This post relies on bug report submitted some time ago: https://turtle-wow.org/bug-report?id=9450.
I would be grateful if you upvote this issue there.
Sometimes battlegrounds start with weird balance like 1 vs 15 in Arathi Basin or 1 vs 9 in Warsong Gulch.
Though it might be seemed as a bug, there is interesting theory that in fact games like these don't happen because of a bug but because of intentional activity of organised groups.
Background of the problem:
Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin are specific battlegrounds because you can create a raid group and sign up everyone in this raid for one of these battlegrounds so everyone from your raid will join at the same time. In theory this mechanic might be the source of ghost queue bug and intentional abuse from some premade PvP groups to level PvP rank efficiently.
How to reproduce (as an organised PvP group):
- 1. Create Raid Group 1 that consist of real PvP premade of Faction X.
- 2. Create Raid Group 2 that consist of alts of the same PvP players from Raid Group 1 of Faction Y (on alt accounts).
- 3. When both Raid Groups are ready, the leaders of both groups join their group to selected battleground at the same time.
- 4a. With some luck, the server queue creates new battleground match with Raid Group 1 and Raid Group 2 as main participants.
- 5a. Everyone from Raid Group 1 enters the battleground while everyone from Raid Group 2 intentionaly doesn't enter.
- 6a. Raid Group 1 will have significant advantage in that match and will get free honor abusing the system.
- 4b. With no luck (for organised group), the Raid Group 2 won't face Raid Group 1 but some random players instead.
- 5b. The Raid Group 2 doesn't join the game and random players will have easy PvP game - that's the case in which most random people experienced this "ghost queue bug".
Facts that support this theory:
- This is possible in the game as long as PvP premade has lvl 60 alts of enemy faction on alt accounts.
- It's very unlikely that the server was coded that bad to allow 1 vs 15 situations.
- It's very unlikely for random people from one faction to mass decline - mathematically very unlikely.
- This method provides massive honor advantage for PvP rankers and makes their honor farming more efficient which is very important in the current PvP ranking system.
- From what I've seen, most of these 1 vs 10 screenshots were taken in Arathi Basin, some of them were taken in Warsong Gulch too. However, Alterac Valley that doesn't support joining as raid groups making this method impossible there. In fact this issue was never recorded there. There is no problem in Blood Ring because the game won't start if it isn't 3 vs 3. The issue was never recorded in Sunnyglade Valley.
This is only theory so the team should investigate the issue, maybe look at the logs to check if these groups really abused the queue system this way.
You might think that the best solution would be placing longer deserter debuff on characters that decline joining the battleground but it's bad solution - Raid Group of alts could join the game against Raid Group 1 and the result will be the same since their alts will be afk and the game would likely finish within 3 minutes if it's Arathi Basin.
The only solution would be monitoring such abusive activities through server logs and punish the alts that cause ghost games to start. Without the alts, organised PvP groups won't have easy honor farm making PvP ranking more fair for casual PvP enthusiasts.
Don't forget to upvote the issue here: https://turtle-wow.org/bug-report?id=9450