Yesterday (Tuesday, 4/21/26) I was able to snag a few crates from The War Within zones for quick conquest on some alts after the servers came back up around 6 PM Eastern.
Today, (Wednesday 4/23/26), the crates from The War Within are no longer dropping any Conquest or Bloody Tokens, just Honor.
WHY!? Why was this a priority fix over housing, why was this a priority fix over peoples’ characters becoming stuck online and bugged? Why was this a priority fix over Holy Paladins’ current situation where their healing is 50% as effective (and their armaments aren’t working)? Why was this a priority fix over Hunters taking incorrect amounts of damage?
Throughout the entirety of The War Within, we could’ve farmed conquest from Battle for Azeroth crates if we wanted. Or Shadowlands, or Dragonflight… but now, on this random Monday morning the day after 12.0.5’s historically crappy, bug-filled release, the conquest crates were nerfed?
Crates from Midnight zones correctly award Bloody Tokens and Conquest, but the previous expansion crates do not, and without any say-so from Blizzard. Baffling
We never had crates for Shadowlands though, what do you mean
I hope they nerf crate farming altogether. Buff the amount of Conquest they drop from 60 → 300, but put them on a daily lockout so raid groups aren’t incentivized farming them on a loop.
Because crate farming is ultimately unhealthy for War Mode. This was never a problem before TWW because crates were never farmable in previous expansions. They were always on daily lockout. Tell me why the activity that requires the least amount of PvP is the best source of Conquest.
Someone could spam battlegrounds in the span of an hour and win every single one yet wouldn’t gain nearly as much Conquest as running around in a raid group steamrolling the local populace on a shard.
I fail to see how this is healthy for PvP. I’m all for easy Conquest gains don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t it. Buffing Conquest drops from crates, from 60 → 300 but putting it on a daily lockout would prevent raid groups from going around destroying organic WPvP fights that could’ve occurred on a shard. You’re getting 5 crates worth of Conquest (by todays crate conquest amount) in 1. You can cap out on Conquest by looting 1 crate every day for 5 days if they did this change.
This is your opinion, mind you, and can’t be proven factually. I had a TON of fun in the 40 v 40 clashes during war crate farms, and will continue to have fun in the 40 v 40 clashes. Which… given that the mode is LITERALLY called “war mode” feels perfectly appropriate. You haven’t had 40 v 40 clashes in warmode before? If Warmode existed just to enable people tricked out with engineering gadgets, toys, and tricks up their sleeves to kill lowbies, it would be much worse off, which is sort of what you’re advocating.
This is exactly why crate farming should be part of the game. Like, full stop, you just proved my point. You have explained perhaps more concisely than I could’ve WHY crate farming should exist, despite your insistence that it should not.
Because getting more people geared up for PvP more quickly is better for the health of the game, and better for the health of PvP as a whole. Imagine that you’re a newcomer and in order to gear up, you’re forced to (AS YOU SAID) win battleground after battleground against people who are experienced, have full gear, and who are well practiced. Could you imagine an experience MORE prohibitive? This isn’t Legion anymore, you cannot just jump into Arena or EBG’s with minimal disadvantage on a freshly leveled toon. It is a grind just to become relevant.
I have 20 alts that I’ve been maintaining thanks to the crate farms, and especially thanks to the War Within crate farms. I’m on a high population server, so despite The War Within being defunct content, there was plenty of PvP combat in those zones even still. Looks like that number is going to shrink dramatically, as will the number of players entering PvP who are discouraged by the uphill battle they face in order to gear out.
Oh - and since all the crate farmers are going to be funneled to Midnight zones, the exact shard annoyances and 40 man battles you were complaining about are going to become more prevalent.
Really, because from my experience, the crate farms that I’ve seen all go for efficiency. More often than not, they’ll hop to a different shard if they had to fight another crate raid in one zone. Sure they’ll stick around for that one fight since they’re already there and have no other choice, but afterwards, one of the crate groups will hop to a different shard where they’re assured little to no competition.
