Январь 2010 Февраль 2010 Март 2010 Апрель 2010 Май 2010
Июнь 2010
Июль 2010 Август 2010
Сентябрь 2010
Октябрь 2010
Ноябрь 2010
Декабрь 2010
Январь 2011
Февраль 2011 Март 2011 Апрель 2011 Май 2011 Июнь 2011 Июль 2011 Август 2011
Сентябрь 2011
Октябрь 2011 Ноябрь 2011 Декабрь 2011 Январь 2012 Февраль 2012 Март 2012 Апрель 2012 Май 2012 Июнь 2012 Июль 2012 Август 2012 Сентябрь 2012 Октябрь 2012 Ноябрь 2012 Декабрь 2012 Январь 2013 Февраль 2013 Март 2013 Апрель 2013 Май 2013 Июнь 2013 Июль 2013 Август 2013 Сентябрь 2013 Октябрь 2013 Ноябрь 2013 Декабрь 2013 Январь 2014 Февраль 2014
Март 2014
Апрель 2014 Май 2014 Июнь 2014 Июль 2014 Август 2014 Сентябрь 2014 Октябрь 2014 Ноябрь 2014 Декабрь 2014 Январь 2015 Февраль 2015 Март 2015 Апрель 2015 Май 2015 Июнь 2015 Июль 2015 Август 2015 Сентябрь 2015 Октябрь 2015 Ноябрь 2015 Декабрь 2015 Январь 2016 Февраль 2016 Март 2016 Апрель 2016 Май 2016 Июнь 2016 Июль 2016 Август 2016 Сентябрь 2016 Октябрь 2016 Ноябрь 2016 Декабрь 2016 Январь 2017 Февраль 2017 Март 2017 Апрель 2017 Май 2017
Июнь 2017
Июль 2017
Август 2017 Сентябрь 2017 Октябрь 2017 Ноябрь 2017 Декабрь 2017 Январь 2018 Февраль 2018 Март 2018 Апрель 2018 Май 2018 Июнь 2018 Июль 2018 Август 2018 Сентябрь 2018 Октябрь 2018 Ноябрь 2018 Декабрь 2018 Январь 2019
Февраль 2019
Март 2019 Апрель 2019 Май 2019 Июнь 2019 Июль 2019 Август 2019 Сентябрь 2019 Октябрь 2019 Ноябрь 2019 Декабрь 2019 Январь 2020
Февраль 2020
Март 2020 Апрель 2020 Май 2020 Июнь 2020 Июль 2020 Август 2020 Сентябрь 2020 Октябрь 2020 Ноябрь 2020 Декабрь 2020 Январь 2021 Февраль 2021 Март 2021 Апрель 2021 Май 2021 Июнь 2021 Июль 2021 Август 2021 Сентябрь 2021 Октябрь 2021 Ноябрь 2021 Декабрь 2021 Январь 2022 Февраль 2022 Март 2022 Апрель 2022 Май 2022 Июнь 2022 Июль 2022 Август 2022 Сентябрь 2022 Октябрь 2022 Ноябрь 2022 Декабрь 2022 Январь 2023 Февраль 2023 Март 2023 Апрель 2023 Май 2023 Июнь 2023 Июль 2023 Август 2023 Сентябрь 2023 Октябрь 2023 Ноябрь 2023 Декабрь 2023 Январь 2024 Февраль 2024 Март 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30
31
Game News |

The Horde is so popular in WoW: Burning Crusade Classic that it's beginning to ruin the game

 The Horde is so popular in WoW: Burning Crusade Classic that it's beginning to ruin the game

World of Warcraft Classic is quickly deviating from its initial promise to be a "take it or leave it" recreation of the MMO as it existed in 2007. Since launch, Blizzard has made dozens of changes that were never in the original game. Tweaks that, while controversial to purists, were intended to find a better balance between nostalgia and what's fun in 2021. 

But this weekend, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic began testing its most controversial change yet by letting players on North American servers queue up for Battleground PvP matches against their own faction. It's a band-aid on what is quickly becoming one of the biggest issues with Burning Crusade Classic: No one wants to fight for the Alliance. 

