People always say WoW PvP is bad so what has good PvP?

[Lilly32]

All you read is people saying WoW pvp is terrible and the Devs dont care about it. But what other MMO out there has better PvP? UO and DAoC had awesome PvP but they are pretty much dead now. Rift is basically a WoW clone when it comes to PvP so its not much better. Heard EvE is basically Ultima Online in space but I never could get into it. GW2 is just zerg vs zerg. Aion was also zerg vs zerg or just a gankfest last time I played. SW:ToR is fun but class balance is worse than WoW ever was. So when comparing WoW pvp to other games is it really that bad?

[Salech]

Gw2 PvP is not zerg vs zerg, you're confusing it with World versus World versus World, gw2 pvp is not perfect either but all professions stand a chance to do quite well.


Good PvP was in Guild wars 1, good PvP is probably in those Dota games also.

[Splatter]

Gw2 PvP is not zerg vs zerg

WvW felt that way to me. The battleground style of pvp was quite fast paced but still seemed quite zergy.

I really enjoyed SWTOR PvP. Huttball is one of the most enjoyable pvp experiences I have ever had. To me it always felt like there was a reasonable balance among the classes in SWTOR, a couple were a bit strong at the start (troopers etc) but for the most part it was fairly even and you always had a good chance of winning.

[Xl House lX]

All you read is people saying WoW pvp is terrible and the Devs dont care about it. But what other MMO out there has better PvP? UO and DAoC had awesome PvP but they are pretty much dead now. Rift is basically a WoW clone when it comes to PvP so its not much better. Heard EvE is basically Ultima Online in space but I never could get into it. GW2 is just zerg vs zerg. Aion was also zerg vs zerg or just a gankfest last time I played. SW:ToR is fun but class balance is worse than WoW ever was. So when comparing WoW pvp to other games is it really that bad?

Any shooter game out there is better than WoW PvP. So basically (and I haven't played WoW in like a year so hang with me here), in WoW in PvP, you are restricted to your class. No matter what you do, you will be playing only one class in a match (RBG/Arena/BG in this case). You can't interchange or switch things up in the middle of a game. You can't instantly switch to your Paladin cause your team has no healers. However, in a shooter, in most of them anyways, if the game isn't in your favor, you can switch things up to (hopefully) make a gain on the enemy team because they never know exactly what to expect from you next.

In WoW however, the only thing I believe you can do in the middle of a match is interchange out individual talents which usually don't make a huge impact as you would like it to. You are stuck whatever it is you chose to do before you got into that match. If you got paired up with no healers and all melee (no diversity), you are screwed. You can't switch to be a different role once the game has started (like change to a Paladin or a Hunter or something). Its kinda just like the luck of the draw really with WoW. You don't control what you can do (other than how to play your class you queued in with) to change the way the match is played.

I believe if ilvl was scaled to a certain level in a PvP match, and you could interchange your max level characters in the match and honor/conquest was on a per account basis, way much more balance would be restored to the game. Oh, the other team has a ton of healers? Let me switch to DK so I can keep them a little more control.

Of course, if something like my example were implemented, it would have to be in a delicate manner, it could certainly be abused. For example you can only switch your class in the middle of a game 'x amount of times' or something.

[Ebonheart]

All you read is people saying WoW pvp is terrible and the Devs dont care about it. But what other MMO out there has better PvP? UO and DAoC had awesome PvP but they are pretty much dead now. Rift is basically a WoW clone when it comes to PvP so its not much better. Heard EvE is basically Ultima Online in space but I never could get into it. GW2 is just zerg vs zerg. Aion was also zerg vs zerg or just a gankfest last time I played. SW:ToR is fun but class balance is worse than WoW ever was. So when comparing WoW pvp to other games is it really that bad?

Well to be honest it really has nothing to do with PVP. The main problem is that most of all the current MMOs just have too many spells and abilities. Often times this just makes it hard to balance when each class has around 40+ abilities and CDs. It becomes even more frustrating when Hunters and Warriors have even more CDs and can line them one after the other.

Take LoL for example. You have around 4 abilities which I feel is quite low but it works well. And the cool thing each class for the most part has a unique spell that is different from other classes though they often provide the same results like slows, stuns, etc.

That is one of the reasons I am excited for Elder Scrolls Online. They are staying true to their 8 key binds. Sure there are many more spells but you can have access to only 8 at any given time. This makes the game easier to balance.

[Vankrys]

class balance is difficult to judge. People saying there class are underpower, often don't play to the full potential.

they are so many factor influencing the end of a fight, going from player skill, hard counter specific to class group make up, lag spike, and sometime simply pure luck on a crit or a resist.

