Warmode is Dead, Fix it before Shadowlands

PVP War Mode and World PvP
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RP Warmode

Ion Hazzikostas you missed the point about RP sharding.

RP realm players want to see those on the same realm and other RP realms for reasons.

But RP sharding has zero value when the population is so low that a player has little to no chance of seeing another player in a particular zone.

In that kind of scenario, specially in Warmode, sharding more players together should take precedence over creating RP only shards.

  • Smarter sharding algorithms.

  • Less RP realms.

General Warmode

Warmode is not about extra rewards mode it’s about PVP. It has failed because you made a product that does not appeal to the PVE or PVP communities by trying to appeal to both.

  • No flying in warmode.

  • Getting marked Assassin should make NPC faction bounty hunters attack you in same faction cities and sanctuary cities too. Warmode should feel dangerous, THAT is the reward.

  • Getting marked assassin should not flag you on the map. It should flag the name plate and it should persist until reset or until a player claims your bounty (not just death).

  • Since Engineering is the defacto PVP profession. Add WPVP and bounty hunter gadgets!

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A few things that I wanted to address:

War Mode will never truly appeal to PvE’ers. The only “appeal” to it is that they can opt out of it and keep it turned off if they want to.

The extra rewards you’re talking about isn’t even an extra reward either. It’s there to offset the time spent PvPing. You may argue that people in War Mode tend to ignore each other and not PvP at all, in which case you’re right, they do need to give more incentive on actually PvPing.

Some ideas come to mind though, reworking the Assassin and Bounty system to grant more honor or conquest should be implemented. For instance, becoming an Assassin increases honor kills gained by a certain percentage, and killing an Assassin would grant more honor than your average player, killing X amount of people while bountied would give you conquest, etc.

As for these other points:

Huge nope. Flying is a luxury, and getting rid of it would cause less people to turn War Mode on because of no flying. Instead, just make the Net-o-Matic, (which would become pointless if no flying in War Mode was implemented) have no range on it. Let it shoot people from an indefinite range so long as they’re in view distance.

Yes, because I love engineering.

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I like that because it makes Warmode even MORE dangerous.

Also, the Net-O-Matic should be a craftable item by Engineers.

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Ooo, or maybe if we want to make the Net-o-Matic have indefinite range, there’s an upgrade item that Engineers can make that will upgrade the Net-o-Matic to indefinite range.

That way it’ll net us some money.

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  • Engaging in WPvP should apply a 60 second debuff that prevents players from taking queues to escape WPVP.
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Spoken as a salty Horde player that gets upset when they can’t 10v1 Alliance. Horde has the greater population as their advantage, Alliance gets sneak queues as their consolation prize.

Similarly, your complaints about Warmode giving rewards are similar to all complaints, in that they’re Horde players upset about Alliance getting the greater rewards, while not thinking a few thoughts ahead as to why those increased rewards were created and why they continue to be of use. As has been chronicled across the forums from years hence, Alliance is the outnumbered faction in world PvP (only excepting RP shards), and any action that “disadvantages”/revokes a current advantage in Alliance favor will just continue to further this trend.

If warmode is made into what you want it to be, the minority faction will simply opt out, and all servers will be defacto PvE servers.

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  • You support players using queues to escape pvp in Warmode.

  • You are adamant about not losing Warmode bonuses while having no interest in PVP.

You are the perfect example of the player Warmode caters to and the reason Warmode is dead.

Thank you for your post.

Ion Hazzikostas add this to the list of things to fix before Shadowlands launches.

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If warmode is dead it’s because of faction inbalance and general disinterest in PvP. Why you would think that removing incentives from a “dead” content would increase participation is confusing; there is almost no chance of Blizz reverting to PvE and PvP servers (which is the only reason PvP ever existed organically), so if you want to fix the situation of World PvP in Warmode, you have to consider what is actually likely to increase participation.

There is some large-scale WPvP right now (from guilds like Ruin/Terren) and that will continue even without any incentives, but why would a player willingly opt into a system where they’re likely to be outnumbered if there isn’t any benefit to offset that possibility? Obviously I believe that the Alliance needs to be catered to to some degree, being the minority faction in almost all forms of PvP, WPvP not excepted, so unless your suggestion is to let Horde use Merc mode out in the wild, I don’t think you have any idea that will actually make more people play in World PvP, which is the only way to fix it as a dead system, if that’s how you see it.

