Those are probably the ones who can’t socially connect in game either. The irony here is mmo’s have traditionally been regarded as the go to for the real life socially inept.
Now the basement dwellers have social classes. Lol. I’m convinced. This game is just a Gov’t human behavior study.
You can’t make this schtuff up!
1 Like
For homework your assignment is to watch South Park “Freemium”. I want at least a 256 word essay on the impact of mtx on social structure in mmo’s.
1 Like
Probably. There was this study one time where it was shown to correlate that those who have the ability to socialize on social media and the like lack such traits in person. Or maybe not.
lol.
1 Like
Still yet to read a convincing argument on why these leet premade pvpers are so reluctant to actually have some competitive pvp with other leet premade pvpers.
I’ll just straight up tell ya Ellans.
Most of the premades are looking to rank up and get gear.
That’s the motivation for participating in battlegrounds. It ISN’T the pvp. As such the goal is HpH…and what’s the meta. The meta is grouping up and smashing pugs.
If you changed the meta from not being grouping up you make wow pvp a single player affair since it would be on par with solo queing.
Enforcing groups to only ever face other groups would destroy that meta.
A solo qued player could easily just rank himself up and not socially interact with the pvp community. He/she would just log in play their few matches and log off.
Which is the experience you get from retail. And why retail and WoW has been in a decline since 2012. There is no community. There doesn’t have to be.
So in the end, these communities you probably hate, with their social structure and hierarchy are actually great for the game. If you are a jerk, it matters. If you don’t know how to play, it matters. If you don’t want to interact in a massive multiplayer game - IT MATTERS.
Now that was a long winded effect about what’s going on and why it’s needed for the health of classic.
So in the interest of maintaining a pvp community and social hierachy I would give you an olive branch and suggest that it would be ok to enforce groups to only face groups provided you insure that the meta is still group play and not single play.
To do that you would need to severely bump up honor gained through group play while nerfing honor gain through solo que.
Sound fair? Carry on.
2 Likes
Unless I’m mistaken, you suggested seperating pugs from premades in ques.
So your suggestion is to take a current poor representation of vanilla and turn it into something not vanilla at all?
Pugs NEVER facing premades is not vanilla.
1 Like
One option is only good for the small number of rankers trying for the top few ranks. The other option is good for everyone else. Anyone arguing for keeping the current match making system is a sweaty ranker. And they pay the same $15ish/month as the rest.
Turning WoW into a solo player affair where top rewards can be gotten without enforcing social interaction (beyond simply being randomly paired up with people you will hardly talk to inside the BG) hurts the overall health of the game.
It’s GOOD that the meta is premades. And I would never suggest changing that.
If you want to protect solo heroes in battlegrounds from playing against premades, then again, you need to severely hamper and reduce their honor gained so they can enjoy their solo play but have very little hope of achieving top rewards. This maintains the need and desire for group play in order to get the best rewards in PvP.
The meta always needs to be based around social interaction and hierarchy for the health of classic. When people socialize and form groups based around a hierarchy structure, they form friendships which makes them log into the game even if they don’t really wanna play it. Keeps them subbed, keeps them involved. Keeps them online.
The ones that drift off to new games once they get ADHD are the solo babies. They are not noticed when they are here, they are not noticed when they leave.
So there. I’ve now explained it in detail for you. 
2 Likes
Here’s my big question.
Why do players in groups deserve more honor than solo players?
Okay but I enjoy the game in pugs, and I don’t want to make online friends.
I have real life for that.
Raiding is the social endgame activity, PvP is not because it has a solo queue option. It’s the reason why I PvP’d in Vanilla, and infrequently raided – nothing is changing about the social health of the game, because all PvE content, endgame or otherwise, requires socializing.
Nothing is changing about that nor should it. What I’m trying to voice is that PvP is decidedly not the social sphere of the game. It’s inherently more gameplay centric, because of the method by which players access the content.
Given my assertions in the OP, you’re still entirely entitled to queue for battlegrounds with friends, as you call them; but those matches are constructed to be more fair as a result of having a group of coordinated groups of players on both ends, rather than creating a match which is inherently imbalanced as a result of the players on only one side of it having constructed their own team.
I don’t agree that, simply because you queued with your friends, it automatically precipitates that you are somehow more deserving of reward than I am; nor that the game is somehow healthier – especially because the gameplay is hot trash in reference to a match featuring a pre-constructed team on both sides.
What you said was:
It’s a healthier game because I’m more privileged to reward than you are for having online friends in an activity that you can queue for as a single player.
If the social health of the game was important to you, you wouldn’t be defending your argument with a reward centric counterpoint.
If the purposes of your social interaction with other players was about making friends, (and if that was important to you), you wouldn’t be concerned about solo players making better honor gains than players playing pre v pre; because you’d be just as happy to play with your friends in a fair match as an unfair one.
