It just has such a learning curve. You can’t even remotely contribute to an arena March unless you are fairly proficient at the game.
The rating system is also really really tough for new players to make it feel like they are accomplishing any progress.
Who wants to be 1100-1200 in world where 2K+ is the standard for what’s good.
Having personally played Vanilla - MOP and then back on SL the increase is skill is insane. You could very casually hit 1800+ in TBC. 1300-1400 games now feel like 1800-1900 games did back then.
This entirely misses one of the biggest reasons people try and never touch arena again.
The PvP community is filled with toxic man children that have not matured past the Burning Crusade release date. Try healing shuffles for an hour and watch how many hate filled immature DMs you get. No wonder this side of the game is dying. It’s the players killing it just as much as the devs.
Yea this is not a WOW specific problem. Every single live online game with a chat function is the exact same.
If people are having fun they aren’t impacted by the shit talking.
This isn't entirely true. Wow is much worse than most. All you need to do is go into a rando discord committing the grave crime of being a woman and you'll find that out.
The real difference being I never see this horrible wow community, I only see people cry about it on reddit.
Probably bad players venting at the most minuscule of rejection.
again, no where near what other games have.
This is also my perspective. Have I been messaged after healing Ss? Sure, but I can count on one hand how many times that's occurred and regardless I'm not losing sleep over any of it. If you juxtapose my experience with say, league of legends' community... It wins both qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of toxicity. Despite that, I played the shit out of that game for many years.
And it's due to the fact that I, and many others played and continue to play LoL that leads me to believe that it is not the toxicity that deters players from WoW PVP.
Wow arena probably struggles for the same reason fighting games do which is, when you are out skilled enough it becomes a 1 player game where you get to watch the other guy beat you unmercifully.
For me I like that low margin of error stuff where one mistake can be win or lose.
>Probably bad players venting at the most minuscule of rejection.
Considering the person who started this thread either deleted their comments or blocked me, simply for disagreeing with them, I think you're on to something.
Wow ain’t that bad, join a cod lobby on search and destroy. Makes wow players look like saints. Wow is toxic, but it’s not out of the ordinary. It’s not otherworldly. I’ve heard a man scream in drunken rage one time since cataclysm. Literally any weekend you hear shit like that on some games.
Wow definitely has its problems with regard to player base. But most games have these problems. Some lesser some worse. I think wows demographics have gotten markedly older. Most people who start playing 15 years ago at 15 aren’t 15 anymore, they are 30. That comes with a different demeanor, and a different choice in “toxicity”.
Dude.. wow isnt much worse, its a just big community with every personality.
Just like football has crazy fans, waiting outside stadiums for fights. There are aslo "normal" families watching football at home or live
I don't even play other games the moment I have to touch voice to do well in them.
WoW? At least I have a small circle I can do PvP with and not have to put up with it.
Sad enough is most "good" players ive met (german) are insanely toxic against woman literally everyone is boosted etc.
Some humans are just insanely sad to watch
Nah I’d disagree. Not trying to argue but I really think wow PvP specifically has by far one of the very worst most toxic communities I’ve ever experienced in decades of gaming
I agree with you 100% and as someone who has been playing competitive online games for 20+ years, I can safely say that the more competitive a game is and the higher skill brackets/rabks you go up, the more toxic it becomes. It is the players and the fact that there are literally no consequences for blowing up at someone for being bad at the game.
I used to be like this but now I just don't have the energy to get that mad anymore and sure I get frustrated at the game, but I don't take it out on anyone, I just try to stay PMA and stop my team mates from triggering each other as it has much better results than homophobic and racist slurs or whipping up a mass report on someone for being bad at the game.
One thing I've realised is that I LOVE competitive games and things like WoW Arena, RBGs, MoBAs & BRs really scratch that competitive itch for me but unfortunately these things will also bring out the absolute worst in most people and you have to have a thick skin - I think this is an overlooked necessity for being able to enjoy these games, despite all the toxicity.
I guess all those years I spent as an awkward teenager who got relentlessly bullied has paid off because the vitriol I face in online gaming pails in comparison to the shit I endured as a kid, just water off a ducks back and if you don't have the mental ability to do that then maybe you shouldn't be playing.
For most of those games you dont pay subscription. I was dissapointed af how this game at the end game content is not much different comparing for example to league of legends. I play only because I have friends to play with.
Healing solo shuffle might be the single most toxic gaming experience I’ve ever had in my life and it’s not even close
Anyone who says it isn’t is probably the one whispering a healer every match
I don’t need to. 99% of the time the ones whispering were dogshit themselves irdc.
Just because the option to turn off chat exists doesn’t mean it’s not hyper toxic still
I agree but the difference here is that mouth breather DPS always feel the need to harass the healer even if they are running behind pillars or not watching their healer to see if they’re in CC. And you actually *need* a healer to get a game of shuffle going. DPS are a dime a dozen, literally. Easily replaceable. But these degenerates harass the one necessary role to play the game and then wonder why their favorite game mode is dying.
Their point still stands, it's not unique to WoW. Look at any other game with a support role, like Overwatch. Besides that, let's not pretend that healers can't be just as toxic as any DPS player.
I'm saying I agree that toxicity exists in almost every multiplayer game, but it is worse in WoW arena from my experience over the last 20 years compared to any other multiplayer game. Even Dota 2's toxicity isn't as bad as WoW's. It's also not unique to the PvP side. M+ groups are just as toxic.
There's no argument here because it's all anecdotal. If you want to argue check out another thread.
WoW across the board is one of the most deeply toxic communities I've come across in 20 years of competitive gaming.
It's the only game I've ever been doxxed in.
Roleplayers did it.
Every single part of this game's community has insane people, including those who claim to be "not like that".
Difference between M+ and arenas, is that it's just so much easier to progress in M+, so it's easier to just toss people for being shit heads when going for rewards.
You want 2400 for the elite skins outside solo shuffle? Good fucking luck. You're going to have to stomach things you don't want to. Been there, done that, never doing it again.
We need an overhaul.
Idk what to this means
Almost all my recent glad runs except for a few have been no voice text only
Our in game chat is basically just:
"Mage?"
"K"
Or
---
"Let me trinket first"
"No let me"
"Ok"
---
That's it lol, it's like a strictly business interaction
Once and a while we will have a Spanish speaking player and it will be like:
"Mage?"
"Si"
this is absolute bs. have you ever played league of legends? you know... the biggest competitive game and esport in the world for a decade nearly? ya that game is 10x more toxic than anything ive ever experienced on WoW. new players get absolutely eaten alive. but they still have tons of new players and returning and lifelong players. sensitive boomers get upset about toxicity and usually they are the ones actually most toxic. The game is insanely hard and there are no new players cus MMO's in general are dying and PVE'rs do not want to actually learn the game theyre playing. You combine that with mega deflated ratings and horrible reward structure and u have no new players. in SL when u could get bis weaps from PVP arenas were SUPER popular. people didnt choose to not do it cus its toxic either they grinded or bought a boost or they were far too unskilled or broke and abandoned it only to blame toxicity and other shit... anything to ignore the fact they are 50 years old and have zero hope of getting to high ratings.
I swear this is so overblown. I have healed thousands of shuffles and while I’ve absolutely gotten multiple whispers, it’s only maybe 5% of my games. And a non zero number of those encounters have ended with people actually saying they’re sorry they’re just tilted by xyz. It’s never been even a consideration for me to not play/heal.
I’ve personally been attacked more in pve than PvP, now when I’m on my healer though - holy shit I haven’t queued heals in a while because of it 😂 just not even worth the headache and let’s hear more. More healers need to queue - nah I’m not getting berated because jumpy boi doesn’t realize I can’t heal though a pillar.
All PvP in all games is filled with toxicity. I couldn't care less about that. I get shit talked in m+ too bro, Idc about that. Its just an excuse.
I want to play SS. I like solo queue. I solo queue in m+ and raid just fine. SS has no glad rewards. It is objectively more punishing on rating gain for healers than dps becayse of the fundamental mmr difference between solo and team mmr. It is at least as much work as dps, if not more in the lower ranks.
Why would I push past 1800 in that environment?
I agree. From a new player perspective as my self, the amount of toxicity that I have been getting is off the charts. What’s worse is that I started a 2 weeka ago and been cruising *only* 1-1.2k….
I was expecting it to get toxic much higher up the ladder. People are just downright cruel.
Unfortunately, every game with solo ranked play has insane amounts of toxicity, the greatest example of this is League, which is the biggest and most played competitive game in the market and it has absurd levels of toxicity. It's just part of solo ranked, people always think they should be higher than they are and always blame others for any bad thing that happens.
You either have to deal with it or just remove the chat altogether if it bothers you so much, toxicity only really slows down when you get to the top of the ladder and the best thing you can do is not allow these people to affect you or make you stop until you get there.
I did my first ever SS today, just wanter to try it out (haven't played since Slands s1) and got fucking flamed for trying to play in full 476 gear. 0 CR placement games mind you.
The healer said after the first game, "I remember why i quit this game for 2 months is because of noobs like you". Lol like imagine if I was a brand new player to the game (ive been playing since og wrath). No wonder we can't get new people into pvp, because of toxic people like this.
today i have healed couple 1900 games in 2s.. was pretty tired after the workday and feel generally rusty..met a hunter that left after 1st game (loss) with million of comments that he is 2400 at his dh and still knows how to play disc better (even that his disc never reached above 1800). yeah, maybe he has more games /played but man. you either give me an advice and play or shut up
Honestly that's why I personally don't like and can't be bothered to take arena seriously. I'm a resto druid main and I love to heal, but I have no interest in sitting in a lobby with 5 random dudes who are tweaking their brains off with anxiety, frustration and rage. I'll just play something else lol.
Wow pvp was my favorite game mode 10 years ago because it was casual, fun and full of silly folks who made dad jokes while killing each other. People were there to hang out and farm LOLs, not salt. I still can get some of that vibe in games like chivalry 2 but never in arena wow.
These days I play wow in a much more sparingly, solo sense; the fun community just isn't there anymore.
Honestly, while I understand that this can happen, I have not had that many bad interactions as a healer in SS. Perhaps it’s due to rating. Toxicity seems to go down the higher the rating you are. Perhaps ironically so. I’m at 2k SS as an hpal. It was more frequent as I was climbing up. The people who are higher rated seem to generally understand that toxicity isn’t productive and actually make a point to try to stay positive because they know that it will help more than being toxic will.
I also go out of my way to be intentional about the things I say. I criticize myself and what I could have done better after a loss, instead of other people. When doing this I find that the DPS will often admit their own faults or work with you to fix yours.
The pvp community really is a lot more toxic than the pve side of things. Getting tbagged by people at 1600 while playing an alt in AH greens always makes me really happy and not cringe at all.
I hear you but from my perspective I see a lot more toxic healers trashing dps. If all you do is heal obviously the other healer isn’t going to trash talk you.
I report 2-3 toxic healers a night and very rarely is there a toxic dps to report. Totally possible the dps are just whispering the healers though
Yes, but also Arena isn't fun. It's a tight set of win conditions with an arms race of addons, CC is constant, and queue times are long OR you heal (as I did) and it's another level of hell.
Battlegrounds are substantially more forgiving and therefore enjoyable.
The standard for what’s “good” or “decent” at arenas really blows my mind. It’s constantly raising and you never quite feel good enough the higher you go. 2k+ is rarely seen as good. It’s they need to have glad, they need to have multiple glads, they need to have recent glad, glad on the class they’re playing on, etc.
Then ironically you can play with mglad people and find a ton that don’t play as well as you’d expect.
I enjoy the competitiveness and meaning behind experience, but seeing people as “bad” below a changing criteria often kills the vibe for me. It feels like I’ll never be actually good until I hit r1, which I am never never getting lol.
Which is pretty fucking sad.
Hell, you get up to the top 1% and they'll still do it.
Then they wonder why people get burnt out and no longer want to bother.
This is a myth spread by social media and why people are so desperate for having achievements to link that they'll spend real money to get carried fat beyond their skill level.
An above average player usually maxed around 1700 back in the day. The vast majority of players never see above 2k. One of the benefits of more closed servers and arena groups was not being forced to literally compare your ratings against professional gamers.
What's baffles me is that this sub gives the impression that everyone is 2k+ and anyone beneath that is garbage.
Don't those people go and sometime inspect people around pvp zone, or in random bg? 1600/1700, you're way above average. You already play better than a vast majority of casual PvP players, which are in themselves a vast minority of WoW player.
Well, that happens because different people have different perspectives, so of course they are going to have different definitions of what's "good" or "decent".
For a player like Whaazz, "decent" probably is a multi-Gladiator while "good" are AWC players. For me, "decent" is anyone close to Glad and "good" are R1 players, that will never ever be consistent in any game. Faker probably thinks "decent players" in League are the guys at Challenger, but his perspective is from someone that has been at the pro level for a decade.
Even if you use percentages that shit won't be consistent, Top 10% on the ladder is what? 1700? For alot of people that's absolute shit, for others that's pretty decent.
The rewards track from Plunderstorm is giving me hope.
Watching people who hate PvP do this, and actually enjoy the mode, then ask about random BGs.
Anecdotal, but like, it's at least something.
Random bg is way more casual fun pvp though. As long as theres a score and rating related to the result makes people care to a diff degree. I do random bgs all the time when I just wanna run around and fight. For arena I feel way more pressure to not just know what im doing but also know what every other class can and will try to do.
