current state of PVP server

[Defiant]

I'm not a dev, so I can't really judge how big the impact on the PVE server would be.

Yeah, me neither, for me it's mostly a guesstimate in my head. Because the cross faction thing did improve our queues quite a bit, and since the population on Yshaarj isn't that huge, I feel like adding cross realm but removing cross faction would leave us back where we were. That said, if Yshaarj grew in population, or if both servers grew in population, it might not be as much of an issue.

Personally too, I actually prefer BGs when they aren't cross faction. I just accept it because at least for now with our lower populations it's a necessary evil. That's one of the reasons I'm frustrated with the topic. They want the best of both worlds, while the rest of us are making sacrifices to improve things as a whole.

For those who strictly want faction vs. faction can opt for non-cross server games? Maybe this could be an option only for the PVP server? This way, people from the PVP server can decide whether they want to wait 5 hours for a queue pop or accept cross faction and have instant fun.

I think that would be a great solution and if it was technically feasible I'd totally support it. I'd prefer for the PVE server players not to be able to opt out of it though, and again I would *want* to opt out of it, but I wouldn't due to the ramifications. Because if it was opt out, and a large enough amount of people opted out, then you'd essentially have two distinct queue systems and that would defeat the purpose of having cross faction in the first place, and it might actually make queue times worse than not being cross faction. Again I'm not a dev I don't know all the inner workings but I've thought on the issue a fair bit and there aren't really great solutions until the population increases. But I think that would be a passable solution if it can be implemented properly? Like if it's cross realm cross faction by default, but the PVP crowd can opt out-- I mean as I'm thinking about it, they could opt out, but in reality it would basically be forced on them because even if like 25% of the PVP server stayed cross faction to benefit from the queue times, those who opted out would then get significantly significantly worse queue times. I'm sure many of them would be quite unhappy about that, and would accuse the GMs of giving them a false option and manipulating them.

because I don't have 5h to wait for a game and I'd rather have "lore inaccurate" games than no games at all.

Yeah, that's the only reason I supported cross faction BGs. It's not my cup of tea personally.

Talking about for example an updated PVP gear system, while this is a dramatic change indeed, couldn't this also enrich the PVP experience on the PVE server? Just because a current system is good, doesn't mean that you can't make it even better. That's at least how I look at it.

I mean the new gear system for PVP is still well, new. The additional tiers of PVP gear were still new to Turtle when they shut down. Also a lot of the current gear is locked behind the roadmap progression tiers. In general that would also be a huge undertaking, and I generally lean towards if it isn't broken don't fix it. I'm genuinely curious about how the new gear system will play out here, and want to experience that. I wasn't PVPing in the last few months of Turtle being up, as I'm sure many others weren't. If it was still the old vanilla gearing system I would agree it needs a revamp. I also don't think that this is really a relevant topic to include in topics discussing the population issues on Yshaarj as I don't think it's even a small factor for why the population is struggling over there.

My personal stance on why the population is struggling is because the game mode just isn't as popular as it used to be. The community is far more laid back, and prefer to engage in PVP in a more organized format such as BGs. There are some extremely competitive PVP players on the PVE realms. That's the thing, right, there's no real reason to even roll on the PVP server from my perspective. The only real distinction it has to the PVE server is that you can get ganked in the open world. That's truly the only distinction, and that's how Blizzard always designed it. PVP servers aren't some unique completely different experience, and they never have been, so I don't really understand the expectations from many of the PVP players regarding that. I feel it's pretty clear that Mysteries of Azeroth is first and foremost a PVE experience. Turtle created TA to give those wanting a more PVP oriented server a go, and frankly, it was never very popular even on Turtle where the population was several times larger than it is here. When I first heard they were opening a PVP server on Octo I felt it was a mistake, and that it would suffer from population issues. So that's where I'm coming from, I guess? I don't think putting a ton of work into custom PVP sets will suddenly increase the population, there's already custom PVP sets that are relatively new. In my opinion PVP servers would only work if we had like 10x the population in the community. Now the devs can try and force it to work with additional PVP only content, but why should they spend that much time and effort on such a small subset of the community when working on PVE style content will actually be for everyone, not just the PVE crowd, because even on the PVP server there's a lot of people raiding and engaging in content other than PVP. Hell, in my opinion, part of vanilla PVP is engaging in PVE. It's one of the reasons it was always my favorite balance for PVP, I was engaging in PVE back then strictly to improve my gear for PVP. In my opinion that's the best balance, because it encourages you to experience all of the content in the game, not just PVE or PVP. Both. I hate that retail separated those two things like they did. Some BIS PVP gear should 100% come from PVP, but some of it should also come from PVE. That gets people to engage in all content, and for a game, I feel that's a positive thing.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text but yeah, I give a shit about PVP and wanted to put my actual beliefs out there as I tend to usually just shoot down the suggestions and explain why I disagree with them. Also it's nice to actually have a real conversation with someone about this, as the PVP players usually just shout and scream.

