Concerned... Where are the Alliance twinks???

Androlleck

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Every game I que there seems to be an average of about 3+ twinks horde side but im stuck with random pugs alliance side getting /spit on after a super skillful 5v1.. I mean arent there any alliance guilds out there at all? Surely not everyone went horde.
 
I was up against a couple Ally 3 man's today and a random super group with @Scrubhuntin. I have hour plus games pretty much everyday. Imo it's fairly balanced and I see the most new names coming from Ally.
 
Our guild has been a little less active the past couple weeks, many are levelling diff classes for 39 to fill holes in our roster.But yeah far more horde for sure.
 
I had this problem today as well while solo queueing. minimum 4 horde twinks, and I was the only alliance twink for 3 games
this is rommel btw ggs
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I was up against a couple Ally 3 man's today and a random super group with @Scrubhuntin. I have hour plus games pretty much everyday. Imo it's fairly balanced and I see the most new names coming from Ally.

I played one game against you today was a nightmare you had 2 other twinks with you one rogue and a war as well as healers they may not have been twink but shit... GGs anyways
 
this is rommel btw ggs
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I played one game against you today was a nightmare you had 2 other twinks with you one rogue and a war as well as healers they may not have been twink but shit... GGs anyways

Ah, yeah I remember, ggs. That was my best group today tbh. But I can admit that on the whole horde have more twinks. Still, Ally is committed and y'all run more good healers. I see a healthy bracket and steady growth, although my homeboys are coming up rn, so I'm finally gonna have real partners to queue with :]
 
Northern Army Rommel?

Haha nah Rommel like the desert fox from ww2. we created a guild on skeram alliance for our 39s called Flags For The Führer. Most of our members are named after a random ww2 General from what ever army they chose.
 
Every game I que there seems to be an average of about 3+ twinks horde side but im stuck with random pugs alliance side getting /spit on after a super skillful 5v1.. I mean arent there any alliance guilds out there at all? Surely not everyone went horde.

Generally there's 3 or 4 Horde geared pretty well, then a bunch that are kinda mediocre.

It feels about the same on both sides I'd imagine. So here's some perspective from the other side, and I'm pretty much always just solo queing:

For Horde: we almost never have a geared up healer/priest. In games where we do have a priest, we'll have 3 of them....all level 35 or under with 1k hps. Of course, I'm virtually never anywhere close to any other horde player...so it may just FEEL like we dont have any healers since there's hardly ever anyone around to heal me anyway. Most games we dont really have a decent flag runner, so I generally try to save prep to steal flags and make up for it.

For Ally: I almost never run into an Ally that uses any engineering toys at all. About every 4th game or so, I'll end up queued up against a team that just steamrolls us with 2 good flag runners, 2 good mages/warlocks, a good hunter or two...and 150 paladins. About the same amount of time, we do the same to ally. The other half end up with 2 or 3 decently geared ally and then 7 or 8 that I can one shot with ambush or a death ray...and ends up being a 45 minute turtle while I wait on cooldowns.

Allies seem to play the BG as a group better than horde does, though. Ya'll certainly have more people that know the pathing tricks. It's a pretty rare game for Horde to try to coordinate at all. Probably feels the same on the other side.
 
with so many games going and rotating it is really hard to give an honest opinion on the state of the bracket since you are always only ever in 1 game out of the anywhere from 3 to 8+ games running at the same time. 1 out of that is NOT a good view of what is happening in those other games sadly. i say this because everything werk just said is exactly the opposite of the games ive been in lol. horde always has the druid flag runners and multiple priest healers whereas alliance usually has a stronger dps makeup(good mix of class makeup) I have yet to have a game with multiple priests. THe only thing i've seen that matches with werks games is the paladin overflow lol. But the same can be said about hordes shamans and can obviously be attributed to side specific classes obviously.

I honestly just think the games people get in are just luck of the draw. Always remember if you dont want to keep pulling the SAME group of pugs always wait a few minutes before queueing if you are constantly getting a premade horde side or ally side vs. lvl 32s and you. Or like rommel and I did the other day /w a twink you might know and try to queue with each other by confirming what bg pops etc.

I've seen some constant names in multiple bgs so I am getting to know some of the horde counterparts like @Outofspace on his hunter and a few rogues and warriors.

