anyone else find it disheartening..

[Illiterate]

Is pvp participation low because it gets no developer attention and most casuals would rather avoid the obvious imbalances?

OR

Is developer attention low because because people in general are disinclined to pvp in the first place, so the devs dont feel it is worth the effort to please such a small percentage of the playerbase?

Personally, i feel that if the pvp experience were more fun (and lets be honest here, more rewarding) then more people would partake. The WoW playerbase has, for better or worse, become used to incentives and seems loathe to participate in any activity that does not offer rewards for time invested. Obviously the competition, the thrill of victory, etc., not even the PvP gear itself is enough of an incentive for the average player.

PVP players were never taken seriously by the devs, even when it was a lot more active (tbc-wolk). Over time people get fed up with imbalance. Now with the ability nerf, pvp is even more linear and boring. If opponent does x, you do y. There is no choice, and very little option in how to react to a situation. It's a lot like fighting a dragon now, everything seems scripted and predictable. That's why most people don't bother with pvp now.

[fruitshoot]

my mindset atm, is that the game has never in its entierty been balanced, i dont think think i've been so disappointed this season, with burst / bm hunt / combat rogues ect...

[TheTaurenOrc]

To quote Jay Wilson: Shut up PVP guy.

But seriously putting all their PVP eggs in one basket (Ashran) has been a disaster. I am amazed that the learnt nothing from Wintergrasp and Tol' Barad.

There is no reason to put any emphasis on PVP gameplay when less than 10% of the players partake and a large portion of the ones who do partake, dont want to but only do it to get conquest gear to PVE with and then never go back to PVP. WoW is a PVE game. Hell more people do pet battles on a regular basis than voluntarily PVP

Which is the result of neglecting it. Allowing a feature to descend into obscurity is > giving a shit apparently.

[Wass]

Is pvp participation low because it gets no developer attention and most casuals would rather avoid the obvious imbalances?

OR

Is developer attention low because because people in general are disinclined to pvp in the first place, so the devs dont feel it is worth the effort to please such a small percentage of the playerbase?

Personally, i feel that if the pvp experience were more fun (and lets be honest here, more rewarding) then more people would partake. The WoW playerbase has, for better or worse, become used to incentives and seems loathe to participate in any activity that does not offer rewards for time invested. Obviously the competition, the thrill of victory, etc., not even the PvP gear itself is enough of an incentive for the average player.

I pretty much agree with this post. The PvP playerbase is big, but in the scale of sub numbers it's pretty small in comparison to the rest of the playerbase.

However - the part of the pvp community that does arena (which should be the main part of it honestly) don't require much more actual content to the game than balance. If you asked an arena player what they wanted from the devs they would not cry for content but rather balance.

Balancing the game must be really hard for them though seeing as the effort doesn't really seem worth it. There's still a lot of imbalance around, and no I'm not going to call out any specs or anything, but there're still obvious issues that need to be adressed. 6.1 got a couple of them, but far from all.

[Zippoflames]

I don't understand Blizzards stance on this at all because even if ONLY 10% of the player base play pvp that's still like £10,000,000 a MONTH coming in just from pvp players..
Now for that sort of money they absolutely should balance pvp and even go as far as to rebalance monthly all through the season.

This season is atrocious absolutely atrocious, S5 dks were better balanced than todays game.

[Deleted]

Don't know how to tell you this without it hurting some feelings, But wow is now, has always been, and will always will be a primarily PVE based game with PvP as an initial after thought.

[SirBeef]

Is pvp participation low because it gets no developer attention and most casuals would rather avoid the obvious imbalances?

OR

Is developer attention low because because people in general are disinclined to pvp in the first place, so the devs dont feel it is worth the effort to please such a small percentage of the playerbase?

Personally, i feel that if the pvp experience were more fun (and lets be honest here, more rewarding) then more people would partake. The WoW playerbase has, for better or worse, become used to incentives and seems loathe to participate in any activity that does not offer rewards for time invested. Obviously the competition, the thrill of victory, etc., not even the PvP gear itself is enough of an incentive for the average player.

I think it is a little of both. Obviously PvP is extremely niche in WoW, much like raiding, but I do believe on a much smaller scale. I used to PvP in the open world at SS/TM, or the Crossroads and Westfall, becasue leveling took a long time and sometimes it was fun to fuck up the Alliance from time to time on my server. That was when it was all new, and people were mostly bad players and outside of lock chain fearing your ass, CC was not really that big of an issue. Once they added rewards to PvP it became less interesting to me. It moved to BGs and away from player generated content if you will. I try it out every now and again, but it never holds my interest anymore.

[Spraxle]

Personally I don't even need new content. All I care for is class balance. Nothing else. And they're doing a poor job with that right now, imo.

This sums up WoD PVP so far. A guy I know loves his Warrior, but all he does is bitch about how much they've been nerfed in PVP. I try to give him suggestions since I'm not 100% sure that it's true, but he always cites how top pvp warriors are complaining about the nerfs. Hell he talked to a GM the other day about something and they started complaining about Warriors together apparently. I will say they have made some specs nearly unplayable in the name of balance.

