In an attempt to balance queue times, Blizzard will enable same-faction battlegrounds in World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Classic tomorrow.
In original TBC, players queuing up for battlegrounds could only face off against members of the opposing faction. This meant that Horde would only ever fight against Alliance members and vice versa.
While TBC Classic has kept that feature so far, a vast disparity between queue times for Horde and Alliance players has been problematic.
On the Alliance side, players can queue for any battleground and instantly get into a game. But for members of the Horde, queue times have steadily increased to the point that most BGs have a wait time of an hour or more.
The vast difference between the two factions’ queue times is tied to the number of players queuing on each side. And with many Horde players frustrated about not being able to play, Blizzard has decided to experiment with a potential fix.
Starting tomorrow, Blizzard is enabling the ability for the BG matchmaker to pair members of the same faction against one another.
While Blizzard’s official post today says it will prioritize pitting players against members of the opposite faction, it won’t force masses of Horde players to wait for a few Alliance players.
“If an opposite-faction match cannot be quickly made, you’ll be matched against a team from your faction,” Blizzard said. “Rewards such as Honor and Reputation will be assigned as usual.”
This change will extend to Warsong Gulch, Eye of the Storm, and Arathi Basin queues. Alterac Valley queues will remain the only battleground that’s required to be Horde vs. Alliance because of the number of faction-specific NPCs involved.
This change is only a test for now. After this weekend, Blizzard will return queues to the way they originally were and “analyze what happened” over the weekend with the same-faction testing.
Assuming all goes well, it’s likely that the same-faction queuing will end up being a permanent fixture relatively quickly, though.