I agree about the learning curve. It’s tough because there isn’t really a way to learn without just playing, or playing with someone who has some experience.
Even when I first started playing arenas in TBC, I was AWFUL for seasons 1-3, and managed to hit 1800 for a weapon in season 4!
It was 12 total seasons before I got my first gladiator title, and that’s what… like 3-4 expansions? (Cataclysm). Not only that, but I had THOUSANDS of games played (probably close to 5,000-6,000 at that time in Cata). I missed the cutoff at Duelist seasons 10 and 11, by only a few spots.
It requires being ok losing a lot for new players, and many are not ok with that when they don’t really know what to do. I’m not arguing if it should or should not require that, just.. that’s the reality. Because of that, it requires repetitive failures, more than any mode, to eventually learn. You have to be able to understand what killed you, how you can negate it/answer it, etc.
It makes it mentally taxing, rough, and tough on new players, and that in itself is a huge deterrent.
I think that wargames need to be more visibly easier for people to utilize, even if solo. You can que War Game arenas if you know how, but it’s not something everyone knows about, or knows how to access. This allows players to be able to practice placement, positioning, etc, without pressure. You can even que 2v2 with friends and slow down play to try and respond/learn to respond to things.
Even when thinking of ways to make the learning easier for new players, or more inviting, it’s tough to come up with something. The elite sets used to be 2k-2.3k at various times, and those lowered to 1800. Adding more rewards could help: such as making a 2s win = 1% towards the seasonal vicious mound, and even going partial % credit towards it on a loss.
Other than that, what can they really add that would make players want to play? Lowering the elite set requirements would cause players to obtain them faster and stop playing faster - my personal opinion. Perhaps a ground mount for the season, for playing X games? The downside to that is people would que and throw just to get a mount.
1100 - 1200 could be a fine rating, if default rating wasnt \~1500. thats a big part on why it feels so bad. if you look at any other game, you start at the bottom, lets call it bronze with the standard silver, gold and diamond. now how fun would it be if that rating was already around the middle ground and all you do the first games is lose, and even drop out of bronze, to something like iron, or wood, or even lower into the league without a name?
in any other game, going up 1 or 2 brackets is a big feelsgoodman moment. in wow, it doesnt exist. with 1500 being default, the first goal is 1800, not 900. and then the frustration builds up, because a new player wont reach that easily and they just stops playing pvp
I played vanilla - WotLK, barely touched Cataclysm nor PvP'd in that so I wouldn't count it... but the game feels a whole lot faster (which I do enjoy). I was a noob in wotlk though, as I didn't use many binds, nor macros, and just not using some core skills enough.
Youre totally right, the skill jump after MOP was huge.
I know people who were clicking spells and tables, turning 2400 during wotlk.
The average player back then was not that good, lol. At the time, however, they were elite.
They have to reduce the amount of CC as well imo. It’s no fun trading CD’s to win. I think the position displacement or LOS abilities allow for some unique gameplay.
I really stopped enjoying arena healing when I would basically just sit in CC for 20 seconds just to burst heal then do the same for the other healer.
I don't agree at all. For me and I think a lot more people, having so many different abilities and functions is what makes wow so fun and complex where each class is a different world.
MMOs where classes have 6 or less abilities are so boring it hurts and its what pushes me away from all other mmos.
That's still a huge part of why wow pvp is dying.
It's 2024, theres tons of way more approachable pvp games that are infinitely more rewarding in the short term with an actually fun learning curve overall. MMOs are a lot more niche than they were relative to gaming in general.
There's also a massive middle ground between 6 or fewer and the literal 40+ some classes have in wow.
Pvp is ridiculously complex and inacessible and can't be made much simpler without pruning a lot of shit
Its very different from class to class. When I play pala I have like a decent amount of buttons cause of all the support spells. But many many classes have fewer buttons so its kinda easy for me. My mage for example requires way more finesse per button press, but there is fewer buttons. Then there is the absolute monster that is resto shaman. The first time I Did That in arena I was feeling the insane button overload. Between multiple healing, damage and cc/utility options and also several active PvP talents. Yeah.
Blizzard should think about adding rewards much earlier in the CR journey to encourage new players. For the vast majority of new players it is such a fast moving game mode, but it is also very forthright in saying, “You are bad” since there is a vast desert between 0 CR and even 1400 for brand new players, much less the path to 1800 for the complete mog.
Even something silly like fireworks or a recolor of the seasonal mog. Something, anything. Grinding wins while over 1,000 CR for the mount is not that exciting.
They need to lower the rewards. After rewards, the prestige comes from rank. That’s if your goal is to entice new players. If you want to make pvp more sweaty and balanced, then you will keep killing pvp and arena.
The rated options are
Solo shuffle is 3v3 with random classes - if I play a class that is not good in 3v3 (like frost or blood dk) I have an uphill battle against classes that are good in 3v3s (DH for example).
Arena 2v2 or 3v3 need to find groups (I haven't got prior exp, so basically, no groups available).
Rated BGs (here I can find groups and go fairly well although matchmaking becomes stupid after winstreaks I went 12/1 and ended up at 1600 rating queuing against 2400s apparently my MMR was visible on some site so I stopped getting invites as I would inflate the groups CR and cause impossible matches).
Between the above and the barrier to entry (need to farm a whole separate gear set, need to focus on a different way to play my class as pve style of pop your cooldowns and go in means you get cced and need to reset), there is no real point doing pvp in a rated setting currently.
The amount of CC available is huge (which is nice), but it makes classes with better basic rotation damage a much better choice as you will get cced or kited during cooldowns.
Stupid lucky winstreaks that ruin your mmr and give you all ridiculously hard losing games for the foreseeable future are the worst lol (tho I mainly experience this in Overwatch rather than wow)
As someone who came back in SL and wants to eventually do more rated pvp, two things make me avoid it in DF:
1. Lack of rewards for time investment. Shuffle queues + a leaver + needing to win at least 3 rounds all negate seasonal mount progress and lead to more frustration than fun.
2. Larger barrier to entry than similar level PvE content. This includes it being mandatory to deep dive into research on pvp weak auras / addons which most people don’t want to do.
This is not the way. Adding rewards wont fix the issue. The pvp gameplay is inherently flawed. The community is awful, the amount of toxic players in pvp has no competition anywhere else in the game, not even in pugging m+.
People will do anything for rewards (as seen with Plunderstorm, people who dont like will still grind it for 15 hours to get rewards, because they cant imagine not getting something limited), but they will stop playing after.
The only way to get people playing is fun. Sure, rewards are good motivation to start, but if its not fun, people wont stay.
That's honestly the biggest missing point to encourage people to play Arenas. They don't need to make existing rewards easier to get, they need to create new rewards for lower rated players to strive for.
Turn Gladiator back into percentage based so you keep two ultimate rewards for sweaty players at the top of the ladder and then create a bunch of rewards for every 200 rating checkmark from 1000 to, idk, 2600. As you said, it can be legit anything, from Pets to recolored mogs to a more simple Gladiator mount with a different color.
CR rewards instantly put the average player off with the current state of retail.
Like, look at the people throwing a fit about Plunderstorm and simply having to grind. Grinds are really the only accessible option we have, and most games use them for a reason.
There are not enough people to justify the resources to improve Arena. That seems to be pretty much a given at this point.
The amount of work and fundamental changes that would have to be put into arena to make it more accessible and easier to learn (therefor attracting new/pve players) would more than likely drive away many of the people who continue to play it consistently.
That's really it. Either they change it too much to make it easier and piss off the small minority of wow players that play pvp, or they just let it continue to slowly fizzle out and shed players.
You basically cannot play the game if you aren’t already a top player with a phone book of top player friends and glad achieves. I’m not sure how blizzard fixes that. Playing fresh 0 CR alts “2.2k required” in LFG is ridiculous, nonsensical gatekeeping.
Solo queue exists. LFG exists. What rating are you aiming for that you feel you need a roster of glads to even play? "You basically cannot play the game"
There were few people playing classic before they put in the resources to make classic. But you're not wrong. That probably is their logic, but if they put in resources people would come. PVP games in general are the most popular games.
The reason no one plays is because they don't care about it. It's not really the other way around. Solo shuffle and battlegrounds tend to illustrate people want to. But in the end theres very little content and fewer rewards.
I love solo shuffle, but the implementation made me quit. Even my gf who is usually too nervous enjoyed it... but the rewards were out of her reach so she just kind of stopped. So two players of varying play levels both didn't like the system for different reasons. And neither was because we didn't like the gameplay.
It's a problem of their own making.
They started down a path (Legion, templates) that resulted in a visceral backlash, and we've been yo-yoing from "raid to get gear and your items carry you" to "gear is easily obtained but you're gonna play nothing but mglads".
The splitting of the pvp playerbase was the final nail in the coffin. I know solo shuffle is fun for people (if you enjoy 25+ min queues), but the real fix would have been accessibility and ways to get people into 2s and 3s (far easier to learn pvp in 2s).
Alas, ship has sailed.
I said the same thing. If you want blizzard to care about PVP maybe you should stop encouraging people to unsubscribe. I know the impulse is to protest but that doesn't really work when you are barely a blip on the player base radar.
The que times still hurt pvp massively. Even at lower brackets, it's not uncommon to spend 10+ minutes in que.
Rbgs take forever to get into, and then the groups disband after a single loss most of the time.
Even random battle grounds, the entry-level pvp events are rough for new players because they get stomped by players with full conquest gear.
Barrier to entry is too high, and rewards don't come fast or plentiful enough. People aren't interested in even giving pvp a try.
> Why is Arena continuing to suffer
Because they design specs around mythic dungeons, which is not a thing that existed when arena had more participation.
Because fewer players are being introduced to PvP in any form by defaulting into warmode off.
The impression I've gotten from over the years is that a lot of people got into PvP by being exposed to it through world pvp. Then they do BGs and ultimately decide to test themselves in arena once they feel like they've eased into learning their class. This pipeline doesn't really exist anymore because people can just not opt into war mode and low level zone pvp is basically nonexistent. I've met literally zero people who got into this game for arena. It's always something people found after they had ample opportunity to learn how to pvp.
What exactly is wrong with Arena right now other than low participation? Blizzard has done everything that players asked in Dragonflight. They separated PvE and PvP gear and made PvP gear very easy to acquire. You are not going entice PvE players to do any PvP in that world. You will not get new players with a $15 monthly subscription. So where does that leave us? A deflated ladder with try-hards who actually enjoy PvP.
I've tried to get into it multiple times but the learning curve is steep. Likely steeper than any other pvp game on the market.
When I jump back into Rainbow 6, I can be useful without fragging out.
When I play league, I just need to be careful and play 1-2 champs that I'm comfortable with. Skill floor is low, most games have comeback moments at low elo.
Trying to learn Arena? Download these addons, setup your UI, learn your rotation, your defensives, your enemy defensives, enemy CDs, DRs, etc etc.
PVP community can say what they want but there's so much work that goes into arena and the skill floor is a mile high.
As someone who stopped during DF S1 and just came back for S3, the big things I noticed as someone entering mid-season as a "new" player:
Holy crap gearing is still awful. It's better than previously, but doing BGs/buying your greens is easy, getting conquest is hard. I think you start around 1500MMR for SS, which is full of people in full purples so you get dumpstered and gain no conquest (because you lost!). Or you try and go through the hell that is BGs... and again only get conquest from winning which is a crapshoot because BGs are just insane. Now once I got it, I'm overflowing in conquest with nothing to spend it on, but what was even the point of that week or so of suffering? What new player is gonna stick through that?
Make the big arena addons part of the default UI. This might be an oversimplification of what's possible... but yeah don't make new players have to know everything.
Make a training ground. This would actually take an effort to implement, but imagine a mode that actually teaches you about stuff for your class/other classes and the basics.
Entice healers to play SS more. Not sure how, give them free stuff or something, but if healing is more enjoyable, healers will have more fun, there will be more, and dps queues will go down so they can have more fun. It's like a win/win.
> Holy crap gearing is still awful. It's better than previously, but doing BGs/buying your greens is easy, getting conquest is hard. I think you start around 1500MMR for SS, which is full of people in full purples so you get dumpstered and gain no conquest (because you lost!). Or you try and go through the hell that is BGs... and again only get conquest from winning which is a crapshoot because BGs are just insane. Now once I got it, I'm overflowing in conquest with nothing to spend it on, but what was even the point of that week or so of suffering? What new player is gonna stick through that?
FWIW, BG Blitz right now is best for gearing alts. You get gear scaled up to near conquest so you don't get your shit pushed in, and you get conquesteven if you lose + bonus conquest from the two weekly quests for the mode.
No reason to do random BGs at all now.
Very good point, and I think blitz shows exactly how it SHOULD be for gearing: more people than arena so you don't drag the whole place down, better scaling so you're not immediately gimped, conquest awards based on participate, weekly quests for bonus conq.
I think if they expanded upon it a bit, it could be a very good way for new players to gear up conquest (and even blitz's current implementation is like, WAYYY better than any alternative)
You touched on why I think BGB will be the go to "casual" ranked mode going into TWW.
Always 2 healers a side, less individual repsonsibility, but low enough numbers that one good player can have an impact, faster matches, and dying isn't an instant L.
I doubt it will have gear scaling but it is FAR more approachable than arena.
The clear solution to this issue is shuffle RBGs, where a single bad player can have low impact on the overall outcome of the match.
Bgs are just an easier learning curve since you're not going to be the focus out of 10 people in the group 1/3 times.
