Premades vs Pugs

2022-12-13

Battleground Premades – love them or hate them, have always been a big part of World of Warcraft Vanilla gameplay.  You just have to look at the sheer amount of whine posts on the wow-one PVP forums to see that it's probably one of the more controversial topics to do with vanilla gaming.

Everyone who isn't in a premade hates facing premades in battlegrounds and the premades themselves don't seem to care that much what the non-premaders think.

Click below to read Clodagh's incredibly long ramble about Premades and PVP and other random miscellaneous crap that comes into her head….

My PVP Background on Feenix Warsong

I remember starting out on the server around March 2011.  I rolled a priest.  At that stage, Naxx wasn't out yet, most guilds were progressing in BWL, not that many were in AQ40.  Times were good, 5 mans were easy to get.  Not that many people were pugging ZG or AQ20.  I guess the server has evolved a lot since then – with most people being able to pug 20 mans, some MC pugs and of course Drakon's famous BWL pug on alliance side.

What's gear got to do with premades? I hear you cry..  Quite  a lot actually.  If you've ever played in a pug with green/blue/5 man dungeon gear versus a BWL+ geared premade, you'll find yourself getting owned incredibly fast.  If you're in a PUG though with some good epics vs perhaps a blue geared premade, you might not have the advantage as always gameplay > gear, but you will offer more competition.

Gear does give a huge advantage in Vanilla PVP – it's a fact whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.  Put two equally skilled premades facing each other with different levels of gear, the ones with better gear will of course have the advantage.

Realisation – your PVP rank is limited to your IRL lifestyle

This kinda dawned on me in Summer of 2011 when my blue geared premade could no longer stand a chance or really struggled against premades with rank 14 gear.  We give them some good competition, even managed to beat them a few times, but yeah – on the open field, they could pretty much destroy us within seconds.  This led us to start playing a lot more defensively but they always countered our tactics with tactics of their own and in the end, their gear kinda got the better of us.  So what did we do?  We started raiding.

I guess, because most of the guys and girls I play with are around my age either work or study full-time, it was pretty much impossible for us to get above a certain PVP rank.  The top I got on this server was rank 10…. I could have gotten to rank 11 at that time maybe, if I'd pushed hard at it… there was a lot more people PVPing when I was ranking, so competition was much harder.  Standings were hard to get.  Queue times were pretty long for horde and it all felt a bit of a waste of time.  In vanilla PVP… Time = PVP Ranks.

At the end of the day, most of us were only PVPing for fun, I guess that… excitement of playing together as a team and facing other equally skilled teams.  If you haven't played as part of a premade before, I guess it's kinda like playing as part of a football team or another sports team where you know your team mates, you hang out together doing other stuff and I guess, that sense of achievement and winning when you face tough competition.

We still premade together the nights we aren't raiding, although i guess we have a few more epics now than what we had.  Unfortunately though, competition isn't so great since Train Cow stopped playing together. They were the most fun team to face and we loved to play against them.

Steamrolling PUGs isn't fun

Ok, I guess this is one of the more controversial points of the whole argument.  I love playing in my premade… but when we face a PUG, we sigh, we switch off, we don't have fun, it's kinda like going into auto-pilot mode… just getting the game over and done with in hope that we'll get to fight vs another premade next game.

I know a lot of the other premades would prefer fighting PUGs.  Maybe not for amazing epeen reasons though… Whereas premade vs premade games can go on for quite a while if both teams are equally skilled, PUG vs Premade games are usually over in less than 8 minutes which means faster game which means more honor.  If you're grinding for rank, honor optimisation is pretty much everything… you don't want long games, you want them like women – fast and easy.

I'm trying to explain that not everyone who fights as part of a premade is the same.  Players who PVP in a premade shouldn't all be bannered under “dicks cos premade who just likes steamrolling pugs”.  Sure there are PVE guilds who put premades up to give themselves an erection as they one-shot greenies with their T3 but those guys are few and far between on this server.  Most of the PVPers I've met here on Feenix have been really nice down-to-earth guys.

