Same promises to fix PvP as before every expansion, do you believe them this time?

[Feranor]

When talking about an upcoming expansion, Blizzard always makes the following promises to fix PvP:

• A new World PvP area will resuscitate Open World PvP
• Damage will no longer outscale health as itemlevels increase

Let's look at how this has worked out so far:

The Burning Crusade

World PvP:

So, going from Classic to TBC we got some PvP gimmicks in most zones similar to the towers in Eastern Plaguelands, culminating in Halaa. These worked for maybe a week or two until the first 70's started hovering above them on their flying mounts, waiting to swoop down on low levels or until they outnumber the opposition. They were abandoned save for the occasional player trying to farm the tokens to get the mount. These could have worked had they been relevant for endgame rewards and if there hadn't been flying mounts. The introduction of flying mounts means that TBC has been the worst expansion for World PvP. Later on there was the Isle of Quel'Danas, but that was mostly Rogues or gank groups versus PvE players fighting mobs for their dailies. Vastly overrated.

Scaling:

At the end of Classic, Rogues were literally two-shotting most classes with AQ40/T3 daggers and once the new talents arrived everything just sort of exploded. TBC brought us Resilience, which at the time was actually a good thing. Unfortunately it also introduced Arena, which has probably caused the death of MMORPG PvP in general, but that's a separate issue. One problem was that too much defense, or a focus on outlasting through DoTs and mana drain could result in boring and potentially endless matches because you're locked in a box, forced to fight a team deathmatch. TBC also rang in the age of instant casts, Ice Lance being its high herald.

Wrath of the Lich King

World PvP:

This time Blizzard had apparently learned that flying mounts and World PvP go together about as well as toothpaste and orange juice and made Wintergrasp a no-fly zone during the battles. Wintergrasp has a couple of crippling flaws, though:

• It's server internal, meaning that often one side is vastly outnumbered. Blizz tried to fix that by giving the underdog side an absurdly strong buff, which didn't really help in winning the battle but certainly caused some inflated egos in players oneshotting everything.
• It's based around vehicles. Blizzard got really crazy with this new toy, and we've seen how well they work in Wintergrasp, Isle of Conquest and Strand of the Ancients.
• It's just one zone that essentially has a cooldown. World PvP doesn't have a schedule.

Also, zone phasing further diminished any residual World PvP going on.


Scaling:

This expansion was all about PvE gear. Insane damage trinkets, Shadowmourne etc. made for crazy burst and resulted in the infamous Wizard/X Cleave. Also, instant casts everywhere.

Cataclysm

World PvP:

A lesson learned from Wintergrasp was that vehicles suck. So Blizz made them less important and semi-automatic, which wasn't too bad. However, Tol'Barad was also server internal, the only difference being that instead of a buff there was now a player limit for the overpopulated side. So most of the players on a lopsided server never actually got in. Also the actual objective was badly designed, it was almost impossible for the defending faction to win and the gameplay consisted mostly of running from one conquest point to the other. The PvP after the actual battle wasn't that bad, though, except that there were far too many aggro mobs.

Scaling:

Cataclysm saw hugely inflated HP pools. Supposedly that was the solution to damage scaling. Heck, I even remember some pretty good duels at the start of the expansion, but soon damage got out of control again and we were back to crazy bust.

Mists of Pandaria

World PvP:

Uh... there's this area where you can kill named NPCs for honor. I've never seen any PvP happening there, though. There's also Timeless Isle, where gankers fight PvE players trying to do their dailies. Isle of Quel'Danas 2.0, I suppose.

Scaling:

Resilience was made a baseline stat (except for trinkets) and PvP power was introduced to prevent PvE gear from interfering with PvP. Unfortunately there were so many PvE tiers that it ended up being so far higher in item level that PvE gear reigns supreme, at least on Timeless Isle.

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Do you think Blizz has failed often enough to get it right this time?

[Stormspellz]

you got some points wrong but the overall message about right.

same old carrot on the stick for the pvp community

[Avada Kedavra]

I do think they will get it right....whatever right is.

The issue here is that they do not have separate pve/pvp trees. As long as they keep them together, it will make the other suffer.

The item squish should help with that, something they have not tried before so maybe this will be the best expac ever.

[DiscoGhost]

at this point any kind of major overhaul will be welcome.

