Consolidated list of ideas to improve rated pvp participation

PVP Arenas
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None of the below are necessarily new ideas, and the list is not limited to what I’ve put on it, but these are all things that I think would individually have a positive effect on PvP participation:

  • Remove/disable focus frame (e.g., simplifies game, reduces macro and keybind requirements and information overload).

  • Implement Gladius/Sarena and BigDebuffs equivalent(s) functionality into the base user interface (at least). Ideally also implement OmniCD and OmniBar.

  • Implement solo/duo queue functionality for ALL rated pvp brackets (e.g., that feeds into the same ladder as those manually making groups).

  • 1k gold per rated win for healers in rated arena formats, 5k gold per rated win for healers in rated bg formats.

  • Implement a seasonal mount for every rated bracket [e.g., a recolored/reskined glad mount for Legend, Strategist, etc.]. Give the 3v3 glad mount some extra shine/cosmetic effect(s) similar to the improved appearance effect(s) for reaching 2400, since this is typically the most difficult achievement to get.

  • Priority queue tokens for dps alts, obtained by getting 4+ round wins as a healing spec in shuffle, every 4 rated arena wins as a healing spec, every rated bg win as a healing spec, etc.

  • Minimum bi-weekly pvp tuning to address extreme outlier specs (e.g., going months at a time where hpal/disc are the only viable healers, where bm hunter can effortlessly dominate, etc. crush overall participation).

  • Stop making abilities that you know will require a weak aura to track in order to play the spec properly/efficiently. Ideally remove or redesign existing ones. This is an added layer of complexity and hassle that turns off casual players for no good reason (e.g., it caters to the top 0.1% of players, and not even so much for their skill to shine, but for their ability to process information/clutter on the screen more efficiently).

  • Revamp the current rating system. Adopt a more recognized, accepted/understandable, and % based rating system (e.g., wood, bronze, silver, gold, diamond, gladiator, rank 1 gladiator, etc.). Having it be % based would at the very least give each ranking meaning. As of right now the meaning of a ranking is tied to the expansion and/or season and/or time frame within the season that the ranking was obtained, instead of being tied to the actual skill level of the player(s).

  • add min-max type pve power rewards that can only be achieved for reaching at least lower pvp ratings/rankings (e.g., if applied to the current system, at 1600 and 1800). PvPers always have to do some degree of PvE to maximize their character, yet the opposite is no longer the case (e.g., something like an comparable combination of stats for an enchant, but maybe the enchant allows for otherwise unobtainable stat combinations (haste/mastery instead of crit/mastery for example) if you only participate in PvE).

Doing most or all the above will certainly require some time and resources from blizzard (and we know it won’t take place this expansion), but I think the net effect over time will be more subs and more rated pvp participation/a healthier ladder, which at the end of the day would be a win for blizzard even from a business perspective.

Happy New Year all :slight_smile:

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The only things they can right now is add a mount to shuffle and BGB. That would be the best motivator to get people playing. It would hurt 3s tho.

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It would at least until they implement the solo/duo queue functionality for the 2s/3s/rated bg brackets. That is the biggest detriment to 3v3 participation at the moment.

As long as the 3v3 glad mount offers some noticeably desirable cosmetic effect(s), I think that most of the 3v3 mains would be okay with this, and that the 3v3 glad mount would maintain its prestige and to an extent that more or less results in the same amount of players pushing for the 3v3 glad mount.

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I think the biggest problem with 3s is that it’s so meta focused. It’s the same boring comps over and over. They would also need to fix that before it becomes more playable.

Can you imagine solo queueing and getting an enh on your team against a premade jungle? Lmao. What an absolute nightmare that would be.

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True. This is where I feel that the minimum bi-weekly pvp tuning comes in (and is needed). Ideally weekly tuning, but this would ultimately result in a lot more diversification in terms of spec/comp viability.

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Stopped reading after this. Shut up

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Why are you triggered at that idea?