It's like starcraft 2. The meta game show a race stronger than another until someone find a neat strat and reverse the meta game without the need of rebalancing. Sometimes it needs balancing, sometimes it does not, but frankly, i would trust professional developer or player above "forum expert" anytime.

[Deleted]

There are not many MMOs with good PvP, but I dare to say on a World of Warcraft fan forum that Guild Wars 2 got the better one, with profession balance that is, sadly Guild Wars 2 only got 1 PvP mode at the moment which is Conquest (hold bases, similar to Arathi Basin), while it is fun, playing the same mode over and over again gets boring.

[Glaziola]

What is wrong with zerg? WvW and (old) alterac valley is the best thing about these games imo.
Rated bgs and arena are absolutely no fun its just about CC healers + Burst squishy dps.

[Synbaby]

I miss old alterac valley in wow, when people used to do armor scrap and blood turn ins so they could summon the mini bosses. Wow pvp is full of bots now, in regular bgs so regular pvp right now sucks.

SWTOR pvp was awesome, huttball was probably the most fun in a battleground I've ever had.

GW2 pvp was kind of fun, but yes it was kind of zergy.

Rift pvp is a lot of fun right now because they changed it so the 2 factions can play together. And since its gone free to play, warfront queue times are fast.

[WarpedAcorn]

As someone who has played SWTOR almost exclusively for the PvP and played every class in PvP, saying SWTOR has terrible class balance makes me scratch my head. Honestly, its been my favorite PvP out of all the current line up of MMO's...although the caveat is that right now healers are a little OP, making the 31-54 bracket much more enjoyable for me personally as opposed to the 55 bracket.

[ParanoiD84]

I would say that its bad because of too many Abilities, but on the other Side Diablo3 has few Abilities and it's also bad.

I hate alot of things with D3 but the combat is awesome.

About wow pvp,

1: they change abilitys all the time
2: to much cc
3: to much selfhealing from hybrids
4: FotM rules wow pvp, check arena it's only feral/hunter disc teams
5: if they dont seperate pvp and pve abilitys the game will never be balanced, they change abilitys and stuff all the time only to make things worse in most cases.

I must say that imo cc is the most broken thing in wow,dr what dr? wow pvp can be the most frustrating game to play when you sit in cc 90% of the time. And atm playing melee in pvp is just plain frustrating when everything can kite you forever. Talking about solo and 2vs2 and random bg's, but if you have a pocket healer 24/7 it's alot more fun.

Pve is awesome though but they need to give pvp more love and maby a complete overhaul. Maby give all classes only one unique cc and do something with diminishing return.

About other pvp mmo's i had alot of fun with the pvp in warhammer online, to bad the game is bad in all other aspects other then pvp. GW2 i liked as everyone had same gear in bg's so it's more skill and not roflstomp someone with bad gear (even though that can be alot of fun to) never tried WwW for more then 1-2 times.

[LilSaihah]

I personally thought that, when I played SWTOR PvP, that class balance was more solid than WoW.

Except for Assassins/Shadows.

Screw them.

GW2 PvP's fun but it can feel unrewarding hopefully they fix that I suppose.

[Dasffion]

What is wrong with zerg? WvW and (old) alterac valley is the best thing about these games imo.

Not sure you know what Zerging is? Old Alterac Valley was not a zerg fest. The current Alterac Valley is. Everyone just rushes the main bosses, that's zerging.

[NightZero88]

GW1 was one of the best.

[Fencers]

But what other MMO out there has better PvP?

Guild Wars 1 and 2 are greatest implementations of PVP in the MMORPG genre.

Objectively so too. And by default, impossible for linear &/or vertical progression, asymmetrically balanced statistic based MMORPGs to ever be respectable on the same footing. Even asking the question of this thread seems somewhat ignorant of basic game design and play systems based on competitive mastery. It is a low premise.

The idea of PVP in such games as WoW, Tera, SWTOR or Rift are inherently corrupt from a design & gameplay point of view to the goals player vs player play that is based on equality and player mastery.

It simply can not be that the play systems of MMOs such as WOW can ever have greater PVP than MMOs designed as Guild Wars.

[Feranor]

There hasn't been, to my knowledge, an MMORPG with functioning PvP since DAoC.

GW1 has some of the worst controls in existence. It's barely possible to rate its PvP because the player input is normalized by the movement on rails. A lot of people seem to love it, but I cannot call it skill-based PvP. It's like playing Starcraft with a game pad; the decision making part is still there, but it's impossible to excel through how you operate your avatar.