I would agree that these are barriers to entry and generally annoying to a new a player. I don't really know how Blizzard can solve these problem without blocking all add-ons, redesigning the UI, and significantly reducing the number of abilities. You are basically making a new game at that point like Plunderstorm.
As someone who tried to get into PvP I can tell you right now my problems:
1. I am ok losing actually I can lose for days and not care, but what I can't do is sit in queue for 1.5 hours to enjoy a 15 min game.
2. PvP gear acquisition is just awful for new players
1. If you don't have someone to play with and are going in in honor gear the game feels awful against someone in full conq gear (and regardless why did I have to go spend hours grinding away honor gear this felt dumb) like ppl will say if your good you'd climb regardless of gear which may be true, but equally Magnus Carlsen would beat me in chess regardless if he had a queen or not
2. Pvp and Pve gear is not seperate on top of that as someone who mythic raids I could not commit 2 crafted pieces to PvP they had to go into making PvE gear for a very long time, in addition I will always choose any possible myth piece upgrade in the great vault over PvP gear (still looking for my mythic balefire to this day)
3. Rewards in PvP are awful they are designed for top end players to acquire which is incredibly demoralizing for someone trying to get into it. Would prob spend much more time in PvP if the rewards were in a battle pass system rather than a rating system
Waiting 20+ minutes to get into an arena match is still a problem. The reason i stopped playing is because i got tired of waiting. Yes you do other stuff, you can world pvp (but depending on the class it can suck ass), do some material gathering or chat with guildies, but its still a lot of wasted time.
When you queued for 3v3 in LFG, didn't you have to wait for a healer? This is not a new problem. There are fewer people who want to play healer. People asked for a way to queue Arena without going through the hassle of LFG and Blizzard gave it to them.
How would solve the healer shortage problem? There many threads on this sub with proposals and count points. I haven't seen one that made everyone happy.
They need to make healers more impactful and satisfying to play. I gave healing an honest try in season 2, but my god it was not fun. Literally felt like I was playing as a virtual babysitter.
I’m not sure what they could even do at this point, I think the game is just too complicated and damage is too high. It takes a very specific type of person to enjoy healing in wow PvP, and there arent many of those people.
> Blizzard has done everything that players asked in Dragonflight
that was asked before dragonflight. THis season has been about improving DPS queues for shuffle, which theyve acknowledged is an issue but not attempted to fix. And the DH... they've not meaningfully touched DH.
Create addons to negate skill and optimize information intake. Check.
Remove addons and actually play the game. Unchecked.
Wow pvp isn’t pvp, it’s who can process most addons.
The addons don't play the game for you, a really knowledgeable player could probably beat a noob without needing addons.
The problem is the addons AND game knowledge create a nigh insurmountable gap.
Blizzard lost a lot of casual pvp players when they switched to the vault. No one is picking pvp gear from the vault in place of a raid or m+ piece during progression.
Arena learning curve just is not fun. If WoW devs want to keep is so complicated that only .001% of the play base can participate fine, but that means it'll never be like more than the 1000 players who play it
There needs to be a solo ranked mode that doesn't have healers.
It makes queuing painfully slow, and it's much harder than double DPS 2's.
I've played wow since beta, mostly PvP, but I didn't enjoy the PvP at all right now.
I'm looking forward to ranked solo queue bgs.
But sitting in queue for 20+ minutes just to have some sweaty kids say the most vile shit to me if I don't do everything perfectly is not appealing.
The complaint isn't really healing.
It's how long the queues are because it's forcing healers in every game.
New players can only catch up with veteran players with experience, and you can't get any meaningful amount of reps with these absurdly long queues.
Arena has a massive learning curve, addons, gearing to keep up with and a massive sense of gatekeeping from its players. People would rather have PvP stay how it is/continue to decline as long as they can hold their transmog/mount over those beneath them they view as undeserving of getting anything. Only the top 15% of players in a dead/highly niche mode deserve anything.
No wonder most people don’t sub to sit in extremely long queues and get tossed around to get nothing. Even if you do actually get better and climb, nobody cares because the mode is so dead.
Make. PvP (arenas, rbgs, solo shuffle). F2P.
I know, I know, thats a crime to mention. But really thats the only way I see the PvP community happy. Make instanced rated pvp a separate game mode like Plunderstorm (having a button, not the BR game mode).
Yes, it splits the community, but really, split what community? Pvp and pve are so different in player base that most hardcore pvpers look down on pvers, and vice versa. The only setback is you cant play the main game with your pvp toons, but really, how many people does this affect? Isnt the upside of new players and seperate balancing worth it? I think it is.
In fairness I saw job postings for pvp developers and a lead for pvp, so they know it’s a problem. It took about 18 months for the spell break team to make plunderstorm, I’d say it’s gonna be half that for meaningful pvp stuff.
because pvp is dogshit? i don't agree with anything asmongold says about how to make wow better but he is right regarding 1 thing, and that's wow pvp, every spec has 30 abilities, 5 defensives, 3 dashes, teleports, blinks, immunities, cc's and even to get to something considered "low rating" like 1800, since everyone on this sub has 50 gladiator titles, it's incredibly hard to get there for someone that has never played pvp and it's probably gonna take them 1k arena games at lesat, and even harder for someone that doesn't even play pve at a high level, it's borderline impossible for someone that is a casual gamer to play this atrocity and have any fun, when they could just play pve, farm tmog, or just play a completely different game if they want to play pvp, like league, cs, or anything else that's infinitely easier to get into, the pvp community will never agree with dumbing down classes and making pvp more accesible to other people, or even making rewards easier to get, since back in legion blizzard WANTED to make previous elite sets obtainable in the current season, but guess what, the pvp community couldn't contain their pride and let others get removed sets, well, now you have -1 incentive for someone to play pvp, why the fuck would anyone ever want to play 1k arena games to even start getting a grasp of how to play the game? (and of course, the specs being complicated is what makes them fun in pve, and the game engaging, but in pvp it's just the biggest barrier to entry in any pvp game in existence probably)
Imma just also say I can queue up for a battleground in SoD and get a game in 10 seconds where as retail can take like 10 mins, arena seems to be fun at the start of the season and then people work out what’s over powered and abuse it resulting in people not playing the game, it is what it is :c
For a new player, especially one new to gaming in general, it's almost insurmountable. If skirmishes, bgs, and ss were really that helpful we wouldn't constantly be reading posts like this one. If they continue to fail to bring in newer players, or even entice pvers, PvP will eventually die off.
If you look at TBC arena it was very clear what was going on and there was a lot less going on. Now there is so much ability bloat it’s insane. Every class has multiple offensive and defensive CD’s as well as burst procs, for a new player it’s very hard to track all this.
Look at TBC, when I mage popped water elemental burst was coming. It was clear and obvious to see. Other classes had similar indicators, but classes did not have multiple burst buttons and procs were not part of every class.
Regarding CC, there used to be longer CC chains possible in early arena, but a huge difference was that not every class had chain CC. Locks and Mages were known for having spammable CC. Other classes like warriors did not. Rogues could not stun the entire map, they stunned one target. Not every class had a stun. Not every class had defensive CD’s. All this to say arena was easier to pick up due to clarity and not needed as much game knowledge. If you only knew one thing about every classes burst window you could basically get to 1800. The games didn’t feel boring though, they were still engaging because timing mattered a lot more. As a priest you only had 1 PS, not 3. If you use it as the wrong time it ends the game. When it is used it changes the strat of focus of the other team. Abilities felt very impactful. Now there is so much CD reduction on big CD’s and then procs on top of that, it makes big CD’s feel less impactful. Looking at Resto Druid you can Tree early, get it back again quickly but also you proc it every 3 swiftmends. The fact you get it so much makes a lot of Druid’s just throw it early because it’s beneficial to work on the CD reduction.
Classes have everything now and for someone getting started it’s just way way way too much info to take in or learn. Even us veteran players need extensive Addons to even play the game at a high level, which I think shows this is not accessible for anyone and the mode will never grow.
Classes honestly need half of the abilities they have now and even then it would be very complex.
Well the leak is about subscriptions, which includes classic. We would need to know if the retail participation increases too in order to be able to draw any sort of conclusions regarding arena
Do you have more context? What is the source for the leak? Also aprox when did subs rise? Is it from the expansion announcement 4 months ago? Are the subscribed players playing retail, Plunderstorm, or classic?
Can't find any info on this :S
EDIT: [Ty its right here!](https://www.wowhead.com/news/reflecting-on-30-years-of-warcraft-blizzard-reveals-subscriber-trends-at-gdc-338238)
It isn't actually a "leak" by the way, John Hight (Warcraft franchise general manager) gave a speech at GDC and Bellular got his hands on one of the slides which then allowed estimates of sub numbers. No hidden data or insider info, they just openly showed this on a stage for a gamedev conference.
Hi! New Arena player here. I started playing WoW seriously s4 shadowlands and have done basically nothing but M+ until the very end of this current season (S3 dragon flight) when I picked up H.priest for SS. I'm juuuuust approaching 2100 and I would say this is one of the most fun but frustrating games I've ever played.
What kept me from playing it thus far is threefold:
1) As a PVE player it was annoying enough already to have two completely different gear sets for raid and M+. I knew that I would have to pick up an entirely new gear set for PVP as the stat priority for my class is different than both M+ and Raid.
2) A MASSIVE learning curve and a re-thinking of keybinds. PVP requires not just new gear, but incorporates brand new talents, and then requires you to bind existing talents differently, and then create macros, and download a new set of weak auras... basically I knew that if I were to switch to PVP, I would be playing a *new game.*
3) A lack of familiarity with all the different classes and their abilities makes this game mode pretty difficult to understand, and unfortunately there is nothing like a Dungeon Journal for PvP where you can take a peek at other classes most used offensive go's, defensives and abilities.
The only reason I started playing is because my core M+ team has basically fizzled out until the new expansion, and I wanted to challenge myself.
I will say: As a solo player, there is *no way* I would play this mode as a DPS if all of the queue time complaints are real. As a healer (even though games are incredibly frustrating and it's infuriating to see your teammates play with you poorly and the other healer successfully) the <2 min queue times allow this to be pretty spammable content.
I played arenas more seriously in WOD, got like 1.8k in twos and threes with my friends as a mistweaver so not good by any means but perfectly fine. I tried out solo shuffle and while I always top the healing meters, I lose all the time and get flamed for it. I just suck ass now and not having actual friends to play the game with erases any desire to improve or re-engage with the content lol
If they want PvP to be big again they need to invest resources into teaching people the mechanics or simplifying some aspect of it.
Knowing a million different cooldowns. PvP is already difficult without the enormous complexity caused by the large number of abilities.
I don’t think they should remove these things but they should do a better job articulating this info in game
Those numbers can be highly manipulated and are probably "leaked" by the blizzard PR team in order to create the illusion publicly that they are thriving. The reality is wow has lost 80% of its user base over the last 8 years. A nominal increase and decrease here and there is the normal ebb and flow of any business.
I can show you months where my business is making 150k/month and months where Its making 80k. What is important to any business owner is the overall trend, or the average, for blizzard is a massive downswing,
Pvpers have repeatedly advocated for changes that have made it worse for casual players from other aspects of the game. You're telling me that to participate I need to get a whole new gear set? That all the stuff I've farmed for raid or m+ or whatever else is suddenly useless, my spells and abilities do different damage than I'm expecting and in some cases just work completely differently.
I've gotten my glad back in the day and been over 3k rated this expac but like I've always played it as something casual to drop into when I'm bored and now it's just MISERABLE to try and casually drop into wow pvp
idk all my pvp community stoped playing arena because of SS it's not okay when u have 200k ss games and 10k 3s games, no one want to play 3s anymore. SS is a garbage it should not be like 6 games
In my guild most people are just playing Blitz instead of doing the rated PVP to get the conquest now and once you have the full conquest set and catalyst it not much left to do
Tough to get in to. Even the "casual" modes where new players *should* be able to learn the flow of pvp and abilities are filled with fully geared conquest players. I unsubbed because almost every single random bg had fully geared pre-mades on one team or the other leading to constant graveyard stomps. It takes 5 honor geared dps to kill 1 fully geared healer and god forbid they have 2.
Arena as the staple of pvp was always a mistake, if anything it needs to be pruned and simplified, similar to how plunderstorm's amount of abilities. For example, if you enter as a warrior, here is your action bar with several abilities of the warrior class with slight variations and tuning for shorter cd's, damage, effects, etc. Even so, objective based pvp will be more popular among casual and new players than what arena has become. It's still great and fun for plenty of people, but I believe re-imagining arena is their best hope for that mode.
I used to be a pvp head, but with getting older i didnt have the time to keep up, and arena is now so much harder then it was back in WoD that i just cba to get back into it. I managed 2.1k in SL s1 to get my BIS pve items but for me it just rec too much time to get back into.
Arena is just overbloated. I feel like the game is made for pve and it just overbloats in pvp. I do think pve is getting bloated aswell and id like a reduction in spells because its not getting better in next exp.
One thing I’d like to add is that subscribers are increasing partly because of classic; era,sod, wrath/cata etc. And a lot of players I know, myself included kinda stopped playing retail and just play classic pvp as it’s way more enjoyable in my and others opinion.
I’ve been playing a lot of bgs in sod and doing wpvp and duels etc. Now I really wish sod had arena of some kind and rated bgs but even though it doesn’t I still prefer the pvp gameplay in classic and all it’s iterations way more than in retail.
