Thinking a bit outside the box, but I’ve had the opinion for a while that instanced PvP (including Rated PvP) should be used as a free-to-play entrance to WoW. This would definitely need a plug-and-play model.
WoW PvP suffers from one thing above any other, and that’s a lack of participating players. It is a vicious cycle too, the fewer players there are, the more the ones who stay are likely to be higher skilled. The barrier of entry thus becomes more daunting for newer players.
The problem has gotten worse too, year to year, since M+ became a thing. It should be remembered that when dungeons were just a briefly important prelude to raiding, and raiding was the only real PvE progression, it limited how much time was normally spent on PvE progression. Psychologically, there were more “nights off” in the old system, because if it wasn’t a “raid night” there was little to gain in PvE progression. Now, on any night, you have M+ on offer.
In sum, PvE focused players are incentivized to spend more time than ever on PvE progression, and have less time to engage in PvP, which has fewer players and a more brutal environment for beginners.
Open up PvP as a free-to-play entry into WoW, use gear templates for PvP instanced content, use all the cosmetics / titles as the main incentive for non-subscribing players (like any other online PvP game), but then also make it so that non-subscribing players can earn real gear just like subscribing players can… but to make use of that gear in the wider world, and to even access that wider world, they’d have to subscribe.
I do think gearing matters as an incentive, but Blizzard just needs to bite the bullet and make the gear that’s earned actually good, all-purpose gear, competitive with the higher end raiding and M+ gear. None of this “here’s a low ilvl item that becomes high ilvl in PvP.”
Long story short, WoW PvP needs new blood, and could be an effective gateway for new players into WoW as a whole if it’s made into a free-to-play aspect of the game. But that only works if it’s a plug-and-play model.
Like I said, it’s an outside-the-box idea. But I feel like WoW PvP underutilizes it’s potential (to attract players) to a severe degree. The ability for new players to just jump in and start playing against other players should be a major goal of development, and instead it feels like the people who develop WoW PvP are just not that interested in anything other than keeping it on life support.
