I’m not against the duel arena for giggles that was proposed in the survey, but classic+ needs a real competitive PvP system. It only adds to the game and hurts nobody. The number one thing many of us play WoW for is the PvP, raiding in vanilla is just something I’m forced to do to get gear to PvP. Arena always gives us something to strive/grind for outside of raid logging.
Add 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, with an MMR system modeled after TBC. Only gate shoulders/wep, titles, and a mount behind rating.
I am not a big PVP guy but I do believe they need to put a lot of effort into making PVP great. Arenas, BG designs, ranking systems, all of it…it should be a big deal to do well in PVP
The platform feels extremely under-developed given it would sell a lot of subs on it’s own if it was excellent
Developing an abundance of things to do outside of raid is important, in general, if we want C+ to be evergreen
We don’t need any arena. Arena is cringe.
Did you play tbc arena? It was a mess. Starting at zero “solved” the fictional problem of people intentionally losing (no one actually did this), while eliminating true casuals since it could take them months to accumulate enough points for even a few pieces of gear. And that was only if your team stayed together for that entire time.
As a result, you’d run into meta comps of glads at anything over 1500 or so. 70% of the participants were under 1500 at the end of the season, and then after the season ended you’d have like half the highest rated team’s banned for piloting/boosting.
Classic was always going to be sweatier than vanilla, but they somehow made arena even less appealing in the expansion that needed it the most as an alternative to raid logging. Gating gear HAS TO DIE. Making player power exclusive to the best players in the game makes about as much sense as giving the #1 pick in the draft to the Super Bowl champ. It should take you longer if you suck, but you should be able to eventually obtain it (just like in PvE).
They need to leverage any and all cosmetics, titles, mounts, mogs, etc. to give good players a way of letting everyone know you’re that guy, but gear IS the game and needs to be accessible.
3/4 of the seasons in TBC only gated shoulders/weapons which wasn’t a big deal. 1-2 status symbol items are fine and offer something nice to strive for.
The issue was when every single slot of the best gear was gated in season 4, and since teams no longer started at 1500, most of that gear was also significantly harder to get than it was originally.
Blizzard also didn’t adjust the arena point calculations to account for starting at 0 which was extremely short sighted.
Agreed, but can you imagine if the last piece of your tier set wouldn’t drop if your clear times weren’t in the top 10%? I think the player base would riot.
Also agree with this, but I just think those shouldn’t be tied to player power (hence the draft pick comment). Make it cosmetic.
Classes that feel distinct are a big part of why classic feels great to play, but when you start trying to force high parity competitive play into that environment, you get a disgruntled player base that rationally clamors for changes that lead to the homogenization that we have in retail.
Personally I think competitive/rated battlegrounds have always made the most sense in a game built on social play, even though I do think having a death-match mode like arena is important if world PvP isn’t going to be an emphasis. But in either case there’s already a competitive scene in retail. Classic plus should in my opinion avoid the attempts of the late 2000s to make wow an esport.
Not even close to the same. If you clear the raid boss, your earned the drop. If you can’t clear the last raid boss, you use previous tier weapons that are easier to get. Not everyone gets the best stuff in PvE either, your guild usually has to want to reward you priority if you have good performance.
Same logic applies to PvP. Having 1 or 2 big ticket items you have to really earn is a good thing. But I agree PvP needs to a reasonable degree of parity, and literally not everyone can get X rating in an MMR system, which is why you don’t want everything gated by rating.
The difference is they aren’t exclusive. My access to my class’s current tier set isn’t limited by Paragon simply existing.
And again, I’m 100% in agreement that there should be big ticket items that you have to earn, both in PvE and PvP, but they should be cosmetic—just like they are in pve.
Stating this in no way invalidates the analogy.
Until you progress to the point that you can clear the last boss. It takes you longer than the best players who are running splits and one shotting it, but if you’re dedicated you eventually clear it.
On these accelerated timelines that might be the case, but in vanilla you cleared weekly for months, and most everyone got their tier set if you didn’t miss a lockout. You’re grasping at straws here to make gating sound similar to PvE when it’s not.