If you were a pure pvper templates were a godsend, they forced gameplay to be based on mostly skill. You could stand your ground on a freshly capped toon against a mythic raider and not worry about getting 1 shotted from the gear disparity. The people turned off by templates were the ones who are more interested in gearing up to pwn lowbies than have a fun fight.
@Inemia: True, but weapons still mattered alot.
910 vs 970 made a world of difference.
Yup, WoD was the last expansion I played hardcore. I had 8 days total time played at 110 and about the same now at 120. Let 2 months of my 3 months I purchased go unplayed and this last month of gametime will go unplayed.
PvP vendors need to return for me to play again like I used to.
You are so amazing at sucking!
If itâs really 60-65% it might be the worst ever, though Warlords was close. Legion seemed to have relatively good retention after an initial drop due to keeping the content pipeline full. But what Blizzard really needs to do for long term game health is set things up so that new and returning players stick around. Right now various story phasing and bracketing issues prevent them from linking up with the community. Iâve basically given up on helping new players since thereâs basically no way to do things with them while still retaining my existing ties.
Nothing is so bad it canât be made worse. That said, with Warcraft holding up Blizzardâs revenues through Q3, they should be able to insist on some breathing room.
Of course, the pressure to perform can be good, too. Blizzard is being much better about figuring out and addressing the things that actually cause player frustration and unsubscriptions than in years past. A case in point is making the epic Conquest reward daily, permitting casual PVP people to keep up, as opposed to insistence on forcing people into rated.
Agreed, and that was one of the things they fixed with Legion.
Wasnât there a serious hit in Cataclysm, too?
That said, pressure to keep revenues up can be a good thing when it forces Blizzard to do things that keep subscriptions up. Ultimately, whether people care enough about the game to subscribe - or farm for tokesn - is the true measure of whether they enjoy it.
The surveys are part of it, but what people say they want and what they really want arenât that closely correlated. Blizzard really needs to do some data mining to figure out patterns in who is leaving. For example, if Iâm right that a big chunk of them are leaving because of war mode imbalance, a disproportionate number of the people who cancelled would have had their first 120 on the Alliance side. There are probably other patterns as well. The people who were primarly interested in the story and the quest lines will have left in record time this time, of course, since those didnât last long.
Thanks for providing what information you have. Obviously the rest of us have to treat it with skepticism, since we donât know your sources, but itâs still interesting.
Many people have said they left due to pvp being completely unbalanced, classes being unbalanced and having no recourse in 1v1 encounters, which happens in every single Rated and Non-Rated BG and arena.
The problem is Blizz designs the game for groups when 1/2 the population wants to play solo. Thereâs not a lot of content for solo players. Blizz has not learned from other businesses who cater to one side or the other. They completely alienate 1/2 the paying base, who leave for games that cater to solo playing content.
Solo content is what made the original Warcraft game so popular. Blizz has lost its way.
Want to revive the game?
Bring back content for solo players.
Make all classes viable and fair in PVP.
Bring back PVP vendors and get rid of RNG PVP gear drops.
Allow players to better customize their toon like back in the day.
Did the other side have a priest or use fort scrolls? Your post is highly anecdotal.
I solo queue into Bgs plenty. You can solo queue into skirmishes.
Iâm with the vendors, and customization. I really miss the old talent trees! On the other two points, i feel like classes are viable and fair in almost an annoying regard (homogenization) where every class has on demand stuns, etc.
As far as your first point about solo content i just donât understand. The game can be completely played without groups and you can still manage 370ilvl. World Quests, Emissarry Caches, WF and a few lucky warforge/titanforge and youâre there. Outside raiding and rated BGs you can do -everything-. Remember old WoW? Canât solo any of the âstoryâ quests 55+, whereas modern day nothing is off the table for a solo player.
In solo content, the best Iâve seen drop is 330-340 items. Like on all my toons my trinkets are low because they donât drop. The best geared players in the game are doing group mythics. Theyâre wearing 390 gear now. Even if you happen to get something at 370 drop, in PVP, are you still badly outgeared.
You canât do mythic+ solo either. Unless you get extremely lucky, I donât think itâs possible to be ilvl 370 solo at present; ilvl 360 maybe, and that takes a lot of time investment.
Yea 370 solo can be pretty hard to achieve. 360 is pretty easily achievable. I think people are putting a little too worry on their ilvl (although some people will be silly and require a high one). With scaling itâs not really that big a deal.
The bigger issue is azerite traits. Focus your rage here. Let the hate flow through you! Sorry my friends havenât been on and Iâve been watching a lot of star wars instead of playing with randos XD
Mischievious, my partner is 368 i think without doing any content not solo. Not 370, but damn close. It took less than a month.
What you say is spot on, ilvl is really not important. I had a monk () pal, fresh 120 at 73k last night do just fine.
Azerite traits can push absurdity, especially high ilvl pieces. Blizz are changing that though with 8.1 so hopefully we get more variety and equalized power levels.
Lol donât believe the propaganda⌠They have been completely unable and unwilling to fix/balance azerite traits as they are now.
In the next tier there is going to be a whole new set of traits. There will be equally busted ones that will also remain unbalanced for huge gaps of time.
I find that kind of hard to believe⌠Iâve done a ton of group content and am only just 370. A whole expansion of RNG war/Titan plus group content and 370 only (havenât really bothered to push past rival).
There arenât really that many avenues to get 360+ solo. A warfront every month? Raderio makes high mythics hard to get into for pvpers.
If your friend is that high I guarantee they did more than solo content.
Edit to say that once the new conquest rolls around you will be able to solo 370. At this point though a hell of a lot of groupers will be 380+
I think a team of 360s is competitive, yes. A team which is half 270s, not so much.
The real issue is why Alliance alt more and thus have more 270s, while Horde work on their mains. The answer is because Horde have far more active mythic raiding and high rated communities, so there are better avenues for focusing on your main on Horde. This situation developed over years due to imbalanced racials - and yes, the situation was reversed in PVP before the EMFH nerf - but has been especially exacerbated in BFA due to positive feedback effects, especially in war mode where Horde essentially have a 10% Azerite bonus.
My Horde priest is 367 (my other priest, not this priest, yes I have two horde priests), I think Iâve done less than 10 arena matches this season (and then only to cap the conquest bar on a week where BGs werenât getting the job done). I havenât done a Mythic+ in months (I donât think any of my current equipment is from a dungeon). Everything is from Warfront, Arathi Highlands boss, world bosses, Emissary quests, brawl win chests, etc. I play several alts, so I donât focus on this character. Ilvl progression is slow, but achievable without requiring group content that I canât queue for solo.
If youâve done any content together, heâs doing content thatâs not solo.
Some times, not a large percentage of the time, I run across players who intentionally manipulate iLvl for azerite scaling reasons. You can tell by looking at their character, gear choice and HoA level. Other times, I will seemingly take damage from low iLvl characters that seems disproportionate to the level of damage that a higher geared character can output, and I donât understand why. I think there are some really wonky things going on. Also, I was in the match with Magnificient last night where the fresh 120 mistweaver was able to compete just fine (and in fact he only took 1 death) while I took 8 deaths from focus dps on my ~360 iLvl mistweaver.