The one bit of advice i'd give is don't get frustrated with levelers. instead try and be positive in your way of getting them to work together. Even though a lvl 30 is super frustrating to have in a game with their 800 hp.. they can sheep that pesky healer 1 time and cause a return. Never underestimate the power of teamwork. Too many twinks have the IM SO 1337(yes i used numbers) that cause people to tilt in games and lose when a simple "hey try this next time I think it might give us a better shot" is better than "OMG YOU SUCK PLZ ALT+f4"
 
i say this because everything werk just said is exactly the opposite of the games ive been in lol.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at: YMMV, luck of the draw, etc. I dont know what it is about the WOW matchmaking system...but it's basically always been feast or famine for the entirety of my time in WoW. There's no way to really quantify it in classic, so the only evidence we have is anecdotal....which isnt necessarily accurate.

In vanilla, I was on an Ally heavy server....and always got shit draws while pugging. Cross server improved the imbalance a good bit, so the draws got better on average (meaning: got in more games where I drew wither a better team, or a comparable team rather than just a faceroll smash farmed loss). Seems about the same in classic. Both sides have about an equal chance to draw a superior pug that the other side just cant compete with, but the median gear level is just higher on the more populated side...so they'll have a gear advantage. In this case, Horde has an advantage. At least, that's the way it seems to be to me.

The major difference I see between Horde and ally is in the playstyle, though. If Ally get behind a flag or two, it's very common that they'll sit 6 or 7 in the flagroom or their GY (and there are a few hunters on ally that are very good with trap placement while doing so) with the FC. Horde very rarely goes all D turtle in the FR or GY....most of the time, Horde "turtles" around the tunnel entrance with maybe a person or two on the FC.

The skill level for the better horde players and the better Ally players ... nobody will ever convince me there's much difference between the two. Same with the shit players. The mediocre, though, are probably better on Ally side....but the Horde are probably better geared.

Edit: Ok so I'm a data nerd professionally, so I'm going to start keeping track a bit. Played 5 games today...interesting tidbits:

wins: Horde 3 Ally 2
average class comp per game:

Priest: Ally 1.2, Horde 1.2
Rogue: Ally 1.6, Horde 2.6
Shaman/Paladin: Ally 0.6, Horde 1.6
Warrior: Ally: 1, Horde 1.6
Druid: Ally 1.4, Horde 0.8
Mage: Aly 0.8, Horde 1.2
Hunter: 2.4, Horde 0.6
Warlock: Aly 1, Horde 0.4.

Absolutely inconsequential sample size, but I thought it was interesting. I'll keep a running tally and post it in a week or two.
 
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Some days we have a ton of twinks on alli side or at the very least semi geared 39s. Other days it's me and a bunch of 35s vs 5+ horde twinks. All just the luck of who's playing and the games you get, that's been the experience on my lock.
 
. I mean arent there any alliance guilds out there at all? Surely not everyone went horde.
Alliance guilds
Whitemane - Defiers of defeat, largest and most active
Whitemane The Drunken Horn - Have seen 3 druids and a rogue.They queue with us.
Kirtonos - Gnomeland security
Heartseeker - Never Forty - see a few now and again

If someone could do proper guild list thread that'd be good.
 
i say this because everything werk just said is exactly the opposite of the games ive been in lol.

I have no earthly idea why this has caused a spreadsheet obsession for me, and I'm probably just talking to myself in this post. That said, after tracking 20 games:

Average Group Comp Per realm:

Allies Horde
Priest: 1.21 Priest: 0.64
Rog: 1.357 Rogue: 2.428
Pal: 1.285 Shaman: 1.857
War: 1.356 War: 1.357
Dru: 1.356 Druid: 0.7142
Mage: 0.857 Mage: 0.857
Hunter: 2 Hunter: 1.5
Warlock: 0.57 Warlock: 0.64

Winning %
Horde: 70%
Alliance: 30%

Average Flags Capped Per Round
Horde: 2.357
Alliance: 0.8571

Average Reputation Per Round
Horde: 118.21
Alliance: 44.285

So through 20 games (which is still an inconsequential sample, really), most of what I felt was the case is pretty much the case. Aliance have, on average, twice as many priests queue as Horde does. Over the course of 20 games, I only played in 5 games where the Alliance did not have at least one priest...in contrast, Horde havent had a priest at all in the last 8 games I've played. When Horde has a priest, interestingly, they generally have two more often than not...and have only had a priest at all in 6 of 20 games (30%).

