Wall of text inc!
So I've been entrenched with this game since Beta, I've gone through a couple of accounts on the way, stopped and re-entered the game a few weeks/months later, but never really quited. I've been in some really good raiding guilds and held gladiator twice back in TBC, these days though, most of my friends have stopped playing alltogether and I only log on once in a while to play some PvP, sometimes Arena, sometimes just Battlegrounds with my girlfriend.
A thought I have had growing for quite a while now that I keep a somewhat relaxed position to this game and just play whatever alt (mage, hunter, warlock, rogue, priest - shadow or disc/holy, resto shaman, druid or soon to be my monk) for fun is how appauling it must be for a new player to try and enter PvP in this game. Why you ask? Well let me break down my thought;
1.
You just dinged 90 as a new player, you are probably not very comfortable with the amount of buffs/debuffs to keep track of, even from your own class/spec. and even less so with the other 33 specs in the game. Your character is weak, and when I say weak I mean you can't do shitall. If the person leveled completely with quests/dungeons they are probably not very familiar with positioning/LoS or hell, even how to operate their character (aka, not keyboardturn, bind all buttons etc.)
You queue up your first battleground and how must that feel? First of the disgraceful language and name calling is just... I don't have words for it. It's wierd how some people just spew their garbage all over everyone else and doesn't have a singel ounce of human dignity in their bodies. If I wasn't hardened from seeing this shit year in and year out I would probably exclude myself from every trying to co-operate or work together with people in bg's.
Second of, even if you invest in the crafted pvpgear it isn't as you can do much to help. Your damage output will be that of a papersheet. If you are hitcapped you can run around spamming cc perhaps but remember, if you are new, do you understand the need for it? Hell I rarely see anyone use cc in bgs unless it's instant and on the target they are shooting. Also, as soon as you would land any cc some herpes-avatar is obviously targeting that instantly and breaking it.
Your character is also so weak that if you are left alone in a 1v1 you will lose if the enemy has better gear in 99% of the cases, specially if you are new. I remember gearing my warlock recently and facing of against a hunter, now I could tell the hunter had no idea of what he was doing (BM'd before fear landed so he couldn't break fear on the pet for one example) yet still, thanks to attrocious gear I almost died, through all defensives. Imagine I was new to the PvP, would I have won that duel, or any duel for that matter if the gear difference is to high? Probably not.
For the first what, 50bgs you have to put up with being completely useless, standing in the back and if anyone touches you, bend over and submit. Who in their right mind would think that was a fun game? Who would invest time (quite a lot of time tbh) in such? Listen to dickheads circlewank about how great they are and how everyone else is shit while you are completely helpless like an infant.
I as an experienced player can still get some thrill out of it, for me most of the time it's more of a challenge to play a newly lvled toon in a bg and try to survive/do something useful instead of standing in the middle with BiS gear laughing at the whole enemy team as they try to plow my priest in to the ground. But for a new player it must be attrocious no? Whenever a undergeared player attack me in bgs or hell a whole swarm of them if you will I feel like god standing in front of ants, for me it's hardly fun and for them it must be utterly frustrating no? I mean, they can't even break a singel PW:shield and I can kill them with penance...
2.
Ok so let's say some poor new soul manages to get through the BG grind and onto Arena, not that arena is everyones goal when going into pvp, but still, humour my idea here!
So you are in honor gear, if you are late into a season everyone, even the teams @ 1000-1400 mmr are fully decked out, like completely as geared as my main. If you are in early, then you are in a bit of better luck, but if you are new to the game how big are the chances you managed to time your leveling to 90 to the end of a season so you could honor grind in between seasons and then start fresh in the new one? Not big I recon.
If you are new to arena, you are probably jumping into 2s instead of 3s as it requires less coordination and is in general slower paced. But so many setups have absolutely to many cc's. Instant that into instant that into instant that. Even as a experienced player it's a freakin lot of cc in this game at the moment with bullshit like 0.1sec stuns and what not but imagine being new to it, what view do you get of arena?
From trying to cap alts @ low mmr it seems most have the idea that you:
a) Mount & charge
b) Press ALL buttons, pop ALL cooldowns!
c1) We win, yey!
c2) We lost, they had superior classes/button pressing skills as in, they could do more damage than we in a short amount of time
Being new, this must be god awful to face, double dps classes with close to BiS gear tearing you a new one less than 20seconds after the doors open, how do you learn to get better when you get stunned for 5sec, trinket that into another stun for 3 sec or something or silenced or random scatter to break casts and you can't do anything but watch your character get fondled to death?
or elemental comps for that matter who just randomly shoots and then POOF! 100-5% instantly, no foreboding warning, just randomly happens.
3. <- last one 'kay!
So ok, I ranted a lot now, but I did it because being new to the game must be horrible, at least the pvp part of it. It must be like paying 12euros (whatever you pay in america) to go to a BDSM club and have some crazy person beat the shit out of you. What the pvp community lack right now is new blood. All ladders seems to be dying, queue times are horrendous at most points of the day all around the bracket, recently moved to a more populated battlegroup but even there above 2.2k you sit 5-10minutes and wait. What can we do as a community to make people come and join us?
I sometimes whisper random ppl that seems to be new (quick achiev inspect when they run past) and ask if they would like to have some help (aka: mentoring) and then try to help them on their merry way forward in PvP, but alas, that ain't much. For every person I help another 100 gets scared away with the system that is in place and the disgraceful attitude of the community in some cases.
I don't want to attribute the decline ONLY to unbalanced situation, though BM-Hunters and shamans sure contribute to a lot of people saying "f**k this" and shelves PvP forever. Any ideas what we can do more to guide new people into trying pvp? : (
and if someone new to WoW reads this, please give me your story of how you feel/felt when going into PvP! : )