Replayability. What it will take to bring us back

PVP Arenas
1

I’ve really enjoyed the base game so far but what has made me leave is that I could not keep up with WoW any longer.

I work beyond fulltime in a Covid Testing facility on the second shift (4PM to midnight) and I had struggled since the new year to push rating when I could to keep my gear remotely competitive or reasonable against other players for world content and BG’s.
I was not on at any times a serious RBG group could push rating after my arena rating continued to tank or go nowhere after finding a good group and then the group would leave after 2 match victories from the late hours.

I was invited to play on the RBG group for my step brother’s team but would have to give up half my saturday or more to get the wins needed for that 1600 rating sweetspot to have my gear be decent enough to battle any player, but I was unwilling to give up one of my 2 days off to do something I’ve never wanted to do in WoW (push rating). On top of the hours I struggled at 3 in the morning to form LFG groups.

I couldn’t keep up with WoW, anymore.

I have enjoyed the game all thru until Legion when vendors were scrapped and there became an infinite artifact power grind, some element CONSTANTLY demanding my attention and my playtime. Lootboxes. Azerite power. And now, rating requirements on all the gear (not just weapons as in BC/Wrath).

I do not want to pay to log in and add stress to my life. For the years following BC, and into WOD, WoW had made rating pushing optional, the gear gap between rated and unrated play was never so high.
I had much more leisure time, to pursue World PvP, and Casual PvP. And Wintergrasp, and Tol Barad and Isle of Conquest.

What makes PvP fun? Why did I not turn to PvE? Until Legion, PvP demanded much less time than running through a raid. I could cap conquest in a few hours.
Enemy players think, and react, and I didn’t sit through the drowl of a scripted fight relying on others for my progression or ability. I was good on my own. I had many adventures I still remember today. But I find myself unable to make anymore adventures.
War Mode is dominated by FOTM and stealthies that simply erase you. Massive gear discrepancies pit me at a tipped disadvantage I cannot overcome vs. people privelaged. That’s right, privelaged, to be able to push the rating and have this massive cushion to make mistakes.

WoW has become work. I already work. I long and pine and still think about if this longstanding game could go back to focusing on replayability instead of punishing us for rerolling alts ot find the right fit. Hours, and hours, of story catchup. Gear catchup. 7 tiers of gear, causing massive discrepancies in gear. Extremely punishing rating ladder.

Seeing people in casual BG on enemy team just give up as their 24k hp healers just don’t want to fight against bladestorming warrs with 38k health. There is no competition, there is no spirit of play. There is just carrot on a stick geargrind. The challenge of pvp was trying to be better. Equal play, warrants increased competitiveness.

I’ve read countless posts and forums of people just giving up, trying to be on some form of equal footing to enjoy all of the game modes. I’ve never once tried to push rating in over a decade of WoW, it wasn’t fun. I didn’t get my highs from griefing or pushing people down. In the history of WoW, we all got even geared by participating in PvP because it was fun. But those days are gone now, and the game has such a great base mechanics for clases that just require tuning.

But I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep up, and its hurting the game and its hurting WoW’s rep.

Please care about your players. Please stop supporting the minority of players who need prestige to feel important and bring others down, then claim ‘this game isn’t for u’.

tl;dr

PvP success on other games is about Replayability, playing the same maps thousands of times BECAUSE each match is completely different from the first. It’s fun. But the joy is sapped, when I have to struggle for hours on LFG and losing matches and accepting that I’ll not ever get to where I need to be from my schedule. Please Blizzard, care for your players. Let us enjoy the game as it was for years instead of trying to force and compell us for playtime that is making players leave by the tens of thousands and dropping your revenue and our faith.

I’m keeping up with updates, but I cannot play for now. I have hope for the future of the game will let us come and go and enjoy and not punish us for the life we have to live outside of Azeroth.

8 Likes
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best of luck man, second shift can be hard to find a consistent team to push with those are ‘primetime’ gaming hours.

I also agree, gear should not be rating gated, nor should there be as many chores are there currently are.

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i have yet to personally interact with someone that openly believes that gear being tied to rating is good for the game or gives them a sense of prestige

cosmetics should be the only prestige

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There’s a few forum feeds around saying that High Rating should = High gear.