I have, and they’ve all been lagfests. The servers can barely handle 40v40 without crapping itself. War Mode exists to replace PvP servers, that’s all it exists for. To attempt to balance the unbalanced PvP servers that existed.
PvP servers existed to allow people to PvP out in the open world. Nothing more to it.
I mean, if we leave it at just, “battlegrounds are a terrible way of getting Conquest” then sure, leave crate farming alone.
But that’s not where I was getting at. On top of nerfing crates to be on a daily lock out (but rewarding 5x the Conquest), they should buff all other sources of Conquest as well. Remove the diminishing Conquest returns on battlegrounds and arenas, every win in battlegrounds regardless should award 100 Conquest (not just for the first win of the day) and close losses should award 30-40 Conquest. Same with rated PvP, go back to the MoP era of awarding Conquest for close losses and remove the diminishing return on the Conquest rewards.
Buff the bounty bag Conquest rewards too and maybe even give people incentive to being bountied, perhaps someone bountied could get 2 Conquest per kill.
Like I said, I’m all for people gearing up quicker in PvP, but again, not at the cost of the health of War Mode.
Read the above suggestions. Buffing all sources of Conquest on top of nerfing crate farms.
Edit:
Also to this
Newcomers are placed in their own matches for battlegrounds with similarly skilled players. Below a certain Honor level, you’re put into “newbie” matches. So if we’re talking a newcomer coming into PvP, you’re likely not fighting experienced players.
This is sort of a simplification/misunderstanding of what happens. I’ve lead plenty of groups, enough to know that the only way to reliably change shards is to ask everyone in the raid NOT to visit a zone for 20+ minutes and hope that it changes, which is usually impossible. The “shard hopping” you describe is just blind luck or shard over-saturation.
I do agree with SOME of your proposed changes. I also still staunchly disagree that crate farms come at the “cost of the health of War Mode,” which is again just your opinion. Furthermore, if your contention is that War Mode exists just to allow players to PvP and nothing more, then surely you understand why your argument - that the manner in which that PvP occurs affects War Mode’s health - hypocritically refutes your own opinion.
To be fair I’m talking about prohibiting newcomers from entering arena/Blitz. Casual BG’s/EBG’s are pretty unserious content and balancing it has (rightfully) never been a specific priority. But you make again another good point about how crate farming being nerfed hurts newcomers: because not only do they need to invest the time and energy to gear/gem/enchant to be prepared for arena, they also first need to invest time and energy to suffer through casual BG’s/EBG’s in order to gear out in the first place! Which of course would be totally disincentivized if crates were giving out 300 conq per on a daily lockout.
Maybe blizz noticed that 40 person raids farming pvp crates in empty legacy zones for current bis gear was kind of ridiculous, so they nerfed it. I think legacy zones weren’t nerfed during war within because there were no raids farming the bfa or df zones (idk why, probably lower spawn rates than war within zones).
But crate farming in tww zones did not seem to slow down at all when midnight season began. I would frequently encounter a massive raid of level 90s in Undermine while doing weekly stuff.
Didn’t say it was going to magically make people want to WPvP, it’s just a step in the right direction. Theres lots of things Blizzard needs to address if they want people to participate more in War Mode. One of the biggest concerns is faction imbalance and the perception of it.
Blizzard has said shards try to even things out, but even back in BfA, had admitted themselves that LFG tool completely breaks that. That’s part of why Alliance turned WM off back then. They claimed factions were relatively balanced, but the perception of Horde out numbering Alliance because of a bug with the LFG tool, drove people away.
Crate raids just make that worse. You get these massive groups dropping into shards and it feels like one faction is overwhelming everything. Don’t get me wrong, Alliance is the dominant PvP faction right now, but we need more organic shards where local population is actually fighting over the objectives without getting steamrolled by a raid that was never part of that shard to begin with.
Or the other way to shard hop, which includes reforming the group with someone on a different shard and funnel everyone into that one. I’ve literally seen class trial alts named “shardholder” (or similar) to do just this.
My point about War Mode vs PvP servers is that, PvP servers didn’t need a forced gameplay loop to make people participate. People fought because it was fun. You had high traffic areas that naturally led to fights. You called people in not because there was a crate or something, but because you wanted to push back the other faction.
