Genuine PVP Changes and Suggestions

PVP Battlegrounds
1

Hi all,

Under normal circumstances I’d never find myself posting on these forums, but I’m extremely passionate about my Wow PVP, and well, the compulsion was too strong and here I am. I have loved the mechanics and excitement of Wow pvp for years and it’s a shame to see something so fun progressively decline. Longer read., so I apologise in advance, but it’s all relevant to forging the end arguments.

BACKGROUND —

  1. I’m pretty washed up, but generally get Gladiator every season I make a genuine attempt and have a few R1s across all expansions, across multiple accounts.
  2. Like all players of this nature, I play both factions. Faction rivalry is not a big thing for me, but if I had one comment in the current context, I guess generally top end players have historically preferred Horde because it’s more relaxed and less toxic (some incredibly nice Alliance peeps too). The recent changes have been a good thing, though the drinking meta and lack of balancing racials has really shifted the balance.
  3. If I have someone to play with, I do rated content. Farming lesser geared, lesser experienced players isn’t for me

More recently, with I guess a declining population and declining queues, I’ve found myself doing some randoms just to relax (see washed up above). Today alone, seeking that chill time, I’ve entered 4 consecutive Bgs that had already commenced with all teams farmed at GY. In all of these games, premades (one that I experienced twice, and one that I’ve seen regularly previously) were farming the team at GY by the time I phased. All full gear, with phials and checking Details, utilising consumables. My own team, pretty much in green PVP gear average. Even myself, just playing an alt casually who is far from full gear. Ironically, I would see the same names in my team; meaning a lack of people queueing and hilariously, from the eyes of the premade … maybe making them think we were a premade. This is a constant. I’ve hopped in the very odd Epic and alas, experienced the same, and it seems to be a storied experience in chat, with much frustration there and this forum, and it is completely justified.

DYNAMICS —
Several dynamics are clearly at play

  • Recognising the intent of an MMO in ensuring people can play together and have fun. This is mandatory.
  • An incredibly rubbish experience for a new player, let alone any player - R1s and Glads included - who phase into games where they have zero agency over the result, zero margin for enjoyment and zero opportunity for skill expression.
  • The above dynamic essentially disintegrating any chance a new player without a soft entry (a friend who plays Wow and can carry or manage expectations that it will get better) or a PVE player wanting to dip their toes into PVP has of sticking. Very important.
  • A lack of queue pops across a whole gammut of MMRs in Rated Content leading to people like myself seeing many of our BNet friends/Arena Partners, no longer logging in and thus just playing casually till end of season
  • This feeding RMT as people are compelled to pay for rating or at worse, an acceptable experience

I don’t believe members of premades are intentionally malicious; they want to have fun and that means playing together. Fun often means winning - even if it’s in an unconscious, unbalanced bully style situation (of which they’re not conscious of the consequences), and I get that too. However, generally, I think people are authentic in wanting to be able to play together regardless without negative intent. They are, however, often oblivious to the fact they are destroying a new player experience and griefing the growth of the game and worthy investment.

I am really sympathetic to new players, especially those who conduct research, spend gold on AH crafted PVP gear as a starting point, only to be globalled because we are late in the season. The gear disadvantage is too excessive for anyone new to learn anything around trading appropriate cooldowns, receiving positive reinforcement through good dams/heals or getting a hang of mechanics. Especially, queueing Horde, which appears to be a trend of feedback and why I mentioned above, we sync into games in progress, but essentially at their finality.

THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Here are some genuine thoughts and suggestions -
UNRATED

  • Equalise all gear in Unrated Content. Bring everyone to 489 with customisation options during the Prep phase (whether you want 4 set bonus or not). - This removes excessive feel bad moments, neutralises a lot of imbalance, and allows new players and those who mostly commit to PVE to have a fun PVP experience without grinding or being bullied to oblivion. It also means, you don’t get silly situations like someone 1 shotting everybody in an unsatisfying manner because they’re just grinding honor to upgrade their 226 weapon to 233 (Shadowlands Season 1 was an abomination of design in that sense and I did not enjoy that).
  • Give everyone a single use Consumable of Heal and Extra Damage. The ludicrousness is that in winning, one gets more chests and thus more consumables, and thus more advantage. Equalise the playing field, but usage becomes a point of skill differentiation.
  • Allows for better clarity on what is relatively OP. A fully buffed Marksmanship with consumables one shotting is a very small part of the story and it is very counterable in an even fight
  • Cross faction queues are an obvious one, to negate queue syncing, but at its extreme, consider -
  • Going the step further and make Unrated a Solo Queue only option to fuel rated content and make that the appropriate grouping content. This is drastic, but will help feed the Rated Environment which is needing people to queue. It will also ensure Unrated is a safer haven for newer players to have a better margin for error, and hopefully gain the enjoyment we had for Wow, and become a part of the PVP world. This, in my mind, would be an ideal implementation that rewards players for playing well in a balanced environment, can be casual, can be serious, but the latter two won’t clash due to MMR.

RATED

  • Solo and Group based options of all sizes, for all content. You can queue arena as a two and find your third. You can have 8 people for an RBG and find the last 2. The preference is of course to reach the 2, the 3, the 10, or whatever epic configuration becomes. However, if you don’t have enough, no matter.
  • Removes necessity for Solo Shuffle and BG Blitz. Don’t break the community into segments of rated. Consolidate and let people fill, and let people have their groups filled; the latter just generally want to enjoy, be flexible and play within relative balance with rewards and they’ll play at lower MMRs and rise later when they choose.
  • Gear is relevant - Conquest system and chests exist.
  • MMR scales to highest member of the group but has parameters that prioritise finding games within an acceptable window. This means you can’t farm Gladiator wins at 1800, but also won’t be waiting unacceptably long times - unless say all 3 or 10 members were at a very high CR/MMR.
  • Regarding the above, my general view is that MMR and CR really only matters late in season, and is not something we should be sensitive to for the vast majority of it. Play for fun, and then push with inflation, and you should be encouraged to, to play your best and improve.
  • Want to climb, get a full group and climb. Want a small group and relax, just be casual and play against people at whatever MMR the more casual groupings are at - this might be like a 1500 zone, and full groups float that 1800 zone. Most full groups will end up at MMRs well above the semi-filled, chilled group structures so not having a full group won’t be farmville.
  • Creates an Epic Rated zone to appease people who like to group together and farmville, but in a rated structure without abuse

TLDR - The intent -

  • Preserve people playing together - the enjoyment was in being together right, and not bullying people?
  • Give a rewarding and fun PVP experience to new players, PVE-ers and PVP-ers just playing casually where huge gear and consumable disadvantage doesn’t exist. This helps fuse relationships where people want to play together again and hopefully join into Rated.
  • Stimulating the Rated environment across all MMRs which is what we require
  • Consolidates Rated players away from Solo or Arena, Blitz or RBG, to 3 man content or 10 man content
  • Hopefully fuelling the entry of new players who don’t have to manage incredibly high barriers to entry a few weeks into a season and thus bolster the population - the most important sticking point which has been grossly damaged
  • In bolstering population and demand, hopefully fuelling reinvestment back into improving PVP experience - more bgs for instance. Right now, it’s completely unjustified and I absolutely do not blame Blizzard if they track new player retention in PVP
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As far as worrying about fully geared, enchanted, gemed, consumable filled MM Hunters, dont bother. I boosted this hunter for $60 bucks to get from lev 1 to 70 and 4 gametime hours later topped the overall damage done chart at the end of a regular battlegroud with no tier set and no conquest gear and my previous hunter experience being vanilla world content. Now I have 1 peice of conquest gear and can kill nearly anyone I want if I play smart and use MMs tools to succeed.

As far as taking the MMO out of pvp and having it be a bit more like choosing a load-out like in some FPS games…I could take it or leave it, but I think gearing including pvp gearing is fun. Getting new pvp gear is fun because it makes me more powerful in pvp than I was without it. See number go up, smile.

