Because I legitimately enjoy arena. My friends and I spent about 2-3 years with 70 twinks queueing arenas with no rewards. I’ve played Pserver arenas without rewards (AT, HH). I would play TBC arenas if there were literally zero arena points, no arena sets and no titles.
You guys are making it sound like rating requirements on weapons mean that zero people are going to want to queue. If 99.9% of people are only queueing for the items and not for the fun of it, they might as well just remove arena from the game. You guys make it sound like some painful chore you only participate in for the gear progression pathway.
Am I the only one here that just genuinely likes arena for arena?
Most Classic Andy’s sole enjoyment of WoW stems from feeling superior to other players, not actually playing the game, so it’s easy to see why playing content with no reward wouldn’t appeal to them.
i like arena, bgs and raiding. I actually did not like the resilience on pvp gear change when tbc first came out. I like to do stuff in the open world and feel my player grow in power from gear i get from heroics and raiding. But then i would get gear from raiding, be out grinding on stuff, get ganked. Put my pvp gear on, equip my pvp trinket and then i was less powerful against the pve stuff that i was grinding on or doing dailies on. I hated that. I always thought i would try a pve server because of this, but never did.
If you scratch the surface deeply enough you probably are.
Right, because doing something you don’t enjoy for no reason what so ever makes sense. Skinner boxes and the science around them sort of prove you wrong.
EDIT: FOr me personally IDGAF about waving my epeen around. I just want the time I spend ingame to be working towards something. Like most adults I have enough to do without adding a 100% pointless grind to it.
A massive reality in WoW is that gear is a core component of nearly everything one does.
PvE - Gear.
PvP - Gear.
Crafting - Gear.
Consumes -> Get Gear.
Farming -> Fuels the above.
Fishing -> Fuels the above.
PvP once you HAVE the gear, its absolutely the most enjoyable way to continue to spend time in the game, but unless you already have the gear, yes, most people only do something in game to get the gear.
I’m exalted in the BGs, and not because I needed that BG loot, but because even now, I’m still queuing on my Main that has been exalted for over a year since I finished my grind because I enjoy PvP.
Most of the PvE types wont touch Arena now, and that will make it a worse experience for everyone who actually does want to just play Arena.
No you are not. I think most people play this game to improve their character. I am pretty sure that is the purpose of the entire game. The enjoyment most people get out of this game and why they liked tbc in particular, is that just about everything is fun to do. so you get to improve your character by getting gear and you are also doing something you enjoy while you are doing it.
Arena would not be fun for me if all i did was just arena and my character stayed at the same power level, meanwhile the other players i compete against keep getting more and more powerful because they also do raids. Eventually any skill that i had over some of them would be overcome by their gear and i would lose every game over and over and over. that would not be fun.
most players are all about improving the power level of their character though. So they will do stuff they don’t like if there is a gear upgrade. They also will avoid stuff that does not improve their character because they could be doing something else that does.
it is up to blizzard to satisfy that goal of improving our characters and giving us stuff we enjoy at the same time. When they do that, everyone is happy.
There are a lot of replies here but not a lot of answers to the question. I’m seeing a lot of “reward is the only motivation for me to engage in any activity” or “if the activity is not a gear-progression-pathway then I am not interested - I only play the game to make my character stronger.”
Obviously, gearing is a main point of the game. Your character’s gear is your primary source of power creep and, ostensibly, gaining power is the unwritten endgame of WoW. I understand that perfectly well. But I also engage in a lot of in-game activities that neither directly or indirectly improve my gear or offer a reward. In retail a few years ago I got into pet battling, leveled about 300 rare pets to max level and really did a deep dive into the mini-game. I never got a single piece of gear from it, or frankly much reward at all. I did it because I enjoyed it. I used to spend at least an hour most evenings out front of Orgrimmar dueling people. There was no reward. No ranking system, no gear drops, no reputation. I probably spent more time in Durotar dueling people than in a raid setting in Wrath of the Lich King, no joke. It wasn’t wasted time. I had fun.
And that word, “fun”, seems to be lost in this discussion. I asked if any of you would seriously arena without a single reward and the over-arching response has been “no”. It would seem that, at best, most of you are tepid about arena enjoyment and at worst you absolutely hate the activity but were going to suffer through it for the gear.
I’ll be playing a ton of arena whether there are rating requirements or not, whether there are titles or not, whether there are arena points or not and even whether there was a rating system or not. I… enjoy arena.
The purpose of a game is enjoyment. Your enjoyment and mine are going to be different.
So with that, the rest of what you said doesn’t matter because your argument base is off.
Casual players don’t enjoy being outgeared strictly because of gear gating and it shows from actual data in Shadowlands as well previous expansions. Player participation drops. Their fun not being satisified = community deflates then dies.
player participation dropped after wrath because everyone who was going to play wow already was and eventually people leave games. thats where SL is now. all those who play are always going to play and not many new people will join. thats just how it is after a game has been out for 15 years.
the game isn’t created for casual players. this game isn’t a game catered to a group of people. its for everyone. so that means some will sacrifice for others. it’s something called not being selfish.
also do you speak for every casual player?
the amount of people who will leave because of this change will not directly impact any part of the game. too many will be playing. if a million play. if 20 percent leave, or even 50% leave the amount will still be so high you cannot tell a difference.
The time you spend in game is working towards you having less time to spend on real life activities that contain actual rewards: that’s all it will ever be.
Your opinion. My opinion is that Shadowlands is boring and unimaginative.
Game has changed towards giving instant access/teleportation for everything, pokemon, super sweaty PvP, eSports Dungeons/Raiding, and garbage like Warfronts. Their story writing plummeted too.
It was created for casuals. Not the collect them all casuals but, the actual Joe Blow who works a shift and wants to play for a couple of hours.
Do you? You seem to have the opinion… “player participation dropped after wrath because everyone who was going to play wow already was and eventually people leave games.”. I based my analysis off of actual data and interpretations over time.
It will impact the Arena population. I’m not going to play unless I start playing seriously. It’s either Arena or Raiding w/ friends. The choice is pretty easy when most of my friends who play are PvP inexperienced.