Zug zug 

After 17 years of evolution, the neverending war between the Alliance and Horde is still World of Warcraft's defining feature. It's also the source of its most frustrating problems. Since the MMO's launch, players have effectively been divided into two groups that never interact except to fight one another. Despite how often the two factions join forces to fight a common evil in the overarching story, Horde and Alliance players have never been able to group up to take on dungeons or raids together.

This wouldn't be a problem if different races didn't each have a unique ability that could give players an edge in both PvP and PvE fights. Take the Undead ability Will of the Forsaken, for example, which grants the player instant immunity to charm, sleep, and fear effects for five seconds. In PvP fights, an ability like that gives Horde players a significant advantage—which is exactly why Undead have always been the most popular PvP race.

With Burning Crusade Classic's launch, Horde populations spiked to an average of 61 percent of all players across NA PvP servers.

In World of Warcraft Classic, these imbalances weren't such a big deal because PvP was chaotic and largely took place out in the open world where dozens of players squared off against each other. Small advantages like that wouldn't help you against a bigger or more coordinated team. Just before Burning Crusade Classic released in June, IronForge.Pro estimated the balance between Horde and Alliance players on Classic PvP servers was almost even, with Horde being favored by just 53% of players. 

But Burning Crusade's flavor of PvP is very different. One of the biggest features of this expansion is PvP Arenas, where teams of two or three players duke it out in small-scale brawls where minor differences in skill and abilities can make a huge difference. Very suddenly, WoW's PvP shifted from massive outdoor wars to intense, intimate duels. Naturally, competitive players would want every advantage they could get and, largely due to racial abilities, Horde became the de facto choice for PvP in World of Warcraft.

It's not surprising that history would repeat itself. With Burning Crusade Classic's launch, Horde populations spiked to an average of 61 percent of all players across NA PvP servers, according to estimates by IronForge.Pro. Looking at individual servers, though, that ratio can get really gruesome. Though a few do have a majority of Alliance players, most PvP servers skew toward the Horde with some, like Kirtonos and Skeram, supposedly being 100% Horde. You'd think winning the faction war would be the ultimate victory, but it's actually a nightmare for both sides. 

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Cycle of war 

Since Burning Crusade Classic's launch, the subreddit has been dominated by complaints of long queue times for PvP. Because most players are enlisting with the Horde, there's simply not enough Alliance PvP groups to fight against, with some servers allegedly suffering hours-long waits to find a match. But Battlegrounds aren't the only way to earn the Honor Points necessary to unlock the cool new PvP armor. So while waiting in a queue, Horde players often go prowling through different zones in Outland looking for Alliance players to gank.

As players have noted, this creates a vicious cycle in which no one wins. Alliance players trying to level up to 70 on Horde-dominated PvP servers are repeatedly being ganked by the overwhelming number of bored Horde players. Faced with such unfair odds, a lot of those players will either quit or reroll on a PvP server that favors the Alliance or switch to Classic's PvE servers where open-world PvP is opt-in. Or they'll swap sides to join the Horde.

When this happened back during Burning Crusade's official launch, the issue probably wasn't nearly as pronounced since min-maxing and theorycrafting weren't nearly as prevalent in the gaming community as they are today. But that faction imbalance steadily grew in severity until 2015 when Blizzard rolled out Mercenary Mode, a new feature that let players temporarily swap sides in Battlegrounds matches. When Mercenary Mode was activated, your avatar would be swapped out for one belonging to the opposing faction, so your opponents never even knew they were really fighting players from their own side.

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

As more Alliance players are inevitably drawn to the Horde (or more balanced servers), it'll create an even worse experience for the ones who remain.

This weekend, Blizzard tested a similar system for Burning Crusade Classic wherein Horde players could queue up in Battlegrounds and, if no matches were found, would then be placed into match against another Horde group—only this time they'd be wearing cardboard masks with Alliance races painted on them instead of being magically transformed into another race.