Removing what item level various players have wont also remove variation of skill, game/class/spec/spell knowledge, stat weight knowlege, macro/add-on/weak auras players have and learned how to optimally utilize.

I DO think BGB is a cool game mode, I love it and dont mind one bit the way they implimented item level scaling. Someone with an inflated item level from scaling does not help them more than it should. If they perform well, it is because they themselves or their team or both, out played the other team. A new player who lacks the experience to have the knowledge to perfom, will not perform well by being granted some stats that still leaves them with less stats/embelishments/consumables/tier gear/knowledge ect Vs veteran pvpers.

The MMR system I feel gives the illusion of fairness. Sellers sell carries to buyers daily, and to do so will tank their MMR+CR and be right back to Glad Vs person wearing pve gear from last season. I feel there should be filters for glads, and other such skill brackets to prevent matchmaking 1 team of primarily current season glads or close(flagged by account, not spec or roll) Vs a team of mostly 2000 rating and under. Regaurdless of current rating or MMR when an account has a 2100-2399 rating, you play with players of your own caliber, 3000+ gets to play with each other. Farming no rating having new players for sport with your 20man team, queue synced into a Epic battleground from an account you already proved you fought and killed some of the best players in the game with causes a lot of folks to swear off pvp for good.

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Thanks for the response Deckarcain. A few points to address in your post -

  1. Pertaining to MM Hunters, I don’t believe they are anywhere near as oppressive as they appear in unrated content (under their current iteration). In Rated BGs, there are 4 (with 1 very borderline) within Hero range. Compare this to 31 Rogues. The class benefits from certain conditional elements in unrated content - range, extremely low skill floor to contribute adequately, generally unpunished by interrupt and damage modifiers that exaggerate up front damage that doesn’t exist in real content. Any gear disadvantage - a 489 v a fresh - makes this feel worse because it’s like a one hit, but in truth decent players can react against burst and trade cds properly.

There is context why they feel so ridiculous. You equalise gear, and those moments are lessened significantly already (not completely) with more margin for skill expression - example, you have time to wall the first shot, health stone, then disarm, then incap, then ring of peace, and karma when you need to, and you still have dampen available. You trade logically and pragmatically. It buys the time which shows the spec isn’t as crazy oppressive and you punish during your opportunity windows accordingly as in Arena.

The funny thing about your example, is when you bring everyone, including yourself to 489, you’ll see it much harder to top damage, then if you had less gear than other people (but it being a mish mash). Reality is, in a random, a windwalker on say WSG can do a lot more than you by virtue of being able to set their port top, and go to it via tunnel, can defend even a team of rogues by speccing into Fatal Flying Guillotine and solo defend, and having the right tools to duo a full geared tank flag carrier. But the context exaggerates your contribution. You also need context beyond damage.

  1. The load out concept and solo queue concept I’ve aforementioned above only applies to unrated content. The core of my post focuses on solving some key dynamics -
    i) The need to make dipping one’s toes into PVP easier and more appealing, and accordingly helping them stick so they grow the population
    ii) Filling Rated Queues which need a bit more stimulation beyond prime times. And this applies across all MMRs. I have played for example the same teams 5/7 times in the 2400-2500MMR range on my main.

It also has the side benefit of allowing people to try different gear builds where they reach a Mastery or Haste break point.

We achieve the above two by solving -

  • removing an unfulfilling grind where you are one shot … by hunters for example - by removing gear from just wanting to pick up and play pvp
  • addressing the issue with premades “unintentionally” grounding new players into the dirt. put them into rated queues where they will play similar players. after all - they’re playing for fun, not to bully right
  1. Item Level is a massive contributor. It allows people to break a threshold where their globals are making a big difference and playing how they should - rather than being forced into being a CC, dispel, curse bot, because that doesn’t scale with gear, or forced into bad habits like overlapping defensives. In your statements above, that is what we want to achieve - skill being the differentiator - not gear. Right now, an amazing warlock without gear plays completely different - expressing skill through maintaining debuff uptime in curses, using amplify on the right target, rather than maybe pushing for damage windows amongst their cc chain.