As I said, both of these are consolations for the smaller faction, and even with these in place the playrate is low, so why do you think removing them would entice MORE Alliance, and not less, into Warmode?

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The rewards are there as an offset to the time spent PvPing. It really isn’t even a reward, and the reason why Alliance get more “rewards” than us is because they are at a greater risk of being ganked or spend time PvPing because there’s more Horde.

Though this is the case, War Mode bonus is given on a regional basis, which it really shouldn’t be. RP servers or Oceanic servers actually have a greater Alliance population than there is a Horde population, yet the Alliance there are still given an increased bonus. On that note, the War Mode bonuses should be given on a shard by shard basis.

Not only that, but even though:

this really isn’t all that true. We don’t know how many of the Horde population actually has War Mode turned on, and we don’t even know how many Horde players are even actively participating in War Mode.

A lot of people have War Mode on for the wrong reasons, many have it on just for the bonuses. A lot of people who have War Mode on don’t even actually PvP, some avoid PvP as much as they can even though they have War Mode on. The War Mode bonus, as I said earlier, is determined on a regional basis of how many Horde or Alliance have War Mode turned on, which is really gimmicky because it’s not even taking into consideration those who don’t PvP in War Mode, nor the Oceanic or RP servers.

What they need to do is add measures to weed out the players who are only in it for War Mode bonuses. Discourage opting in and opting out of War Mode, encourage keeping War Mode on and making it more so of a commitment, such as the first few days of War Mode being on, you receive no bonus at all. After those few days are over, you receive a quarter of your faction’s War Mode bonus. After a week you receive half, and after two weeks you receive the full bonus. Turning it off at any point would cut it down to half, so for Horde, if you’re at the full 10% and turn off War Mode, when you next turn it on you’d be at 5% and would need to keep War Mode on for a week to get it back to 10%. If you were at 5% or below, it would just reset you to 0%.

That way, players are discouraged to turn War Mode on for bonuses. If someone who hates PvP only turns War Mode on for a few dailies then turns it off, they will no longer be encouraged to stay War Mode if they aren’t receiving anything.

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My question to this in general would be “Why does indifferent participation in Warmode matter?” I don’t doubt that there are many people in Warmode who only want the bonuses or the extra PvP talents, but in what way does that make the system worse? We’re talking about unranked/unorganized content, so increased numbers has its own benefit, even if most of the numbers are effectively disinterested in the surrounding content.

If anyone wants to further elaborate why players joining Warmode but not helping in PvP is a problem other than out of spite for them not aiding you I’d like to hear it. If we subtract the leeching players and only have the earnest PvPers do you think that would make more PvPers join in? I can’t really see how that would actually happen, given that the basically afk players are rarely going to be in anyone’s consideration until after the fact.

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It’s because of the War Mode bonus. Its a system based off of how many people have War Mode turned on, not based off of how many people in War Mode are participating and PvPing. How is it accurate or fair in any way to say a faction should receive more than the other just because population wise, they have more even though half of those aren’t even PvPing. The way I look at it, War Mode bonus is designed in a danger gauge sort of way. You’re in a world where you’re susceptible to being attacked by other players, you’re put in more danger than your normal non-WM world, therefore you receive more bonus, but if there are players who aren’t even there to PvP, how are they in any way dangerous?

I mean I don’t care if players help me or not. I run with my group of friends and we all play in War Mode to PvP. If Blizzard is going to base a system off of some sort of danger gauge, they should be accurate about it is all. You can’t give someone increased bonus to War Mode because, “there’s more of X faction, youre more likely to be attacked” if none of those people actually PvP.

PvP in general is at an all time low, and its because PvP isn’t appealing because of the new systems put in place by Blizzard. When they removed PvP vendors in Legion, and kept them out in BfA, there was really no point in doing PvP unless you enjoyed it. PvE gear was the go to. In previous expansions, there was a clear progression path for PvP, which is what players enjoyed. You did PvP content, got Honor/Conquest currency, continued to PvP. Because the last few expansions haven’t had this, and the PvP team just ignored their own playerbase, it went downhill and participation went down.

When we start seeing a rise in PvP participation, I’m sure more PvPers would join in.

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I agree that BFA PvP has been terrible and basically ignored, but that doesn’t mean the faults of Warmode imbalance are based on new features. And w/r/t the rewards being based on overall players and not on PvP participation, I’d wager that things are skewed inversely to what you’re imagining: the Horde get basically no benefit while the Alliance get a substantial benefit, and yet the benefits persist as is, which means there aren’t enough Alliance joining in.

And if you believe there are excessive non-PvPers as Horde toggling Warmode, would the ratio not be worse for Alliance, as they have 30% rewards and AoO as opposed to merely 10% rewards? We can assume players of both factions join Warmode without really “joining”, however I think it’s reasonable to believe that the side with the greater benefit simply for joining would be the side that also has more queuing merely for those benefits. Thus, removing the benefits would remove a greater proportion of the already smaller numbered faction.

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  • Warmode bonus rewards for World Quests create a condition in which every system revolves around World Quests in Warmode, rather than a system that focuses on PVP.

Remove flying in Warmode?
“No, because my WQs take longer!”

Shard more players together in Warmode?
“No, because then I can’t finish my WQs!”

  • Warmode bonus reward should be an honor/conquest bonus for killing players in the open world and for BGs/Arena.

The bonus starts at 0% and builds up slowly to 20% over time.

If you switch off Warmode then you start at 0% all over again.

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While I enjoy WPvP, the only incentive for me to turn on War Mode while leveling a new character is my own pride and habit from playing on an RP/PvP realm for years. I find that until I reach max level, PvP is just a minor inconvenience that I am indifferent to. I feel that since WPvP Is pretty much catered to max level characters with high level gear anyways, Blizzard should consider making War Mode accessible only to max level characters. It would be a start to de-incentivizing those low level players who are only hunting for XP bonuses and not even interested in WPvP. Besides, leveling a fresh character in pre-patch has been fast and smooth without any extra boosts.

Just my opinion but you know what they say about opinions and… Well anyway…

Peace y’all!

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Well it sounds like you don’t enjoy the added risk and danger that comes with Warmode and that’s perfectly fine.

Those aspects of Warmode that you refer to as an inconvenience is precisely what WPvP players love.

  • I enjoy leveling up in a world where I can get 1-shot by a player if I am not aware of my environment.

  • I enjoy dragging mobs under trees, under structures, and under water to hide from high level players.

  • I enjoy using my brain to stay alive, rather than my gear and spellbook.

What is NOT fine is when Blizzard focuses on convincing YOU to turn on Warmode, and ruin it for those that intrinsically enjoy Warmode. Creating an environment that is not enjoyable for anybody.

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I want my pre-BFA Emerald Dream back. :frowning:

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Unfortunately, WPvP isn’t what it used to be. Sharding killed any semblance of individual server identity.

Now, you can go into a battle that is 5v5 and before you know it a 25 man raid drops on you.

It’s just the way it goes. Frustrating but we still get to play WoW. =)

Cheers!

PS

Just a couple weeks ago while zoning into Stormwind portal room a large group of hordies from off realm (and a specific large guild) had taken up residence on top of the zone in spot. LMAO!

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Its not dead, there is no action because it is end of the expansion. Wait until leveling zones get full then see it.

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Emerald Dream is my home too.

  • Warlords of Draenor ability pruning by Celestalon.

  • Legion pvp gear pruning by Hazzikostas.

  • Battle for Azeroth pvp server pruning by Hazzikostas.

Then they act surprised when it prunes their paying subscribers.

Paternalism is the value that hurt Blizzard and they know it because they are finally listening to their subscribers.

The problem is that unless there is a 200 page thread on the forums complaining about an issue, nothing is done to address it.

What Blizzard should do is communicate with their customers. Once a month, do a Q&A with community leaders and learn what your subscribers are thinking.

Blow the socks off the entire gaming industry by showcasing what customer-centric game design looks like and what it can achieve.

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