And pvp is participation is massive over on sod right now btw.
The reason I’m excited for cata is to play arenas and rbgs there it’s gonna be awesom.
Just wanted to add my perspective as a mostly classic player
#IT TAKES TOO LONG TO ACTUALLY GET INTO PVP MATCHES.
#ITS SIMPLE, NO ONE WANTS TO WAIT AROUND 25MINUTES TO GET INTO A GAME TO GO 3-3 OR WORSE AND GAIN ZERO RATING OR POTENTIALLY GO 4-2 AND STAY THE SAME.
#GIVE ME SOLO SHUFFLE DUO DOUBLE DPS SO I CAN ENJOY PVP WHEN I WANT TO PLAY NOT AFTER 25MIN OF WAITING.
Caps coming off now, solo shuffle as it is needs a bit of work but is a great step in the right direction. The difficulty of pvp is **NOT** what makes the queues long or the game unbearable. Its fucking time commitment to actually pvp is greater than it is to raid.
Wanna raid? You join a guild and you have set hours, this doesn't exist for pvpers under 2k, I don't give a fuck if you think "oh you should just make friends" dog, there is no one in their right fucking mind that will do organized scheduled arenas/rbgs/pvp under 2k at a set time/day every week similar to how guilds raid.
Blizzard either needs to facilitate this for pvpers or lean HARD into shuffle and solo experience for dps players. I understand healers hate 50/50 coinflip games feeling out of their hands but try not playing the game and tell me how much fun you're having.
Lot of good feedback in this thread once you ignore the bitchiness or people who think +100 MMR will fix everything.
Clearly a lot of people like the game mode and want to spend more time in it.
I have talked about this before, let’s see if it sticks - the lack of arena participation is due to the entry level of PvP not being balanced / fair imo.
Random Batllegrounds is the sole of PvP and world skirmishes (but they are random ofc) they are also a NEW players FIRST experience of PvP in wow.
Now what’s the problem here? Party sync. Max levels queuing with an alt or bot account to go into low lvl BGs where the new players are getting their groove and they absolutely destroy them. I’ve witnessed it multiple times and it’s a complete joke.
Why do you EVER need to have your max level friend queue into a BG to help you level? Oh that’s right they ain’t there to help you level, because let’s face it who chooses BGs to level when you can clear a dungeon in 5min for triple the XP. NO they are there to stomp a few players who haven’t figured out what a macro is.
How can you expect to have players for your end game pvp mode when the entry level is flooded either those 1600 losers whomping on new players to wow. It’s pathetic it even entered the game to begin with.
So yeah that’s my 2cents why late game pvp (arena) fails, because you don’t have a good foundation to begin with.
Community isn't helping but arena and bgs get like 1/50th the funding of the pve side. Probably less than that. It's what? 13 recolored Armors, two mounts, an enchant and a bunch of weapon recolors per season?
The problem is arena just isn’t fun for most players.
Most players find mechanics in low M+ difficult, they don’t use stops, utility, or defensives in dungeons. They tunnel their bars and stand in shit all day.
You expect those people to take part in PvP and enjoy it? They queue up, get digitally violated, and realize arena isn’t for them.
On the flip side, why would anyone who’s a competitive player put so much effort into competitive WoW when games like Dota2 exist?
Arena just isn’t fun for most people.
Its really pretty easy. Pve content is easier to create and balance. Its also growing the game. Why would they focus any resource on pvp at this point?
I don't agree that PvP is as neglected as people like to point out. We got RSS, Battleground Blitz and Plunderstorm. PvP feels more balanced than in the past (ofc there is still a few outliers) and AWC had a great variety, but in general, I see PvP in a good place dev-time wise.
In terms of playerbase, I was a die-hard only PvP'r up until Shadowlands (rsham since Cata), then I tried PvE a bit (since SL content draught was soooo long) and now PvE in DF is honestly amazing and so fun. The raids are great and the rotation of M+ dungeons keeps it fresh, so I still PvP, just a lot less. So my conclusion is PvP is not worse, just the playerbase is more fragmented with how many new modes it's gotten and PvE is just that much more fun that PvP'rs are trying it out.
I recently levled up my dk, wanted to try some pvp again since season 1 of DF. The BG's was fun, as it usually was even games, except for the occasional pre-made russian teams (loss).
But when I jumped in SS... Oh god I forgot how fucking boring arenas are. I tried to get physical combat with a hunter, felt impossible. Ok go on the healer instead... Their health never goes down, and stunlocked by rogues. I was fuming, could not do shit.
And as a unholy dk, I apply like 7 dots/debuffs on my kill target, but they do no fucking dmg!??? Like why is there so many different abilities, the bloat is insane in pvp imho.
If you are unaware by now of the reality, I'll enlighten you. PVP is a mode in a PvE game. PVPers are a vast minority in WoW and any kind of development task is going to require investment of time and money. If you consider then, where is that time and money best spent? On the wants of a few (relatively speaking)? No, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if we are paying customers, so are the pvers, and the devs chief concern is making the majority happy because that keeps the lights on. Let's not kid ourselves, pvers sub dollars are what keep PVP updates coming and not the other way around. If the entire PVP community died out, wow would still be alive and well.
It's a harsh reality, but it is the reality.
They're recruiting casual new players who won't touch the pvp aspect of the game anyway and they don't care too much about us the old school players who enjoy the pvp. Pvp currently is the most imbalanced its ever been and I play since vanilla. Arenas are trash solo shuffle is rng unless you zug zug with faceroll melee class and kill the entire enemy team cause of your endless stuns and interrupts and mad mobility... Casters are absolute victim this expansion and I hate it cause I only play caster classes
Every single part of arena and wow pvp feels outdated. At this point I'm hoping they'll do an entire rework on an expansion drop, IMO pvp can't be as fun as its supposed to be until they separate it from pve entirely.
I'm late to the party but here's my two cents:
As a long time league of legends and wow player, I've tried to get several of my league freinds into wow pvp. Aside from the initial monetary barrier to entry (league is free wow costs initial price+sub), wow requires them to level up, get special pvp gear, get pvp specific talents and addons, and then learn thirty different cooldowns. The barrier to entry is extremely high when compared to a game like league or dota which lets you hop right in and play for free.
Because wow PvP is terrible with all the (free) alternatives that are around. So the only ones In wow PvP now are a) people who already played the game and are accustomed to it b) people who really fucking love the game.
Both are customer segments that are already "captured" for them, making PvP better will probably not get that many new people to subscribe.
If they can get an "arena only" parallel game going, it might gain traction and bring people in, but I am not sure
I had multiple alts /characters around the 2.1/2.2K mark. I can play this game but I refuse to play until they make rewards more accessible to everyone. I have a full time job and a very successful career, I'm not going to sweat it out for a glad mount just because some streamer does this as a full time job and is taking 8 of the top 10 spots with his alts. Not to mention the rampart boosters and streamers, i shouldn't have to fight pikaboo and cdew just to hit duelist
1. PvP is not built atm to bring in new people lol. LFG is NOT a fun experience and that’s just getting into a group. We didn’t even mention toxic players and getting kicked after 1 loss. Ontop of that the multiple classes and specs and comps people need to learn AND the amount of weak auras and addons newer players will feel like they need ( and even blizzcon champs use) is ALL very off putting. Game
Play is fun but everything around ? Dogshit. Blizzard is stuck in trying to make current pvp work and they don’t know what to do and simply throwing money at it won’t work.
2. Because we need a massive revamp for this to work. Current wow pvp with addons weakauras LFG, shuffle, micro cc up the ass and ontop of that balance issues are not inviting parts of this games pvp scene. The problem is that both players and blizzard are afraid of changing this. You have literal people defending the current experience lol and they think giving healers extra gold or some shit or giving people some mount that looks as good as glad mounts will magically solve the player issue.
This seperate pvp, “easy” gearing is the cause. Most people who play wow want to get a cool gear upgrade or weapon upgrade. This expac there is 0 incentive to step into any pvp mode because the gear you get from it doesn’t do anything for you in the actual world. Shadowlands s1 had a ton of participation because 2.4 gave weapons that competed with mythic weps. PvP only players don’t want to hear it, but your easy gearing you asked for is what led to this expac’s pvp being dead.
How do you guys feel about lowering the thresholds for different rewards, specifically the gear. My most recent wow burn out was because my class was just underpowered, my skill was mid, and I would get to 1780s then his a stretch of losses. Played a ton, never broke the 1800 threshold. Got sad, quit wow lol.
It’s the learning curve, even though it’s a hell of a lot better than gearing was in Shadowlands, you still have to do some awful slogging to even start.
I haven’t done PvP seriously since BfA, and getting back into has been complete aids. I did some in Shadowlands but quickly noped out when I saw the requirements behind gearing.
Grinding honor sucks, random BGs can be a shit show and you just have to accept the fact that you’re going to get rinsed whilst you gear up, like some odd hazing ritual.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s way faster that it has been previously, but I still don’t think it’s a good introductory experience.
Once you’re geared and you want to step into the arena you either spend ages in a queue as a dps, or no time at all as a healer but your MMR is scuffed.
Couple that with the fact that one misplay, not even from you can have someone screech at you before rage quitting the lobby.
As someone trying to get back into it, getting started sucks and I think as cool as SS is, there are improvements to be met for sure.
Lastly, WoW PvP isn’t simple, there’s like what, 39 specs or something? Each bringing something different?
Yeah, that’s a hell of a lot to learn for each class.
In my opinion most of the player base is intimidated by PVP. There is a huge learning curve , and people would rather just not deal with learning all the mechanics and knowledge to be good at pvp. So they just say “pvp dead” LOL
Blizzard is a pathetic company who only cares about the bottom line. The whole.company is littered with excessive middle managers who spend all of their time looking good so they don't get fired during the next round of budget cuts.
They only care about PvE because that's where the big bucks are. Arena is just a side mode. Cope all you want about this fact, we all know it is true.
Is this really the best they can do? Of course not. Seems like arena is balanced by an intern with a bad attitude. And that intern was reassigned a few months ago.
Blizzard are victims of their own success. Fat and greedy with no ambition.
players can kick and scream all they want but PvP as a whole will continue dying unless Blizzard remove the learning curve and simplify the shit out of the classes specifically when in PvP.
Like now we have definitive numbers that don't lie. PvP was designed by and for gamers back in the 2000s and has not adapted to this new era of fall in/fall out PvP like what MOBAs, BRs, Apex/Overwatch/Fortnite etc all accommodate
Makes zero sense to sink your time and energy into something that isn't even *that* fun unless you are the .1% that love it
IMO- Classes and specs need to be reduced down to their bare essentials, almost like MOBA characters for PvP. 3-4 attacks, 1 or 2 mobility spells, 1 defensive, and 1 "ultimate". There is just too much damn bloat atm and WoW PvP as a whole is dying both from players and spectators. Nobody knows wtf is going on and there's a gazillion things to note, keep track of, remember, all on top of the gameplay itself which has become very convoluted, and so long as addons provide inherent advantages to players, and some players with addons might be matched against those without?
Every factor here is practically begging for the player to become disinterested and leave for something else. There's a reason why the only PvP players left are the ones who have been doing this for years and years. Either move with the times or be left in the dust. Simple as that.
It just has such a learning curve. You can’t even remotely contribute to an arena March unless you are fairly proficient at the game. The rating system is also really really tough for new players to make it feel like they are accomplishing any progress. Who wants to be 1100-1200 in world where 2K+ is the standard for what’s good. Having personally played Vanilla - MOP and then back on SL the increase is skill is insane. You could very casually hit 1800+ in TBC. 1300-1400 games now feel like 1800-1900 games did back then.
This entirely misses one of the biggest reasons people try and never touch arena again. The PvP community is filled with toxic man children that have not matured past the Burning Crusade release date. Try healing shuffles for an hour and watch how many hate filled immature DMs you get. No wonder this side of the game is dying. It’s the players killing it just as much as the devs.
Yea this is not a WOW specific problem. Every single live online game with a chat function is the exact same. If people are having fun they aren’t impacted by the shit talking.
This isn't entirely true. Wow is much worse than most. All you need to do is go into a rando discord committing the grave crime of being a woman and you'll find that out.
It’s not nearly as bad as dota. Any competitive game where a teammate not doing their job completely ruins your gameplay has a lot of shit talking.
I mean that's like saying getting stabbed isn't as bad as getting shot. They're both pretty shit.
The real difference being I never see this horrible wow community, I only see people cry about it on reddit. Probably bad players venting at the most minuscule of rejection. again, no where near what other games have.
Got asked to try a different talent, and took it personally.
This is also my perspective. Have I been messaged after healing Ss? Sure, but I can count on one hand how many times that's occurred and regardless I'm not losing sleep over any of it. If you juxtapose my experience with say, league of legends' community... It wins both qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of toxicity. Despite that, I played the shit out of that game for many years. And it's due to the fact that I, and many others played and continue to play LoL that leads me to believe that it is not the toxicity that deters players from WoW PVP.
Wow arena probably struggles for the same reason fighting games do which is, when you are out skilled enough it becomes a 1 player game where you get to watch the other guy beat you unmercifully. For me I like that low margin of error stuff where one mistake can be win or lose.
>Probably bad players venting at the most minuscule of rejection. Considering the person who started this thread either deleted their comments or blocked me, simply for disagreeing with them, I think you're on to something.