Warlock is a class where you’ll see massive skill expression, not only because mechanically you need to be strong, but there are so many attributes you assess beyond damage. You see so many warlocks dark pact at low health, who do not soul burn their healthstone or port, who cannot rotate between dark pact, port, healthstone, gateway, ending resolve, port, soulburn drain life, who cannot curse, and fake cast in between. an amazing player in equal gear can live for weeks and solo spin a node for an age until help comes, whilst a lesser player (even many I see at 1000+ honor level who packpedal and have bad habits due to rolling people over in premades) can die in seconds.

  1. I disagree with you on the MMR system significantly. I get the argument you are making, but you are not hostaged to players who paid for rating, nor completely hostaged by sellers. I main healer for instance; it is absolutely obvious to me when someone has paid for a service, either by way of not knowing how to rotate cds, being completely oblivious to needing to stop a re-CC on me, or making a silly comment that i shouldn’t play around their port. If I want to push, I know not to play with this person. If I’m casual, no issues, I’m not an elitist jerk, and sure, why not. This is all visible from people who are say 1 time gladiators, and have not being able to repeat performance because - they paid for carry or pilot, or they were carried by their class being incredibly broken in a given season (retpocalypse season 1 is a great example of just being weary about this players skill because people who don’t even sanctuary got elite).

I do get the point you are making around filters, though all this does is move RMT to utilising smurf accounts and high end players not being able to play with their friends who are learning. The reality is, in the latter instance, high end players don’t want to play at low MMR - unless they are getting paid money - and want their friends to get better and higher ASAP, and generally, they won’t be stuck for more than a day if they get a second friend to carry. Like my suggestion above, let MMR be for the highest person, with the queue only expanding based on thresholds in queue time. When MMR is at the highest person, you cannot have someone grinding gladiator wins at 1800. You will see this trickle down where RMT is happening at much higher MMRs - be it 1800 for elite, or 2100 carries - that doesn’t affect the general player population. More importantly, with my suggestions bolstering queues, you might see the RMT team once or twice and they’ll move on because you’ll be fighting so many other teams.

  1. Short aside to your last statement. I’ve been farmed by many contributors of these forums (familiar names) in unrated content, in their full consumable, full gear premade groups. I have also recognised their names in rated content as my team (arena or RBG) have rolled them over very quickly when the playing field was equal. As much as it would seem, I don’t get satisfaction out of that fact. What is relevant, is this game needs an influx of people to bolster unrated and rated queues - the current dynamics and unintentional toxicity are hurting the game - new players, and anyone returning. What matters is addressing that experience - not new Bgs, not forcing people to pvp to get BIS pve gear, not a stupid battle pass style concept where a volume player can get Gladiator. What matters is balance so new people can try pvp and find out how amazing it is.
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I too want “i) The need to make dipping one’s toes into PVP easier and more appealing, and accordingly helping them stick so they grow the…”

Accomplishing that is going to be difficult. While some specs are easier than others to perform at maybe a 75% effectiveness Vs a training dummy, PVP required knowledge takes years to memorize and recognize/react to AND tuning and spec designs are often changing. To preform at your personal best, you need to know most of every specs current kit and how it can be utilized AND, may require add ons to track enemy debuffs, abilities used or available and many others. Having add-ons and a max geared character does nothing without lots of experience, some semi-favorable tuning.
Personally, I dont want spec or combat design pruning. I’ve never put much effort in being above 1800rated as I’m a casual. If tuning is bad for my spec either, oh well I’m not after a title, or I have the option to reroll.
War mode is optional, carrys are sold daily without actions on the account, and premades in non-rated content is commonplace. I dont partake in those last two, but I dont feel they are inherently toxic. Players may stay or opt out of any ongoing match with only an exceptionally minor penalty. If anything, a team capable of denying their enemy all objectives and keeping an entire team locked down in the GY is probably sparing anyone that leaves early or stays some time, as the team holding them hostage is the probably completing objectives quickly.

