I think it’s fair to say that for the longest time now any form of PvP that wasnt rated has been totally neglected (although I have argued in a previous post that even rated has been neglected a lot, see The importance of frequent PvP tunings, frequent seasons and a devblog - #3 - WoW Community Council - World of Warcraft Forums (blizzard.com).
To quickly sum up what I mean by casual PvP: I mean leveler / low level BGs, random and epic BGs at 60, the PvP Brawls, wargames, dueling and world PvP - basically any form of PvP that is outside rateds.
I want to start with the Brawls first, because it just totally boggles my mind why it’s in it’s current state. Why is it timegated? There is literally no point in timegating it. Sure, Comp Stomp gives a bunch of honor (and is also an insult to PvP by pitting us against bots), but who cares? These are all fun gamemodes to engage in at any point, the literal point of the brawls being playing the usual BG maps, but with a twist, purely intended as a fun gamemode.
Since I’m giving feedback to Activision-Blizzard, think of Party Games in your favorite Call of Duty. Wouldn’t it be kinda bad if you could only play Gun Game a couple times every 3-4 months? Isn’t it annoying that One in the Chamber is only playable every 6 months? Why is it that I want to play Infected but I broke both my arms, so I couldn’t turn my PC on for the duration it was available?
It is beyond me why it’s like this. So here’s my suggestion to fix it: in the place of the current Brawl queue, add a “Random Brawl Queue” that puts you into a completely random brawl. No time limitations, no timegating, nothing. (Sidenote: do the same for Timewalking content. Please.)
As for Random and Epic BGs. We have gotten one BG in the last 4 years, a couple reskins for old BGs (Arathi and WSG, but not AV), one BG totally removed, BG blacklisting removed and one rework to a battleground. There is barely any cool innovation to have. While the BGs are still super fun to play (even after having played a couple for 16 years), I feel like it’s about time to get some sort of refresher. I’m not asking for new BGs to be pumped out every patch, but at least every expansion give us a new one, and if there is an abundance of BGs, please, re-implement blacklisting.
Strand of the Ancients was removed because it was super archaic, which I agree with, I think the BG did not age well, but at least let us access it in Wargames for nostalgia’s sake. Oh, and make the Wargame feature itself accessible, it’s honestly bewildering how little people know about it - right now, if you want to have a proper UI for Wargames, you need to download addons. Seething Shore was also removed from Rated BGs, which, honestly, I don’t know why that was, but I’m glad.
The gear you can get from simply playing random BGs is also rather disasterous. Even at it’s best, there is still a massive 26(!) ilvl gap between a full conquest and full honor player, and that is not even mentioning the difference in stat distributions, conduits, gems, etc. Not only that, that grind is instantly invalidated and restarted fivefold the second you get a Conquest piece.
Let’s move on to leveler BGs. During BfA, believe it or not, up until 8.2 landed (which separated XPoff and XPon players), the queues were popping off. That is thanks to XP gains being much higher in leveler PvP content during BfA, and with XPoff players generally existing on both sides, and the fact that the differences between players were not that big once the leveler searched for some easily accessible resources as to how they can get much stronger for barely any effort, leveler BGs were quite lively.
I feel like the leveler BG experience is something a lot of people miss out on for their own detriment. It’s almost a new way to play the game, with how different max level is to lower levels, and how it makes old content relevant. XPoff characters are super easy alts to set up, and they’re very fun to play. Of course, the issue of the difference between XPon and XPoff comes in.
Here is where I propose that you need to make use of old PvP gear as leveler gear for XPon BG dwellers. Change up the stats on the old Marshall gear all the way up until Corrupted gear to have a bunch of Vers on them, and for them to have at least one socket. Adjust honor gains so that these pieces are easily purchaseable, gemmable and enchantable (yes, you can buy some gems and enchants with Marks of Honor as of right now). Make use of the old PvP reputations to give players a little bit something extra on the side. And most importantly, let XPoff and XPon people queue into eachother.
And lastly, World PvP and dueling. I feel like WPvP right now takes place in one place only: Korthia, for the Overwhelming Odds quests. That’s it. Now, normally, WPvP is something that happens naturally all over the place, but I feel like there is an opportunity with creating random WPvP events all across Azeroth with special rewards. It would be a great way to revisit old zones and to get some cool rewards, cosmetic or anything you can think of.
Dueling, in my experience playing on Argent Dawn EU, simply does not exist. However, back in the old days, there was always a dueling zone right next to the PvP vendor - think of Dalaran Sewers, or in Cataclysm, everyone was dueling in front of the Capital because the PvP vendors were so close. I would suggest creating a duel-friendly zone around the current PvP vendors to let players do something while they’re sitting in a queue.
Long wall of text, I know, but the original script was 20 times as longer. Not joking.