[iceberg265]

I never believe anything Blizzard says anymore, which is why I no longer buy their games. So, to answer your question OP. No I do not believe them.

[Prag]

"Resilience will fix it."

Nope.

"Resilience for everyone didn't fix it. Item scaling will fix it."

Nope?

[DarkstarG]

No, because no matter what they do or what they try and improve.....not everyone will be happy with the results. They are trying to cater to too many different peoples desires and there is always going to be a group complaining about something.

[dragonfiyah]

As long as they tune the cc down I will be happy.

[Cobaltius]

As long as they tune the cc down I will be happy.

If they remove/cut down on CC's it will make healers even worse to deal with will it not?

[Terahertz]

If they remove/cut down on CC's it will make healers even worse to deal with will it not?

In the current game it would, but remember that healers are changing A LOT next expansion.

[Cobaltius]

PVP will never get better until something is done about the Hordes overwhelming domination of PVP.

It has only ever gotten worse since vanilla, it is not their racials or that they magically do not only have all the best players, the majority of the faction's skillsets are seemingly leaps and bound ahead of Alliance. To the point where their skills are such that it allows them perform a if they were 5-10 levels higher than their opponents.

If they get rid of whatever is causing this apparent and unbelievably huge degree of skill separation between the two factions then PVP might start to balance out.

[PrairieChicken]

Well by the promises they made the changes will be awesome - It's just a matter of how they implement it.

[TheRickyB]

Nope. which is even more why im doing everything i want to do now, in regards to "item Squish". they Def gonna mess that up 100%... >_>

[ComputerNerd]

If you are expecting "fixed" pvp with 11 classes/34 specs then you are quite frankly very naive.
Look at the complaints when there is any attempt at homogenisation.

PvP is never going to be balanced, simple as that.
There will always be adjustments, and then adjustments to fix the last adjustments.

World PvP is something that developed on its own, something that doesn't need "fixed" as blizzard did nothing to break it.
Players did that themselves by choosing the more convenient battleground format, reward over fun.
What about the town/city invasions which flying could only boost ?
Oh yes, nobody does that any longer as they already have their mount from doing it once.

If you have to bribe players to do something which originally did not require a reward, then the fault lies entirely with the players who expect to be handed something at the end of it.

[mannenabo]

its sad how they keep trying to add pvp to a pve game, they should just make arena another game, but I guess they wanna keep them as subs

[ComputerNerd]

its sad how they keep trying to add pvp to a pve game, they should just make arena another game, but I guess they wanna keep them as subs

It started as PvE primarily, but the players asked for it and then complain endlessly about the consequences and to "fix" the problems they make.
Be careful what you wish for, as you may just get it.

[Renx]

I doubt it. Blizzard says they'll fix a lot of things and that usually tends to never be the case or they break something else. It's an on going cycle. WoD may or may not make things better, but I doubt it'll be what some people expect it to be. CC/Healing changes sound great on paper, but we don't know how's the going to turn out or reveal new issues which is most likely going to be the case.

Take it for what it is. Enjoy it is you can if not just don't bother and move on. Or join the crowd on the forums crying every second! Just make sure it's about nerfing something, that has the highest success rate!

Joking obviously....somewhat.

[Vongimi]

The fact that they are removing a great deal of CC from the game really makes me have high hopes. The burst gameplay will never change, and its not necessarily a bad thing, only super bad when combined with the CC problem.

[Ragashii]

They won't fix it, and I always laugh when they say they want to improve WoW as an eSport. Sorry, WoW has never and will never be an eSport so stop trying to force it. WoW pvp gets laughed out of most places because it's broken and always has been.

Their whole idea to "fix" pvp this xpac was to give dragonslayers a huge edge. I still don't know why they made pvp gear such a low item level when they implemented the item level ceiling. It was a stupid idea. Oh and the absolute hilarity when they tried to tell everyone that your pvp gear would be competitive out in the world with heroic gear. Then they nerfed pvp power scaling hard. If anyone believes the crap they say about "fixing" pvp then you're in for disappointment.

[TheWindWalker]

Do you think Blizz has failed often enough to get it right this time?

I think it's a lot better than simply removing PVP from the game.

I mean, that's really the only two options: "Try again" or "Remove it and move on."