I believe that wow PVP is the most balanced and the systems used to get gear are the best they have been since launch. With how easy it is to get gear for PVP, the scene is still stagnate and struggles to entice new players and retain casual PVPers. I believe that this isn’t caused by the PVP gameplay itself, rather by a number of factors surrounding PVP that have caused serious problems for the game.
- Low Level BGs and low honor level queues
Players first introduction to PVP is in the mess that is low level PVP, where games have massive queue times, and revolve around overgeared toons one shotting anyone else who tries to play. This is a terrible introduction to PVP and will turn most new players away. This system should be addressed in several ways.
First, Blizzard should get rid of low honor level queues outright. There are not enough players left to support this system. Second, low level BGs should be reworked entirely. Low level BGs should queue everyone from level 20 up to level 70 in the same lobby. I chose level 20 as this is the first level that war mode is unlocked and is the level I believe most classes at least have their baseline kit. Their stats should be completely normalized like it was in legion, where gear and level does not matter at all and everyone has the exact same stats. This means that the only disadvantage a low level player will have is what abilities they have unlocked.
This means that a low level player would at least have a a chance to fight against higher level players and could potentially outplay them if they play well. Next, I would also give substantially more exp in PVP than is given now, to make battlegrounds a more viable way to level up if a new player enjoys it. The level 71-79 BG bracket should have a more forgiving minimum item level cap as well to offset the effects of high geared players.
- Premades Scare off new and casual players
Premades make casual battlegrounds unenjoyable to queue. No one enjoys being stomped and this often turns into the player just AFKing out and doing something else instead of PVPing. And we have seen the effects of premades in classic PVP as well, where it has effectively killed off casual PVP in those games. The cycle goes: Premades stomp casuals until they stop PVPing, premades get longer queues and are forced against other premades, and then quit after they start getting stomped by better premades. Retail has not reached this stage yet, but this tends to be what happens if you let premades go around unchallenged.
Some may argue that casuals should just join premades if they don’t want to get stomped, but even that doesn’t address the problem. Stomping people in premades is just as boring as getting stomped once the novelty wares off and it takes a very specific type of person to enjoy this gameplay. You aren’t really playing the objective if you play in a premade vs a pug, you just end up graveyard camping the enemy team, spamming your PVE rotation on them because you likely outgear them.
The clear solution to this problem is to only allow premades to face off against other premades. Allow for players to bring a raid team into random battlegrounds, but ensure that they are always paired with another premade of equal size to ensure fair matches. If you duo queue in randoms, there should be a duo queue on the enemy team. If you are in a 5 man in a random BG, you should face off against a premade. If you bring 10 people, you should face a team with a 10 person premade. For epic BGs, blizzard needs to patch queue syncing and penalize anyone who attempts to do so as cheating. Allowing random BGs to be a place where casuals can play without getting stomped every other game will help to revive the PVP community.
- Casual Class Balance
Blizzard typically balances the game around competitive PVP. Namely arena. However, I believe that this approach is short sighted and drives casual players away from the game. You often hear the common mantra of “game isn’t balanced around 1v1” when a casual player complains about losing to another class in a duel. However, this approach leads to casuals quitting if they play classes that do not fare well in solo PVP or if a class is genuinely overpowered in casual PVP situations.
I believe one of the biggest offenders historically have been hunters, whose kit is extremely powerful in battlegrounds. No one enjoys being one shot by a class that is balanced around being trained in a small scale arena game. This isn’t a problem that applies to me specifically, because I play classes that tend to do well vs hunters, but it is an extremely common sentiment I have heard from people trying to play casually. To address this, blizzard should take the time to look at casual BG, casual 1v1, and world PVP balance and make a few changes with these modes in mind. If something is completely dominating in casual PVP, it should be toned down a bit. They should not necessarily make casual PVP the primary thing they balance around, but they should at least keep an eye on it to make sure that nothing gets out of hand.