Is it just me, or is it actually reasonable to say that rated PvP is OBJECTIVELY bad now?
Personal feelings aside, please hear me out; TLDR: just 6 reasons why I feel that the current state of rated PvP in WoW is at an all-time low.
- Incredibly high barrier to entry to play rated PvP [e.g., at a remotely competitive level, it is incredibly time consuming to level, grind x/y/z for gear, grind covenants for soulbinds/talents, grind torghast to upgrade legendary, etc., and even then, you will STILL be at a substantial ilvl disadvantage against a lot of players].
- Horrible class balancing combined with toxic game design [e.g., it’s bad enough that many specs shouldn’t even be bothered to que, but when you can’t even get accepted to groups because you aren’t a spec that can more or less 1 shot someone + heal as good as a healer, it makes you wonder why you should bother playing the game at all (if you don’t regularly enjoy PvE content), especially considering that the game requires a monthly fee].
- Outdated and arguably pathetic LFG system/interface [e.g., players without dedicated partners/groups likely spend more time looking for partners than they do actually playing the game, and the lfg interface has no meaningful filter to help facilitate you finding partners of similar skill/gear efficiently (someone saying 2400/glad xp is near-worthless information, as it doesn’t account for gear, alts, what season/expansion they even had the xp, etc.)].
- Minimal (to be generous) effort and communication from the developers/designers [e.g., the sloth’s pace at which clearly broken things are fixed (bugs, broken abilities, etc.), if they ever are fixed, is ridiculous, and coupled with generally only changing/communicating PvE-focused issues makes it painfully apparent that rated PvP is (and should be) regarded as a meme (something that shouldn’t be taken with any remote degree of seriousness from a competitive viewpoint)].
- Hamster-wheel game design that destroys any idea one might have of playing alts, changing characters, specs, etc. [e.g., you’re pigeon-holed into playing only 1-2 characters (so fingers crossed the ones you like are meta for the expansion/season), and the path to gearing an alt is depressing to even think about in terms of the time commitment that is required to get that alt to a point that it can compete]; [e.g., the direction the game has taken over the last several years and expansions is clearly one that is purely business-oriented with respect to forcing players that are to some extent addicted to the game to grind trivial chores indefinitely so that they are that much more invested into the game and more likely to purchase micro-transactions]; [e.g., many players spend more time doing grindy trivial chores than they do actually playing the content that they enjoy]; [e.g., by the time I do all the unenjoyable repetitive chores required to keep my character(s) on par, I have that much less time to actually enjoy the game, if I even feel like playing it at that point].
- Significant gear gaps/rating gated gear [e.g., while from a progression perspective, some gap would/should be regarded as acceptable (a great example would be Legion templates), there shouldn’t be so much of a gap that boosting is promoted (destroying the integrity of the ladder, especially the lowermost brackets), and similarly, in the spirit of competition, skill is ideally what ultimately/mostly determines your place on the competitive ladder(s), not insane gear advantage, exploiting broken abilities/gameplay mechanics, spec/comp, etc.]; [e.g., Legion templates were the best thing for rated PvP, and balancing/tuning around those would have led to a vastly better game, and anyone arguing “mmo, customization, choice, etc.” is either fooling themselves or delusional if they think that the current system(s) is/are better for the health of the rated PvP scene (99.99% of the time, you’re going to target the best stats for your class until your entire gear set comprises x/y/z stat distribution if you want to be competitive, and to this extent, there is no real choice or reason to configure your gear set with a sub-optimal stat distribution outside of meming and/or exploiting something broken (e.g., 1-shot set ups))].
These are just the major things, and while I understand that many will not necessarily agree with my use of the term “OBJECTIVELY”, am I really wrong for doing so? Does anyone sincerely think that any of the above points are wrong/untrue and/or an unfair assessment of the current state of rated PvP (anyone that isn’t profitting from the game in one way or the other (boosting, tournament winnings, etc.))?
Even if I am perhaps wrong to say “OBJECTIVELY”, my opinion about the current state of rated PvP is that it’s in the worst state that it has ever been in for at least the reasons above (this is the first expansion where the game feels so bad/toxic to play that my addiction to the game isn’t even remotely close to being enough to make me want to play it, and if it wasn’t for my tbc nostalgia, I would feel compelled to unsub (but hey, I’m just a drop in the ocean of cash you higher-ups are swimming in, who cares right?)).