[Slitknotz]

I'm not a dev, so I can't really judge how big the impact on the PVE server would be.

Yeah, me neither, for me it's mostly a guesstimate in my head. Because the cross faction thing did improve our queues quite a bit, and since the population on Yshaarj isn't that huge, I feel like adding cross realm but removing cross faction would leave us back where we were. That said, if Yshaarj grew in population, or if both servers grew in population, it might not be as much of an issue.

Personally too, I actually prefer BGs when they aren't cross faction. I just accept it because at least for now with our lower populations it's a necessary evil. That's one of the reasons I'm frustrated with the topic. They want the best of both worlds, while the rest of us are making sacrifices to improve things as a whole.

For those who strictly want faction vs. faction can opt for non-cross server games? Maybe this could be an option only for the PVP server? This way, people from the PVP server can decide whether they want to wait 5 hours for a queue pop or accept cross faction and have instant fun.

I think that would be a great solution and if it was technically feasible I'd totally support it. I'd prefer for the PVE server players not to be able to opt out of it though, and again I would *want* to opt out of it, but I wouldn't due to the ramifications. Because if it was opt out, and a large enough amount of people opted out, then you'd essentially have two distinct queue systems and that would defeat the purpose of having cross faction in the first place, and it might actually make queue times worse than not being cross faction. Again I'm not a dev I don't know all the inner workings but I've thought on the issue a fair bit and there aren't really great solutions until the population increases. But I think that would be a passable solution if it can be implemented properly? Like if it's cross realm cross faction by default, but the PVP crowd can opt out-- I mean as I'm thinking about it, they could opt out, but in reality it would basically be forced on them because even if like 25% of the PVP server stayed cross faction to benefit from the queue times, those who opted out would then get significantly significantly worse queue times. I'm sure many of them would be quite unhappy about that, and would accuse the GMs of giving them a false option and manipulating them.

because I don't have 5h to wait for a game and I'd rather have "lore inaccurate" games than no games at all.

Yeah, that's the only reason I supported cross faction BGs. It's not my cup of tea personally.

Talking about for example an updated PVP gear system, while this is a dramatic change indeed, couldn't this also enrich the PVP experience on the PVE server? Just because a current system is good, doesn't mean that you can't make it even better. That's at least how I look at it.

I mean the new gear system for PVP is still well, new. The additional tiers of PVP gear were still new to Turtle when they shut down. Also a lot of the current gear is locked behind the roadmap progression tiers. In general that would also be a huge undertaking, and I generally lean towards if it isn't broken don't fix it. I'm genuinely curious about how the new gear system will play out here, and want to experience that. I wasn't PVPing in the last few months of Turtle being up, as I'm sure many others weren't. If it was still the old vanilla gearing system I would agree it needs a revamp. I also don't think that this is really a relevant topic to include in topics discussing the population issues on Yshaarj as I don't think it's even a small factor for why the population is struggling over there.

My personal stance on why the population is struggling is because the game mode just isn't as popular as it used to be. The community is far more laid back, and prefer to engage in PVP in a more organized format such as BGs. There are some extremely competitive PVP players on the PVE realms. That's the thing, right, there's no real reason to even roll on the PVP server from my perspective. The only real distinction it has to the PVE server is that you can get ganked in the open world. That's truly the only distinction, and that's how Blizzard always designed it. PVP servers aren't some unique completely different experience, and they never have been, so I don't really understand the expectations from many of the PVP players regarding that. I feel it's pretty clear that Mysteries of Azeroth is first and foremost a PVE experience. Turtle created TA to give those wanting a more PVP oriented server a go, and frankly, it was never very popular even on Turtle where the population was several times larger than it is here. When I first heard they were opening a PVP server on Octo I felt it was a mistake, and that it would suffer from population issues. So that's where I'm coming from, I guess? I don't think putting a ton of work into custom PVP sets will suddenly increase the population, there's already custom PVP sets that are relatively new. In my opinion PVP servers would only work if we had like 10x the population in the community. Now the devs can try and force it to work with additional PVP only content, but why should they spend that much time and effort on such a small subset of the community when working on PVE style content will actually be for everyone, not just the PVE crowd, because even on the PVP server there's a lot of people raiding and engaging in content other than PVP. Hell, in my opinion, part of vanilla PVP is engaging in PVE. It's one of the reasons it was always my favorite balance for PVP, I was engaging in PVE back then strictly to improve my gear for PVP. In my opinion that's the best balance, because it encourages you to experience all of the content in the game, not just PVE or PVP. Both. I hate that retail separated those two things like they did. Some BIS PVP gear should 100% come from PVP, but some of it should also come from PVE. That gets people to engage in all content, and for a game, I feel that's a positive thing.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text but yeah, I give a shit about PVP and wanted to put my actual beliefs out there as I tend to usually just shoot down the suggestions and explain why I disagree with them. Also it's nice to actually have a real conversation with someone about this, as the PVP players usually just shout and scream.

