The question we have to answer is the following:
Do crate raids increase participation in PvP or lower it?
I would say that it lowers it since it reduces the reasons to queue up for PvP (earning conquest and honor).
We don’t know how many people farm crates then go on to queue for a lot of battlegrounds, versus the number of players who farm crates then don’t queue up for PvP much anymore because they got their gear.
It is a sad state of PvP but once you get your honor and then conquest gear there’s no incentive to queue for PvP unless you care about pushing rating. And while people should certainly want to queue for PvP for fun, it’s still really nice to actually get rewarded for doing so too.
I don’t know if people just aren’t able to comprehend that things are not straight black and white or if they are intentionally arguing. Media literacy is dead and nuance died with it.
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Blizzard punishes people that don’t play meta.
I have geared exclusively through crates since legion.
I would rather gear so slowly it hurts than enter the objectively terribly designed game mode.
This entire debate could be summarized with a question
Do you grasp incentive structures and human nature, or don’t you
Yeah I mean I don’t really care what you think you’d rather do, I care what the numbers show you’ll respond to. And the answer to the latter is that you’ll queue rated if it’s the only meaningful way to attain conquest.
Right now you are incentivized to play until you win one random, one epic, and one brawl win a day then stop queueing until the next day.
You could do rated, but even rated gives really low conquest compared to the first win of the day bonuses.
If you want to get more conquest than that, crate farming is fastest and easiest.
That’s a sign of a broken PvP reward system.
I want to make this clear because people keep missing the point:
I think crate raids should not be a thing, but that ALSO the PvP reward structure should be, you know, actually fixed.
And there’s nothing stopping people from forming 5 player groups and doing crates either (unless a daily limit is placed on them). Even if the only change is such that you cannot open a crate if you were in a raid at any point from the time it was dropped to opened, that would be a huge win for PvP overall especially world PvP.
I’d love to see a lot more 5 player groups going around on all the shards getting crates.
That’s not what the numbers say.
That’s what the numbers say we would do in those specific years.
I won’t play the objectively terribly designed game mode period.
It’s precisely what they say. The more conquest became available outside rated, the less people queued rated.
Again, either you grasp human nature and incentive structures, or you blame current queue times on nonexistent boogeymen like a healer shortage.
Well good news then, whether crate farming raids exist or not would have no effect on you if you don’t queue for PvP since you won’t need PvP gear!
I blame the objectively terribly designed game mode.
I have a lot of fun doing wpvp.
I’m not hampered by meta in wpvp.
People pvp because they like to pvp. If you don’t like it, why pay a sub just to troll the forums? 
They increase participation because now instead of running into objectively terrible sweats like the dk who can’t discern the reason why no one cares about shuffle, they can gear their main toon, do wpvp, do random bgs to their heart’s content, and do the same on alts and if they want to step into rated thats there for them too.
Limiting people’s options for gearing is objectively terrible design.
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People play MMOs to push toward a goal
In WoW’s case the goal is gear and only spergs care about rating/titles
The gear isnt my goal.
Fighting people in wpvp is my goal.
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Yep. Its a means to end. Of course it does feel fun to progress and I do think gear should matter. But if gear in pvp matters it should be easy to get. Or hard to get, but doesn’t matter much.
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Wouldn’t spreading the 40 player crate raids that are on single shards into 5 player groups that are on multiple shards help with world PvP overall?
You’re working under the false impression that all shards are either empty or filled with raids.
Neither is true.
Nor did I say or imply that.
Help isn’t necessary. No one zergs beyond groups of 3-5 v 1-2.
Hella acceptable perimeters.
I have fun rolling around killing folks.