If I developed a gearing system to absolutely punish new players and prevent interested PVErs from jumping in and trying it, I don’t think I could create a better system if I tried intentionally. And Blizzard came up with one unintentionally.
Step 1: Create massive power differentials so that high rated players in their gear do 30% more damage, healing and have 30% more health than someone in upgraded honor gear.
Step 2: Make honor gear take an absurdly long time to acquire and upgrade, forcing people to PVE to gear up instead of playing at a 30% disadvantage in BGs.
Step 3: Watch participation plummet.
The thread “9.1 PvP Gearing and why it is BAD” on the PVP forums has ONE THOUSAND responses, and is a well-written post by a well-known PVPer who makes valid points without being insulting. No reply from a developer as of yet.
Late last season you could open LFG and see (after removing booster groups) a small handful of people still playing arenas and maybe 3-5 rbg groups. If this season continues in this manner pvp participation will dwindle to such an extent that it may as well be deleted entirely and we go back to vanilla world pvp only. No point spending developer resources on something that nobody plays, and those of us who like pvp will be free to go to another game.
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Blizzard staff do read the forums, so any specific feedback left will be visible to them. Ion and the devs work hard to ensure a wonderful gaming experience for its player base, so rest assured that the developers take pride in their work and will do what is necessary to ensure that great gaming experience for its players 
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You forgot…
- Give incentives to top rated players to form premades to crush unrated players in casual content.
And no. I don’t think they want to eliminate PvP. I think they see PvP as strictly a sidegame where mythic raiders can get extra bling for having the best PvE gear. Because getting the best PvE gear means you have been playing the game right™, and should be rewarded with shinies, cash from paid carries, stuff, prestige, and mandatory respect from the unwashed masses.
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He’s a troll who flips viewpoints occasionally. A few weeks ago he posted many threads on “Why this game is trash and I unsubbed”.
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They’re gone man.
A board of guys who only view things through the lens of earnings, design the game now.
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Man you’ve kept this up for like a week without breaking.
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Then they should see how accessible pvp was in MOP and WOD, how many people were playing, how full LFG was, and how easy it was to gear up an alt and realize that participation and engagement are both enhanced when people are allowed to play the content they want to play without a ridiculous barrier in front of it. We had one honor set, one conquest set. You could grind the conquest set with full honor gear and it wasn’t bad.
The strictest bean counter in the world will tell you that you retain customers by giving them what they want. From a financial perspective, I see only benefit by creating a system that fosters a community of people playing the game the way they want to play it.
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I would be nice if the upgradable honor gear at max rank was only a little less powerful than the top arena gear. Also, the cost of honor to acquire the upgradable honor gear and to rank it up should be drastically reduced. Or honor gains in BGs for both wins and losses should be significantly higher.
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They don’t care about the player experience of average or casual players. Participation won’t matter on any level until the experience of elite players is impacted. The only player experience that matters is that the most elite of elites get what they deserve. Nobody else deserves anything. They exist to be farmed for easy wins so the elites can get currency to buy free stuff, and to buy tokens to buy carries so elites can get free gametime.
They’ve convinced themselves that everybody is so addicted they’ll never quit. Or if they do, they’ll get their heads straightened out by being away from the game and come back as obedient drones.
The game is more important than life itself, and getting people to play it right is a moral mission. It’s called mudwimping.
http://www.memorableplaces.com/mudwimping.html
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Fully agree on all points.
If you browse the pvp forums, the worldofpvp subreddit, and any other forum related to wow pvp, you’ll see nothing but every single player saying what you are saying.
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I’m sorry but PvE gear should be literally useless in PvP unless you want gladiator gear to be competitive with mythic raid equipment in PvE otherwise it isn’t a fair game
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The barrier to entry is too high and easily discourages new players fro participating. Getting repeatedly facerolled because of a 50 ilvl gap is dumb
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The problem is I’m guessing the Dev listen to the hardcore PvPers and they would have a fit if those changes were made. I’ve come to realize that the hardcore PvPers, the sweatiests of the sweaties, do not want fair PvP or balanced PvP they want to just stomp lower ilvl players.
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Their focus is on the top end players.
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Top end PvE players are the ones who get the greatest advantage. And the devs are…top end PvE players, at least those that we know have played the game.
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This isn’t really true, no. Remember that high end PvPers for the most part aren’t ever interacting with low ilvl players. Everyone at their level has the same gear and most glad+ or hero+ players don’t do randoms or low mmr arena/RBGs where they are going to encounter low ilvl players. I’d bet if you polled most glads they’d say templates or WoD gearing would be preferred to what we had in BFA or what we have now.
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I think it’s more they do what they want in PvE (i.e. introduced long power grinds to extend content) and PvP developers are left to deal with whatever systems they design no matter how much it screws over PvP.
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We tried telling them before slands launched.
We told them that trying to force casual pvpers into rated PvP would only result in all of them quitting.
But hey what do we know.
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