Introduction
Introduced in BFA, War Mode crates were designed as a way to promote world pvp. As of TWW, they can give you conquest points if you loot them more than once per day. This has lead to the formation of raids where people will set up timers and take a tour through each of the different zones to pick up the next crate drop. Many have been calling for this to be nerfed/removed. So in this thread, I’d like to elucidate on why being able to farm crates is GOOD for the game and why either nerfing or removing it is a bad idea.
Reasons why crate farming is great.
1. It allows catching up on gear if you join mid season.
One common barrier of entry to PvP that has been known for many years is that if you are joining mid season, it feels demoralizing to step into a random BG and get melted by people who have been playing longer than you and have more gear. Over the years, Blizzard has attempted many things to remedy this but they either didn’t work or weren’t respectful of the time that people put in to gear their character.
-In patch 5.3, they gave everyone 65% base resilience but they eventually removed resilience in WoD
-In Legion, they introduced stat templates where your stats would only go up by 1% for every 10 item levels you gain which were removed in the next expansion
-In 9.1.5, they added additional upgrade brackets for conquest gear. But in the next expansion, PvP gear was changed to only have fewer PvP item level brackets like in WoD.
But with TWW, an simple solution was found. One that didn’t require that didn’t require a vast resource investment, makes use of an already existing game mode, and doesn’t involve having to get matched up against people who outgear you.
2. It facilitates people grouping up en masse and co-operating with each other.
In order for a crate raid to be able to do what it’s intended, people in the group have certain roles to play. Members of the raid have to go to each zone, wait for a crate to drop in it, and give the time to the raid leader or whoever is using the addon that tracks timers. This level of players working together towards a common goal isn’t quite something that exists anywhere else in the game. And encouraging people to play and work together is one of the core facets of an MMORPG.
3. It makes War Mode relevant and a viable source of gearing
I love War Mode. It’s my favorite PvP game mode. And crates give people a reason to go out into the world again. In a game that puts a lot of it’s primary focus towards instanced content, it’s good that the outdoor world has relevancy and is therefore a viable source of progression unlike before.
Common arguments people bring up against crate farming
So it wouldn’t be fair to make this thread without bringing up all the common arguments people have against it so I’d like to take a moment to address them here.
1. “Crate raids make people ignore instanced PvP!”
This is just not true. Random BG queue times as Horde are 2-3 minutes tops and Alliance can easily get in on that if they use mercenary mode. Solo Shuffle and Battleground Blitz queues can take a while yes, but this is and always has been due to a shortage of healers. Solo Shuffle queue times were long as far back as DF which was way before crate raids came to be.
In fact, I’d argue that crate raids get more people into instanced PvP. You need conquest gear to be competitive in rated PvP to begin with. Most people looking to get into PvP find it demoralizing to step into a random BG or a rated match find it demoralizing to get melted by a 10+ year PvP player that is more geared. Crate farming makes this issue non-existent.
2. “They aren’t real PvP”
Crate groups often run into another crate group of the opposing faction which can lead to epic fights. That definitely sounds like PvP to me.
It’s also not entirely out of the ordinary for some PvE to be included in PvP game modes or objectives. PvP WQ’s allow you to kill mobs to get credit for the quest if other players are not around. In BG’s like AV or IOC, the final objective is to kill a PvE boss. And you can get credit for sparks quests by killing rares.
3. “Crate raids are boring!”
This is just a matter of opinion really. I can tell you what’s boring (and frustrating), sitting in a 10-20 minute long BG Blitz queue, losing due to bad luck or another circumstance, and it taking that much longer to get gear for the week.
And it’s not like getting every crate is guaranteed either. There’s the possibility of the raid missing it, running into an opposite faction crate raid, or changing shards.
Conclusion:
PvP gearing has never been in a better spot than it is in TWW. Crate raids are just another W that was added for PvP’ers in this expansion. It does not have any caveats what so ever that justifies it’s removal. With many efforts being made over the course of WoW’s 20+ year lifespan to make PvP more accessible, removing this way of being able to gear up would be very counterproductive.
TLDR: Crate farming is a good thing for the game and there is no reason to remove it.
Edit: Spelling, formatting, and added a TLDR.