[dryankem]

I don't understand Blizzards stance on this at all because even if ONLY 10% of the player base play pvp that's still like £10,000,000 a MONTH coming in just from pvp players..
Now for that sort of money they absolutely should balance pvp and even go as far as to rebalance monthly all through the season.

This season is atrocious absolutely atrocious, S5 dks were better balanced than todays game.

Yeah that's a lot but not as much as the 90mil (based off purely your numbers) which is just so much more. Since 1 seems to affect the other than they will easily decide to piss off the 10mil rather than the 90mil, it's just simple math (just on a much larger scale than most).

Over a year that would be 1.08 billion from PVE and .12 billion from PVP.

[Zippoflames]

Yeah that's a lot but not as much as the 90mil (based off purely your numbers) which is just so much more. Since 1 seems to affect the other than they will easily decide to piss off the 10mil rather than the 90mil, it's just simple math (just on a much larger scale than most).

Over a year that would be 1.08 billion from PVE and .12 billion from PVP.

I fully appreciate that but for the 10 mill a month surely they could split the ability's pve/pvp ?

[Deleted]

I fully appreciate that but for the 10 mill a month surely they could split the ability's pve/pvp ?

That would cost an entire battleground.

As much as I would love to see them split PVP and PVE spells and abilities, it would just mean double the balancing work, Where as at the moment they only need to balance around classes against each other in an overall sense, rather than one lot of balancing for PVP and one lot for PVE.

[Nihilan]

You have to understand though that the majority of WoW's profit does not get re-invested in the game. WoW is the cash cow that funds the development of content not only for itself, but also for all of the other Blizzard IPs. But ultimately, yes, i do agree that they invest pathetically little into the one activity a significant portion of their playerbase logs in for - PVP. Personally, its the only reason i still have a sub. Though that sub is getting harder and harder to justify.

[Orlong]

To quote Jay Wilson: Shut up PVP guy.

Which is the result of neglecting it. Allowing a feature to descend into obscurity is > giving a shit apparently.

Yes, when there is no interest in it

[Starsinn]

Yes, when there is no interest in it

This guy has been baiting a pvp/pve argument all thread.

[PrairieChicken]

Most problem comes from the fact that PVE and PVP are tied together, separate them and voila rainbow appears.

- - - Updated - - -

That would cost an entire battleground.

As much as I would love to see them split PVP and PVE spells and abilities, it would just mean double the balancing work, Where as at the moment they only need to balance around classes against each other in an overall sense, rather than one lot of balancing for PVP and one lot for PVE.

Actually it will make balancing much easier.

Currently PVP and PVE are tied to each other, so as a result you have to take into account both sides when balancing stuff which makes it nightmare to balance stuff both without screwing over one or the other. Make them separate then no need to worry about how we can make hunters not oneshot everything while maintaining decent simcraft.

[Klingers]

Personally I don't even need new content. All I care for is class balance. Nothing else. And they're doing a poor job with that right now, imo.

My destruction warlock lobs a fel-empowered wet noodle then goes crunch. I empathise.

[Terahertz]

Blizzard is working hard on driving pvp-ers away from wow, so that they don't have to deal with pvp balancing and just focus on dragon slaying content that really counts.

I'd say they're doing an absolutely phenomenal job with that at the current pace. If they want to lose out on (apparently according to some people in this thread) 10% of their subscriber base and lose profit on a demographic that, I'd dare say, requires very little actual content in general, then be my guest. They're only actively crippling themselves by doing so.

I don't see how it can be so difficult as to balance PvP and PvE separately, though. Hire a small team of knowledgeable and willing PvP devs that do the balancing and you'll have made 80% of the PvP community happy.

Anyways. I must say I'm quite enjoying GW2 PvP right now. It's much, much more balanced and allows you to play numerous builds per 'class'. Although the combat is much more different and the movement does feel a bit more restricted (imo) compared to WoW, purely PvP-wise it's very much balanced.

I'd say it feels like wrath/cata PvP in the sense were you can burst someone down in a matter of seconds unless you react appropriately.

[time0ut]

To be honest, I don't think Blizzard is capable of making a good game anymore. They keep putting out highly polished but bland and boring games. SC2 was mediocre at best. D3 was abysmal. Cata was bad. MoP was worse. WoD seemed like they were reversing things a little, but it is actually the worst yet. It is sad, but I think they have lost their edge.

[Beefkow]

I think they're also having trouble balancing pve as well as pvp, class balance is the one good feature that blizzard left out in this expansion.

GG blizzard, you broke the game.

[ellieg]

My destruction warlock lobs a fel-empowered wet noodle then goes crunch. I empathise.

With GoSac im doing 50k chaos bolts and 80-90k with cds and trinkets up. With charred remains I am throwing them out consistently. I also heal for 20% hp over 10 secs for the entire fight. Obviously we are not good in arenas atm with all the interrupts and melee in your face but im far from weak and squishy.