You disagreeing with this in particular shows just how disconnected you are in terms of understanding how unnecessarily high the barrier to entry is in wow pvp for the average/casual player.

The average/casual player doesn’t want to bother trying to learn 70+ keybinds for any given spec they play, especially when most of those keybinds are for largely trivial improvements in efficiency (trivial in that they don’t add anything meaningful to the gameplay experience).

The game is far too old and complex to bring in a meaningful amount of new players in its current state, and one of the things that can change this is the removal of the focus frame.

Think Plunderstorm. This is the direction that rated wow arena/bgs needs to take, e.g., a simplified and more uniform experience for all participants, and without needing one or more pages of macros + needing to have the exact same spell(s) on 3 different keybinds for the purpose of landing a cc/interrupt 0.1 seconds faster.

Anyway, thanks for your usual constructive feedback :slight_smile: (also, you realize that there is already a precedent for having no focus frame right?, e.g., classic wow, which has incredible participation, especially for how old the game is).

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No I definitely understand it extremely well. In comparison with most I have not played this game very long. The most important part of learning wow is actually wanting to learn it. People begging for everything to be dumbed down further than it already has actually just dont want to play the game . Im not triggered at all, " shut up " is probably the kindest way to tell someone that was a bad idea

Sorry buddy, ill give that you do have a few good ideas in there except for the healer bribery, weak aura junk and the above.

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Yeah, as opposed to Blitz where people play what they enjoy like mistweaver and mistweaver and rogue then pres and ooo another mistweaver

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I don’t disagree with this, but the thing is, you aren’t going to get many people that want to learn how to play an incredibly complex game where they are going to be pitted against people that have 2+ decades of experience.

I play the game more than most (I think), and I’m just trying to be objective about wow rated pvp participation by thinking about it from the eyes of someone that doesn’t play the game. No offense, but you don’t seem as if you’re able to think about this objectively.

There is no begging going on, because the people I’m referencing don’t even play the game or care to play the game because the barrier to entry to play the game is incredibly high. They aren’t begging because they don’t desire to play wow pvp in the first place, because there is just no reason to and/or the return on investment is not worth it.

Is it though? I’ve had my account suspended for typing this (or similar things) in wow chat(s). I don’t think blizzard agrees with you on this one.

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This is a SUPER reach

The forums and game moderation are very different

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It’s not a reach at all. Again, you’re viewing it from your own personal lens, not the lens of someone that hasn’t already put in an extensive amount of time/effort into the game.

Compare wow pvp to virtually any other online pvp game. Most other games you can jump right into them with no prerequisite(s), learn 5-6 keybinds, and you’ll be doing okay within a matter of hours (if not sooner).

Add this onto the fact that you don’t have to manually seek out teammates in order to play the game, and it’s clear as to why the additional hurdles to participate in and get good at wow pvp are just not worth it to most (e.g., you need to first pay a monthly subscription, then learn 5+ times more keybinds compared to any other popular pvp game, reference numerous 3rd party sites to understand how to play your spec(s) because it’s not really intuitive to a new player, learn about various effectively required macros, download at least a handful of 3rd party addons + configure those addons, etc., and if you do happen to do all of this and/or are willing do do all of this, it will still likely take you 1-3 years to play the game at a decently high level).

I can readily understand that this just isn’t worth it to most players.

Nah, not really. Being polite/having manners isn’t exclusive to one or the other.

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Yeah lets do that but keep it in the genre. I would say with confidence OSRS pvp is just as complex if not more complex than wow pvp at this point. Especially with shuffle now were if you simply know how to do your rotation you could reach average ratings with no other knowledge. Weak auras are not needed to play nor do they offer even close the advantage reddit pvpers claim they do, regardless they are extremely easy to acquire as are add ons with wago/curseforge , my 4 month old could probably figure it out.

Uhh??? trust someone who has seen vacations on both forums are FAR FAR FAR more lenient than the game is. Go ahead and report my post for saying shut up and nothing will happen congrats

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Stopped reading after “remove focus frame”

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Never played it so can’t really comment on this. I can’t get past how horrible the game looks to ever be enticed to try that game.

