ofc it’s not everyooone waiting for last 2 weeks, rated 3s are insta pops as well. right now is kind of the play alts and chill phase and all the bracket will experience the final 2 week push for titles.
in DF blizzard made a blue post that they want 3 distinct phases of the season
Gear → playing alts → pushing for rewards. I think we’re just seeing this play out
There’s so much discussion on here about increasing retention by designing some optimal reward system, when a larger issue is that (retail) WoW pvp just isn’t as culturally relevant as it used to be.
Back in the day when everyone was playing wrath/bc there was some motivation to be good at pvp because everyone was talking about WoW.
Now if I have to choose to spend my time on something, what do I get from spending it on learning WoW pvp? No one IRL cares, you can’t make a living from it without streaming, and your progress can be destroyed by a single balance patch. I find it fun, but it’s a purely selfish endeavor now: my gf doesn’t play, my friends don’t play, and instead I could be working on getting promo at work or spending time with people.
I didn’t start playing WoW in middle school because I wanted to be an arena god, I was interested in the conclusion of the storylines started in wc3. There was always some natural funnel of people who liked the story/pve content, then tried out pvp because they enjoyed WoW as a whole. I redownloaded league to try it out after 12 years because arcane was so good.
The story now is terrible, and all the new players who try retail without coaching (see videos by grubby/day9) find the experience unintuitive. The top of the funnel of players who would feed into the pvp system is dying because a significant portion of the game (leveling/story) isn’t fun or engaging.
Throw more
Yeah, early-mid season is just gearing, trying alts, bugs being fixed, specs being adjusted, mid season is trying out comps and getting initial rating out of the way, maybe elite sets on alts, late season is wrapping up actual pushy goals.
Honestly not the worst idea if you need cr
Well pushing for rating is very taxing on the central nervous system. The bracket can’t always be pushing.
What’s going on right now is that the main teams are either not playing, or playing alts like you said because why push main team if no one else is pushing? Once inflation has caught up to them and the last couple weeks have all the top players then the end ratings will probably be 50-100 points higher.
But the game is totally not dead. LFG and 3’s are.
did hansol’s blitz q ever pop? 
Idk, I stopped watching him after I checked to see if shuffle queues were the reason the queue timer seemed so long.
Nah it got to 166 minutes and then he logged on marvel rivals ( an actually well designed solo q game where the queue pops 24/7 within 0.5-1.5 seconds of queueing)
Unless you are getting paid to play wow, you’re also a casual, regardless of the fact that you no life play 24/7, you’re not special, calm down.
Mythic tier, legendaries, and even the Mythic mounts are available after the season ends, and are easily soloable within 2 expacs. They only remove the titles that are directly related to getting the content done at appropriate level of difficulty, same as the glad mounts and titles.
Why you would care if someone who didn’t play in legion has access to the elite PVP sets in tww is beyond me. I can promise you, no one who sees Billy the DK in tww with legion gear is upset, outside of narcissistic sociopaths.
Nobody that posts on the forums is a casual lol.
Casuals log in run around the new zone for a few hours buy a shop mount then log out again.
Maybe level a third druid to farm invincible with.
What about 8 druids, one of each race because we support harmony and for lore and xmog farming reasons?
Nah third nelf
Maybe another bm hunter
It can be a very big part of your life, you’re still casual unless it is a paid job.
Or play 5000 rounds of arena with all their free time.
I prefer shamans.
No. 
That’s not what casual means man 
Not sure why anyone would want to make this game their career. Unless you’re Pika, or Trainwreck, you’d make more working in a factory somewhere. The game is just full of manchildren.
Just because you play a lot doesn’t mean you aren’t a casual player. Just because you let your progress in the game determine your self worth, doesn’t mean you aren’t a casual.
I’m curious to know how you honestly determine if someone is a casual or not. What’s the cut off for casual to pro?
Edit: Just so we are clear, this started because old mate started throwing the term “casual” around as an insult. I guess “hardcore” is different from “casual”, but I consider them the same to separate them from the pros. There are different levels of ability and time spent within “casual”, but again, unless it’s a paid job, I consider it casual regardless of your level of addiction.