I hope the RNG from the current BG win boxes isn't a preview of whats to come at 110

[Caolela]

AFAIK, Blizz didn't go after scripters. The weak ban waves have been mainly Honorbuddy gold botters and pilots which Blizz sees as taking revenue from them. They actually make money from the kickbotters, fly, lag, and wall hackers, exploiters and other cheats by looking the other way, and making up more excuses/spin. Most importantly, they haven't been full acct. bans, or address/payment method or hardware bans, which if they were serious they could do.

your regular PvPer has to climb through the ladder himself. getting gear where he can.

That's the essence of your justification for gear imbalance from rating? Ridiculous, and I've already argued how it's wrong.

I didn't say low participation was because of gear. That's something you just made up. You said, "if people are facing others around their MMR, then there won't be a "significant" difference in gear strength" - but there should not be any difference in gear strength because it's artificial and arbitrary. It simply doesn't belong in PvP. Also the MMR system pits you against much higher and lower MMR teams because of few players in Rated, that in Legion will give an unfair gear advantage or disadvantage. And then there's the que dodgers with top gear who will be stomping the lower ranks even worse than farming for cheap wins has already been.

There's no way to flip this on its head and make it sound good. Legion PvP is a compete and utter mess and will result in more segregation and even less participation. It seems to be the plan by Blizz, in hopes that WoW players will take their PvP to OW or HotS.

[wombats23]

you're completely ignoring that there IS good in the system (player progression in an RPG), it's just muddled because of other problems.

any form of cheating will harm PvP, regardless of the gear put in place.

a mismatch of MMR from lack of participation is not an issue with the gearing system, it's an issue with the lack of participation. queue dodgers are in a similar situation, although the issue might be more heavy on the matchmaking or rating gain sides.

in all of these cases, a gear difference exasperates these issues, i will not deny that. however, this does not mean a gear progression system is in itself flawed. the real issues are everything you mentioned.

and the whole notion of blizzard purposely wanting people to stop paying for a monthly subscription or buy an expansion to play a different game of their's is absurd. how is blizzard even to guarantee that players will only consider those two games when looking for a new game? why even spend the money developing the whole template system if you're purposely trying to shelf it?

[Reapocalypse]

There is supposed to be a "bad-luck protection" on level 110, i dont think that this is active with the current boxes.

The System itself is bad imho, RNG can totally be fun for the average player but when looking at anything competitively its just annoying.
The most important part being that you get the Elite appearance through boxes; queued the whole season above WhateverRatingEliteRequiresNow but still no Shoulders? too bad for you, maybe try next time.

Since specific Items do not matter in Instanced PvP i dont think that it will matter that much.
If you also do PvE im feeling bad for you all, Random gear with Random stats on it, if they think PvP players will get anywhere with this crapgear they really didnt thought it through.

Who would want someone with a fitting itemlevel in the Group that does not have any Setbonus, trinket, relics or even prioritized the right stat on his gear, the most Pugs will just say that no PvPers are welcome.

[Caolela]

wombats - I'm not ignoring progression. I'm saying it's the wrong kind of progression for PvP, or the wrong way to do it.

Of course there's no guarantee that people who quit WoW would go to another Blizzard title, but they know about "brand loyalty" and the perception that Blizz makes good games, thus a high chance that unless a player is pretty huffed at the company, they're likely to spend the $60. for OW or spend cash in HotS. That would cover several months of WoW subs. Sales of new titles like OW also helps that title look successful to investors, which is really all Blizzard gives a shit about. They've already made their profits 1000x over on WoW.

They also have data on who has pre-ordered and who is likely to buy Legion, even if they buy just to try before they might get fed up and leave. Great for Blizz too because even if they quit in a month or so they'll already have their money for the xpac. But the hardcore scumlords will always be there because they too make money from their cheating.

BTW - the template system is useless if they don't apply it properly, and from what I've seen on the beta forums so far, they haven't done a bang-up job with it.

[Mafic]

The ball is rolling man, get ready for more and more and more RNG as the game evolves. Removing justice and valor, sockets, adding warforged now titanforged, Ashran loot etc.. it is all a gradual sneaky infusion of more and more RNG into the game that will only get worse over time. It's so gradual though that most people won't notice let alone mind. It all adds up though and eventually we will be playing a time-gated diablo game.

There is nothing gradual about it. WoD started a huge RNG fest and it continues with Legion.

PVP participation is going to see another dropoff.