What 3.2 Means for Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp barely got a mention in the first draft of the patch 3.2 notes, but the outdoor PvP zone will in fact see some major changes in the new patch.

The updated patch notes show the following changes:

To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.

• Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
• Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
• The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
• Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
• Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
• The queue will accept up to 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 200 players at a time.

There are several major implications of these changes. First and most obviously, servers with a large discrepancies in faction populations should have more balanced fights. Blizzard’s original strategy to combat population imbalances in Wintergrasp was to adjust the Tenacity buff, but even with 20 Tenacity stacks, the server-side and client-side lag made gameplay difficult, and CC spells like stuns overwhelmed the underdogs. Tenacity is (presumably) not going well, and I think the mechanic will remain useful and should be expanded to Battlegrounds. One hundred players on each side is still a huge number; that’s two and a half raids on each side if the battle is full. Horde players on the Proudmoore sever occasionally need a second raid, but I doubt we often break 100. The Alliance, on the other hand, well outnumber us, and getting capped at 100 will increase the Horde’s chance of victory significantly. Most Horde players on Proudmoore don’t even try to defend Wintergrasp as the Alliance almost always captures it. Since 3.1, Archavon’s Log reports that the Horde has defended Wintergrasp 7 times and captured it 303 times, while the Alliance has defended 673 times and captured it 302 times. This is almost certainly a product of sheer numbers in this case.

It is unclear if the queue will try to put players in at the same rate between factions; that is, in battles where only 20 players of one faction show up, the other faction’s numbers will be limited. I’ve never played Wintergrasp on a low population server, but I imagine if they implement this change, it will be well appreciated. Gear checks, like the ones used in Battleground queues, could also be implemented to ensure that the factions have similar numbers of well geared and not-so-well geared players. They already select against lower level players, and they have the infrastructure to do gear selection from their Battleground code anyway. I think this could be valuable as well; Battlegrounds with similarly geared players is more fun, and they already showing wants to match similiar players in PvP, such as matching twinks with twinks.

Another major implication is where players will be when Wintergrasp is starting. You can almost always see people huddling around where the portal will open before attacking Wintergrasp. Now, those players can queue, go do other things, then get ported to Wintergrasp when it starts. This will be especially handy for Battlegrounds, especially if you are on a server that is likely to have a wait to get into Wintergrasp. It will be interesting to see where players who aren’t queued get teleport to if they attempt to enter Wintergrasp; perhaps they will get a debuff warning like when you fly into a no fly zone then sent to Dalaran near the Wintergrasp portal. Its a sort of a reinstatement of “ghetto hearth”, where you get a free “teleport”. I wouldn’t be surprised if these “Battlemasters” become queues like the battlegrounds and you are returned to where you entered from after the battle.

Additionally, with the teleport in place for the start of the battle, where will it place players? Its very strategically valuable to get positioned at a Workshop before the battle starts to capture it or start churning out vehicles. There are many unanswered questions, and I’m sure we’ll hear more once the PTR is up.

Are these changes necessary to balance Wintergrasp, or is capping it taking away from its original purpose? Will you be angry if you are doing your fishing daily and get kicked out of Wintergrasp?