Alliance has, on average, twice as many Druids as Horde. In 20 games, I've only played in 1 game where the horde had more than one druid...wheras Alliance has had multiple druids 7 times. The percentage of games where the horde has a druid is about the same as alliance, though...so I was wrong about that (so far). Alliance just generally has more than one of them.

One thing that was surprising was that the occurances of Paladins is lower than it seemed. There's almost always a paladin playing for Alliance (17/20), but it's generally only 1. Probably means I just find good paladins super annoying.

Horde have had significantly more Shaman than alliance have had paladins, which isnt really surprising. This combined with basically double the priests queuing explains the relative lack of healing on Horde vs. Alliance (Paladins are just superior PVP healers to Shaman, regardless of playstyle)

The rogue numbers are a bit skewed to horde because I'm taking the samples, and I'm playing a rogue...so it's the one class on either realm that is never going to be absent. The games have broken down to be 3 rogues and 2 shaman (or vice versa), then 5 other classes randomly mixed in basically every game.

What I AM surprised by, though, is in the results. I did not expect Horde's winning percentage to be so high, but it's not completely shocking. What I was floored by was that when Horde wins...it's always 3-0. Horde is more competitive in losses, meaning triple the average reputation gains per round. I'd imagine this is not due to median skill level of the player base, but more to do with the fact that horde has better gear and more rogues to sneak up and blow cooldowns/engi to burst down a turtled EFC.

Anyway, interesting. I doubt I'll track it any further.
 
more to do with the fact that horde

...levelers aren't alliance levelers, which from the birth of WoW have generally sucked at PvP. Time tested fact.

edit- "just let them win" was absolutely an alliance battle cry for a generation.
 
...levelers aren't alliance levelers, which from the birth of WoW have generally sucked at PvP.

While this may be true on a micro level, it's not true at scale. There are really only 2 quantifiable differences between the realms

The first is population imbalance. With respect to BGs rather than open world PVP, this has an indirect effect: mainly, its just easier to gear in a realm that's more populated.

The second is the things that are not mirrored between the realms: Paladin vs. Shaman, racials, and battleground starting points.

The class difference is pretty major, and why Blizz threw in the towel pretty quickly on trying to balance that. The second, racials, can be major on a micro level but no so much on a macro. Example: rogues. On a rog v. rog fight, and all else being equal, a human rogue have a huge advantage over any others simply due to getting the opener every time. But a priest? Perception doesnt do shit, but will of the forsaken can be an iwin button.

The battleground maps matter very little in classic, at least outside of AV. They dont matter at all in AB, and in all honesty the only real difference in WSG...that even remotely matters...is that the line up the stump on the west wall is on the south side of the map. There's a couple of others in the bases, but the truth is nobody ever really uses any of those anyway.

As for AV: it's not even remotely close to mirrored. Both sides have two choke points outside the base, but they are completely different. Without getting two detailed in analyzing it (because it's completely irrelevant to this topic): the layout actually favors a horde grouping that understands how to play it, but it's wayyyyy easier for Alliance.

Other than that? The only other real difference is the randomness of the matchmaking system, and the luck of the draw in who is queuing at any particular time.
 
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You're giving attributes of a faction choice, i'm speaking of the people playing it.

That's exactly correct: I am, and you are. The differences between the factions are quantifiable, the differences in the players's skill by faction are not.

I do not see...never have seen in 15 years of wow...an appreciable difference in median skill level between the factions; and any anecdotal/empirical evidence of same is, I think, most likely explained by the quantifiable differences.
 
Well... as WSG rewards have not yet been available i'd wager you'll start to notice it more as they get implemented.

So far it has been a PvP for PvP sake except for AV, when johnny PvE starts running WSG for that "leet blue swoard" reward you'll begin to see the factions do in fact differ... "quantifiably". Alliance has always been the worse in that.

I'll also admit I haven't played near enough to make a concrete argument, but it is and always has been my experience to see ally decide to turtle 8 on D while being a flag more down in WSG. That's not a "faction difference" decided by blizz.

It's a player difference.

And it's not something I notice often on the other side. Horde is PvP oriented, alliance is... less. For 15 years.
 
So far it has been a PvP for PvP sake except for AV, when johnny PvE starts running WSG for that "leet blue swoard" reward you'll begin to see the factions do in fact differ... "quantifiably". Alliance has always been the worse in that.