What is or isnt viable in, or what only affects 2400+ teams in rated content isnt a contributing factor to fun or misery for someone that just bought the game and likes to do non-rated content while they learn. A few weeks back a new player posted asking for questions related to end game pvp, but they were not near lev 70 and actually a new player. I gave them the abridged run down of where to gain some game knowledge and how gearing currently works. I also told them not to worry too much about gearing for S3 as it is nearly over and S4 pvp gear will be a far higher item level. On another thread someone was asking what the most powerful spec is for pvp with no pvp experience on their account, even though sometimes Fomo changes weekly, new folks still want to play what is percieved as powerful.

Sorry that was a bit of a rant.

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Glad we’re in agreement. And don’t apologise about the rant. I think it’s incredibly important that ideas are thrown to welcome new new players and be inclusive of PVE peeps. I definitely believe it’s not a combat design thing, it’s just game mode adjustment.

My original post outlines those ideas that aren’t about mechanics or combat design -

  • Equalisation of gear in unrated randoms - gives full ability for people to understand how damage is meant to spike, and how they’re meant to stagger responses meaningfully. Means there is skill growth and clarity. It’ll be become much more evident that early season DH was significantly more powerful than MM Hunter.
  • Random is Solo Only - less coordinated, silly damage worsened by 489 against fresh. Creates a stable place for learning and improvement. Want to play in a relaxed way, here you go. Take the competition and toxicity away from where new players are learning. Have your premade against other premade/solo players, in ranked.
  • Group Content is Rated Only, but with Solo Option - Groups can find players based on need and MMR will address putting people in their relative segments. No more obliteration of new players and ruining their experience - play as intended, as a group, against people at your level. Have lots of fun as you do in randoms. If you keep winning, eventually you’ll start meeting that trio of rank 1s, or 10 man HOTH team. Stimulates rated queue, and MMR will increase in matching based on queue timer.
  • You now have an Epic Rated PVP mode. Heck, give an epic PVP title similar to Hero. This might even create a flood of interest from high end R1s and Gladiators to make competitive Epic PVP teams to contest against current premades.

All this, with the end intention of protecting a new player experience whilst having extremely minimal disturbance to any seasoned or premade player just in random.

  • You were queueing randoms anyway, playing against solo players with less gear. There shouldn’t be an intent to protect fully geared, full consume players, their sandpit to farm lesser geared, lesser coordinated people. This should be our last priority.
  • You’ll be at casual MMR if you’re casual. You’ll rise in MMR if you win and are serious, but truth is, MMR/CR does not matter until end of season. You’ll get plenty of games and see more competitive games. There will be broader exposure to more skillsets and you play to your level.
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Most of that makes sense AND would work in practice. Unfortunatly there is a growing player percentage that derive their fun from Queue Syncing into non-rated bgs and EBGs. If a solo queued player instances into one of those matches it might be a loss before the gates open without them knowing it. If I, a casual non-duelest most seasons, want to do random BGs with my GF who has held 0 pvp titles, we are at a large risk of seeing the same 8-15 player Oceanic guild premades on coms. Sometimes we win Vs pre-mades but it is rare.

Making the new player experience fun is not a one size fits all solution. And as I mentioned already, raid sized premades in non rated BGs are a large problem for new players, and no one can bestow all the knowledge needed to be a great player on a new player. WoW pvp probably takes years to master for the first time, learning to play a new spec is easy compared to learning every spec for pvp knowledge.

You mentioned me playing my hunter, when it topped the damage charts in that single Random BG, it only had honor gear. I dont even know how to play it well, but it does damage still due to favorable tuning. A fully geared hunter has killed me in about 1 or 2 seconds, and thats fine. The reason I’m now playing Hunter instead of my BIS geared Ret is ease of play. My defensives are rarely affected by enemies as hunter and nearly always removed early as Ret. I stay far out of CC range of most classes as MM so I have way more control of my character than on my Ret. My hunter has stealth, instant mobility and more cc and the same damage potential while having a huge item level deficit compared to my Ret. For Random BGs/BGB Ret can perform wonderful, if the opponants dont use CC effectivly, but MM doesnt care if they use CC on what they can reach because it isnt me.

