Hey Blizzard,
First I want to say that I am a long time fan of all of your work and am excited to see all the excellent adventures that you will produce in the future!
I am a relatively new to playing World of Warcraft. My friend got me playing during the first Arena Tournament Server. It was like sex, I was soooo bad at it, but it was so fun and eventually figured out what I was doing enough to help my friend get a title.
After the tournament server I was hooked, but didn’t really have a realistic way to pay due to a bunch of time commitments elsewhere. I swore to myself I’d come back to play WoW in the future, but only if I was able to give it the time needed to achieve a high level of success in arena.
11~ years later we’re here. I’ve experienced relative success in my life to a point where I can afford to put a good amount of time into this game. Last week I finally created an account, hit max level and started playing. Took me about 40 hours, and I had a great time!
Now that I’m 50 it’s time to master my class and assert my dominance over the entire pvp and arena community. I go into my first arena skirmish (which originally, I thought was like solo q LoL), and instantly die. I watched some videos of pikaboo on YouTube and got my rotation right and go in again. Instantly die. Now, I’m not discouraged in the least, obviously I’m still growing and I come to learn to gear is a huuuuge part of this xpac, and life without resil is different.
Now I did something that some people might now agree with and originally my pride didn’t like it either. I paid to get carried through M+ and heroics. Honestly… I had a great time too. I got to see all the current content of the xpac, met some very friendly people, and was just all around thankful to be playing.
Now you might think that it’s dumb to do that right before a xpac right? If I’d had a more easily accessible way to obtain competitive gear so that I could PvP I would have done that. I want to learn the game. When you are getting one shot by a holy priest its hard to tell whether you’re bad or your gear is bad or both. That makes for an unenjoyable learning experience. If I can pin point what’s wrong, that’s great, but if not I’m wondering around in the dark.
This past weekend I was spending time resourcing Shadowlands content so that I can prepare going into it. There is a youtuber by the name of Stoopzz, who i thought brought up an excellent point. The barrier to entry for Pvp is much higher than Pve. I am not saying that it is hard, they are both very different. Mad props to anyone that organize a group of 20+ rowdy nerds.
I think it’s extremely silly to time gate this gear for 7 weeks. That is like your parents not letting you have some Hershey’s chocolate till Christmas, but having Godiva in the frig.
My only idea is a slightly higher ilvl pvp set (maybe +10,+15), and do 3-4 upgrades instead of 7,8,9. I know this personally would help me out greatly. Just to knock down some of the time required to get them. I think it’s extremely silly to time
I’d really like to see easier entry into pvp for the masses, but I know you guys will do a great job on the xpac regardless.
Sincerely,
Future R1 Chekz