Difference between X-realm Battlegrounds and Dungeon/Raid Finder

Dungeon Finder/Raid Finder/Current WOW you can queue up anywhere in the world from your screen.

In vanilla you needed to go to specific locations to queue up for a specific battleground.
So essentially you cant be in the Strangletorn Vale questing and decide to open a screen on your UI and queue up for a battleground.
You needed to run, fly, hearth to a city that can queue or run to the entrance in different zones in the world.

Dungeon Finder/Raid Finder/Current WOW you can queue up anywhere in the world from your screen.

In vanilla you needed to go to specific locations to queue up for a specific battleground.
So essentially you cant be in the Strangletorn Vale questing and decide to open a screen on your UI and queue up for a battleground.
You needed to run, fly, hearth to a city that can queue or run to the entrance in different zones in the world.

I appreciate this, so apart from being able to queue for dungeon/raid finder outside of Capital Cities, they are basically the same thing as 1.12 Crossrealm battlegrounds. I just find it hypocritical that players criticize dungeon/raid finder, yet defend crossrealm battlegrounds. They were effectively the same systems.
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That said, I would prefer not to have cross-realm BG's. I enjoyed the dynamic of knowing players (friend and foe) on sight and remembering people from their World PvP days.

Just like with dungeon finder, these mechanics make your own reputation matter much less - if you'll never play with these people again, what is the purpose in communicating with them, or being social? They're just strangers on the same subway car, all heading towards the same destination.

They were effectively the same systems.

I guess you can say that...

That said, I would prefer not to have cross-realm BG's. I enjoyed the dynamic of knowing players (friend and foe) on sight and remembering people from their World PvP days.

Just like with dungeon finder, these mechanics make your own reputation matter much less - if you'll never play with these people again, what is the purpose in communicating with them, or being social? They're just strangers on the same subway car, all heading towards the same destination.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid fi der ruined WoW.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid fi der ruined WoW.

I think they are accepting it because it was there in 1.12 (Not that they want it or support it in general)
It goes the same as adding things that werent in 1.12 that you shouldnt take things out that were in 1.12

#NoChanges rememeber

That said, I would prefer not to have cross-realm BG's. I enjoyed the dynamic of knowing players (friend and foe) on sight and remembering people from their World PvP days.

Just like with dungeon finder, these mechanics make your own reputation matter much less - if you'll never play with these people again, what is the purpose in communicating with them, or being social? They're just strangers on the same subway car, all heading towards the same destination.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid finder damaged WoW.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid finder damaged WoW.

You double-posted, but generally this change homogenized the PvP experience across realms. On my backwater PvE server, there were 2-3 premades on each faction that absolutely stomped each other, to the point where people would stop solo-queuing and 'strike' until things changed.

Also, the grind to rank 14 was completely variable depending on the vibrancy of your PvP realm, to the point where people would transfer into small servers, get rank 14, then transfer to the big leagues. The cross-realm system flattened all this out and the average player got a more consistent PvP experience.

Don't get me wrong, I think all the above excuses don't overcome the issue that it made the game less social, which is always a problem.

Fact

Firstly, Cross-Realm Battleground PvP (Battlegroups) were introduced in patch 1.12, so there is no argument that it doesn't belong where it is put.
https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Battlegroup

Secondly, Battlemasters existed prior to 1.12, so there was no need to travel to the battleground to queue up.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Battleground <- Patch Notes section shows that Battlemasters existed in 2005 (1.12 was 2006)

Edit: My "opinion" post made no sense due to a wrong assumption. If we really do get 1.12, get ready for Meeting Stones:
"Originally, they were for filling in partial (or just-starting) parties whose members met the required level range by auto-inviting suitable candidates."
https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Meeting_Stone

Patch 1.3.0 (07-Mar-2005):

Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07):

Patch 1.7.0 (13-Sep-2005):

Patch 2.0.1 (05-Dec-2006):

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid finder damaged WoW.

You double-posted, but generally this change homogenized the PvP experience across realms. On my backwater PvE server, there were 2-3 premades on each faction that absolutely stomped each other, to the point where people would stop solo-queuing and 'strike' until things changed.

Also, the grind to rank 14 was completely variable depending on the vibrancy of your PvP realm, to the point where people would transfer into small servers, get rank 14, then transfer to the big leagues. The cross-realm system flattened all this out and the average player got a more consistent PvP experience.

Don't get me wrong, I think all the above excuses don't overcome the issue that it made the game less social, which is always a problem.

Great response. I have heard the argument of the faction population imbalances and how they effect battlegrounds. If there is a Horde dominated server, can't the Alliance just form more premades, especially considering they will fight more Horde pugs. The premade stomps happen even with crossrealm battlegrounds. The system shares so much in common with Dungeon and Raid Finder. I think it will be destructive to Classic WoW.

