BWL Release

On BWL Roster Changes

The release of patch 1.13.1 comes with battlegrounds, keyrings, and the elemental invasion.  Judging by the speed of the content rollout, our best guess for when BWL will be released is first quarter 2020.  To that end, I would like to share with you all some of our thoughts on BWL and the future direction of the guild.

There are currently two methods of ranking guild quality in 2019.  The first is progression.  This is your traditional server first, second, third, and so on ranking.  This is the first ranking anyone sees upon viewing a server on Warcraft Logs.  However due to the ease in which 15-year-old content is solved, another metric has been quickly gaining popularity, and that is speed.
In our current state, we have two raid teams that clear MC in just under 2 hours, each.  To put this into perspective, the current record holder on Yojamba is the Horde guild Cool Whip, with a time of 51:22.  Fury leads the Alliance at 1:20 with Reprobates and Happy Accidents trailing close behind.  We are currently 5th in terms of speed on Alliance Yojamba, or 16th overall including Horde.
Now, why does this matter?  A guild that clears in 10 hours gets the same loot as a guild that clears in 1.  And does server/faction first even matter when the content is so old and well tread?  Many of us believe it does.  The best applicants are always going to gravitate to the best guilds.  Classic has already proven to have a high attrition rate.  You may have noticed some of our friends just seem to vanish without explanation.  Others have been poached.  We are constantly in need of recruitment in order to maintain our rosters, and our long term survival will hinge on the ability to draw quality players to our guild.  With that in mind, let’s discuss roster changes for BWL.

In order to secure a good standing in progression, we plan to launch BWL with a single raid.  This raid will consist of the top 40 raiders, chosen as objectively as possible based on player performance data collected by Warcraft logs.  I will go into detail about our current methodology in a moment.  This new raid will be a roster that is unique to BWL.  The current MC rosters for 7:30 and 9:30 have no planned changes at this time, though it is likely that the day may change.

Apart from performance, availability will also be a factor in deciding the FIRST raid on the FIRST NIGHT. We want to clear BWL server first, that will mean needing to take a day off so that we can get attunement done and enter BWL ON RELEASE. No matter how late it is. It will mean stocking up on redbull etc and probably an all nighter, but it’s necessary if we are trying to secure the first Nefarian kill on the server. We will be putting a poll up as well, to see who can take a day off if necessary and commit to showing up on release night.

Once we have secured our first full clear of BWL, the ultimate goal will be to open the second raid as soon as possible.  Two raids generate more loot for the guild, and obviously nobody likes being benched.  However, we will need to make an evaluation as to when it is appropriate to launch the second raid team for BWL.  How long does it take us to clear?  Can we comfortably clear in one night?  If we diffuse our strongest players, will we be able to meet DPS checks?  These are all questions that need to be addressed, and we currently have no answer.  I personally believe we can transition to two raids very quickly, others do not.  Time will tell.

On methodology.   As it currently stands, each player has a best performance average score.  What this means is, your best ever performance on a specific boss is compared to all other players in the world who did that boss.  If a rogue has a 50% best performance score (BPS) on Lucifron, then that means you did better than 50% of all rogues in the world playing classic on that boss.  Your best performance average score (BPAS) is simply the best score you’ve ever gotten on each of the 10 bosses of MC, averaged.  Your BPAS is then compared to other raiders in the guild and that is how your position on our guild leaderboard is determined.  These rankings are public and may be viewed by anyone.

Your BPAS is relative to your class.  So a warlock does not have to compete directly with a mage for a spot in our raid, and so on.  The first BWL team will allocate a number of seats for each class.  We are still determining the optimal number of each class.  Currently we are looking at 3 tanks, 5 fury, 6 mages, 6 rogues, 5 locks, 3 hunters, 4 Priests, 1 Shadow Priest, 4 Pallies and 2-3 Druids.

Will the methodology change?  Possibly.  BPAS is a very useful measuring stick to get an idea of what level people are performing at, and it is easily tracked by anyone.  However, it’s not perfect and doesn’t take all factors into consideration.  It can be gamed in some cases, doesn’t take gear into account, or differing conditions between our two raids.  We have some ideas on how to improve it, but we are also being wary of making the process too opaque.  If we make any changes, we will tell you.  But for the time being, this is what we have, and I strongly believe that working on improving your scores will almost certainly make you a better player in the process.

What if I’m not chosen?  Anyone not on the initial roster is encouraged (not required) to be on standby.  If the content proves to be challenging, we may need to adjust class balance on the fly.  People may need to leave or may not be able to come at all.  These are all realities of progression raiding.  So if you don’t make the cut, you could still get in if you make yourself available.  Molten Core and Onyxia will continue to be run, though it may be on a different day than normal.  And rest assured, it is our goal to quickly have two raids running successfully in BWL.

That is where we currently are on our plans for roster changes in BWL.  I’d like to have a town hall meeting in the near future to address questions and suggestions to the plan.  Thank you very much for reading and I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts.