Is Warmode a Cursed game design problem?

[Rocksteady 87]

WPvP and instanced PvP aren't the same thing. Nor were BGs added to replace WPvP

Yeah.

It's just, you know, what the majority of the playerbase wanted. Hence why the day they came out, the idiotic battles in Tarren Mill dwindled to a ghost of its former self, and remained that way... until, you know, this very day.

Funny how that worked. Considering, you know, people like you claiming that "world PVP" is what's actually fun and highly desired by all.

Nevermind that PVP is the anomaly playstyle for WoW to begin with. There's a reason PVE servers were called "Normal" servers back in the day.

[micwini]

The greatest example of this is Battle for Nazjatar in BFA. Skill didnt matter. All that mattered is whoever got the biggest and most amount of raids on their shard.

[Khaza-R]

Yeah.

It's just, you know, what the majority of the playerbase wanted. Hence why the day they came out, the idiotic battles in Tarren Mill dwindled to a ghost of its former self, and remained that way... until, you know, this very day.

Funny how that worked. Considering, you know, people like you claiming that "world PVP" is what's actually fun and highly desired by all.

Nevermind that PVP is the anomaly playstyle for WoW to begin with. There's a reason PVE servers were called "Normal" servers back in the day.

Sort of. What killed TM vs SS was when they added the Battlemasters to the capital cities. When you still had physically travel to the BG entrance plenty people still PvP'ed around those areas waiting for the queues to pop.

I would agree that WPvP is definitely a niche among the community. Its also not something as illustrious in 2022 when we have online PvP games in spades compared to 2004 when the concept was still fairly novel. That said, I don't think it was an anomaly at all. At least not in Blizzard's eyes. They wasted tons of resources trying to functionaly support it in TBC, WotLK and Cataclysm.

[kingj56]

Eve online is a perfect example of this. No one wants to waste time playing a losing game. To the select few its the thrill of the battle and thats fun enough. To the majority of us, we want our time respected and to come out with rewards so we play politics. Null-Sec in EVE is the best example. People organize, elect leaders, security, trade officers etc to respect time and dish out rewards when needed. They go to war ONLY when its clear politics wont work. Games cant stop human behavior no matter how hard they try. If you manage to make a game for the people who just enjoy the thrill of battle, you have a Mortal Online where the community is very small which leads a developer one bad decision away from losing the game.

Its hard to cater to everyone so devs cater to the masses since they like making games and want to continue to do so.

[MoanaLisa]

War mode is cursed largely because player dislike open world PVP a lot more than they're willing to admit (unless it's certain they can win). Warmode is fine like it is. It's a compromise but reasonable in the face of the number of players who want to avoid PVP of any kind at all.

[Alkizon]

What would you do to make warmode fun?

Delete it of course (+/+/+/+/+/+)

The only healthy thing they can do for this abomination WM is to make it separate game... but who'd need this product of a sick imagination in this form at all? This question was discussed in great detail and with cynical jokes even at the time of its introduction.
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Yeah.

It's just, you know, what the majority of the playerbase wanted. Hence why the day they came out, the idiotic battles in Tarren Mill dwindled to a ghost of its former self, and remained that way... until, you know, this very day.

Funny how that worked. Considering, you know, people like you claiming that "world PVP" is what's actually fun and highly desired by all.

Nevermind that PVP is the anomaly playstyle for WoW to begin with. There's a reason PVE servers were called "Normal" servers back in the day.

A very controversial statement, given that person speaks absolute truth, when declaring difference between these concepts, so majority didn't asked for "it", such, and even more so, majority didn't need to remove PvP servers, which are a priori quintessence of wPvP. An alternative organization of such activity is BG, aka organized PvP activity. Hybrid implementations have taken place during life of this game, but it did never use any $hitty phasing, scaling and crossrealm.

There is difference between being able to fight and wanting to fight and it's exactly PvP+PvE (servers)vs(toggle) issue.

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division of solid server into anything is wrong decision (shards/phasing/CRZ/whatever else sh*t). Solid should stay solid for every person - this is how world in MMORPG should be designed. So, any change that goes against this rule shouldn't even be considered (and, for your information, scaling goes to the same trash bin, for not only frustrate progress and rewards system, but also makes open world adjust to the player, when everything should happen exact opposite).

People saying that dev-s tried something like this before and this didn't work as intended (well, at least it didn't violate design and was implemented according to game world rules back then), so what's changed since?

you, as well as devs, continue to not understand what wPvP really is - it's unorganized, not specifically motivated, unpredictable process): so about WM - either there is incentive and this is BG, or there is no incentive and this is ghost town.

= = = = simple proof from point of healthy game conditions = = = =
since, from game's adequate technical side, in order to receive rewards (and nobody needs it without rewarding), you need to participate in more or less complication-balanced activity, activity with at least some complexity (matching rewards to "labor-time"), and it can't be organized in framework of current WM design (whole world toggle)... so it have to be BG (which is only working such one here, balance&rewards, but with commitment, no choice in participation, was built for mandatory fight activity) and PvP servers (which is about no balance&rewards, but about every minute freedom of choice) should be returned. Q.E.D.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

ps. Btw, name "normal" was such only in vanila, then everything goes with being depended on localization region, somewhere there were no "normal" ones at all, and somewhere PvP servers were normal. Indicate it in this format (especially during period when there was no activity in game designed as such) isn't even semantically appropriate. "Normal", from my point of view, will be the one that gives me freedom of choice, and doesn't limit it by server rules.

[Alecazam]

Warmode needs just a drop of replayable content. The great thing is that the structure is already there. The capture points in zangarmarsh/hellfire peninsula/plaguelands, halaa, gurubashi/blade's edge/nagrand/black rook hold arena, battle for nazjatar, tol barad. Make an event for each of these areas, give relevant rewards, and create new achievements.

Make a daily quest that gives some honor/conquest for winning X duels. Add achievements for winning 10/100/1000 duels. Increase honor gained from killing a player in the world.

With a little effort WPvP will be very active

[arkanon]

War mode is cursed largely because player dislike open world PVP a lot more than they're willing to admit (unless it's certain they can win). Warmode is fine like it is. It's a compromise but reasonable in the face of the number of players who want to avoid PVP of any kind at all.

We dont agree often, but this is one thing i can 100% agree with you on, without a doubt. Before warmode, no one selected a pvp realm because "you know what, id like to get ganked while im fighting a rare, or ganked while trying to quest, or attacked by a group of 4 at the summoning stone while my mate is on the way". Everyone had their reason, some because of population, some because, at a certain point in wows history, PvP realm ALSO had the most serious PvE guilds, some to play with friends, etc etc - these are all non-pvp related decisions.

When purely picking PvP vs PvE based purely on the differences, the ONLY difference between a pvp and pve realm was the ability to engage in lopsided / unfair pvp. Outside of the very early vanilla days, Blizzard have provided more and more game modes designed purely around fair and equal (in theory) pvp. This meant that outside of the very early days when the ONLY pvp was world pvp, the decision was either based on the non-pvp related criteria listed earlier, or, players simply wanted to gank other players.

I dont mind warmode - i HATE it in combination with the phasing, which often results in getting an objective to 85% then suddenly an entire enemy army materializes and evaporates you from existance. This isnt fun, but, also isnt a fault of warmode, but rather their servers and how they deal with phasing. Im sure most if not all people can relate from the Naz pvp objectives where you would have 15 odd players controlling something then fucking BOOM 40 enemy players spawn instantly.

[Rendark]

Most people don't go out into the world just to pvp, that's why people don't use it.

[Loveliest]

People that dislike world pvp should uninstall wow.

i enjoyed pvping at the world quest in Stormsong Valley where you have to kill the naga hulk. very chaotic, the size and strength of each team kept shifting and players joined and left. great fun. perhaps the most fun thing in bfa.

and you guys hate world pvp? Pah!

4 guildies and myself used to gank alliance who were trying to do the turtle world quest. Good times. I mean I don't know why anyone would be upset to get taken unpraperaded when coming out of a WQ by an organized group of 5 to 1, with a healer to boot.
World pvp is more often than not about inequality and unfairness. Of course there are many people who hate it, you only like it when you are winning in cases like this.

[Alkizon]

Warmode needs just a drop of replayable content. The great thing is that the structure is already there. The capture points in zangarmarsh/hellfire peninsula/plaguelands, halaa, gurubashi/blade's edge/nagrand/black rook hold arena, battle for nazjatar, tol barad. Make an event for each of these areas, give relevant rewards, and create new achievements.

Make a daily quest that gives some honor/conquest for winning X duels. Add achievements for winning 10/100/1000 duels. Increase honor gained from killing a player in the world.

With a little effort WPvP will be very active

I'll assume you're a beginner (in this discussions), so I'll explain. This design is only good on paper, but in fact this plane won't take off, because it isn't controlled by any rules, only open world, which means it's flawed (in your way) and subject to exploits by players (see my quotes above). We have gone through this many times: either it fits into framework of BG (instanced PvP) and has at least some kind of competitive basis and rewards, since it's controlled by closed rules (quantity requirements and objectives), or it doesn’t fit (open world) and then it has nothing of such stuff (only if there're some local bonuses, but it already worked on normal adequate PvP servers and WM is absolutely not needed for this).

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Regarding exploits, there are easy fixes.

And here you're falling into the same trap as Blizzard did from which they can't get out already *checks records* since WM was introduced. They didn't solve it (and won't, by definition) and you won't ever offer anything helpfull. Semantics is not important here, the main design criteria are important: if - then, otherwise - this. It makes no sense to breed this verbiage.

WM isn't wPvP.

There will be no fixes here, this is world-class war against which more than one generation of system workers are fighting and continue to lose brutally. The simpler and tougher system's outside boundaries, and more flexible/transparent mechanism within it, the more stable it will exist. But no, they act precisely on the contrary, they have blurred boundaries, and they're trying to cram a myriad of crutch-conditions-(inside boundaries) -that litter code and regulation inside the system. Cherry on top of this pile of crap is that in all this they rely on automation, in intricacies of code of which they themselves have long been unable to tie up loose ends, so, as result, this war was lost before it even began.

[WowIsDead64]

WPVP has "double Meta" problem. Problem is - in some perfect world WPVP is about small skirmishes turning into large scale battles. But reality is different. Despite of having Meta in PVP, instanced PVP is more or less balanced, because devs have tools for doing it. Such as MMR, that is about making things self-balanced. But open world doesn't have such tools. And therefore players can choose, when they want to engage and when they don't. And players pick situations, where they have advantage. I.e. even more simple: they attack weaker players and avoid stronger ones. Yeah, it turns into ganking. The most toxic and anti-social thing in whole game. And players just don't want to be victims. That's it.

[cparle87]

Is a "cursed design problem" an actual thing? Like backed by educational organizations and published in peer reviewed works? If it is then you should explain that because otherwise people are going to assume it means what they think the individual words mean.



NOTHING
because everyone doesn't like PvP. I quit playing on PvP servers back in BC once I learned that PvP meant other players can fucking interrupt me while I'm doing somethi



I'd have to first know why people think it's not fun

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People that tell people to uninstall wow because they don't like their gameplay choices should uninstall wow.

Someone put it pretty well at the beginning of BFA that there are four kinds of people who play with WM on.

1.) People who actually want to pvp and attack people on sight.
2.) People who only want to pvp in large groups where they can't lose for AAO credit and the loot rewards (some overlap with group 1)
3.) People who are just there mostly for the 10% bonus, who sometimes partake in pvp if they see another guy (some overlap with group 1)
4.) People who are there purely for the 10% bonus, who run away from pvp and exist to be food for people in the prior 3 groups.

[Pakheth]

I'm probably alone on this but I actually enjoyed the city raids we had back in the day to kill the faction leaders. But nowadays you can't be in a raid in PvP without being penalised so no one does them anymore.

[Alecazam]

I'll assume you're a beginner (in this discussions), so I'll explain. This design is only good on paper, but in fact this plane won't take off, because it isn't controlled by any rules, only open world, which means it's flawed (in your way) and subject to exploits by players (see my quotes above). We have gone through this many times: either it fits into framework of BG (instanced PvP) and has at least some kind of competitive basis and rewards, since it's controlled by closed rules (quantity requirements and objectives), or it doesn’t fit (open world) and then it has nothing of such stuff (only if there're some local bonuses, but it already worked on normal adequate PvP servers and WM is absolutely not needed for this).

Any PvP in the open world qualifies as WPvP. The idea that WPvP has to be organic and disorganized died in TBC when BGs gave much more honor than even the biggest WPvP battles. WPvP has to give competitive rewards with instanced content if anyone today is going add it to their lineup of content. Otherwise it's just oldheads trying to relive their glory days. Incentives can be as simple as a quest that says "go out and kill X players." Calling that a battleground is just weird.

Regarding exploits, there are easy fixes. Progress for specific quests can be disabled while in a raid group, and removing CRZ from specific zones is a tech they've had since the implementation of CRZ.

[munkeyinorbit]

Horde player spotted.

World pvp might have been fun 15 years ago, when factions on some servers were at least somewhat balanced. Nowadays, at the start of an expansion or new world content, if you leave town without a party as alliance with warmode on, you're just dead.

That didn't happen in SL launch. Alliance started off with a 30% increase in experience. I leveled slowly over a week and I barely saw a horde. In the end it turned out that the extra experience was a waste of time as you got relatively weaker but couldn't even do dungeons untill you unlocked them through the story. Worst leveling experience ever.

[Accendor]

We have cross-faction grouping as of 9.2.5. Why on earth would they enforce faction balance now? It wouldn't actually solve anything, it'd just force friends not to play with each other and potentially turn off thousands of new players.

Please ignore l don't ignore the other part of my post. If you want revive warmode, you need balance in some way. If they can't not find a way, warmode will never work.

[Nymrohd]

War mode is cursed largely because player dislike open world PVP a lot more than they're willing to admit (unless it's certain they can win). Warmode is fine like it is. It's a compromise but reasonable in the face of the number of players who want to avoid PVP of any kind at all.

When there are actual tasks to complete related to world pvp and good rewards tied to them, people enjoy it. In BFA with zone assaults and Naz'jatar event, people did plenty of world pvp and the conquest reward track gave them a reason to do it. The bounty system also added to the system. It helped that we also had a storyline that supported world pvp.

[Kokolums]

4 guildies and myself used to gank alliance who were trying to do the turtle world quest. Good times. I mean I don't know why anyone would be upset to get taken unpraperaded when coming out of a WQ by an organized group of 5 to 1, with a healer to boot.
World pvp is more often than not about inequality and unfairness. Of course there are many people who hate it, you only like it when you are winning in cases like this.

the whole point of world pvp is:

1. someone kills someone else.
2. killed player recruits people to come over and kill them.
3. ganker recruits people to come and kill those who defended the first player.

and thats the fun. you get a pop-up community of death and destruction. its wonderful.

nowadays, people whine and want to hide. pathetic.

[Rocksteady 87]

A very controversial statement, given that person speaks absolute truth, when declaring difference between these concepts, so majority didn't asked for "it", such, and even more so, majority didn't need to remove PvP servers, which are a priori quintessence of wPvP. An alternative organization of such activity is BG, aka organized PvP activity. Hybrid implementations have taken place during life of this game, but it did never use any $hitty phasing, scaling and crossrealm.

First of all, I get that you think you sound like a hyper-intellectual. But please, for the love of all that's sacred in the world, learn to write a legible sentence.

Second, yeah, no. Every last form of "open world PVP" has failed miserably, including the original incarnation. The second battlegrounds were released, it all but died in vanilla and it never recovered. That's a simple fact, no matter how badly you wish it weren't. Nevermind that PVP servers only existed in the first place to separate the obnoxious trolls and asshats from the proper players, without Blizzard being too painfully obvious about it. Because PVPers--formerly know as PKers--were always seen as complete and total douchenozzles by the majority of players.

ps. Btw, name "normal" was such only in vanila

Wrong again. The change was relatively recent, like within the last five years or so. Probably less.

"Normal", from my point of view, will be the one that gives me freedom of choice, and doesn't limit it by server rules.

Absolutely no one cares about your point of view.

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the whole point of world pvp is:

1. someone kills someone else.
2. killed player recruits people to come over and kill them.
3. ganker recruits people to come and kill those who defended the first player.

and thats the fun. you get a pop-up community of death and destruction. its wonderful.

nowadays, people whine and want to hide. pathetic.

Cool, so you agree then. Being phased away from everyone and having no special rewards for being in Warmode is the best way forward. After all, you're just there for the fun, and you hate the people who are there just for the special rewards, so win win. Right?