A better argument would be that players in coordinated groups are playing at a higher level of skill than players who are pugging – but if you’re constructing that viewpoint off of the win-rate of premades who are facing pugs, I’m not going to support you.
Most players who frequently pug would perform just as well using voice chat in a good group comp; the difference between us is that pug players choose not to, for any one of a wide variety of reasons; all of which are unique, personal and valid.
That said, not being in voice chat and having a random team comp instead of a preconceived one has effects that hamper a group’s success rate – especially in reference to teams which have both of those things.
The gameplay is different – not better, nor worse; neither is it more or less competitive.
It’s just a different set of circumstances.
PVP gear is very much on par with PvE gear right up to the last raid instance. As such an individual without needing to form and social bonds or friendships can log in get arguably the best gear in the game and f-off once their ADHD thirst is quenched.
As such it, like raids…requires that their be a social bond. Team building and a reason beyond playing the game for an individual to log in.
If you were to compare the play length/sub length of two types of players…the solo players vs the ones who form social bonds within the game. You would find that the ones who are in guilds, raiding and forming friendships log on longer and have longer subscription lengths.
That’s the goal for blizzard and what they lost with retail. They need not make same mistakes twice.
And?
PvP gear was implemented for players who played the game primarily for its’ PvP aspects. It’s a different endgame progression path which is like raiding, but nominally different. Rank rewards were designed for “PvP Players.”
PvE gear is just as available for the players participating in raids.
Player controlled combatants don’t behave according to a strict set of rules like NPCs do, and some players like that experience, others don’t. The set and reputation rewards were designed for players who did.
The gameplay meta in classic has resulted in a PvP experience that nobody genuinely enjoys.
This is a baseless claim. There’s a metric truck ton of things to do in WoW classic whether you’re playing at the endgame level or not; not to mention that a subscription to classic inherently includes a subscription to BFA and soon SL.
Subscription count is decidedly a poor place to argue from.
Premades are not a social system; and your concern is not about the social health of the game. They’re a method of efficiently farming honor which results in inequity between players who do and don’t engage with them as a direct result of the unfairness we observe when they’re pitted against pugs.
Ultimately this only serves to denaturalize what was intended to be an effort based system – a fact which has only been exacerbated by increased server population and honor bracket sizes, resulting in a gameplay meta which feels inherently inauthentic in reference to Vanilla.
Y’all nochangers are defending inherent changes to the game, which I seek to revert.
congratulations you’ve won the thread
If premades stop playing BG because they can’t smash pugs for max HpH then that’s their problem. You keep going on about how this social interaction and sense of community is so important to the health of the game, but if it disappears at the first sign of difficulty then how authentic was that sense of community in the first place? The opposing argument is literally “we have to let premades smash pugs in order to preserve a sense of community”. Don’t you guys see how ridiculous that is? And finally, no, why should premades get more honor than “solo queue casuals”? If premade pvp is bad HpH because you guys don’t want to have actual competitive games, which is how BG’s were intendedto be, then maybe you guys will go out and do open world PvP. Maybe you guys will form groups that will engage in the open world like in Phase 1. That would make the game world feel more active, exciting and alive which is good for the game.
3 Likes
The motivation is to get gear. That’s the motivation. I’ve said this from the beginning. The ability to get gear through ranking up by smashing pugs is the motivation.
If you change that by removing the motivation then what the hell is the incentive to take the time to form groups?
1 Like
I’d argue the opposite. Premades winning against PUGs is faceroll. They should get less honor and rep for it. You don’t deserve brownie points just because you spend all of your time cultivating WoW friendships with the handful of other sweaties trying to avoid actual competitive PvP to max HPH.
PvP and the gear rewards have always been for the those who didn’t want to or didn’t have time to waste their life raiding.
The system was not designed for premades to smash PUGs, hence the changes to AV.
The challenge in ranking up in classic isn’t the opposition. It is the time required and the ability to collect as much honor per hour as you can.
This was changed on bc. But this isn’t bc.
I thought the incentive to form groups for pvp was to make meaningful online friendships to foster a sense of community and camaraderie which is overall great for the game. But it seems you’re argument is really about making ranking as easy as possible. And that’s a bad system that obviously needs to be fxied. This is just my guess, but you couldn’t care less about whether there is a wider WoW “community” or not. Your idea of “community” probably ends at your guild of like-minded people and the people you premade with. If you really cared about the health of the game, you wouldn’t want more people leaving the pvp scene because it is filled with premades that smash pugs.
1 Like
Nooo.
That’s just the biproduct. If you give a player a choice, they will always pick the easiest road.
What you want to do, is nudge them out of their shell and into making friends and forming bonds that will give them incentive to log in and be in more often with long subscriptions.
You know this, I know this…
1 Like
Yes that’s what raids are for. BG’s have always just been a side game.
Not if it gives out equal gear.
So no. Needs to be there too!