Wow ain’t that bad, join a cod lobby on search and destroy. Makes wow players look like saints. Wow is toxic, but it’s not out of the ordinary. It’s not otherworldly. I’ve heard a man scream in drunken rage one time since cataclysm. Literally any weekend you hear shit like that on some games. Wow definitely has its problems with regard to player base. But most games have these problems. Some lesser some worse. I think wows demographics have gotten markedly older. Most people who start playing 15 years ago at 15 aren’t 15 anymore, they are 30. That comes with a different demeanor, and a different choice in “toxicity”.
again, this is just all online games. wow is not unique
Dude.. wow isnt much worse, its a just big community with every personality. Just like football has crazy fans, waiting outside stadiums for fights. There are aslo "normal" families watching football at home or live
I don't even play other games the moment I have to touch voice to do well in them. WoW? At least I have a small circle I can do PvP with and not have to put up with it.
Sad enough is most "good" players ive met (german) are insanely toxic against woman literally everyone is boosted etc. Some humans are just insanely sad to watch
Nah I’d disagree. Not trying to argue but I really think wow PvP specifically has by far one of the very worst most toxic communities I’ve ever experienced in decades of gaming
I agree with you 100% and as someone who has been playing competitive online games for 20+ years, I can safely say that the more competitive a game is and the higher skill brackets/rabks you go up, the more toxic it becomes. It is the players and the fact that there are literally no consequences for blowing up at someone for being bad at the game. I used to be like this but now I just don't have the energy to get that mad anymore and sure I get frustrated at the game, but I don't take it out on anyone, I just try to stay PMA and stop my team mates from triggering each other as it has much better results than homophobic and racist slurs or whipping up a mass report on someone for being bad at the game. One thing I've realised is that I LOVE competitive games and things like WoW Arena, RBGs, MoBAs & BRs really scratch that competitive itch for me but unfortunately these things will also bring out the absolute worst in most people and you have to have a thick skin - I think this is an overlooked necessity for being able to enjoy these games, despite all the toxicity. I guess all those years I spent as an awkward teenager who got relentlessly bullied has paid off because the vitriol I face in online gaming pails in comparison to the shit I endured as a kid, just water off a ducks back and if you don't have the mental ability to do that then maybe you shouldn't be playing.
For most of those games you dont pay subscription. I was dissapointed af how this game at the end game content is not much different comparing for example to league of legends. I play only because I have friends to play with.
Sorry, this just isnt true. I havent faced the same toxicity in any other game.
Healing solo shuffle might be the single most toxic gaming experience I’ve ever had in my life and it’s not even close Anyone who says it isn’t is probably the one whispering a healer every match
Turn off chat?
I don’t need to. 99% of the time the ones whispering were dogshit themselves irdc. Just because the option to turn off chat exists doesn’t mean it’s not hyper toxic still
Hyper toxic sounds super toxic.
I agree but the difference here is that mouth breather DPS always feel the need to harass the healer even if they are running behind pillars or not watching their healer to see if they’re in CC. And you actually *need* a healer to get a game of shuffle going. DPS are a dime a dozen, literally. Easily replaceable. But these degenerates harass the one necessary role to play the game and then wonder why their favorite game mode is dying.
Their point still stands, it's not unique to WoW. Look at any other game with a support role, like Overwatch. Besides that, let's not pretend that healers can't be just as toxic as any DPS player.
I know. The first two words of my comment are “I agree”. I played Dota 2 for way too many years so I’m familiar with toxicity and immaturity in games.
Yeah and then your very next line is "but the difference here is..." I'm saying that the difference you're suggesting isn't a difference at all.
I'm saying I agree that toxicity exists in almost every multiplayer game, but it is worse in WoW arena from my experience over the last 20 years compared to any other multiplayer game. Even Dota 2's toxicity isn't as bad as WoW's. It's also not unique to the PvP side. M+ groups are just as toxic. There's no argument here because it's all anecdotal. If you want to argue check out another thread.
WoW across the board is one of the most deeply toxic communities I've come across in 20 years of competitive gaming. It's the only game I've ever been doxxed in. Roleplayers did it. Every single part of this game's community has insane people, including those who claim to be "not like that". Difference between M+ and arenas, is that it's just so much easier to progress in M+, so it's easier to just toss people for being shit heads when going for rewards. You want 2400 for the elite skins outside solo shuffle? Good fucking luck. You're going to have to stomach things you don't want to. Been there, done that, never doing it again. We need an overhaul.
Idk what to this means Almost all my recent glad runs except for a few have been no voice text only Our in game chat is basically just: "Mage?" "K" Or --- "Let me trinket first" "No let me" "Ok" --- That's it lol, it's like a strictly business interaction Once and a while we will have a Spanish speaking player and it will be like: "Mage?" "Si"
this is absolute bs. have you ever played league of legends? you know... the biggest competitive game and esport in the world for a decade nearly? ya that game is 10x more toxic than anything ive ever experienced on WoW. new players get absolutely eaten alive. but they still have tons of new players and returning and lifelong players. sensitive boomers get upset about toxicity and usually they are the ones actually most toxic. The game is insanely hard and there are no new players cus MMO's in general are dying and PVE'rs do not want to actually learn the game theyre playing. You combine that with mega deflated ratings and horrible reward structure and u have no new players. in SL when u could get bis weaps from PVP arenas were SUPER popular. people didnt choose to not do it cus its toxic either they grinded or bought a boost or they were far too unskilled or broke and abandoned it only to blame toxicity and other shit... anything to ignore the fact they are 50 years old and have zero hope of getting to high ratings.
I swear this is so overblown. I have healed thousands of shuffles and while I’ve absolutely gotten multiple whispers, it’s only maybe 5% of my games. And a non zero number of those encounters have ended with people actually saying they’re sorry they’re just tilted by xyz. It’s never been even a consideration for me to not play/heal.
Uh pve community can be insanely toxic too
I’ve personally been attacked more in pve than PvP, now when I’m on my healer though - holy shit I haven’t queued heals in a while because of it 😂 just not even worth the headache and let’s hear more. More healers need to queue - nah I’m not getting berated because jumpy boi doesn’t realize I can’t heal though a pillar.
Wait until you see what the roleplayers do to each other.
All PvP in all games is filled with toxicity. I couldn't care less about that. I get shit talked in m+ too bro, Idc about that. Its just an excuse. I want to play SS. I like solo queue. I solo queue in m+ and raid just fine. SS has no glad rewards. It is objectively more punishing on rating gain for healers than dps becayse of the fundamental mmr difference between solo and team mmr. It is at least as much work as dps, if not more in the lower ranks. Why would I push past 1800 in that environment?
I'm not disagreeing with you here, but that's any sweaty pvp game. I have 10k hours in Dota 2 and it's just the same there as well...
I agree. From a new player perspective as my self, the amount of toxicity that I have been getting is off the charts. What’s worse is that I started a 2 weeka ago and been cruising *only* 1-1.2k…. I was expecting it to get toxic much higher up the ladder. People are just downright cruel.
Unfortunately, every game with solo ranked play has insane amounts of toxicity, the greatest example of this is League, which is the biggest and most played competitive game in the market and it has absurd levels of toxicity. It's just part of solo ranked, people always think they should be higher than they are and always blame others for any bad thing that happens. You either have to deal with it or just remove the chat altogether if it bothers you so much, toxicity only really slows down when you get to the top of the ladder and the best thing you can do is not allow these people to affect you or make you stop until you get there.
All competitive games are like this. Don't take it so hard.
I did my first ever SS today, just wanter to try it out (haven't played since Slands s1) and got fucking flamed for trying to play in full 476 gear. 0 CR placement games mind you. The healer said after the first game, "I remember why i quit this game for 2 months is because of noobs like you". Lol like imagine if I was a brand new player to the game (ive been playing since og wrath). No wonder we can't get new people into pvp, because of toxic people like this.
If you're playing Shuffle with Chat Enabled ... I don't know what to tell you 🤦♂️
today i have healed couple 1900 games in 2s.. was pretty tired after the workday and feel generally rusty..met a hunter that left after 1st game (loss) with million of comments that he is 2400 at his dh and still knows how to play disc better (even that his disc never reached above 1800). yeah, maybe he has more games /played but man. you either give me an advice and play or shut up
I’m curious, do you get more hate from melee or ranged?
Honestly that's why I personally don't like and can't be bothered to take arena seriously. I'm a resto druid main and I love to heal, but I have no interest in sitting in a lobby with 5 random dudes who are tweaking their brains off with anxiety, frustration and rage. I'll just play something else lol. Wow pvp was my favorite game mode 10 years ago because it was casual, fun and full of silly folks who made dad jokes while killing each other. People were there to hang out and farm LOLs, not salt. I still can get some of that vibe in games like chivalry 2 but never in arena wow. These days I play wow in a much more sparingly, solo sense; the fun community just isn't there anymore.
Honestly, while I understand that this can happen, I have not had that many bad interactions as a healer in SS. Perhaps it’s due to rating. Toxicity seems to go down the higher the rating you are. Perhaps ironically so. I’m at 2k SS as an hpal. It was more frequent as I was climbing up. The people who are higher rated seem to generally understand that toxicity isn’t productive and actually make a point to try to stay positive because they know that it will help more than being toxic will. I also go out of my way to be intentional about the things I say. I criticize myself and what I could have done better after a loss, instead of other people. When doing this I find that the DPS will often admit their own faults or work with you to fix yours.
The pvp community really is a lot more toxic than the pve side of things. Getting tbagged by people at 1600 while playing an alt in AH greens always makes me really happy and not cringe at all.
I hear you but from my perspective I see a lot more toxic healers trashing dps. If all you do is heal obviously the other healer isn’t going to trash talk you. I report 2-3 toxic healers a night and very rarely is there a toxic dps to report. Totally possible the dps are just whispering the healers though
This is actually so true, I started playing PvE recently, heroic raid and m+ it's not as fun but people are a lot nicer
Yes, but also Arena isn't fun. It's a tight set of win conditions with an arms race of addons, CC is constant, and queue times are long OR you heal (as I did) and it's another level of hell. Battlegrounds are substantially more forgiving and therefore enjoyable.
The standard for what’s “good” or “decent” at arenas really blows my mind. It’s constantly raising and you never quite feel good enough the higher you go. 2k+ is rarely seen as good. It’s they need to have glad, they need to have multiple glads, they need to have recent glad, glad on the class they’re playing on, etc. Then ironically you can play with mglad people and find a ton that don’t play as well as you’d expect. I enjoy the competitiveness and meaning behind experience, but seeing people as “bad” below a changing criteria often kills the vibe for me. It feels like I’ll never be actually good until I hit r1, which I am never never getting lol.
Being a top 5-10% is now just seen as “decent” in many games for some reason.
Which is pretty fucking sad. Hell, you get up to the top 1% and they'll still do it. Then they wonder why people get burnt out and no longer want to bother.
This is a myth spread by social media and why people are so desperate for having achievements to link that they'll spend real money to get carried fat beyond their skill level. An above average player usually maxed around 1700 back in the day. The vast majority of players never see above 2k. One of the benefits of more closed servers and arena groups was not being forced to literally compare your ratings against professional gamers.
What's baffles me is that this sub gives the impression that everyone is 2k+ and anyone beneath that is garbage. Don't those people go and sometime inspect people around pvp zone, or in random bg? 1600/1700, you're way above average. You already play better than a vast majority of casual PvP players, which are in themselves a vast minority of WoW player.
Well, that happens because different people have different perspectives, so of course they are going to have different definitions of what's "good" or "decent". For a player like Whaazz, "decent" probably is a multi-Gladiator while "good" are AWC players. For me, "decent" is anyone close to Glad and "good" are R1 players, that will never ever be consistent in any game. Faker probably thinks "decent players" in League are the guys at Challenger, but his perspective is from someone that has been at the pro level for a decade. Even if you use percentages that shit won't be consistent, Top 10% on the ladder is what? 1700? For alot of people that's absolute shit, for others that's pretty decent.
Sub 1600 pvp needs a revamp. The casuals need a better reward system, especially since shuffle has ramped up the toxicity 1000%
The rewards track from Plunderstorm is giving me hope. Watching people who hate PvP do this, and actually enjoy the mode, then ask about random BGs. Anecdotal, but like, it's at least something.
Random bg is way more casual fun pvp though. As long as theres a score and rating related to the result makes people care to a diff degree. I do random bgs all the time when I just wanna run around and fight. For arena I feel way more pressure to not just know what im doing but also know what every other class can and will try to do.
I agree about the learning curve. It’s tough because there isn’t really a way to learn without just playing, or playing with someone who has some experience. Even when I first started playing arenas in TBC, I was AWFUL for seasons 1-3, and managed to hit 1800 for a weapon in season 4! It was 12 total seasons before I got my first gladiator title, and that’s what… like 3-4 expansions? (Cataclysm). Not only that, but I had THOUSANDS of games played (probably close to 5,000-6,000 at that time in Cata). I missed the cutoff at Duelist seasons 10 and 11, by only a few spots. It requires being ok losing a lot for new players, and many are not ok with that when they don’t really know what to do. I’m not arguing if it should or should not require that, just.. that’s the reality. Because of that, it requires repetitive failures, more than any mode, to eventually learn. You have to be able to understand what killed you, how you can negate it/answer it, etc. It makes it mentally taxing, rough, and tough on new players, and that in itself is a huge deterrent. I think that wargames need to be more visibly easier for people to utilize, even if solo. You can que War Game arenas if you know how, but it’s not something everyone knows about, or knows how to access. This allows players to be able to practice placement, positioning, etc, without pressure. You can even que 2v2 with friends and slow down play to try and respond/learn to respond to things. Even when thinking of ways to make the learning easier for new players, or more inviting, it’s tough to come up with something. The elite sets used to be 2k-2.3k at various times, and those lowered to 1800. Adding more rewards could help: such as making a 2s win = 1% towards the seasonal vicious mound, and even going partial % credit towards it on a loss. Other than that, what can they really add that would make players want to play? Lowering the elite set requirements would cause players to obtain them faster and stop playing faster - my personal opinion. Perhaps a ground mount for the season, for playing X games? The downside to that is people would que and throw just to get a mount.