WoW had decent PvP at the start but Blizz killed it with the introduction of Battlegrounds, Dishonorable Kills, flying mounts, Arena, and phasing.

WAR was released prematurely, resulting in a horribly bug-ridden mess, but they also made some terrible design choices, some of which were: only 2 factions instead of 3, instanced PvP in addition to World PvP, a shitty engine and netcode, and a zone layout that encouraged zerging and spawn-camping.

AoC tried the whole "active" or "dynamic" combat thing which only works in single player RPGs: obnoxious controls that favor visuals over usability, a broken melee system (only the end of a "combo" dealt any real damage, so you were just running around and hitting thin air to build up the moves most of the time), no real healers, a sprint meter, a complete lack of class balance (healers outdamaged casters, some classes could just blow you up in one instant stun etc.) and the game was also released in an unfinished state (item stats weren't working, high level content was missing, ...).

AION failed because of flying and consumables.

RIFT is basically a WoW clone. It doesn't have Arena, so that's a plus, but it's still generic instanced PvP and the game is a button masher thanks to bad ability design on most classes. It also had some major bugs and balance issues (Gershlol pulled a Bright Wizard again) that made the serious PvP players quit after about 2 months.

GW2 failed mainly because it focuses on sterile instant PvP and completely neglects WvW, leaving it to professional zergers instead of encouraging healthy group vs group play. The game also lacks competent designers/developers: in GW2, everything looks great, but nothing works right. Abilities are unreliable, movement is floaty, the targeting system is schizophrenic, you have to tediously "tag" enemies in WvW in order to get any reward, there's no class balance to speak of, the nonexistence of dedicated healers makes group play a dull and fickle affair, the boon system is broken in the way the buffs stack, CC is out of proportion in large scale battles, low Field of Vision and camera distance make spatial awareness an obnoxious enterprise and oh god that horrid abomination that is the downed state.

So, yeah, you can play DAoC and wait for Camelot Unchained I suppose.

[WarpedAcorn]

I can't comment on GW1 as I never played it, only watched videos.

However, GW2 was riddled with issues in the PvP department. The concept of having purely cosmetic upgrades is fine. What isn't fine is the way Glory is assigned and the downed state mechanic. I found out how to maximize my Glory, and it did not involve playing like a team player or even winning. The downed state is a concept I liked, but players have WAY too much health and interrupts. It made 1v2'ing virtually impossible unless you ridiculously outclassed your opponents. And on top of that the class balance wasn't any better than any other game. I was infinitely more effective hitting 4-5 buttons as a Pistol-Whip Thief than any other spec I tried.

(Bear in mind I have not touched GW2 since a few months after release, so some of these issues may have been patched)

[Valeron]

don't play mmorpgs for pvp, you play them for the games themselves and if it has passible pvp then it's a bonus

for strictly pvp though, look for a different type of game like a MOBA, FPS, or an RTS

[Deleted]

I think many people liked the idea behind wow pvp. They got arena and battlegrounds, both possible to play in a competitive way. Balance is probably what people mean when "blizzard dont care about pvp", and it's probably the only problem with wow pvp but also what makes or breaks the pvp. They balance classes around 3v3, is the class still not viable? Well, then they say they balance it around rated battlegrounds. Balance issues however, is what's holding wow's pvp potential back.

I cant say that there is any optimal mmorpg pvp on the market atm. GW2 is getting closer, they are suffering from balance issues... introducing more spells in the game wont help balance issues out so as far as I cant see it... balance is still holding that game back, and if there's still bugs in classes... dont know if they fixed them all yet =) But they are progressing more than any other current mmorpg in the field, and next patch will bring competitive play even to the single players out there which is a big breakthrough.

Otherwise there are Rift, star wars, neverwinter... that got battlegrounds as side content, nothing competitive. Which is good for casual pvp but nothing that makes them big in the field =)

Wildstar is the closest to be launched that is suppose to have lots of pvp features and competitive play. I really hope they make it doing it good. Archeage is next sandboxy that we dont know about it's pvp yet, but that might have some potential.
Some are hoping for elder scrolls mmo but think that hype have died, personally I doubt it's pvp potential... being console at all :P

[Joeygiggles]

Still cant find GW2 pvp fun. Well at least WvW, melee didnt stand a chance because all everyone did was stay at range since every class can use a gun or bow of some sort and thats all it was.
Mobas are great for PvP. Depending on the Moba you play of course