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A couple of things here -

  1. Queue syncing in random solo queue - make it cross faction, so when queue pop, they may end up on opposite teams. Moreover, assuming, anyone would go to such ridiculous lengths to queue sync a solo queue, you’ll be in a much better starting place than the status quo because you’ll be in 489 gear, and may have a gladiator /r1 who can lead a team when he’s not fighting gear, on top of comms. Any value in manipulation is lessened.

  2. If this is in rated, and you grouped with your gf, you’ll play a relevant MMR. Hypothetically, let’s say you’re casual, as you’ve stated - you’ll likely be in a bracket where people aren’t 10 man teams. They’ll be like you, with their partners, just grouping and having fun. 10 man premades will have already gone well past the casual MMR early on. Again, you’ll be matched against relative skill, rather than facing walls and walls of disadvantage in either situation. Win win.

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Until BGB is rated I’m not in a bracket so MMR is not in my life. GF has anxiety in 2s even though together we have clobered most teams we saw if they were not equiped with fears or dispells. Cross faction placement so multiple 5 man groups may end up fighting their friends would help, but not stop the Epic BG nonsense. They dont want a fight they want a massacre, and would likely win trade by having the group with the smaller guildmate number drop from the 40man EBG, leaving random solos and small groups to fill the roster void.

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I think it’s highlander gearing combined with an uncaring match making system, it drove people to other means to advance like buying boosts and sync queuing. In SLands they widened the gap with gearing, their whole system is goofy with vault rewards and weekly tier.

Blizzard exacerbates the issue by adding power variables which are supposed to help newer people compete but instead it just becomes baseline and another tool for the experienced to make the inexperienced feel hopeless. I often think they must really hate me as a player to do these things to me.

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i like the way the scaling up works in blitz brawl and would be perfectly happy if it applied to all battlegrounds.
oh also merge xp locked players back into the general population.

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I disagree with the first point. There should be SOME gear discrepency to give a sense of progression but it shouldn’t be overwhelming I.E. 13ilevels total.

I strongly agree with the last point. bgs are ridiculously unfun now. Almost every game is a premade roflstomp where there is no point in even fighting if you’re on the loser team.

2 Likes
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Hi Callipso,

Progression still exists, in a material sense insofar as doing the Random Unrated Solo BGs awards conquest points towards buying gear that is used for Rated Queue types.

However,

  • the emphasis should always be on skill progression and not gear progression. The gap between a 2800 and 2400 player is actually wildly bigger, than the gap between a 1600 and 2100 player.
  • new and PVE players don’t need to have gear disadvantage on top of skill and mechanical disadvantage.
  • the aim is to eventually transition from Unrated to Rated content once you have greater confidence. As is, random content grounds down your confidence if you don’t have context for how actual rated pvp functions, and lacking enough feel good moments, there is no retention, or advancement to rated content. We also don’t want people getting excess gratification through this game mode by winning on gear, gratification should come from gradually improving and making big plays thus wanting pursuit of more meatier contests in rated.

Ultimately, you’re trying to move to a place where all contests, irregardless of unrated or rated -

  • Are fairly balanced by way of gear (there may be low MMR rated games where some folk have terrible gear, and that’s fine because it’s low MMR)
  • Are fairly balanced by way of matchmaking (premades now fight better teams in similar gear as they win, rather than stomping folk who are just starting the gearing journey)
  • Demonstrating progression and participation into a matchmaking system
  • Stimulating Rated Games
2 Likes
13

I feel premades are an issue because actual fair fights and poor MMR/CR gains has removed the incentive for some folks to do 2s, 3s, and RBGs. Mid players dont want a fair fight, eventually if they do well they would have to fight good players on coms. Insteas they want to be on discord coordinating with as many friends as possible in unranked content to massacre small groups and solo players.