I think you have a very valid point that most people prefer to PVP when they want to, i.e. by entering a BG instead of jumping or being jumped at in the open world. While those players are undoubtedly the majority, I'm not so sure that the PVP base is that small. On Epoch, the PVP server had several thousand players before it got abandoned. Also, when I played on TA I frequently saw more than +1000 players online during peak hours. So I wonder, where did these players go? And how can we win them back?

Looking at the recent update that included some of the stuff we discussed, I'm really curious to see how it will turn out. I absolutely had a blast with the short queue times and finally being able to do BGs (even though I got completely destroyed). So a big THANK YOU!! to the Devs!
Of course some people are already whining about it from both sides. I don't get the logic behind insisting on strictly non-xfaction games while the player base is this small on the PVP server and the Devs even said they will add the choice in the future. What more can you possibly ask for? And we should not forget, fulfilling these wishes requires a lot of extra work and just demonstrates the dedication of the Devs to turn Octowow into a great experience for as many players as possible.

Anyway, I love the recent changes and hope they will create the necessary spark to draw in new players.

Looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

[Defiant]

On Epoch, the PVP server had several thousand players before it got abandoned.

Epoch for whatever reason had a lot of hype in general, and a very large amount of players trying to check it out at launch. My understanding is that it shut down very quickly didn't it, like within two weeks of launch? Then it got picked up by Ascension? I think it's good to give it some context, because while the PVP server may have had several thousand, didn't the PVE server have something crazy like 30,000 trying to login?

Also, when I played on TA I frequently saw more than +1000 players online during peak hours. So I wonder, where did these players go? And how can we win them back?

While that was happening, Nord was peaking at several thousand and topping out at 10,000. How do we win all those players back? The reality is that a lot of these issues have absolutely nothing to do with a PVP or PVE server, and more to do with the lack of permanency I'd wager. People lost a lot of time and effort on Turtle. I run a guild and I managed to get maybe 50% of my crew over on Octo. People forget too that when Octo first launched, there was a lot of noise about it being a scam, about the launcher being sketchy, ( before it was open source ) and there were also a lot of people on Turtle that felt Octo and the other Turtle Clones were an insult to what Turtle was. A lot of it though was people just not wanting to put the time in only for Blizzard to step in and end it. Many people in my guild went to Bronzebeard after Turtle shutdown, and then Bronzebeard got shut down, and they just don't have it in them to go through that process a third time. Then you have the DDOS and WoW Forever. We've had really bad luck. This impacts the server, and on a smaller scale it's impacted me and my guild. We've been doing two steps forward one step back for the past couple years now. First it was Ambershire opening, that caused a small exodus from Nord, and we were already struggling with recruitment at that point and when Ambershire opened up a lot of guilds lost people, so a lot of guilds were recruiting. Then the lawsuit occurred and some people left, same deal, a lot of guilds lost people and it made recruitment very difficult because why would people join an up and coming guild rather than a large and established one. I'm only talking about my guilds issues because I feel like it's a microcosm of what Octo is dealing with.

I really genuinely don't believe there's a lot we can do to win them back. Because they left for reasons that have nothing to do with game balance, PVP, PVE, or any of that. The only thing we can do to win them back in my honest opinion is to just continue existing. Be here long term. I would never have joined Turtle in the first place if it had only been operating for six months. Back then I was very much concerned about playing on a private server, and Turtle existing for like four years really helped convince me.

[Honkmcdingus]

All of this + allow dungeon running with more than 1 account (Multi Boxxing)

Was 71 players online when I logged yesterday, getting groups is fucking impossible.

71 players online?

if this is true. the only real solution the pvp server players should be asking for is to be merged to the pve realm and coming up with some kind of 'perma pvp' mode or pvp leveling challenge like 'hit lvl 60 without ever leaving warmode' etc - but on the pve server.

the pve server has 1000-4000 people on most of the time. the pvp server has 71? you can't ask the devs to re-direct their limited resources to catering to 2-5% of the playerbase who play on the pvp server and realistically expect them to bother. you all really should just come to the main server/the pve server. we have pretty good BG queues even in lower level brackets and i think i've probably seem more open world pvp happening on the pve server just by sheer volume of players.

if the pvp server really only has dozens of people online it should just be merged with the main server.