To The Premaders

There are a lot of things that gives the PVP community a bad name.  One in particular is another age-old argument which I guess I could write another 3 pages  and that is “Graveyard Camping“.

On one side of the fence, you have the guys who do it who say things like – “if you weren't totally terrible, you wouldn't get graveyard camped” and stuff like “you don't have to accept the rezz, just stay dead”, and when I try to argue the point that it's a lame thing to do … “It's easy honor and it makes the game faster”.

On the other side of the fence, the guys that are getting spawn-camped who aren't exactly encouraged to queue next game after spending all their time rezzing and getting killed repeatedly without so much as a chance to buff and/or prepare   or  standing in the graveyard for 8 minutes as a ghost twiddling their thumbs.

Now if this is your idea of PVP, then there is something really really wrong with you.   To the guys who are doing it:

1. You're not encouraging future PVP players, therefore limiting the amount of people queuing against you therefore making your queue times longer.

2. You're being a tool.  There's a maximum limit of honor you can get from killing one player, once that limit's been reached, camping someone just because it gets you off, is ruining the gameplay experience of other people.

3. You can stand off to the side, or underneath the graveyard if you want to stop a team from escaping, you don't have to stand on their faces when they rezz and kick them to the floor again.  If they choose to move out of the area where their graveyard is after buffing, then it's fair enough to kill them but killing an unbuffed player who's just spawned is probably the height of childish retardedry, in my opinion anyway.

4. Stop Dodging other premades.  So you want to play in a premade but you don't want to fight other premades?   Stop making other people's lives a misery.  Earn your honour honourably and you might earn more respect from the community.

I have noticed though, while pugging a bit on my alt – that the graveyard camping by premades doesn't happen half as much as it did a year ago, and this is really good to see.  I know it's probably a small point to make, and that PUGs, yes, you will still get steamrolled in 8 minutes by premades… but at least they aren't kicking you when you're down, you don't feel “farmed”, you maybe even get a few kills together with a fast loss.  Personally, I don't tolerate graveyard camping in the premades that I run and I extended that to a guild rule when I created a Pyran guild here on Feenix April 2011.

Other stuff like abusing random bugs in an effort to make games go faster when you're getting a bit of a fight back from a PUG and verbal abuse is some things premaders might want to cut back on a bit.  Just because you're part of a good premade, doesn't give you the right to act like a douche.

To The Puggers

Yeah it's a pain in the ass to get steamrolled by a premade in 8 minutes flat.  Here's some things you can do to minimize the burn:-

1. Start your own premade?  How?  I'll write a whole other blog post on that pretty soon.

2. Stop whinning on the forums.  Seriously – I know it's frustrating, I've been there too… but adding fuel to the premaders who are asshats only makes the situation worse.  Some of us people who play in premades are nice guys – don't label people all under the same tag.   Take it like a man, you will probably lose most games but you might even win a few if you can do some of the following….

3. You're in a PUG but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad game.  Are you there to win or just there for a quick loss?  Decide.  If you're there to win – encourage your team into using some basic tactics.

4. Try.  Seriously – just try your best.  Quite a lot of premades are god-awful world chat premades that aren't really any better than PUGs.  I've gone in with 3-4 good players/friends and beaten some of the better premades that's out there at the moment with the aid of lots of PUGs.  If people see you trying, they will probably try too.  A positive attitude goes a long way.

5. Get some better gear.  Do 5 mans, PUG ZG, PUG AQ20, get into a starter guild.  Don't roll into battlegrounds wearing rubbish gear and then whine when you get two shotted.  Why should other people who HAVE made the effort be expected to carry you?  Get some enchants, bring some consumables, level a useful PVP profession like engineering.  The more effort you put into your gear, the more chance you have of making a difference and the more chance you have of getting invited to future premades…

So folks, that's the end of my rant for today.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Leave me a comment with your views on Premades Vs PUGs.