After thinking for a bit, I think it comes to this… even more than the other problems that have been complained about many times, like how geting groups for 3v3 is terrible, or the queue times for shuffle are 40 minutes, complexity of gameplay and etc.
The result is frustration and feeling like you wasted your time.
What I believe would resurrect pvp for the player base would be the sum of 2 things, the increase of rewards (even if its just a few color variations), and far easier to get.
I have seen people speak about the prospect of the 2 things, the “participatory” reward and the actual “merit reward”, which at its peak is what we have now with the gladiator mounts (regardless of how hard you think it is now compared to whenever else in time it was before).
“it is the one badass mount that only the true epic most badass and best skilled players on the top of the mountain could get” (in typical vanilla 2004 having a legendary weapon as you look at them with a lv 10 character mindset).
pvp feels like its molded on this mindset… but the results don’t lie, you sum it up the queue times, the annoyance of getting groups, the complexity and frustration of pvp, and on top of that you apply the “earn your cool mog/mount” mentality… and pvp is dead.
i don’t think many of the problems like queue time, forming groups, complexity (unless a remake is made) can be solved at all… but the rewards and how easy you can get them, that absolutelly can change, and i do believe that if the rewards were felt like in a sense that the casual wow player could get them (in the majority sense), pvp would be a lot more popular than it is now.
17 Likes
Yeah but we get played housing. It seems like 90% of all resources have gone to this. Why make class and races more accessible and customizable? Why make PvP rewarding and fun? Soon you will be able to have a house…in a town… With things… Yay!!!
PvP needs it’s own unique rewards not recolors of current armor. Being back titles and ranking like back in the day. Plus the PvP feels out of place with the new direction of the story. It needs it’s own identity if its going to evolve. But they are so wrapped up in what’s happening next year they forgot a out this year. So focused on the next gimmick and chase that PvP gets brushed off like a annoying cat.
8 Likes
I don’t like PvP because healers are unkillable now. I once got a BG where neither team had healers and it was actually fun.
12 Likes
Pvp was fun when I don’t die and win, if not, its no fun.
11 Likes
I would actually PVP if the rewards were mostly non-rating based, having it be more “drop in” friendly.
Like there’s Solo-shuffle which probably does help, but if I could earn the season armor tints by just playing for awhile I’d be much more inclined to do so, I don’t want to have to sweat about rating, the mount could definitely stay rating based though, similar to M+ with KSM/KSL.
14 Likes
PvP is dead because they decided to fundamentally change the pacing of it in Legion and never rolled it back to pre-Legion when it proved unpopular and participation nosedived.
Random BGs went from their most queued activity to one that was so dead they had to make BG blitz to get people playing them again.
Healers are overpowered in the setting, and time to kill is way too high. Also there’s so many defensives and so much mobility now that running away is way too easy if you’re losing a duel.
You’d have way more people making the jump into arenas if they just went back to the MoP/WoD style of PvP, where people died in a few hits and healers couldn’t solo heal the damage of 10 people.
5 Likes
We need to expand the award ribbon and make the rating unchangeable at certain positions (1500, 1800, 2000, etc.).
Why don’t those who go to the keys get a RIO downgrade if something goes wrong in the key?
3 Likes
Literally this. Time to kill is already too high, there’s too many defensives, and healers are beyond busted in the setting.
At a minimum they should have DR on healers healing each other, but they don’t want to do even that, so we’re left with these godlike beings roaming about that can instantly turn a fun battle into a wet noodle fight where nothing dies.
2 Likes
Yes, it’s a pointless feature that no one asked for, but now all the developers’ efforts will be focused on this, rather than on class design, races, and PvP revival 
2 Likes
considering the frustration levels of pvp (coming from me that at least can get to 1.8k), that number needs to be way lower if we want to begin talking about the prospect of enjoyment by playing pvp, which is exactly why nobody plays it.
4 Likes
cite data, or gather data, publish on forums to validate or further your “assumption” then fail post because you didn’t do any work - good job “thinking for a bit”
1 Like
They should remove cooldown from hunters turtle shell and let them cast during it. Add in 6 more immunities for each class
1 Like
What do you mean nobody asked for? People in the 1000s have asked for this every year. Here is another shocker that might be hard to accept, not everyone does or likes PVP.
5 Likes
Okay, go kiss squirrels, pve hamster 
3 Likes
Agreed, I’ve suggested this before but the PVP elitist get butt hurt, 
suffer like they have I guess. They were really pissed off about honor badge increases during the last anniversary event. I remember telling one of them to relax because it meant fresh meat for the grinder. But yeah increasing the rewards and not making conquest gear to attain such a grind there would be more participation, just like there was during the Anniversary event, I was earning badges for old tmogs but didn’t stay after because the rewards sucked. I honestly think the gear is such a grind because it’s critical to PvP, you don’t really need a measure of skill because imo PvP is heavily gear reliant in order to play effectively and earn honor and conquest for the rewards. It’s easy to attract players but almost impossible to retain them after due to an grindy & uninspiring rewards system. I have quite a few ideas that would definitely breathe life back into PvP and not impact PVE negatively
The reason I don’t PvP is simply because it isn’t fun. Suddenly your talents are completely different, and now there’s a whole new set of PvP talents that switch stuff up. You think you know how a spec plays, then you go into PvP and suddenly people are using skills you’ve never seen before (like holy priests flying in the sky, WTF?), or skills you have seen before are operating differently. Shamans have a bunch of totems I’ve never even seen before. This is the biggest hurdle for me, personally. It feels like an entirely different game within the game.
Then, you spend a good chunk of time getting beaten down, preyed on, and camped before you can even put up a fighting chance. It’s even worse of an experience if you’re a healer. The whole gameplay itself is just anti-fun.
That said, I used to be an avid PvPer from Wrath to Legion. I’ve tried several times to get back into it and I just can’t. Haven’t really been able to pinpoint why, but it has nothing to do with rewards or gearing.
Editing to add that world PvP is a completely other niche community. You’ve got people buff stacking and using toys and exploits everywhere that you just have to be “in the know” about. People who were abusing follower dungeons and queues to escape getting killed. Swarms of crate farming groups that overwhelm any chances of a fun fight. Weird etiquette where you get called a jerk for ganking people who willingly turned on War Mode, even in FFA zones… Feels super unforgiving for newbies to get into. Just my experience.
7 Likes
Yes, it’s very toxic content, but believe me, winning and getting a high rating is much more enjoyable than another beating of a mannequin 
2 Likes
My personal gripe is that the combat kind of feels bad.
It’s either endless fight without HPs moving, or one side instantly obliterates the other one. There are almost no trade off kills happening. I also feel like I have no agency at all in combat, except pressing cooldowns and surviving. Normal damage doesn’t matter, target focusing doesn’t matter. Everything is sort of AoE vs AoE. Granted, I’m just a casual PvPer, but that’s just my perspective.
It’s still fun to try different playstyles, like stealth or caster class, but it’s a phase when I know I’m on the verge of taking a long break again.
1 Like
Agreed, the most important thing is to get new players to PvP, and the best way to do this is to offer rewards for playing. There should definitely still be rewards for top players, but there needs to be rewards for grinding out games as well.
And there needs to be waaaaaaaaaaay more rewards.
Every raid tier gets 4 recolors per difficulty. Why aren’t there four recolors for PvP?
Pvp could use a renown track like the raid and pvp mechanics that make it so healers can’t do their role like cc and dampening could be tuned down and removed respectively.