I quit PvP in WoD. I did random battlegrounds PvP from Cata and all through MoP. It really taught me how to get the most out of this hunter and Resto Druid. Did a little bit of Arena with my sons when they were in grade and middles school. I have popped in a time or two, but the gear wall for PvP was steep enough I chose to not play.
Which also worked in my favor, because for the last few years I have chosen to orient my play style to spend as little time logged in as possible in order to achieve my minimal goals. (Clearing LFR, doing the pet battle dungeons, and that is about it.)
I agree that the PvP experience and how gearing is handled the last few expansions is… not good. So I will grant you that Blizzard has completely borked the PvP experience, and if that is a big part of your end game, you are probably not having a stellar experience.
Surprisingly I have been playing random battlegrounds on my iLevel 229 Ret Paladin and my win rate is about 66% right now according to Reflex.[1] (On Alliance.) I queue week day evenings when nothing else is happening. No Arena. No Rated Battlegrounds.
[1] This is low sample size, and the plural of anecdote is not data. But it is all I have, to judge my experience. I am just surprised to win at all on Alliance…
Yes. If you feel that you’re not worthwhile, that’s a personal thing that I wish I could help you with. But the game is not designed to bully people or make them feel bad.
To be fair, this has been part of MMORPGs since day one. That’s part of what makes them an MMORPG. Vanilla got you absolutely nowhere without group content. Not even in the lowbie zones. BC got you some blues instead of green, but all of the purples were locked behind group content. Wrath got you a few epics from rep, but most were also locked behind group content.
That’s part of the genre.
I do see some newer games being released that are a type of MMO, but not like these ones. Palia might be fun for you. Check that one out. It just hit Alpha. The community is very nice, too. Their Discord is very inclusive, as is the game.
So we’re looking at a very different style of game. We just need to see if there’s anything we can do to help those who want to try out guilds and communities, but feel they can’t or have a very negative view of them.
For sure. All I want is to be able to enjoy random BGs again. I used to have fun going in there, trying to get the achievements and racking up HKs. In Legion I used to run around the PvP WQs sniping people on my mage. I spent a lot of time in the Dalaran underbelly as well. Now I feel like a big part of the game is locked out to me.
Right now I’m just trying new characters, locking them at 45 and playing around in older content through Chromie Time by myself. Not really sure how long that is going to interest me though. Shadowlands is just not a friendly expansion at all.
Are you not getting tossed around by people lucky enough to be three pillars champions though?
You’re not addressing the point I made though. The game does not give solo players decent gear at all, and our only place is to get stomped on in battlegrounds. Which is fine if you’re into that I guess, but I would wager it’s not fun for most.
Am I wrong there?
Since late Vanilla when the honor system was revamped I used to be able to get decent gear on my own, and even without connections I could make an impact in a BG or in open world PvP. I could have fun on my own whether or not I could count on people to help me.
I like WoW for its own reasons. I like playing dark and wicked characters, and WoW offers me the warlock, death knight and shadow priest. It’s hard to find that in other MMOs. EverQuest was the only one I really found that’s similar, and that game is ancient.
I’ve tried other games recently and just never got that same feeling. I wish I could see WoW turn to be more friendly to players like me, rather than be forced to flee elsewhere.
I don’t PvP. It’s irrelevant to my solo play. I got gear from my Covenant in 9.0, from Korthia in 9.1 and from ZM in 9.2. I don’t need anything more. This game provides me with a lot more than it used to.
PvP is a side part of this game and not the main focus. Therein lies the issue.
And that’s why this thread exists: to talk about how to encourage more group support.
I realize I sound like a negative nelly but I’m really just speaking as a realist. Most people in this day in age are in guilds for one of two reasons:
They enjoy progression raiding
Playing with close friends/family
Even diehard pvpers flock to communities now instead of guilds. It’s easier that way because you know you’ll be playing with people that share a common interest. If you join a typical “casual social/leveling” guild as they call them now, you’ll find that nobody ever talks and no one does anything together. Cataclysm just killed the need to be in a guild.
Yup. People used to form guilds where the only purpose was to invite people whom were just wanting the perks. And whomever formed the guild would have the benefit of the extra gold trickling in. It was a win/win.