Though the test is now over and Blizzard hasn't said whether or not the feature will be added permanently for all servers, a lot of players aren't happy with the idea of Mercenary Mode coming to Classic because it does nothing to fix the underlying issue. Of the top 25 posts on the WoW Classic subreddit last week, 13 are threads complaining about faction imbalances. A lot of players are worried this will further decimate the already small Alliance population on PvP servers.

This Reddit thread in particular sums up the problems with Blizzard's solution. While making Battlegrounds faction agnostic will fix queue times for the Horde, it doesn't address why so few players are choosing to play Alliance. And as more Alliance players are inevitably drawn to the Horde (or more balanced servers), it'll create an even worse experience for the ones who remain. Fewer Alliance players on a server means fewer groups for dungeons and raids, less activity on the auction house, and fewer people to fight alongside in PvP.

But untying this knot isn't as simple as fixing the imbalances present in the different racial abilities. That's just one of several reasons why players tend to choose Horde. It's also a popular faction simply due to its aesthetic: undead, orcs, trolls, blood elves—there's a race that appeals to every kind of player. Blizzard has tried (unsuccessfully) to fix this by introducing more monstrous races to the Alliance side, but nothing has really shifted the needle much. And now that the imbalance has taken root, the only way to fix it would be to entice players to reroll as Alliance either by adding extra rewards or by preventing players from making new Horde characters on certain servers. But how do you get 18-year veterans to change their preferences?

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)
More on WoW Classic

WoW Classic boxout

(Image credit: Blizzard)

WoW TBC Classic leveling guide: hit level 70 fast
WoW Classic race guide: the best for your class
WoW Classic class guide: choose wisely
WoW Classic server: which to go for
WoW Classic addons: for vanilla and Burning Crusade

During BlizzCon earlier this year—well before Burning Crusade Classic had launched—game director Ion Hazzikostas acknowledged the faction imbalance as one of the biggest problems with WoW since its original launch and even hinted that one day players might be able to group together regardless of faction. Removing these barriers separating players would be great, but it still wouldn't address the problem that, fundamentally, one faction has qualities that are more desirable. And Hazzikostas worries it might also damage the unique identity of these factions and Warcraft itself. This isn't a "Red vs Blue" multiplayer game.

It's a conundrum that becomes even more vexing in Burning Crusade Classic since it's fundamentally a recreation of an old era of WoW. Though Blizzard has been able to make some changes without much controversy, a lot of players bristle at the idea of transplanting modern features like Mercenary Mode into this old-school version of Azeroth. This controversy, and the way it has divided the playerbase, feeds into the narrative that modern WoW has lost its way because Blizzard has continually caved to players' demands to make the game more casual and accessible through features like the automatic group finder for dungeons.

Classic's enormous success hinges entirely on offering an alternative to modern WoW. For many, its extremely slow pace, emphasis on community, and grueling challenge are an exciting departure from the Pavlovian progression systems of modern WoW. But if Classic starts solving 'old' problems with modern solutions, at what point will the two MMOs become indistinguishable?

Correction: An earlier version of this story mixed up Arenas with Battlegrounds in a few different sections, but we've fixed that.



Читайте также

В Little Land можно построить миниатюрный дом среди травы и огромных насекомых

Dragon's Dogma 2 is an abject lesson in how system requirements pages are failing PC gamers

Рецензия на игра Millennia

Москва

Sitronics Group рассказала о достижениях компании в области корпоративного спорта

Новости тенниса



Game24.pro — паблик игровых новостей в календарном формате на основе технологичной новостной информационно-поисковой системы с элементами искусственного интеллекта, гео-отбора и возможностью мгновенной публикации авторского контента в режиме Free Public. Game24.pro — ваши Game News сегодня и сейчас в Вашем городе.

Опубликовать свою новость, реплику, комментарий, анонс и т.д. можно мгновенно — здесь.



Персональные новости

Пассажир рейса Москва — Пермь попал в реанимацию

«Радио Зенит» – информационный партнер форума «Мы вместе. Спорт»

Архитектурные доминанты округов Москвы

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)