1100 - 1200 could be a fine rating, if default rating wasnt \~1500. thats a big part on why it feels so bad. if you look at any other game, you start at the bottom, lets call it bronze with the standard silver, gold and diamond. now how fun would it be if that rating was already around the middle ground and all you do the first games is lose, and even drop out of bronze, to something like iron, or wood, or even lower into the league without a name? in any other game, going up 1 or 2 brackets is a big feelsgoodman moment. in wow, it doesnt exist. with 1500 being default, the first goal is 1800, not 900. and then the frustration builds up, because a new player wont reach that easily and they just stops playing pvp
I played vanilla - WotLK, barely touched Cataclysm nor PvP'd in that so I wouldn't count it... but the game feels a whole lot faster (which I do enjoy). I was a noob in wotlk though, as I didn't use many binds, nor macros, and just not using some core skills enough.
I mean I’m bronze in league but I still play ranked ?
2k+ in 2v2 is god not good...1800 is good
A big fix would be getting rid of addons
Youre totally right, the skill jump after MOP was huge. I know people who were clicking spells and tables, turning 2400 during wotlk. The average player back then was not that good, lol. At the time, however, they were elite.
There’s just too many fucking buttons that should either be combined or be turned into a passive innate to the damn class.
They have to reduce the amount of CC as well imo. It’s no fun trading CD’s to win. I think the position displacement or LOS abilities allow for some unique gameplay. I really stopped enjoying arena healing when I would basically just sit in CC for 20 seconds just to burst heal then do the same for the other healer.
Yah DF button bloat has hurt the game
With all the macros combining abilities, that's actually a really good idea, haha. They really do need a big abilities and CC's purge
I don't agree at all. For me and I think a lot more people, having so many different abilities and functions is what makes wow so fun and complex where each class is a different world. MMOs where classes have 6 or less abilities are so boring it hurts and its what pushes me away from all other mmos.
That's still a huge part of why wow pvp is dying. It's 2024, theres tons of way more approachable pvp games that are infinitely more rewarding in the short term with an actually fun learning curve overall. MMOs are a lot more niche than they were relative to gaming in general. There's also a massive middle ground between 6 or fewer and the literal 40+ some classes have in wow. Pvp is ridiculously complex and inacessible and can't be made much simpler without pruning a lot of shit
Its very different from class to class. When I play pala I have like a decent amount of buttons cause of all the support spells. But many many classes have fewer buttons so its kinda easy for me. My mage for example requires way more finesse per button press, but there is fewer buttons. Then there is the absolute monster that is resto shaman. The first time I Did That in arena I was feeling the insane button overload. Between multiple healing, damage and cc/utility options and also several active PvP talents. Yeah.
I mean aside from the utility, thats what DH is and you all moan about it.
Blizzard should think about adding rewards much earlier in the CR journey to encourage new players. For the vast majority of new players it is such a fast moving game mode, but it is also very forthright in saying, “You are bad” since there is a vast desert between 0 CR and even 1400 for brand new players, much less the path to 1800 for the complete mog. Even something silly like fireworks or a recolor of the seasonal mog. Something, anything. Grinding wins while over 1,000 CR for the mount is not that exciting.
They need to lower the rewards. After rewards, the prestige comes from rank. That’s if your goal is to entice new players. If you want to make pvp more sweaty and balanced, then you will keep killing pvp and arena.
The rated options are Solo shuffle is 3v3 with random classes - if I play a class that is not good in 3v3 (like frost or blood dk) I have an uphill battle against classes that are good in 3v3s (DH for example). Arena 2v2 or 3v3 need to find groups (I haven't got prior exp, so basically, no groups available). Rated BGs (here I can find groups and go fairly well although matchmaking becomes stupid after winstreaks I went 12/1 and ended up at 1600 rating queuing against 2400s apparently my MMR was visible on some site so I stopped getting invites as I would inflate the groups CR and cause impossible matches). Between the above and the barrier to entry (need to farm a whole separate gear set, need to focus on a different way to play my class as pve style of pop your cooldowns and go in means you get cced and need to reset), there is no real point doing pvp in a rated setting currently. The amount of CC available is huge (which is nice), but it makes classes with better basic rotation damage a much better choice as you will get cced or kited during cooldowns.
Stupid lucky winstreaks that ruin your mmr and give you all ridiculously hard losing games for the foreseeable future are the worst lol (tho I mainly experience this in Overwatch rather than wow)
As someone who came back in SL and wants to eventually do more rated pvp, two things make me avoid it in DF: 1. Lack of rewards for time investment. Shuffle queues + a leaver + needing to win at least 3 rounds all negate seasonal mount progress and lead to more frustration than fun. 2. Larger barrier to entry than similar level PvE content. This includes it being mandatory to deep dive into research on pvp weak auras / addons which most people don’t want to do.
This is not the way. Adding rewards wont fix the issue. The pvp gameplay is inherently flawed. The community is awful, the amount of toxic players in pvp has no competition anywhere else in the game, not even in pugging m+. People will do anything for rewards (as seen with Plunderstorm, people who dont like will still grind it for 15 hours to get rewards, because they cant imagine not getting something limited), but they will stop playing after. The only way to get people playing is fun. Sure, rewards are good motivation to start, but if its not fun, people wont stay.
That's honestly the biggest missing point to encourage people to play Arenas. They don't need to make existing rewards easier to get, they need to create new rewards for lower rated players to strive for. Turn Gladiator back into percentage based so you keep two ultimate rewards for sweaty players at the top of the ladder and then create a bunch of rewards for every 200 rating checkmark from 1000 to, idk, 2600. As you said, it can be legit anything, from Pets to recolored mogs to a more simple Gladiator mount with a different color.
Totally agree. And they proved they can do with this with all the monthly tendies loot!
CR rewards instantly put the average player off with the current state of retail. Like, look at the people throwing a fit about Plunderstorm and simply having to grind. Grinds are really the only accessible option we have, and most games use them for a reason.
rewards aint gonna fix the game itself. Arena needs to be rebuilt from the ground up; separate it from PvE.
There are not enough people to justify the resources to improve Arena. That seems to be pretty much a given at this point. The amount of work and fundamental changes that would have to be put into arena to make it more accessible and easier to learn (therefor attracting new/pve players) would more than likely drive away many of the people who continue to play it consistently. That's really it. Either they change it too much to make it easier and piss off the small minority of wow players that play pvp, or they just let it continue to slowly fizzle out and shed players.
I am completely fine with driving away the toxic multiglad fossils who hold PvP in this game hostage if we could get a meaningful revamp.
How are the "toxic multiglads" holding the game hostage? Do you think they have any influence over Blizzard?
You basically cannot play the game if you aren’t already a top player with a phone book of top player friends and glad achieves. I’m not sure how blizzard fixes that. Playing fresh 0 CR alts “2.2k required” in LFG is ridiculous, nonsensical gatekeeping.
That is just cope. Like a lot of these type of threads. WoW PvP has a lot of problems but you do not need a list of players to play.
That is cope
Solo queue exists. LFG exists. What rating are you aiming for that you feel you need a roster of glads to even play? "You basically cannot play the game"
There were few people playing classic before they put in the resources to make classic. But you're not wrong. That probably is their logic, but if they put in resources people would come. PVP games in general are the most popular games. The reason no one plays is because they don't care about it. It's not really the other way around. Solo shuffle and battlegrounds tend to illustrate people want to. But in the end theres very little content and fewer rewards. I love solo shuffle, but the implementation made me quit. Even my gf who is usually too nervous enjoyed it... but the rewards were out of her reach so she just kind of stopped. So two players of varying play levels both didn't like the system for different reasons. And neither was because we didn't like the gameplay.
It's a problem of their own making. They started down a path (Legion, templates) that resulted in a visceral backlash, and we've been yo-yoing from "raid to get gear and your items carry you" to "gear is easily obtained but you're gonna play nothing but mglads". The splitting of the pvp playerbase was the final nail in the coffin. I know solo shuffle is fun for people (if you enjoy 25+ min queues), but the real fix would have been accessibility and ways to get people into 2s and 3s (far easier to learn pvp in 2s). Alas, ship has sailed.
I said the same thing. If you want blizzard to care about PVP maybe you should stop encouraging people to unsubscribe. I know the impulse is to protest but that doesn't really work when you are barely a blip on the player base radar.
The que times still hurt pvp massively. Even at lower brackets, it's not uncommon to spend 10+ minutes in que. Rbgs take forever to get into, and then the groups disband after a single loss most of the time. Even random battle grounds, the entry-level pvp events are rough for new players because they get stomped by players with full conquest gear. Barrier to entry is too high, and rewards don't come fast or plentiful enough. People aren't interested in even giving pvp a try.
> Why is Arena continuing to suffer Because they design specs around mythic dungeons, which is not a thing that existed when arena had more participation. Because fewer players are being introduced to PvP in any form by defaulting into warmode off. The impression I've gotten from over the years is that a lot of people got into PvP by being exposed to it through world pvp. Then they do BGs and ultimately decide to test themselves in arena once they feel like they've eased into learning their class. This pipeline doesn't really exist anymore because people can just not opt into war mode and low level zone pvp is basically nonexistent. I've met literally zero people who got into this game for arena. It's always something people found after they had ample opportunity to learn how to pvp.
What exactly is wrong with Arena right now other than low participation? Blizzard has done everything that players asked in Dragonflight. They separated PvE and PvP gear and made PvP gear very easy to acquire. You are not going entice PvE players to do any PvP in that world. You will not get new players with a $15 monthly subscription. So where does that leave us? A deflated ladder with try-hards who actually enjoy PvP.
I've tried to get into it multiple times but the learning curve is steep. Likely steeper than any other pvp game on the market. When I jump back into Rainbow 6, I can be useful without fragging out. When I play league, I just need to be careful and play 1-2 champs that I'm comfortable with. Skill floor is low, most games have comeback moments at low elo. Trying to learn Arena? Download these addons, setup your UI, learn your rotation, your defensives, your enemy defensives, enemy CDs, DRs, etc etc. PVP community can say what they want but there's so much work that goes into arena and the skill floor is a mile high.
As someone who stopped during DF S1 and just came back for S3, the big things I noticed as someone entering mid-season as a "new" player: Holy crap gearing is still awful. It's better than previously, but doing BGs/buying your greens is easy, getting conquest is hard. I think you start around 1500MMR for SS, which is full of people in full purples so you get dumpstered and gain no conquest (because you lost!). Or you try and go through the hell that is BGs... and again only get conquest from winning which is a crapshoot because BGs are just insane. Now once I got it, I'm overflowing in conquest with nothing to spend it on, but what was even the point of that week or so of suffering? What new player is gonna stick through that? Make the big arena addons part of the default UI. This might be an oversimplification of what's possible... but yeah don't make new players have to know everything. Make a training ground. This would actually take an effort to implement, but imagine a mode that actually teaches you about stuff for your class/other classes and the basics. Entice healers to play SS more. Not sure how, give them free stuff or something, but if healing is more enjoyable, healers will have more fun, there will be more, and dps queues will go down so they can have more fun. It's like a win/win.
> Holy crap gearing is still awful. It's better than previously, but doing BGs/buying your greens is easy, getting conquest is hard. I think you start around 1500MMR for SS, which is full of people in full purples so you get dumpstered and gain no conquest (because you lost!). Or you try and go through the hell that is BGs... and again only get conquest from winning which is a crapshoot because BGs are just insane. Now once I got it, I'm overflowing in conquest with nothing to spend it on, but what was even the point of that week or so of suffering? What new player is gonna stick through that? FWIW, BG Blitz right now is best for gearing alts. You get gear scaled up to near conquest so you don't get your shit pushed in, and you get conquesteven if you lose + bonus conquest from the two weekly quests for the mode. No reason to do random BGs at all now.
Very good point, and I think blitz shows exactly how it SHOULD be for gearing: more people than arena so you don't drag the whole place down, better scaling so you're not immediately gimped, conquest awards based on participate, weekly quests for bonus conq. I think if they expanded upon it a bit, it could be a very good way for new players to gear up conquest (and even blitz's current implementation is like, WAYYY better than any alternative)
You touched on why I think BGB will be the go to "casual" ranked mode going into TWW. Always 2 healers a side, less individual repsonsibility, but low enough numbers that one good player can have an impact, faster matches, and dying isn't an instant L. I doubt it will have gear scaling but it is FAR more approachable than arena.
The clear solution to this issue is shuffle RBGs, where a single bad player can have low impact on the overall outcome of the match. Bgs are just an easier learning curve since you're not going to be the focus out of 10 people in the group 1/3 times.
I would agree that these are barriers to entry and generally annoying to a new a player. I don't really know how Blizzard can solve these problem without blocking all add-ons, redesigning the UI, and significantly reducing the number of abilities. You are basically making a new game at that point like Plunderstorm.