Scaling while good, cannot prevent premades. Making season glad rewards more obtainable through easier to gain MMR would help keep Mid players incentivised to do rated content, and out of raid groups seeking Ceritonin by killing people that don’t know how to pvp in random Bgs and EBGs.

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That is an undeniable truth! Any premade/player with an exaggerated win percentile loves feeding on weaker people and it’s an incredibly toxic practise whether they are conscious of it or not.

Anytime you see anyone who has a ridiculous win percentile in unrated content, but has never gotten consecutive seasons of hoth/gladiator/rank1, you know they are continually punching down on lesser resourced/experienced players. Again and again, because they lack the fortitude to advance to contesting against players at their level on a consistent basis. I actually likely see this as a badge of dishonour.

As we have summarised, there are a range of solutions that close the “gap” between full consumable/full gear folk in comms against a solo player -

  • Scaling - I don’t think anyone should argue against this in an Unrated setting that has no reward
  • Consumable Equity - one for all, not multiple for some and none for others. Again, who would argue against this baseline?
  • Cross Factioning - more a feature to stop queue sync than 5 man in standard, which I think is as bad if not worse when everyone is fully geared. Drastic. Some may argue.
  • Unrated Solo Queue - moving grouped queues to a curated place of equity and matchmaking. Drastic. Groups who like smashing face may argue.

Given that these individuals are already ruining random queue for new players, it means they are already disinterested in MMR, beyond wanting to punch down. A forced group only rated function, would purely keep them in the same domain of thinking - “I’m not pursuant to high end content, so, I’ll be at the low-mid MMRs I am already punching down on”. We shouldn’t be building our game modes and policy base around protecting bullying, but elevating the game experience across board, with retention in mind.

Ultimately, my post is not about toxicity in premaking groups, it’s about

  1. improving new player experience, so they have agency and feel they can contribute
  2. improving matchmaking and quality of life to all players- the only detriment is to premade groups who don’t care anyway, hence they are in unrated queues ruining other players’ experience
  3. stimulating rated content which is absolutely necessary. Our player retention is absolute garbage at the new player end and at the competitive middle. The players still playing are competitive high end or aged low-mid (who will still play even with drastic changes because they love the mechanics, just their egos will be bruised a bit as they can’t farm undergeared folk excessively). What we’re doing is moving the low-mid to the competitive middle, with hopes they are inspired to push high, and then hoping we have a massive stimulation of new players who can try without feeling they’re bringing a balloon baseball bat to the mound.
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I’ve been mostly doing Blitz lately because of the better team balance via tanks/healers. I’m slightly annoyed by the Q’ing rules. I like that I can Q with a friend. Not too fond of the “one of us must be a healer” and we BOTH have to be the same faction. What difference does it make if it’s cross faction teams anyway? Why can’t I Q my alliance healer with a friend’s horde DPS? Or vice versa? I get that two have to be healer/dps and that’s ok. Maybe there’s some other way to Q, I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem to be letting us do it.

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Yes please solo queue please 3v3 solo queue please i love you i love you long time please solo queue please

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I think that’s a really good way to frame this overall concept -

  1. The new Random operates like Blitz. Solo queue, but with ilvls all equalised, and none of the Blitz additions. So, just the nice, traditional 10/15 man stuff without the speed boosts and extras.
  2. Rated becomes consolidated into 2s, 3s, 10s and Epic. No more solo shuffle and no more Blitz concept. Queue allows for solo and group. If you are solo, you can find partners for all the above game modes. If you are partial, that’s fine whether it be 2/3 or 8/10. Accordingly, when you queue 3s and meet people who you gelled with you naturally gravitate to playing with them again.

As an aside to your comment Seizuresald, which I’m glad you bring up. I think there are absolute positives to having a solo function to queue into rated. I have gotten gladiator on 2 alts with people I met on solo shuffle. As much as I disliked the fact it split the community into more rated streams, it has functioned as an unorthodox way to find partners and I think this proposed method can still maintain that positive outcome.