They have not always been worse in that, at least not significantly.

There used to be a website where you could see a breakdown of wins and losses on all servers, in all battlegroups, across specific bgs and all BGs combined. This is about as close as you can come to quantifying the historic skill of each faction independently. Hell if I know where it is now, or if it even still exists. All I could find now when looking for it was this post: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1586951-Dispelling-a-Myth-–-Battleground-Win-Rates

Anyway, that post seems to summarize the data that I remember looking at. The overall winning % for each faction, across all BGs, is basically dead even. 52% Horde 48% Allies in the US, and 50/50 in the EU. So lets make an argument that Horde is significantly BETTER at PVP than Alliance, to a degree over and above what can be attributable to how the game, factions and classes are actually structured.

The overall numbers do not show any significant difference between the two. Lets focus on the 3 vanilla BGs: WSG, AV, and AB.

In Vanilla/classic, the most closely mirrored BG is WSG. Historically, WSG is essentially dead even (52-48 in favor of Horde). This *could* be evidence that horde is better at PVP, sure...but it could also be evidence of a structural imbalance between the two sides. Example: 1) Shamans being more offense oriented than paladins, and 2) Will of the Forsaken being a superior racial for pvp. Regardless though, this one is pretty damned close to even. Not really a compelling argument either way TBH.

AV is the single least mirrored BG in WoW. Historically, AV favors Alliance and it's not even remotely close (85% win ratio). This *could* be a counter argument, showing conclusively that Alliance is better at pvp than horde is. It could also be a compelling argument that Alliance is better at PVE without respect to either side's ability at PVP, as this BG can be won (and often is) without any actual PVP occurring. It could also support a counter argument due to the structure of the BG itself not being anywhere remotely mirrored. Both sides have atvantages, but they are extremely different. Horde's major advantage is really that Iceblood is by far the easiest map chokepoint to defend. Alliance's main advantage is that Horde cant run past and skip engaging NPCs in the Ally base. A great argument can be made here that both sides have very similarly focused players in that they want to min/max their honor/rep gains, so they want the quick games: and quick games in AV structurally favor Alliance. So even though this example would seem to be a great argument AGAINST your thesis, I'm not going to make it. My conclusion from AV is that the players' skill is very similar, even though the end result is horribly, demonstrably lopsided. The only way we'd really be able to make an apt comparison would be if Blizzard had decided to rotate flip starting points between the sides: I.E. each side starts half the games on one side of the map, the other half in the other. They've never done that, never will do that, so there's no control to the comparison*.

Lastly that leaves us with a final Classic BG: Arathi Basin. It aint in classic yet, but it's a vanilla and we have now expanded to "always been worse" as a subject. AB isnt an exact mirror, but it's pretty damned close. The biggest structural advantage, IMO, is simply that it's easier to defend the lumber mill, farm and blacksmith than any other combination of flags on the map...and this gives the horde a significant advantage if true. Regardless: this is the map that gives you the best argument of the three as it historically favors horde to a non trivial degree (I.E. horde wins 20% more frequently than Alliance). Now my response to that would simply be that once you account for structural advantages (map layout, gear, racials, class disparity, etc...which mostly favors Horde), the existence of any difference in the median skill level of the playerbase per side is negligible.

The main difference I see in classic as it is today, though, is just raw numbers. The secondary difference I've seen is group composition: Horde queues in this bracket are heavy on burst, Alliance queues in this bracket are heavy on defense. Considering this common comp difference, the common alliance strategy of turtling in their base makes sense...when they have a druid that can solo snipe at the flag (which they generally have). it's a good strat, and the players become accustomed to playing that way. But a well geared Shaman...which Horde generally has... gets close to the turtled FC and gets a couple of good random rolls, the FC is toast. If a well geared & mediocre or better skilled Rogue with all cooldowns (and no concerns about saving any) ...which the horde always has... opens on the FC, he's toast in 3 seconds.

So there, I just created a wall of text arguing with myself, resulting in a conclusive maybe. Four years of night lawschool finally paid off.

* there is ONE battleground where Bliz actually did swap sides: Strand of the Ancients. The one battleground that was pretty much universally hated, and is 100% completely mirrored in structure. Horde has a massive win advantage in this one (84% win rate). This is either proof of horde's pvp dominance, or a straight up anomaly.
 

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