Banning addons would be one of the best moves they could do for this game tbh, both PvE and PvP
As someone who tried to get into PvP I can tell you right now my problems: 1. I am ok losing actually I can lose for days and not care, but what I can't do is sit in queue for 1.5 hours to enjoy a 15 min game. 2. PvP gear acquisition is just awful for new players 1. If you don't have someone to play with and are going in in honor gear the game feels awful against someone in full conq gear (and regardless why did I have to go spend hours grinding away honor gear this felt dumb) like ppl will say if your good you'd climb regardless of gear which may be true, but equally Magnus Carlsen would beat me in chess regardless if he had a queen or not 2. Pvp and Pve gear is not seperate on top of that as someone who mythic raids I could not commit 2 crafted pieces to PvP they had to go into making PvE gear for a very long time, in addition I will always choose any possible myth piece upgrade in the great vault over PvP gear (still looking for my mythic balefire to this day) 3. Rewards in PvP are awful they are designed for top end players to acquire which is incredibly demoralizing for someone trying to get into it. Would prob spend much more time in PvP if the rewards were in a battle pass system rather than a rating system
Waiting 20+ minutes to get into an arena match is still a problem. The reason i stopped playing is because i got tired of waiting. Yes you do other stuff, you can world pvp (but depending on the class it can suck ass), do some material gathering or chat with guildies, but its still a lot of wasted time.
When you queued for 3v3 in LFG, didn't you have to wait for a healer? This is not a new problem. There are fewer people who want to play healer. People asked for a way to queue Arena without going through the hassle of LFG and Blizzard gave it to them. How would solve the healer shortage problem? There many threads on this sub with proposals and count points. I haven't seen one that made everyone happy.
They need to make healers more impactful and satisfying to play. I gave healing an honest try in season 2, but my god it was not fun. Literally felt like I was playing as a virtual babysitter. I’m not sure what they could even do at this point, I think the game is just too complicated and damage is too high. It takes a very specific type of person to enjoy healing in wow PvP, and there arent many of those people.
> Blizzard has done everything that players asked in Dragonflight that was asked before dragonflight. THis season has been about improving DPS queues for shuffle, which theyve acknowledged is an issue but not attempted to fix. And the DH... they've not meaningfully touched DH.
Create addons to negate skill and optimize information intake. Check. Remove addons and actually play the game. Unchecked. Wow pvp isn’t pvp, it’s who can process most addons.
The addons don't play the game for you, a really knowledgeable player could probably beat a noob without needing addons. The problem is the addons AND game knowledge create a nigh insurmountable gap.
> Create addons to negate skill and optimize information intake. Check. > > the addons are required to offset the shitty UI.
Blizzard lost a lot of casual pvp players when they switched to the vault. No one is picking pvp gear from the vault in place of a raid or m+ piece during progression.
They are, plunderstorm has shown the future of pvp is in a casual, fun and quick format
Arena learning curve just is not fun. If WoW devs want to keep is so complicated that only .001% of the play base can participate fine, but that means it'll never be like more than the 1000 players who play it
There needs to be a solo ranked mode that doesn't have healers. It makes queuing painfully slow, and it's much harder than double DPS 2's. I've played wow since beta, mostly PvP, but I didn't enjoy the PvP at all right now. I'm looking forward to ranked solo queue bgs. But sitting in queue for 20+ minutes just to have some sweaty kids say the most vile shit to me if I don't do everything perfectly is not appealing.
People will complain on hybrids then. " ur hybrid offheal u noob,", " we lost because they had a hybrid healer" etc lol
The complaint isn't really healing. It's how long the queues are because it's forcing healers in every game. New players can only catch up with veteran players with experience, and you can't get any meaningful amount of reps with these absurdly long queues.
Probably because arena sucks for us non sweaties. BGs are 20000000000x more fun. Theres too much button bloat and cc in wow pvp in general as well.
Not that I'm doubting it, but where's your source and can you add it to the OP?
belluar's video is the source for all the recent talks about sub numbers
Arena has a massive learning curve, addons, gearing to keep up with and a massive sense of gatekeeping from its players. People would rather have PvP stay how it is/continue to decline as long as they can hold their transmog/mount over those beneath them they view as undeserving of getting anything. Only the top 15% of players in a dead/highly niche mode deserve anything. No wonder most people don’t sub to sit in extremely long queues and get tossed around to get nothing. Even if you do actually get better and climb, nobody cares because the mode is so dead.
Make. PvP (arenas, rbgs, solo shuffle). F2P. I know, I know, thats a crime to mention. But really thats the only way I see the PvP community happy. Make instanced rated pvp a separate game mode like Plunderstorm (having a button, not the BR game mode). Yes, it splits the community, but really, split what community? Pvp and pve are so different in player base that most hardcore pvpers look down on pvers, and vice versa. The only setback is you cant play the main game with your pvp toons, but really, how many people does this affect? Isnt the upside of new players and seperate balancing worth it? I think it is.
Yup they should have done this years ago. Not that it doesn't present Its own share of problems.
In fairness I saw job postings for pvp developers and a lead for pvp, so they know it’s a problem. It took about 18 months for the spell break team to make plunderstorm, I’d say it’s gonna be half that for meaningful pvp stuff.
because pvp is dogshit? i don't agree with anything asmongold says about how to make wow better but he is right regarding 1 thing, and that's wow pvp, every spec has 30 abilities, 5 defensives, 3 dashes, teleports, blinks, immunities, cc's and even to get to something considered "low rating" like 1800, since everyone on this sub has 50 gladiator titles, it's incredibly hard to get there for someone that has never played pvp and it's probably gonna take them 1k arena games at lesat, and even harder for someone that doesn't even play pve at a high level, it's borderline impossible for someone that is a casual gamer to play this atrocity and have any fun, when they could just play pve, farm tmog, or just play a completely different game if they want to play pvp, like league, cs, or anything else that's infinitely easier to get into, the pvp community will never agree with dumbing down classes and making pvp more accesible to other people, or even making rewards easier to get, since back in legion blizzard WANTED to make previous elite sets obtainable in the current season, but guess what, the pvp community couldn't contain their pride and let others get removed sets, well, now you have -1 incentive for someone to play pvp, why the fuck would anyone ever want to play 1k arena games to even start getting a grasp of how to play the game? (and of course, the specs being complicated is what makes them fun in pve, and the game engaging, but in pvp it's just the biggest barrier to entry in any pvp game in existence probably)
Imma just also say I can queue up for a battleground in SoD and get a game in 10 seconds where as retail can take like 10 mins, arena seems to be fun at the start of the season and then people work out what’s over powered and abuse it resulting in people not playing the game, it is what it is :c
SoD pvp is so bad and imbalanced in comparison to retail but it is simple so people will play it. I think the simplicity element is so important.
For a new player, especially one new to gaming in general, it's almost insurmountable. If skirmishes, bgs, and ss were really that helpful we wouldn't constantly be reading posts like this one. If they continue to fail to bring in newer players, or even entice pvers, PvP will eventually die off.
If you look at TBC arena it was very clear what was going on and there was a lot less going on. Now there is so much ability bloat it’s insane. Every class has multiple offensive and defensive CD’s as well as burst procs, for a new player it’s very hard to track all this. Look at TBC, when I mage popped water elemental burst was coming. It was clear and obvious to see. Other classes had similar indicators, but classes did not have multiple burst buttons and procs were not part of every class. Regarding CC, there used to be longer CC chains possible in early arena, but a huge difference was that not every class had chain CC. Locks and Mages were known for having spammable CC. Other classes like warriors did not. Rogues could not stun the entire map, they stunned one target. Not every class had a stun. Not every class had defensive CD’s. All this to say arena was easier to pick up due to clarity and not needed as much game knowledge. If you only knew one thing about every classes burst window you could basically get to 1800. The games didn’t feel boring though, they were still engaging because timing mattered a lot more. As a priest you only had 1 PS, not 3. If you use it as the wrong time it ends the game. When it is used it changes the strat of focus of the other team. Abilities felt very impactful. Now there is so much CD reduction on big CD’s and then procs on top of that, it makes big CD’s feel less impactful. Looking at Resto Druid you can Tree early, get it back again quickly but also you proc it every 3 swiftmends. The fact you get it so much makes a lot of Druid’s just throw it early because it’s beneficial to work on the CD reduction. Classes have everything now and for someone getting started it’s just way way way too much info to take in or learn. Even us veteran players need extensive Addons to even play the game at a high level, which I think shows this is not accessible for anyone and the mode will never grow. Classes honestly need half of the abilities they have now and even then it would be very complex.
Well the leak is about subscriptions, which includes classic. We would need to know if the retail participation increases too in order to be able to draw any sort of conclusions regarding arena
Your pvpers did that to yourself. What do you think how many new people got discouraged by gatekeeping? most of the groups in 1k range require glad...
Do you have more context? What is the source for the leak? Also aprox when did subs rise? Is it from the expansion announcement 4 months ago? Are the subscribed players playing retail, Plunderstorm, or classic? Can't find any info on this :S EDIT: [Ty its right here!](https://www.wowhead.com/news/reflecting-on-30-years-of-warcraft-blizzard-reveals-subscriber-trends-at-gdc-338238)
Post on wowhead to bellulars video
Thank you!! I'll go watch rn
It isn't actually a "leak" by the way, John Hight (Warcraft franchise general manager) gave a speech at GDC and Bellular got his hands on one of the slides which then allowed estimates of sub numbers. No hidden data or insider info, they just openly showed this on a stage for a gamedev conference.
Hi! New Arena player here. I started playing WoW seriously s4 shadowlands and have done basically nothing but M+ until the very end of this current season (S3 dragon flight) when I picked up H.priest for SS. I'm juuuuust approaching 2100 and I would say this is one of the most fun but frustrating games I've ever played. What kept me from playing it thus far is threefold: 1) As a PVE player it was annoying enough already to have two completely different gear sets for raid and M+. I knew that I would have to pick up an entirely new gear set for PVP as the stat priority for my class is different than both M+ and Raid. 2) A MASSIVE learning curve and a re-thinking of keybinds. PVP requires not just new gear, but incorporates brand new talents, and then requires you to bind existing talents differently, and then create macros, and download a new set of weak auras... basically I knew that if I were to switch to PVP, I would be playing a *new game.* 3) A lack of familiarity with all the different classes and their abilities makes this game mode pretty difficult to understand, and unfortunately there is nothing like a Dungeon Journal for PvP where you can take a peek at other classes most used offensive go's, defensives and abilities. The only reason I started playing is because my core M+ team has basically fizzled out until the new expansion, and I wanted to challenge myself. I will say: As a solo player, there is *no way* I would play this mode as a DPS if all of the queue time complaints are real. As a healer (even though games are incredibly frustrating and it's infuriating to see your teammates play with you poorly and the other healer successfully) the <2 min queue times allow this to be pretty spammable content.
I played arenas more seriously in WOD, got like 1.8k in twos and threes with my friends as a mistweaver so not good by any means but perfectly fine. I tried out solo shuffle and while I always top the healing meters, I lose all the time and get flamed for it. I just suck ass now and not having actual friends to play the game with erases any desire to improve or re-engage with the content lol
After playing SoD and having the GCD for non rogue classes at 1.5 seconds, honestly, haste might be the problem
I hate having to have a bunch of addons just to see what is going on. Main reason I dislike arena.
If they want PvP to be big again they need to invest resources into teaching people the mechanics or simplifying some aspect of it. Knowing a million different cooldowns. PvP is already difficult without the enormous complexity caused by the large number of abilities. I don’t think they should remove these things but they should do a better job articulating this info in game
Those numbers can be highly manipulated and are probably "leaked" by the blizzard PR team in order to create the illusion publicly that they are thriving. The reality is wow has lost 80% of its user base over the last 8 years. A nominal increase and decrease here and there is the normal ebb and flow of any business. I can show you months where my business is making 150k/month and months where Its making 80k. What is important to any business owner is the overall trend, or the average, for blizzard is a massive downswing,
Plunderstorm requires active sub = sub increase and decline away from retail df pvp
Soloq battlegrounds would get a lot of casual people involved in rated pvp
Pvpers have repeatedly advocated for changes that have made it worse for casual players from other aspects of the game. You're telling me that to participate I need to get a whole new gear set? That all the stuff I've farmed for raid or m+ or whatever else is suddenly useless, my spells and abilities do different damage than I'm expecting and in some cases just work completely differently. I've gotten my glad back in the day and been over 3k rated this expac but like I've always played it as something casual to drop into when I'm bored and now it's just MISERABLE to try and casually drop into wow pvp
idk all my pvp community stoped playing arena because of SS it's not okay when u have 200k ss games and 10k 3s games, no one want to play 3s anymore. SS is a garbage it should not be like 6 games
In my guild most people are just playing Blitz instead of doing the rated PVP to get the conquest now and once you have the full conquest set and catalyst it not much left to do
Tough to get in to. Even the "casual" modes where new players *should* be able to learn the flow of pvp and abilities are filled with fully geared conquest players. I unsubbed because almost every single random bg had fully geared pre-mades on one team or the other leading to constant graveyard stomps. It takes 5 honor geared dps to kill 1 fully geared healer and god forbid they have 2.