War Mode is supposed to be the replacement for that, but right now leans too hard into “optimize this farm” instead of just letting PvP happen organically.
If we’re still talking newcomers, you’re acting like flying around half AFK from zone to zone is somehow a better experience. Do you really believe that a good introduction to PvP?
There are better ways to make battlegrounds less of a slog if that’s what you’re worried about. Buff Conquest from battlegrounds to make it worth their whole and keep minimum ilvl scaling for undergeared players (and update it every season) for a better experience. St least in BGs and EBGa, nee players are learning how to play their class in somewhat fair environments.
At the end of the day, gear isn’t going to help a newcomer, experience will. You can hand someone full gear from crate farming and they’re still going to get rolled in arenas and BGs because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re gonna get flamed and then discouraged anyway for being a “bad player” despite having gear.
It wouldn’t. A daily lockout with something like 300 Conquest from crates wouldn’t disincentivize everything else. It would just make crates a good chunk of Conquest instead of the only thing worth doing.
People would still go into battlegrounds and other games modes, especially if those were actually rewarding. The difference is you’d have multiple viable paths instead of everything funneling into one brainless farm. And people would actually get experience doing real PvP.
Read fam, read. I’ve explained this already in this very thread lol.
Didn’t say it directly I guess but here’s one from just this thread:
Tldr = crate farms destroy organic fights by injecting outside raid groups into shards.
I’ve also said it in different crate related threads, but I’m tired of repeating myself. Crates turn potential fights into one sided stomps, they disrupt shard balance and natural population (read where I talk about shards and the LFG tool) and they don’t have real PvP interaction compared to other forms of PvP.
Whether you think I care about “organic fights” or not doesn’t change the fact that crate farming kills them. Personally, crate farms don’t bother me too much, I’ll try to find whatever way I can to one shot an entire group of them (ask Ricros, I’ve done it plenty in TWW on my Augmentation Evoker back then) but I don’t think raid groups dropping into shards to steamroll and hop out is healthy for WPvP. It isn’t the same as an actual back and forth PvP fight.
And yes, I do use bugs/exploits occasionally, but never once am I pretending they’re fine and that they shouldn’t be fixed or something. Blizzard should absolutely fix any bug/exploit they come across, but they’re very slow to do that, especially when it comes to WPvP. You can disagree with me but at least engage with the argument instead of trying to dismiss it because of who it’s coming from.
Right, instead youre an attention seeker who has friends from the same guild post on alts pretending to complain about Misoh the Druid LOL. Pepper Ridge Farm remembers.
Yeah, but we’re doing so with the intention of PvPing at least, not to farm crates. Farm tears yes, but we certainly don’t back down from another guild group farming an area either.
I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, but I’ve been in crate raids where, if they lose the initial encounter, they’ll shard hop to a different shard the next go around for that zone.
Sooo should warmode be unmoderated (as you previously advocated) or should it not be?
VERY rarely do guilds do this, and it’s typically only guilds that do this. Because by doing so, you jeopardize all your other shards, even if you have anchors holding those shards. This is not a typical maneuver whatsoever and is extremely uncommon. Not to mention, you are again contradicting yourself - if your argument is that WPvP should remain largely unmoderated and that War Mode exists only to facilitate WPvP and nothing else, it’s hypocritical to try to police how it is used and by whom.
If you think players being flamed is a barrier to entry - and that barriers to entry are unhealthy for the health of PvP - why would you argue that gearing should ALSO remain a barrier to entry lol? Do you see why it’s at least a little bit hypocritical of you to on the one hand vouch for the ‘health’ of world pvp, but on the other hand argue that noobs should face multiple barriers to entry? Reminder that you started this by suggesting you’re glad crate farming in TWW was ended.
To be fair, you haven’t addressed the “how so” besides saying “because I say so,” which is not really admissible. I again agree with some of the proposals you’ve made, and agree with the spirit, but I disagree with your stance that crate farms should be eliminated. And you and I BOTH disagree with your own contention that warmode should be policed according to your preferences.