I really feel like the only valid reason to be in a guild is for your raid group to have a built in incentive to not kick you when there is a single bad pull or one their guildies comes online.
I once healed for an entire Castle Nath run and then when we got to Sire everyone who wasn’t a member of the guild got kicked. Sire was all I actually needed from the raid that week. I was beyond pissed.
So then I joined a guild, and that guild had the worst tanks in the world and couldn’t even complete a raid. That guild then fell apart. I haven’t been a serious member of a guild since.
This is because people looking for PvE are typically looking for not only culture but also for progression and stating where a group is on progression, achievements, and such.
Typically phrases like LGBT friendly, LGBT presence, etc are listed in inclusive guild groups.
I know on WrA Horde we have several inclusive guilds, however, I am not sure if they are welcoming because different people have different definitions of welcoming.
With the guild I run we will often greet people and onboard them. There may be some waiting to get people into content, but we typically help people including helping them gear, helping them learn to do heaps of deeps, and so on.
But people have to meet us half way. If they never speak up or respond to officers when we’re trying to help, there’s not much we can do. We’ve had many people join, never say anything in discord, never make an attempt to get involved, never respond to officers, and leave.
I don’t know about MG-A but I know that Gold Knuckles on MG-H are pretty rad and welcoming of a few of my guildies who go along for them with prog and the ones who come hang with us are pretty chill.
It was a fresh DH. I just got to stormwind and got a guild invite. The dude went on this giant rant about how he had this grand master plan to make the entire guild Asmongold centric to attract his attention on stream. I deleted that DH and started a new one. The entire thing freaked me out so bad, that nuclear seemed to be the best option. I wanted to be sure he had no way of finding me again, lol.
This isn’t Old Republic with thousands. You just keep making stuff up to fit your narrative and not realizing how many different types of players exist. I’m not sure why.
I have yet to find any guild that I would describe as my “forever home.”
I feel like guilds are harder to find and join now. On my old server, no on ever advertised or invited people. You had to look through the guild finder and apply, and the entire process felt clunky and just resulted in me usually joining a dead guild.
Guilds feel wildly out of date and the players just dont seem to care about them anymore, I agree with the OP that blizzard needs to do something.
On my new server, I saw ONE advertisement for a guild. It was hilariously an all Christian role playing guild looking for death knights. I have no idea why a Christian role playing guild needs death knights, but a friend and I took a break from questing to laugh for several minutes.
I’d love to do some group PvE too. I’m just trying to find a guild that’s friendly to someone who struggles at the game. Someone that doesn’t have the best logs, someone who struggles with certain addons like weakauras, and who just wants to play the game and shoot some bosses without worrying about logging, simming, perfect rotations and all that jazz.
I see those a bit on MG.
I’m basically looking for something I described. Also one that isn’t trying to be overly edgy with their chatter, one that doesn’t have that seemingly mandatory period of “new guy ostracization”, and one that will actually not blatantly ignore you when you ask for help for something, even if it’s the most random thing like Gurubashi arena backup.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to feel like I belong and to feel like I matter.
I haven’t been in a guild since my old one fell apart in Cata after everyone quit the game. At the same time, the hardcore raid guilds were leaving the server and I ended up purchasing some of them to use as either bank alt guilds or to invite people to join for perks.
Sounds sad and anti-social now but it’s a reflection of the direction Blizz went with the game.
Its become a choice for me between “Join a guild and have a secure raiding position but be obligated to raid with what might be a horrible raid team” or “Remain freelance and not have to put up with any meetings, raid times, or guild drama but run the risk of not being able to find a guild to run a raid with when I need to. Also be extremely lonely.” I more often just choose to be lonely.
My old guild actually had a DPS that was horrible at the game that was part of our heroic raid team. She was a close friend of one of the officers. One day the RL got annoyed enough to kick her. Holy hell, the drama that caused was earth shaking. I sat in the after-raid guild meeting like a good little soldier and watched the fire fly.
Why the officer felt the need to teach her friend how to play the game during a heroic raid and not in normal or lfr I will never have any idea. I think they were just trying to get loot for their friend, personally. They didn’t paint it that way. They painted it as “The right thing to do.”