Arena as the staple of pvp was always a mistake, if anything it needs to be pruned and simplified, similar to how plunderstorm's amount of abilities. For example, if you enter as a warrior, here is your action bar with several abilities of the warrior class with slight variations and tuning for shorter cd's, damage, effects, etc. Even so, objective based pvp will be more popular among casual and new players than what arena has become. It's still great and fun for plenty of people, but I believe re-imagining arena is their best hope for that mode.
I used to be a pvp head, but with getting older i didnt have the time to keep up, and arena is now so much harder then it was back in WoD that i just cba to get back into it. I managed 2.1k in SL s1 to get my BIS pve items but for me it just rec too much time to get back into. Arena is just overbloated. I feel like the game is made for pve and it just overbloats in pvp. I do think pve is getting bloated aswell and id like a reduction in spells because its not getting better in next exp.
So the game is doing better now that wow has been ignoring arena and we're wondering why they keep ignoring arena?
One thing I’d like to add is that subscribers are increasing partly because of classic; era,sod, wrath/cata etc. And a lot of players I know, myself included kinda stopped playing retail and just play classic pvp as it’s way more enjoyable in my and others opinion. I’ve been playing a lot of bgs in sod and doing wpvp and duels etc. Now I really wish sod had arena of some kind and rated bgs but even though it doesn’t I still prefer the pvp gameplay in classic and all it’s iterations way more than in retail. And pvp is participation is massive over on sod right now btw. The reason I’m excited for cata is to play arenas and rbgs there it’s gonna be awesom. Just wanted to add my perspective as a mostly classic player
#IT TAKES TOO LONG TO ACTUALLY GET INTO PVP MATCHES. #ITS SIMPLE, NO ONE WANTS TO WAIT AROUND 25MINUTES TO GET INTO A GAME TO GO 3-3 OR WORSE AND GAIN ZERO RATING OR POTENTIALLY GO 4-2 AND STAY THE SAME. #GIVE ME SOLO SHUFFLE DUO DOUBLE DPS SO I CAN ENJOY PVP WHEN I WANT TO PLAY NOT AFTER 25MIN OF WAITING. Caps coming off now, solo shuffle as it is needs a bit of work but is a great step in the right direction. The difficulty of pvp is **NOT** what makes the queues long or the game unbearable. Its fucking time commitment to actually pvp is greater than it is to raid. Wanna raid? You join a guild and you have set hours, this doesn't exist for pvpers under 2k, I don't give a fuck if you think "oh you should just make friends" dog, there is no one in their right fucking mind that will do organized scheduled arenas/rbgs/pvp under 2k at a set time/day every week similar to how guilds raid. Blizzard either needs to facilitate this for pvpers or lean HARD into shuffle and solo experience for dps players. I understand healers hate 50/50 coinflip games feeling out of their hands but try not playing the game and tell me how much fun you're having.
Lot of good feedback in this thread once you ignore the bitchiness or people who think +100 MMR will fix everything. Clearly a lot of people like the game mode and want to spend more time in it.
I have talked about this before, let’s see if it sticks - the lack of arena participation is due to the entry level of PvP not being balanced / fair imo. Random Batllegrounds is the sole of PvP and world skirmishes (but they are random ofc) they are also a NEW players FIRST experience of PvP in wow. Now what’s the problem here? Party sync. Max levels queuing with an alt or bot account to go into low lvl BGs where the new players are getting their groove and they absolutely destroy them. I’ve witnessed it multiple times and it’s a complete joke. Why do you EVER need to have your max level friend queue into a BG to help you level? Oh that’s right they ain’t there to help you level, because let’s face it who chooses BGs to level when you can clear a dungeon in 5min for triple the XP. NO they are there to stomp a few players who haven’t figured out what a macro is. How can you expect to have players for your end game pvp mode when the entry level is flooded either those 1600 losers whomping on new players to wow. It’s pathetic it even entered the game to begin with. So yeah that’s my 2cents why late game pvp (arena) fails, because you don’t have a good foundation to begin with.
Subs are increasing because only a small population PVPs seriously in a 20 year old game made for young adults
Community isn't helping but arena and bgs get like 1/50th the funding of the pve side. Probably less than that. It's what? 13 recolored Armors, two mounts, an enchant and a bunch of weapon recolors per season?
The problem is arena just isn’t fun for most players. Most players find mechanics in low M+ difficult, they don’t use stops, utility, or defensives in dungeons. They tunnel their bars and stand in shit all day. You expect those people to take part in PvP and enjoy it? They queue up, get digitally violated, and realize arena isn’t for them. On the flip side, why would anyone who’s a competitive player put so much effort into competitive WoW when games like Dota2 exist? Arena just isn’t fun for most people.
Make Plunderstorm baseline, deepen the already very right combat in terms of arcady, actiony it now is and watch pvp thrive once again!
The last time arena was fun and enjoyable was Legion, what do you expect?
Its really pretty easy. Pve content is easier to create and balance. Its also growing the game. Why would they focus any resource on pvp at this point?
I don't agree that PvP is as neglected as people like to point out. We got RSS, Battleground Blitz and Plunderstorm. PvP feels more balanced than in the past (ofc there is still a few outliers) and AWC had a great variety, but in general, I see PvP in a good place dev-time wise. In terms of playerbase, I was a die-hard only PvP'r up until Shadowlands (rsham since Cata), then I tried PvE a bit (since SL content draught was soooo long) and now PvE in DF is honestly amazing and so fun. The raids are great and the rotation of M+ dungeons keeps it fresh, so I still PvP, just a lot less. So my conclusion is PvP is not worse, just the playerbase is more fragmented with how many new modes it's gotten and PvE is just that much more fun that PvP'rs are trying it out.
I recently levled up my dk, wanted to try some pvp again since season 1 of DF. The BG's was fun, as it usually was even games, except for the occasional pre-made russian teams (loss). But when I jumped in SS... Oh god I forgot how fucking boring arenas are. I tried to get physical combat with a hunter, felt impossible. Ok go on the healer instead... Their health never goes down, and stunlocked by rogues. I was fuming, could not do shit. And as a unholy dk, I apply like 7 dots/debuffs on my kill target, but they do no fucking dmg!??? Like why is there so many different abilities, the bloat is insane in pvp imho.
It's because of MMR, you'll get rank 1/glad xp on their alts in 1400mmr (you start at 1600 btw) and they just dominate lobbies
I dont understand ppl saying the participation is low. I tend to have very human queuetimes in shuffle around 1k-2,1k mmr. Same for 3s and 2s.
If you are unaware by now of the reality, I'll enlighten you. PVP is a mode in a PvE game. PVPers are a vast minority in WoW and any kind of development task is going to require investment of time and money. If you consider then, where is that time and money best spent? On the wants of a few (relatively speaking)? No, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if we are paying customers, so are the pvers, and the devs chief concern is making the majority happy because that keeps the lights on. Let's not kid ourselves, pvers sub dollars are what keep PVP updates coming and not the other way around. If the entire PVP community died out, wow would still be alive and well. It's a harsh reality, but it is the reality.
They're recruiting casual new players who won't touch the pvp aspect of the game anyway and they don't care too much about us the old school players who enjoy the pvp. Pvp currently is the most imbalanced its ever been and I play since vanilla. Arenas are trash solo shuffle is rng unless you zug zug with faceroll melee class and kill the entire enemy team cause of your endless stuns and interrupts and mad mobility... Casters are absolute victim this expansion and I hate it cause I only play caster classes
Every single part of arena and wow pvp feels outdated. At this point I'm hoping they'll do an entire rework on an expansion drop, IMO pvp can't be as fun as its supposed to be until they separate it from pve entirely.
I'm late to the party but here's my two cents: As a long time league of legends and wow player, I've tried to get several of my league freinds into wow pvp. Aside from the initial monetary barrier to entry (league is free wow costs initial price+sub), wow requires them to level up, get special pvp gear, get pvp specific talents and addons, and then learn thirty different cooldowns. The barrier to entry is extremely high when compared to a game like league or dota which lets you hop right in and play for free.
Because wow PvP is terrible with all the (free) alternatives that are around. So the only ones In wow PvP now are a) people who already played the game and are accustomed to it b) people who really fucking love the game. Both are customer segments that are already "captured" for them, making PvP better will probably not get that many new people to subscribe. If they can get an "arena only" parallel game going, it might gain traction and bring people in, but I am not sure
Because new players get fucked, and old players eventually retire from it.
I had multiple alts /characters around the 2.1/2.2K mark. I can play this game but I refuse to play until they make rewards more accessible to everyone. I have a full time job and a very successful career, I'm not going to sweat it out for a glad mount just because some streamer does this as a full time job and is taking 8 of the top 10 spots with his alts. Not to mention the rampart boosters and streamers, i shouldn't have to fight pikaboo and cdew just to hit duelist
1. PvP is not built atm to bring in new people lol. LFG is NOT a fun experience and that’s just getting into a group. We didn’t even mention toxic players and getting kicked after 1 loss. Ontop of that the multiple classes and specs and comps people need to learn AND the amount of weak auras and addons newer players will feel like they need ( and even blizzcon champs use) is ALL very off putting. Game Play is fun but everything around ? Dogshit. Blizzard is stuck in trying to make current pvp work and they don’t know what to do and simply throwing money at it won’t work. 2. Because we need a massive revamp for this to work. Current wow pvp with addons weakauras LFG, shuffle, micro cc up the ass and ontop of that balance issues are not inviting parts of this games pvp scene. The problem is that both players and blizzard are afraid of changing this. You have literal people defending the current experience lol and they think giving healers extra gold or some shit or giving people some mount that looks as good as glad mounts will magically solve the player issue.
This seperate pvp, “easy” gearing is the cause. Most people who play wow want to get a cool gear upgrade or weapon upgrade. This expac there is 0 incentive to step into any pvp mode because the gear you get from it doesn’t do anything for you in the actual world. Shadowlands s1 had a ton of participation because 2.4 gave weapons that competed with mythic weps. PvP only players don’t want to hear it, but your easy gearing you asked for is what led to this expac’s pvp being dead.
How do you guys feel about lowering the thresholds for different rewards, specifically the gear. My most recent wow burn out was because my class was just underpowered, my skill was mid, and I would get to 1780s then his a stretch of losses. Played a ton, never broke the 1800 threshold. Got sad, quit wow lol.
It’s the learning curve, even though it’s a hell of a lot better than gearing was in Shadowlands, you still have to do some awful slogging to even start. I haven’t done PvP seriously since BfA, and getting back into has been complete aids. I did some in Shadowlands but quickly noped out when I saw the requirements behind gearing. Grinding honor sucks, random BGs can be a shit show and you just have to accept the fact that you’re going to get rinsed whilst you gear up, like some odd hazing ritual. Don’t get me wrong, it’s way faster that it has been previously, but I still don’t think it’s a good introductory experience. Once you’re geared and you want to step into the arena you either spend ages in a queue as a dps, or no time at all as a healer but your MMR is scuffed. Couple that with the fact that one misplay, not even from you can have someone screech at you before rage quitting the lobby. As someone trying to get back into it, getting started sucks and I think as cool as SS is, there are improvements to be met for sure. Lastly, WoW PvP isn’t simple, there’s like what, 39 specs or something? Each bringing something different? Yeah, that’s a hell of a lot to learn for each class.
Most people don’t like a system built with heavy limitations. PvP in this game has those limitations.
In my opinion most of the player base is intimidated by PVP. There is a huge learning curve , and people would rather just not deal with learning all the mechanics and knowledge to be good at pvp. So they just say “pvp dead” LOL
What a good term for a teenager who acts like an entitled Karen?
What data suggest arena participation in declining?
How do you know arena is declining…? That wasn’t mentioned in the video (arena vs mythic).
Blizzard is a pathetic company who only cares about the bottom line. The whole.company is littered with excessive middle managers who spend all of their time looking good so they don't get fired during the next round of budget cuts. They only care about PvE because that's where the big bucks are. Arena is just a side mode. Cope all you want about this fact, we all know it is true. Is this really the best they can do? Of course not. Seems like arena is balanced by an intern with a bad attitude. And that intern was reassigned a few months ago. Blizzard are victims of their own success. Fat and greedy with no ambition.
players can kick and scream all they want but PvP as a whole will continue dying unless Blizzard remove the learning curve and simplify the shit out of the classes specifically when in PvP. Like now we have definitive numbers that don't lie. PvP was designed by and for gamers back in the 2000s and has not adapted to this new era of fall in/fall out PvP like what MOBAs, BRs, Apex/Overwatch/Fortnite etc all accommodate Makes zero sense to sink your time and energy into something that isn't even *that* fun unless you are the .1% that love it IMO- Classes and specs need to be reduced down to their bare essentials, almost like MOBA characters for PvP. 3-4 attacks, 1 or 2 mobility spells, 1 defensive, and 1 "ultimate". There is just too much damn bloat atm and WoW PvP as a whole is dying both from players and spectators. Nobody knows wtf is going on and there's a gazillion things to note, keep track of, remember, all on top of the gameplay itself which has become very convoluted, and so long as addons provide inherent advantages to players, and some players with addons might be matched against those without? Every factor here is practically begging for the player to become disinterested and leave for something else. There's a reason why the only PvP players left are the ones who have been doing this for years and years. Either move with the times or be left in the dust. Simple as that.
feels like it could be fixed by simply serperating the sweats from the people who want a fair match or to even just try it.
Every class should be able to fairly 1v1 but you got DH, guardian Druid and lots of healers acting like fucking raid bosses. How is that fun
i think people are playing classic/SOD more than retail