TBH I love the fact people can do rated and can push and can earn titles, prestige. Feats of strength. But not at the expense of my playability.

In the past of WoW, people got those things because they were good. Not boosting or carried. They had to rip and tear through a sea of people all about the same gear in all brackets. They had no handicap.

I support players going above and beyond and actually champion it. It’s not for me. But nowadays it seems like it’s been hand in hand with spitting on anyone who doesn’t have the time nor desire to push and we get invalidated for wanting free gear.

When I just want the gear to be passively earned through participation and replayability.

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Ya I can think of a few people offhand on the forums, though I think Trash mostly means in their daily/personal interactions in game. Could be wrong but that’s how I took it.

1 Like
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oh ya
anecdotal of course but from my perspective from my interactions with players that get 2400 week 1 or 2 of the season and aren’t ever behind on the gear curve, none of them feel like gear being locked to rating is a prestige they think about or that they think is good for the game

maybe there’s a small niche community of players caught between the elite set and the 2400 gladiator mount that feel like gear progression is the only thing in the game that they really earn or that they’re proud of i guess
but overall gear being tied to rating from my pov is really bad for the game as a whole

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Ya hard agree with this. It’s just a shame there’s people who can’t grasp that. I dunno, I just think cosmetics and titles should be the main draw and prestige tbh.

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I agree. To be fair WoD was my favorite gearing because we had alot of choices of stat combinations, the catchup mechanic was fantastic. I had never made so many alts and so many arena geared toons (or some odd mix of bg/arena gear). Then Ashran gave a potential for horizontal progression.

Blizz had gotten so much business from me and my pvp circle, just because we could pvp all day with super geared players everyhwere and when we won, it felt like a REAL VICTORY. Not undergeared toons hiding on their graveyards because it’s absolute trash to fight players who can put out 2-3x your damage or heals.

Either spectrum: A god Healer tanking an entire team of undergears or a wrecking ball DPS that just deletes all the lowbies and alts.

Burnout, sub drop. Bad reputation.

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its fine for there to be a gear disparity, but from 197 - 226 thats pretty big for it.

but the gear disparity this xpac is huge in general, never should have gone past 210-215.

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11

I’m a purist with a ‘settle the playing field even’ card but I can say I would resub if there was a compromise for a system like BC-> Wrath where Rated Weapons required rating whiche quated to about 5% gear.

If they do have to have some sort of compromise.

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Its just sad that blizzard wont see this, since they dont care about their community nor look at forums.

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Azerite gear 8.2+ was so fun to play with, I would level up characters just to see what azerite they had and play around with it, getting enough gear to pvp would be just from doing the cloak quest and then with pvp scaling you could actually pvp on alts, its really sad how blizzard managed to make a game millions of times worse than bfa, and yes bfa was trash but playable.

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14

wow what is wrong with you

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I think it falls under the idea of replayability and I guess new game which I am all for. BfA had it but with extra steps.

People like to do horizontal progression and experiment. It’s like Blizz has gotten so obsessed with lootboxes they forgot how much playtime people put into finding the right fit

But then lootboxes came in Legion, and we lost all the control we had. We could gear our toons for the game modes we wanted. I stacked 42% versatility in WoD just for duels and wpvp. It was fun, I couldn’t push rating. BUT at the end of season I could purchase all my gear for honor and then compete. We had choice, and control.

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Putting gear item level behind rating is a mistake

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Im putting all my faith in tommorows blizzcon, if they dont say anything we want to hear wow is pretty much dead.

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I actually had no idea it was tomorrow. Unfortunately I’ll have to miss it but I look forward to what’s being said.

The base game is strides ahead of how it’s been, they just need to tune and get rid of the elements that are making players leave by the tens of thousands.

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Oribos dungeon and torghast raid. Thats is all.

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bold of you to assume your experience is universal

that goes for the handful of “its not me it’s the other players” vocal posters that have been whining non stop about low cr 2’s the last few weeks

1 Like
21

You’re speaking the truth. Me and my friend are playing around 600 rating on our 150 ilv characters but 1500 on our 210 ilv characters so it is literally 900 rating difference just from the item level.