This is the issue, no other game is comparable to wow pvp. You can’t simply only compare it with other mmorpgs. Tbh no other mmorpg to my knowledge even has a pvp scene that isn’t already dead as a door nail, so comparison there is pointless.

We need to look beyond mmorpgs and understand what is making other online pvp games so popular/successful (relative to wow), and then learn from that, adopt the pertinent aspects from these other online pvp games, and only by doing that will wow pvp progress (or at the very least stop declining).

If you try to look at wow in such a vacuum and only compare its pvp to the pvp of other online mmorpgs, you might as well just go ahead and say “e.g., I’m currently happy with where wow pvp is right now, it’s great, participation is fine, people just need to start playing and enjoying the game as I do even though there is no worthwhile reason to”.

The thought of reporting you didn’t even cross my mind, probably because I was born prior to the year 2k, but your vacations from the game and forums (for which you oddly seem to be proud of) and/or Blizzard’s ban policies don’t have anything to do with my point.

Your responses are childish, plain and simple. Online or face to face, telling someone “I didn’t read after this, shut up” is just a bitter reply that suggests you have some kind of chip on your shoulder, it offers nothing to the conversation (it just takes away from it tbh).

At the very least, how about providing a counter argument as to why you feel that the focus frame should be in the game and/or why the focus frame adds more value to the game than would its removal?

My guess is that your ability to critically think about the longevity of the game is non-existent (not an insult, just the most reasonable conclusion that I can make based on your replies), and/or that you just strongly prefer a more or less hands-off approach for wow (e.g., if I went through the effort of overcoming the barrier to entry to wow pvp, then everyone else should have to as well, otherwise, if the game is dying, just let it die, but definitely do not make it easier for new players).

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I dont think its a fair comparison then. Wow Pvp is very unique and thats what makes it great. Yes I agree its complex but not so much that any human cant learn how to with a little bit of motivation. I agree with you that blizzard should add more to the base UI but again the reddit weak aura doom is so ridiculous.

I am not proud of it I am just pointing out Ive seen enough of it to know the forums/game are moderated far differently. Even simply the point that the games suspensions stack regardless of severity, where as the forums are handled simply on the severity of the report.

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Yeah the unique part is why I think it’s hard to only compare it to just other pvp mmorpgs. It’s also unfortunately one of the reasons I think blizzard devs don’t really put much effort into it (e.g., there is no competition from comparable games of the genre to drive/require them to be better/grow).

I agree you definitely don’t need weak auras (or addons at all for that matter), but at the end of the day it’s still one of those unnecessary things that adds an extra layer of complication that can be off-putting to many (as opposed to just getting a more straight-forward/no bs interface where all of the necessary information you need to play optimally is clearly presented to you from the get go).

That’s good to hear at least. I too have suffered bans in both, and agree that the threshold(s) that result in punishment(s)/ban(s) is/are different from one another.

Using the word idiot, the word now coined “the r word” etc. are all now things that can easily net a suspension in wow, but I don’t think that they would necessarily get you a suspension on the forums (with some exceptions based on context).

At the end of the day, I’m already used to having a focus frame and using focus macros, so it isn’t of much consequence to me.

I (and I’m sure you as well and anyone reading these forums) just want this game to thrive again. I don’t know what it will take or if it’s even necessarily possible, but I really would like to see a more proactive effort from blizzard towards make rated wow pvp a mainstream/popular thing again.

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And its not required to pvp, as we see with Epic bg mains and 80% of PvEr’s playing sub optimally is pretty popular. This isnt because its too hard to learn just derives from being lazy.

Its an uphill battle thats for sure. MMORPGS as a whole have had an incredibly hard time attracting new players.

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I don’t think you’re high enough to know, unfortunately.

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Weird flex considering what I said has nothing to do with MMR but alright. :dracthyr_shrug:

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