 4 real life active players, spread across 7 accounts. Tell me that that doesn't skew the stats just a bit. Of those 27 level 60s, only 6 of them have actually killed rag. Of the accounts only 4 of them. They are spread across 3 guilds. Please number crunch and get back to me with reliable data.

You know what? I don't have to. Tigole did it for me.

Originally Posted by tigole

Q. Overall, what percentage of level 60 players do you think have killed Ragnaros?

A. I don’t have firm statistics, but my gut feeling is around 25 percent.

His gut feeling is more credible than any bullshit you can pull together off of warcraftrealms.

I also have 4 60's who have killed ragnaros - my other brother in law has 3. Then the casual brother in law who hates raiding even has 1. Thats 8 between 3 people who wouldn't care if they never added another 40-man raid to the game ever.

Want to chip away at the stats, be my guest. Tigole > you. He said 25%.

Originally Posted by Quineloe

is this your mathemagic?

6 million world population divded by 4 because there are 4 different WOW markets?

I am not sure I want to follow this level of retardation.

Only you could come up with something that stupid. It was a press release a few months ago that quoted the US playerbase at 1.5 million - I'm not going to look it up, you can dig around if you care.

[frott]

Q. Overall, what percentage of level 60 players do you think have killed Ragnaros?

A. I don’t have firm statistics, but my gut feeling is around 25 percent.

What does 25% of the players mean? Humans who have interacted with WoW? Level 60 characters? People in capable guilds?


I can look at the 5 servers I have access to and check off the guilds that have killed Ragnaros and see that easily 50% (by conservative numbers) of the ***guilds*** have killed Ragnaros, I don't need "gut checks" from two months ago to tell me what contingent is capable.

As far as I'm concerned even if someone in one of those guilds' retarded cousin has a level 32 alt, that basically qualifies said cousin for "Rag is Killable" status.

Again, who gives a shit about WHO HAS done it, what matters is WHO HAS ACCESS TO DO IT.

And good luck with those 25% numbers counting my friends 3rd "taken over" account with 2 level 60s on it who haven't even been to BRD. Guess what: they can drop Rag tomorrow. That qualifies the person who owns the character as actually doing it I M O

[Cad]

Your IMO doesn't change the fact that 75% of the playerbase hasn't completed the very first raid dungeon which was released with the game 20 months ago.

The obvious conclusion is that the majority of the WoW playerbase are not raiders. Given the facts I don't see how you could argue with this statement.

On my server according to warcraftrealms, there are ~7500 level 60's.

On my server's guild progression page, there are 28 guilds working on BWL in some fashion. 12 alliance guilds have downed Nef, 5 horde. (Queue paladin v. shaman..) Still, 28 guilds post-rag. Assuming 70 active accounts per guild (which would be alot, I'd put it closer to 55, but I'll give you 70), thats 1960 raiders. Which is 26.1% of the 7500 active level 60's on the server.

Funny how that 25% number keeps coming up.

Deny it all you like. The majority of the playerbase of WoW are not raiders.

[frott]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

Isn't that the point? The goal is not to only prop up the less-played faction, but also to encourage people to migrate there.

Uh. Out where it's 2000 vs. 1000 yeah, the bonus makes sense.
But then take that bonus and extend it repeatedly to the 10 v 10 battlegrounds and you see the issue.

I'd really love to see the people who "migrate away" from their faction due to anything even remotely similar like that.

You make it sound so intentional rather than being the side effect of a fucking horrible PVP system. Yes, please elucidate me to the amazing number of people who continue the ridiculous pvp grind after hitting GM. Nah, they all disappear and make room for their friends. A laughable amount actually start raiding.

That doesn't say much. All the statistics available on WoW Census (Quick Facts, Server Ratios, Faction Activity Graphs, etc.) points to a ~56:44 Alliance:Horde ratio on PvP servers (51:49 on RP-PVP and 70:30 on PvE, which is about right). Are you telling me that this ratio is invalid because for some reason Horde makes a million more alts than Alliance? Come on. I go by anecdotal evidence and people say it's specific to my server. I go by statistics and people say it's invalid. So what do *you* have to go on that's so damn factual?

I go by the statistics that say 1.5:1 alliance to horde level 60s on my server are garbage when you do a quick scan of the top 400 PVPers on my server and see the numbers

range... a:h
1-100... 49:51,
101-200... 54:46
201-300... 54:46
301-400... 58:42

215:185

Yes, clearly these folks need a huge boost. Let's give them an open world pvp advantage because they're the poor, less populous faction. Snort.

[frott]

Originally Posted by Cad

Your IMO doesn't change the fact that 75% of the playerbase hasn't completed the very first raid dungeon which was released with the game 20 months ago.

What fact is this? You say "playerbase" but all you can possibly mean is "level 60 characters" and you ignore that some percentage of those 60s are alts or people who have access to killing rag but haven't for whatever reason.

The obvious conclusion is that the majority of the WoW playerbase are not raiders. Given the facts I don't see how you could argue with this statement.

On my server according to warcraftrealms, there are ~7500 level 60's.

