PVP is NOT an afterthought

Community General Discussion
1

It’s recently come to my attention that some people think PVP is an afterthought of WoW. I don’t believe this is true, but I understand why people think it is.

There has been an article or two claiming that people who PVP in wow are roughly 5% or less and therefore, it’s an insignificant part of WoW that could be done away with and better the WoW development.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it’s based on the statistics that only about ~5% of WoW players have a PVP rating of 1000 or better in the arenas. This is a very poor metric for grading PVP participation, as many of us (as I do) really just enjoy world PVP and Random “Unrated” Battlegrounds PVP.

That being said, BG participation is lower than it should be and I think I have an idea why. War Crates, at least for Alliance. War Crates provide 60 conquest, but a win in a regular BG which requires roughly 20-30 min, provides about 30-50ish. And a loss gives nothing. Crates drop every 18 min in each zone, and if the spawn times are agreeable, that’s 180 an hour if your faction gets them. Good luck pulling getting that many in BGs. Hell, good luck getting 60 an hour in BGs. As Alliance, the War Crate is almost a guarantee. Unless Horde is running a War Crate Raid, they won’t get chest… they probably won’t even show up because they know it’s futile.

Solution? Give random BG losses a reasonable amount of conquest (20-40) and BG winners a conquest reward that is competitive with war crates (60-90).

I switched to Alliance just to farm War Crates and I’ve geared up two characters extremely fast on War Crates, because Alliance win almost every one of them.

The worst lesson of this is that I avoid the battlegrounds because I don’t want to miss out on a crate drop. Since a crate drop on alliance is almost a sure thing, I avoid random unrated PVP BG’s as that’s more like 70/30 chance of winning, resulting in significantly less conquest points. So why bother with BGs you ask? I don’t. I sit here on the map, waiting for War Crates, instead of PVPing, which I would rather be doing, at least until I collect enough gear to be competitive in the BGs and Arenas.

TL;DR: Blizz needs to give a reasonable amount of conquest point for unrated BG loss, and better conquest for a BG win to be competitive with War Crates.

5 Likes
2

I think it was in vanilla, then they took it more seriously after that when they started pushing e-sport arena hard af, then after most of the PvPers left it went back to being an afterthought.

3

Queue ranked.

3 Likes
4

I think war crates at 60 conquest each should be nerfed. I know everyone likes them (myself included) but if you grind random bg and win sometimes you only get 30 conquest or less. Meanwhile farming the supply crates has become a full on raid activity on my server in the past few weeks. Getting out of hand.

My new panda horde shammy is not getting her conquest set this season, thats for sure.

5

I think it is, they don’t enforce any rules regarding griefing, disruption, and more in it. In fact, the whole game is an afterthought after attempts to get the most money for no work.

1 Like
6

I guess it depends. Rated PvP? That’s not really an afterthought, gets new maps regularly and gets regular class/spec balancing

Casual PvP though? Like 1 new BG map every 6-7 years, and no updates or balancing on the existing maps (…especially noticeable in epic BGs, very unbalanced/one-sided maps)

Also, bugs in casual PvP go unfixed from what I see. There’s still that UI bug involving the scoreboard from Dragonflight, and the TWW honor level loss bug is still live/unfixed as far as I know (and the already-affected players still not made whole)

1 Like
7

I’m just going to leave this here.

Warmode is not PvP

3 Likes
8

It was an afterthought in the days when they couldn’t figure out how to properly balance the PvE game (their primary focus) with the realities of PvP. At one point, they made significant changes to classes just based on performance in PvP, and ended up breaking balance of the raid at the time. Think it was around Wrath. Having distinctly separate PvP talents addresses that somewhat, but the vast majority of players in this game play PvE. It’s not fun to sit there being chain stunned and many v-1’ed. You may think it is, and you’re entitled to that opinion, but it’s not. Just the same as it’s not fun getting chain feared in Stonevault, which usually ends in a wipe because the entire room gets pulled. Can at least kick those fears though.

9

Correct - Blizzard and most of the player base agrees. Let’s be clear though, it’s a significant portion of the game. Both are true.

PvP has been an afterthought since the failure of Ashran. A monumental and disastrous project that’s been relegated to a shadow of its intended design.

PvP should be removed from the main game and have its own dedicated mode in the client. Naturally, you would be able to choose transferring your character to base retail but your primary source of entertainment would be an evergreen mode connected to the main client.

PvP is a mini game and it’s unimportant. That being said, it has its place amongst side projects like pet battles.

Let me know if I should break it down further. Happy to delve further in its insignificance to the bigger picture of the game.

10

PvP is a minigame. Deal with it.

1 Like
11

Correct.

I’d prefer it be removed from the base client and put in maintenance mode.

PvP players can have a lobby area to hang out in perpetually (similar to Goldshire or Durorar). Give them the option of unlocking prestige lobbies based on rating (use minimal resources and prioritize re-using assets. Maybe skin the tier 3 Garrison down to its skeleton with a few buildings for the starter lobby).

Don’t give them any tangible new forms of content or major balancing, however. Those are resources better used for the main game.

12

Warmode is just Faction-Superiority Mode.
By that I mean of which reigns more popularity in whatever region or populace of server.

  • My server for instance, is Alliance dominated in Warmode — which to top it off, they also get the “Against the odds” weekly quest in spite of that, so the Horde are essentially nothing more than subhuman fodder to be mowed down via 40vs1 with ease. lol

I’m sure for other servers its the opposite issue as per the point above, but the overall point is: That the warmode bonus rewards in either reputation, currency etc is simply a boon to the higher dominated faction rather than a fair-play most the time. Phasing didn’t really help either, it just made murder-zones more unpredictable :joy:

13

Arenas a bad metric, look at casual BGs and World PVP.

Anyways, BG participation is low.

???

:joy:

14

thats how pvp servers worked though

15

Random BGs would be fixed if they que’d groups into other groups and not into all randoms and I don’t wanna hear no cringe about, “make your own group” No, this is a random que… make it a random que.

I’m fine without them awarding conquest on loss, if you lose, you should get a reward for it.

Solo shuffle should award points per round, due to all the variance in rating.

1 Like
16

if almost the entire pvp population can’t be bothered to engage in rated pvp it’s just bad. the reality is that pvp is fun casually, but nothing more than that. You queue up once every blue moon and then you forget about it.

17

So, a game or mode with low population is a bad game? What is the logic behind that? Explain games like POE1 who’ve always been a lower pop game, but is widely considered to be one of, if not the best available ARPG.

18

Yes? Next question.

19

Lol, typical :troll:… can’t dispute, resorts to a non-response.

20

You got your response, you just didn’t like it so you’ve resorted to calling me a troll :joy: Kneel.