Dalaran-WoW

Hello Citizens of Dalaran,

We would like to present you with a new concept we are going to give form during the next weeks: The Faction Tournament Council. We strongly believe making players participants in the Tournament decisions will bring many benefits in the short and long term. But first, allow me to explain why this idea has been designed.

We have been squeezing our brains towards generating new ideas and features in order to give the community some nice and rewarding activity for most of the aspects within the game. However, we have noticed for some time that some players can't see that all our efforts and decisions are for the good of the Tournament and server overall. They tend to think that we act in favor of the opposite faction (this happened in both factions), with nonsense accusations of us being biased with each decision or fix, no matter what we do.

A tournament without participation and competition is not a tournament. If one faction is crushing the other for some time, there must be some systems in place to help a bit balancing things out (e.g: WG Blizzlike Balance system, Tournament Advantage points...etc.). Think that those balance systems will help you out when things change and you are the losing faction as they are designed exactly for that.

It is a faction effort. We need to encourage those who are trying even if the fight is not equal, so they keep promoting the activity and engaging more players from their faction to join. If nothing is done and the same result keeps happening, the losing faction will stop playing that much, reducing the overall activity of the Tournament. That is why we need to be there to balance things out if we want the activity to thrive on a long-standing realm, instead of being in a stagnant state.

We have been monitoring the activity from both sides for years, and it has been carefully studied before reaching any decision - it is not an easy or always a clear task, of course.

For example, in order to set the PvE Milestones we made sure that both factions can achieve them every week, no matter the Alliance/Horde ratio, milestones are achievable on a weekly basis, therefore a fixed amount of points obtainable for both. The milestones are set based on extensive data analysis, activity data that has been gathered for a long time.

There are many examples, but we could also use the introduction of the advantage points - more than a year ago, one faction decreased its PvP activity due to many weekly losses in a row. So we put into place those advantage points in order to incentivize them and have a bit of help. But, the thing is, we didn't implement it just for that exact moment - we saw further ahead and decided it was a good idea for the overall tournament as that exact situation could happen in the future for the opposite faction - and it happened, they would benefit from this decision later on.

Or even fixes; when things get very active in regards to PvP, both factions tend to report issues that need to be fixed. And that is perfectly fine, some were long overdue but with so much activity they resurfaced again; others were simply new. But when PvP gets this agitated, those issues tend to appear or become more noticeable; with all the new Tournament revamp there's been an activity surge, and we have been fixing as fast as possible all the properly reported issues - from both factions. Thinking and claiming with so much emphasis that, we are helping the opposite faction because we fix an old or new issue reported by them (e.g: spirit totems (reported by Horde players), MC + HoP on the flag carrier (reported by Alliance players)...etc.), when what we are actually doing is fixing issues that are affecting the PvP scene and, therefore, the Tournament - it is ridiculous and irrational.

Anyways, the fact that some players are fixated and only see the moment these, other features or even fixes went live, instead of seeing the big picture and how it will be good for the future of the tournament, and, as consequence, defame us for implementing them, it is utterly disappointing. We understand that PvP or competition may bring some raw feelings of rage and conflict, but we didn't expect this paranoia from some. Before reaching that point, we think that those players should have talked to us, providing their opinions and constructive criticism about any change - we would have heard them out, very gladly in fact, same as we always do.

We have been working tirelessly for 8 years on Dalaran, there are many many areas that a server with so much lifetime needs to be taken care of. We have respected the community and their opinion as of the utmost value; always listening to each faction equally, talking with old, new and active players to check how things feel in-game, since there is no other way for us to know.

To the vast majority of you, to those respectful players who enjoy the Tournament and play fairly; you deserve that we keep squeezing our brains in order to provide the best that we are able to offer. And that is exactly what we are going to keep doing.

Therefore, we have decided to create a Faction Tournament's Council, let's see what exactly this is and how it will work.