I believe a lot of the current issues regarding PvP come from a single issue, the removal of progression.
Some of the issues include long queue times, lack of participation, drastic decline of participation around the 12 week mark of each season. It’s no big mystery why, players are beginning to become fully geared and have completed all available content. The only thing left to do is try a few alts and wait until next season. Less participation increases queue time, and potential healers don’t even bother as there’s nothing to work towards, no goal post, no finish line.
I believe a giant step in the right direction is to bring back PvP progression. The 2 main issues players had prior to it’s removal was:
-It was too grindy, the honor requirement was quite large
-It added too much power, and near the end of each season it was difficult for players to enter into PvP or switch classes.
It seems like the obvious solution would have been to decrease the cost of gear upgrades, and to lower the amount of power each upgrade provided. Instead it was removed altogether, like getting an amputation for a skinned knee.
To put a little perspective on how big of an impact this made on the game, consider if this had occurred in PvE content. Imagine next season when you run harder keys, or tougher raid difficulties you are rewarded with the same gear, perhaps it levels up slightly in PvP content. The real reward is simply bragging rights, no gear upgrades beyond M0 and normal raids. Can you imagine how that would impact player participation?
Please Bizzard, bring back progression, give players a reason to work towards higher ratings again. Participation will follow, and players will no longer just do their weekly solo Q till conquest cap before logging off. Please bring back that MMORPG feeling again, that has been there since back when we had to work towards helm and shoulders.
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Uhhh… pvp gear progression is not why pvp is suffering.
The problem with pvp is the majority hate arena as pvp content yet Blizzard continues pushing it for now at least.
And pvp always devolves into players choosing the oppressive classes so you end up with less variety in classes played as mains. Sure, people will try the weaker classes, but they won’t stick with them. I’ve been playing my demo lock outside arena the last week and it honestly was not a fun experience. Almost zero mobility, no real execute type of ability, and it’s way to easy for the other team to shut down.
So I went back to my assassin rogue.
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when we entered the age of instant data transmission there was an evil twin that followed closely after…an expectation of the NOW mentality. IMO, blizz kept up pretty well so far with the content roll out but staffing has caused a lot of side effects one of which is what people say PvP balance is.
honestly, for me, I like when damage is super high. games are quick and can get your goals as fast or slow as you want. I would like to see double the splinters per week but it’s not really that important.
that and bloody token WQs more often than they are now. small things though in the grand scheme
People try to create their own bias spin as to why participation is low and yours is wrong. One thing that might keep participation from falling off f is shorter seasons. Because when does participation fall off? When things start to become stale. Although, more frequent big patches might reduce the value of new content.
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Nah, plenty of casual players kind of lose interest after getting full gear. 
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What are you basing that off? Do some players? I’m sure they do. Is it enough to kill the ladder?
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Years of interactions/reading. 
Gearing is a very popular activity in wow, as outside the realm of awareness as that may be to people who don’t even really think about playing until they’re full bis at which point it’s just about cr/io, etc.
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I’m sure people do like the gearing process. Plenty of players also don’t like to be at a disadvantage. This season they made gearing easier and participation has been healthier compared to SL. By this time last xpac, season 4 had completely died and right now participation isn’t that bad (compared to then).
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I think PvP just isn’t that fun for the majority of players and it’s only getting worse.
Even for me, the amount of CC and tools in the game is going overboard. Example… Was on my enhance a few days back. Playing against WW, Arms, Holy Pali. Monk open with leg sweep. No CDs so I don’t trinket. Before leg sweep wears off, I’m hit with searing glare. Searing glare wears off and I get disarmed. I pop prim wave on the arms to get things going. Spell reflect.
It’s a small sequence that repeats often and is making arena incredibly boring. The way you can extend CC chains now ON the kill target just isn’t fun. Same goes for what sub can do. Opens with cheap shot, dance, bomb, trinket, DUEL. Literally burn everything to survive. That’s why PvP is dying a slow death. Imagine being a new player and trying to keep up with that sequence of things. Awful.
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Can’t really compare them in a vacuum.
Especially considering this season has like 500 free mmr relative to Eternal.
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How can you say that the issue is seasons are too long, or that it’s not due to people getting fully geared?
Do you have any other explanation why participation has dropped sharply 12 weeks into the past 3 seasons, what has been different these seasons compared to others?
You think it’s stale after 3 months?
Participation is always highest when things are fresh. The most players are active during the beginning of an xpac and most active during the beginning of new seasons. After that, participation can only go down. No matter what, this will happen. Adding upgrades to gear might keep some people grinding, but it also keeps people from playing altogether.
The more logical conclusion would be to end the season near the moment that participation starts to dramatically drop and start a new season around that moment. I’m sure they have enough data based on previous seasons to be able to estimate when this will happen and plan new content for when that will happen. They did talked about shorter xpacs during Blizzcon for this reason, so they are aware of this issue.
I feel that doubling the number of arena seasons would be a lot more work for Blizzard over simply bringing back progression. But it would probably help a bit.
I still think players need some form of motivation to work towards increasing their rating though. Without it you end up with a large number of players spamming solo Q, and leaving when they don’t like the match up. Progression provided motivation to play other brackets and push rating in a big way.
PvP is different from PvE though. PvP players really don’t care about upgrades, they want things to be fair and balanced since they are going up against other players. In PvE fights are predetermined in terms of difficulty and that’s why upgrades make sense. In PvP, the matches only get harder based on how good the next guy is and if you need better gear to beat someone else then it kind of goes against what the purpose of PvP is.
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I don’t feel like participation is that bad overall but we’re spread across 4 brackets.
The fact that the game can even handle that level of separation as a mmo in 2024 is a testament is just how popular wow is overall.
I know some people would hate this but I feel like there should be one rated arena mode and one rated BG mode. The game won’t be able to support 4 and what is soon to be 5 brackets at the same time for its entire lifecycle.
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I disagree, it’s an mmorpg, if you want plain pvp you can play COD. People enjoy upgrades because it feels like you’re working towards something and moving forward. Without it you have player engagement until they have their 16 pieces, then what reason is there to play?
If there’s nothing to work towards and no rewards, you alienate a large group of players.