Cross realms were Blizzards answer to faction imbalance. Blizzard had no real way to deal with faction issues and this became their solution. Dungeon finder is not affected by faction imbalance and thus was not as much of an issue as cross realm BG's. You could always open chat and find a group for PvE content, you could not always enter a BG. Finding a premade team was far more difficult than finding a 5 man dungeon group. On some servers the wait time to enter a BG was hours. Hours and hours. The game became unplayable from a PvP standpoint. People can sit here and reminisce about rivalries and silly fun times that were had when you knew your opposition, but the reality on some servers was the equivalent of no PvP. Kids would get off school (me included) at 330pm only to remain in queue for upwards of 3 hours, only to enter an AV that had 25-30 teammates against a fully populated opposing team.

Eventually Blizzard offered free transfers off of low pop realms pending faction imbalances to the overpopulated faction. Or free transfers TOO a realm to help boast player counts on the underpopulated faction. They also used some server merging... None of these solutions ever seemed to solve the faction balance issue.

Are cross realm BG's a form of LFG? Of course. Were they necessary? Yes. Do they have the same impact as LFG? No. Battlegroups were composed of a handful of servers and were a necessity at the time. Depending on what server populations we will see after layering has collapsed, we may not need them for Classic. If servers end with 3-5k players, Blizz will likely need some form of battlgroup implementation. If we sit at 10-15k players per server, we wont. These are both extreme versions of potential server pops, the reality will end up being somewhere in between.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid finder damaged WoW.

You double-posted, but generally this change homogenized the PvP experience across realms. On my backwater PvE server, there were 2-3 premades on each faction that absolutely stomped each other, to the point where people would stop solo-queuing and 'strike' until things changed.

Also, the grind to rank 14 was completely variable depending on the vibrancy of your PvP realm, to the point where people would transfer into small servers, get rank 14, then transfer to the big leagues. The cross-realm system flattened all this out and the average player got a more consistent PvP experience.

Don't get me wrong, I think all the above excuses don't overcome the issue that it made the game less social, which is always a problem.

Great response. I have heard the argument of the faction population imbalances and how they effect battlegrounds. If there is a Horde dominated server, can't the Alliance just form more premades, especially considering they will fight more Horde pugs. The premade stomps happen even with crossrealm battlegrounds. The system shares so much in common with Dungeon and Raid Finder. I think it will be destructive to Classic WoW.

In the original Battleground system you had to run to the entrance, often times with groupmates. You then queued and got matched with players only on your realm. There were longer wait times associated with all of this. To expedite the process, Blizzard made it so players couls just queue from the Capital Cities. Imagine if you could just teleport your entire dungeon group into the instance in Classic. Then Blizzard added Crossrealm Queues primarily to lower the queue times on faction imbalamced servers. That is counteractive to how Classic worked. Waiting was part of Classic. You had to wait while forming dungeon and raid groups.

Blizzard took the Crossrealm BG system and basically applied it to PvE later on. We all see how that turned out. Players idling in Orgrimmar or Stormwind chain queuing instances with players from other servers. It is so shortsighted.

Precisely, so why are there players supporting 1.12 Crossrealm BGs, yet claiming dungeon/raid fi der ruined WoW.

I think they are accepting it because it was there in 1.12 (Not that they want it or support it in general)
It goes the same as adding things that werent in 1.12 that you shouldnt take things out that were in 1.12

#NoChanges rememeber

I would like to point out that Blizzard is taking things out of 1.12 that it considers to be preparation for Burning Crusade. That is why the mount costs are not the new system and instead the old.

I would consider x-realm prep for Burning Crusade's arenas, and it's strange that Blizzard doesn't feel the same way. Likely they see it as a convenient fix to faction imbalance and are deciding to keep it in for that reason alone and will not change their minds otherwise because they can.

I would prefer no x-realm, but at this point it seems like Blizzard can do what they want with the "just before BC content" and decide what their intent was or wasn't with it.

I wish they would at least give us a middleground where x-realm is introduced at a much later phase IF there are problems with the prior system, and even then only on certain servers.

EDIT: An important note to make is it looks to be almost all your prior repliers appear to be either Horde PvP or Alliance PvE on the Faction/Server type split. They are the prime example of who wants/needs x-realm BGs because they are the typically overloaded faction on that server type. As you can probably tell, I'm not playing either of those and hence get quick ques. Yes, I'm biased, and so is everyone else on this thread.

X-realm BGs was still connected with battlegroups and reputation still mattered, most people knew the top dogs / famous guilds from different realms.. And queuing WSG after WSG still meant you saw the same people..

I love x-realm BGs because they make dead brackets come alive due to games actually popping.. White LFR makes me queue solo for the latest raid, go AFK throughout the fights and still get to down all the bosses..

LFG has always been in the game in form of meeting stones and inns (according to the 1.12 clients). But I have never used them. Would hate to have an instant teleport to dungeon tool.