A disclaimer before going in. This is going to be a long read, an annoying read, a headache. I’m not going to say nice things. I’m not going to hedge. I’m going to sound whiny and I will look through my rose-tinted goggles. So if you stick around, I’d be surprised, but here it is.
I’m convinced back in 2008-2009 a little thing existed called close fights, where you would get into a BG and most of them would end up being fair, decent matches where you would see players you came to respect on the opposing team. You’d get neck-and-neck tie-breaks and you’d struggle for bases with supportive players who rotated on point, even in random BGS. Of course there were duds, but you’d actually be able to laugh at them because they were an exception to the norm rather than what you could expect from queuing Random Battleground.
In 2024, today, all I seem to get are death-balls in random. In my screenshot inventory are 5-6 screenshots of matches where our team collectively has 0 Honorable kills, and the medium kills for the opposing team are in the high 40’s. I spend most of my BGS either getting farmed or doing the farming. Either their team has several high-geared players and 4 healers, or our team does. There is no inbetween, no variation, and hardly any exception to this rule; by now, I can typecast the match in the opening minute as to whether or not our team will win and it is… boring.
It is boring.
Is no one else bored by WoW PvP in its current state? Given the vast majority of players are people queueing random, I feel bad for the new players coming in thinking, ‘‘wow, this is it?’’ – Likely not so much for the people who’re guilded or in BG communities, but if you’re running random every day, it is miserable. Just miserable.
Now, I’m aware to some that ‘‘random BG wins don’t matter, lul.’’ But when you are a casual player like me who plays for fun it is actually kind of nice to have a system that is balanced for the players even if the classes are not. Me, I don’t care if Hunters are cutting people’s legs off right now or if Death Knights are annoying brats. I don’t. But what I do care about is every match feeling the same. I can’t stand every match feeling the same. It’s either you’re winning, or they are. And there is no inbetween.
I have played five characters now to level 80. All of them levelling through BGs 71-79. I must’ve played 250+ BGs this past month at max level. Most of my characters are conquest geared to the neck, and I can say with absolute, dead certainty that even if I’m geared to my eyeballs I can still not carry or influence the outcome of one of these ‘‘bad match-ups.’’ Whereas I’m pretty sure if my memory recollects that back in WotLK I would have matches where I would have 24 HKs and the rest of my team would have 6-7, we would almost win that match.
And that felt good.
WoW is now in the current state where everyone is so powerful individually, that a good and decent player can’t beat two people on a point. So it doesn’t matter if you’re conquest geared. It really doesn’t. Because you still can’t influence that point individually. People are too tanky and bursty as a duo for you to be able to reliably chunk them both down in time for someone not to rear their heads out from the graveyard in time to stop you checking the point. So, carrying is out. It is non-existant in the current meta. Good luck running solo in a BG, you might as well try to influence the group.
But as I’ve said: wait a minute, my group is getting 0 kills. So–
It’s over.
Every match is this. You zone in, you scope it out, you realise: it’s a dead match-up. You lose.
You zone in, you’re steamrolling, it’s a winning match-up. You absolutely bake them all the way back to the graveyard.
Then about once per day, shining down from the Warcraft heavens and from the inside of Metzen’s beard, you actually get a match where the teams are evenly matched. And you actually, actually get a decent fight with one or two interesting battles; but then after 15 minutes of the short-queue the BG timers are now set to, it’s over. You got your dopamine rush, now get out. You’re back in the boiling pot once again. All those good players you just met – you’ll literally never see them again.
I just have to ask, why…? How on earth is it this way? … How is this fun?
Please for the love of God, fix the match-making system. And fix MMR. Please make it not so brutal. I hate to say it: but this game feels like HotS now for matchmaking where you just get what you get! So, sorry chump! Either it’s over for you:
Or it’s over for them.