On my server's guild progression page, there are 28 guilds working on BWL in some fashion. 12 alliance guilds have downed Nef, 5 horde. (Queue paladin v. shaman..) Still, 28 guilds post-rag. Assuming 70 active accounts per guild (which would be alot, I'd put it closer to 55, but I'll give you 70), thats 1960 raiders. Which is 26.1% of the 7500 active level 60's on the server.

Funny how that 25% number keeps coming up.

Deny it all you like. The majority of the playerbase of WoW are not raiders.

25% killing Nef, which is way low IMO, is nowhere near the same as 25% killing Rag. With guilds running MC in a couple hours, I'd really like to hear your definition of what constitutes a raider. We have people who ding 60 and kill rag the next day.


7500 active level 60s? My friend has 8 level 60s. Yes, only 1 of them has killed Rag... err, wait, doesn't that mean all 8 of his chars should be counted seeing as all that matters is the guy at the keyboard?

I don't see how people can minimize alts so much as largely inflating or skewing these numbers.

Keep cooking the numbers tho.


Fuck, half the people in my guild who have killed Rag I wouldn't even consider "a raider." The numbers are unknowable and thus the conclusion based on vapor is self-serving. Push the anti-raid agenda a bit harder, maybe one day you'll matter in a place where everyone advocates raid-serving design decisions.

[Cad]

If I were just cooking numbers frott, it'd be one thing and your skepticism would be well deserved.

When Tigole says it and you still deny it? Whats he need to do, give you access to the fucking account database so you can see the results yourself? What would prove it to you? Half the people I know who DO raid still don't like it, they do it because they want to progress. The other half have more or less infinite time on their hands and just don't care.

[Etadanik]

Uh. Out where it's 2000 vs. 1000 yeah, the bonus makes sense.
But then take that bonus and extend it repeatedly to the 10 v 10 battlegrounds and you see the issue.

Fine. Then take out BGs from PvP servers. They were a stupid idea to begin with.

You make it sound so intentional rather than being the side effect of a fucking horrible PVP system. Yes, please elucidate me to the amazing number of people who continue the ridiculous pvp grind after hitting GM. Nah, they all disappear and make room for their friends. A laughable amount actually start raiding.

I argued elsewhere that the GM system is retarded and needs to change also. This scaling reward system would be packaged alongside those changes, and will serve to guard against PvP servers (which don't have huge population imbalances) *becoming* like PvE servers. It shouldn't have a significantly noticeable effect on servers where the population ratios are along the lines of 1.2:1, since it'd likely be balanced with regards to PvP activity rather than raw population ratios, so if you agree with me that population imbalances aren't a significant issue on PvP servers (which it seems that you do), why argue?

[Darkmyst]

Originally Posted by Cad

If I were just cooking numbers frott, it'd be one thing and your skepticism would be well deserved.

When Tigole says it and you still deny it? Whats he need to do, give you access to the fucking account database so you can see the results yourself? What would prove it to you? Half the people I know who DO raid still don't like it, they do it because they want to progress. The other half have more or less infinite time on their hands and just don't care.

Virtually everyone in my guild has 2 (or more) level 60 characters. Do we each count as 1 level 60 "player" or 2+ level 60 "players". Or maybe Tigole took that to mean accounts with level 60s when he was asked the question.

We can infer exactly jack and shit from Tigole's estimate with out knowing precisely what he felt "players" meant.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Darkmyst

Virtually everyone in my guild has 2 (or more) level 60 characters. Do we each count as 1 level 60 "player" or 2+ level 60 "players". Or maybe Tigole took that to mean accounts with level 60s when he was asked the question.

We can infer exactly jack and shit from Tigole's estimate with out knowing precisely what he felt "players" meant.

I dunno, but either way 25% ain't alot. It takes some serious cooking of the numbers to turn 25% into a majority. Frankly I'm amazed he even answered the question considering the implications of his answer.

I think we can infer a little more than jack and shit, but you're right without him qualifying exactly what he means, it's difficult to draw iron-clad conclusions. His statement definitely supports the empirical evidence of not a shit-ton of raiders on what are actually very large servers though. How much C'Thun guilds on your server? 2 on mine. And Naxx is already out - when 1% or less of guilds have downed C'Thun. Nice!

[Fender]

I play on Alleria. Our server is 2.8:1 according to that site. 3rd worst imbalanced realm in the game! GG!!!11

I don't think it needs to be said how badly we need the Horde to have a viable titty race.

[Zehn - Vhex]

The fuck are you two even arguing about?

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Cad

Your IMO doesn't change the fact that 75% of the playerbase hasn't completed the very first raid dungeon which was released with the game 20 months ago.

The obvious conclusion is that the majority of the WoW playerbase are not raiders. Given the facts I don't see how you could argue with this statement.

. . . .

Deny it all you like. The majority of the playerbase of WoW are not raiders.

I hate to say this but I have to agree with Cad here. I think the vast majority of players really aren't raiders. I know I am not anymore. I got burned out on the whole raid experience from EQ. Just won't do it again. I know an awful lot of people who feel the same way.

Same thing with PvP. PvP can be fun, but this whole decaying honor thing is THE most retarded thing Blizzard came up with. People can't take breaks without losing ground, can't really raid without losing ground, etc etc.. But I do supect the majority of the playerbase prefers the pvp aspect of the game over the raiding. Would be interesting to see what the subscription numbers would have been like if pvp never existed in the game.