Mists had over a million characters participating in arena. It dropped to 50,000ish in Legion. Gearing being a major factor for most casual pvpers. As others have said getting stomped for a few days/weeks to buy honor gear to get stomped for a few months until you get enough conquest isn’t fun as a casual activity.
IMO PvP just isn’t fun anymore. It’s too sweaty and confusing. There is way to many buffs and de-buffs you have to track. The knowledge you need for every class as well as spec is outrageous. If it’s not your main activity it’s easy to get lost.
It’s pretty rough to get into. PvP was my main focus from Wrath (firemageguru got me hooked) through to legion, then it kinda fizzled out. It makes me sad though that people on gen minimize the hell out of it and think it shouldn’t even be in the game lmao
I wouldn’t say it’s “bad”, but ignored by devs? Absolutely
Well, that’s only partially true, devs give plenty of attention to rated stuff like Solo Shuffle (especially) and rated arenas (…sonetimes there’s multiple new arena maps added per expansion) - it’s mainly the casual PvP/casual battlegrounds side of it being ignored
Because if you wanna pvp it’s harder and more annoying/frustrating to get PvP gear. On top of that you don’t get anything for PvP by doing pve, but pvp waiting time can be long.
Open world pvp back in the day was fun when you would fight back and forth like in South Shore and Ashenvale.
For me, many of these pvp zones just dont feel fun. So I rarely if ever participate. And War Mode has never been fun. Would use it for a leveling boost and was always max levels ganking people who have no chance. And are just having their time wasted.
For me personally, I would pvp more if I didn’t have to run into glad carries while I’m learning and gearing. Like I don’t even want a 1% chance at running into them at 1500 rating.
The matchmaking needs blown to bits and redone.
Also health bars are too rubber bandy for me, a novice at best at pvp. If they wanted to bump damage and healing as you ranked I would be all for diving into it.
Its alot to take in for a new player. Made my buddy quit when i got him into the game. You need weakauras dr tracking focus target/123 macros and so forth. Then you need to know the other classes abilities and how to counter classes. Understand what ccs dr each other. Not easy to keep someone playing when they feel like they are getting dumpstered and they have no idea why. Either disable addons in pvp or allow the base ui to do what these addons can. Otherwise you get us and no new people. This isnt me saying i dont want those in game but im not blind to the hill they have to climb to start this game.
I played solely on a pvp server for vanilla and BC and just burned out. Isle of Quel’Danas was rough. Even though it has been a long time, I just don’t want to go back to it.
