Does any one else actually prefer normal bg's to RBG/Arena?

[Deleted]

I can only play random battlegrounds when im drunk because then i dont give a shit about how bad
people are, how many bots are ruining the bg and all that other crap that usually grinds my gears when im sober.

[Lady Tygry]

I like them both for different reasons. When I just wanted to screw around or work on achievements (was casually working on Khan when I quit; BMaster has been done for years), I played randoms. RBG players aren't dense enough to let me sap/cap, troll four people off a node, thunderstorm entire teams, etc. When I want to PvP for a challenge, I played RBGs. I actually quit after a week where any "match" at 2.2k+ was some ghost, win-trading team. I agree that the formulaic approach of RBGs can get old; piddling around and enjoying the easy wins in randoms is a nice break. I gave up on 2s after TCCY was added and I wasn't good enough to just waltz into a cold LSD on my ele and do well enough to carry or figure out everyone else's playstyle after only a handful of matches together.

[morislayer]

BGs are fun because you are hardly CC'd.

but in a nutshell

1) If you are CC'd someone will break it
2) If you try CC something, someone will break it so you stop trying. thus you focus on point 3
3) You spend all your time trying to see big yellow numbers and how high you can get them
4) If your are stunned you generally die but are back in the fray again in less than 30 seconds.
5) BGs are all about how many healers there are ( usually )
6) If you're a healer you take delight in trying to see how long you can survive vs a whole team of uncoordinated lower geared players

#6 all day!! Especially as a Holy Paladin. I heal and heal and heal till they finally stun me, then bubble then run, then heal and heal and heal. I remember doing Eye once and just ran into a tower with 5 alli, they couldn't kill me so I eventually freedom / speed of light away and looked to see all the alliance chasing me to a horde tower. They must have been so pissed. Shit like that makes godmode healing fun

NBG's also give you KB and HK's which I need for 100k kills achieve. Also in reg bg's you do get those great comebacks or those great node defense battles. Seems like RBG's are so coordinated that it becomes borderline pve raiding. I still did RBG's, its just more competitive, as normal bg's are relaxing to a degree. You also learn in normals, how to play your class completely. All bg's have too much CC, but thats a dead horse.

Honestly my favorite bracket is two's. I get to use all my cooldowns, play to their strengths/weaknesses. Time my CC with my partner and work for a HK. I feel in two's I have the most control over the win / loss of a match.

[Nights]

hey, for a long time i prefered normal bgs much more then arenas and then rbgs but all this crap going around now makes me hate normal bgs, 30-40% in each bg are bots, if they are not bots its usually even worse cus they are afk or super undergeared, ppl complain thru whole bg others have absolutly no clue what to do and they dont giva a shit 0 respect for each other, overwhelming hate makes me quit rly fast usually. How much i love pvp and old school bgs like old av i dont belive its possible to make comunity accept smt like that new days

[Avada Kedavra]

its too easy to slay derps in normal BGS. It doesn't promote higher game play, coordination or communication.

[Prag]

its too easy to slay derps in normal BGS. It doesn't promote higher game play, coordination or communication.

Except, because of the free rights to weapons that everyone's been given, you walk into 2's and face 5+ pc Prideful (w/ Weapon) even at a shit-low rating. The obvious answer would be go do 3's, but nobody groups without Prideful weapon at least.

So back to slaying newbs in BG's we go!

[DingDongKing]

Going back to when I PVP'd (for a short time), I prefer Random BGs. Rated Battlegrounds were just comp wars and Arenas in 2s is very much the same. I might revisit things at some point but right now it just doesn't work for me. As a Retribution Paladin, Rated PVP is not realistic.

[gestapo]

Well, I prefer normal BGs to RBGs. But I like arena the most.

This. I love random bg's for the reasons you mentioned, OP. Especially being able to use fun/quirky items and the time factor. RBG's are far too time consuming for the reward. Randoms are nice because it's a good stress release, you can goof off and there's no pressure.

However, when I have time and i want to get serious, I prefer doing arena. It's fun in a different way if you know what i mean.

[Elodeon]

In my personal opinion, Rated BGs and Arenas are both awful.

Rated BGs are awful because you either:

(1) Need to be in a dedicated PvP guild with a fixed Rated BG schedule, which is a commitment not unlike raiding. I want a game that fits into when I want to play, not a game that dictates my schedule. It's why I no longer raid. (Also, I find it masochistic and non-enjoyable.)

(2) If you're not in a dedicated PvP guild, then you're going to be doing Rated BGs in pick up groups that (a) take forever to form, (b) frequently don't even make it to queue after you've been waiting for an hour, (c) definitely fall apart after the first loss.

I also find the gameplay of Rated BGs unengaging, because they're full of players who know what's going on, so gameplay devolves into the same kinds of encounters. The whole fun of random BGs is running into a wide range of player gear and skill, and unsynchronized actions; you never know what you're going to get. In Rated BGs, you know exactly what you're going to get - a team with 3 healers and 7 DPS, playing one of a handful of strategies, most of which involve a big group fight where the two teams try in vain to land a kill against overpowered CC and healing.

I find arenas similarly frustrating. I play with my wife, which means we play 2v2, which is just an awful bracket. It wouldn't be so awful if it wasn't for how overpowered healers are in 2v2. We don't play 3v3 because that would involve scheduling with another person, so again we wouldn't be able to play when we want to.

Normal BGs (non-rated) are great for us to play as a team. We can play whenever we want, it doesn't dictate our schedule; we get to feel smug because we usually outperform everyone else; and most weeks, we get to win a majority of our games, even as Alliance.

So yeah, absolutely - yay normal BGs; nay rateds and arenas.

[Skarssen]

While it is obviously more satisfying to win RBGs, the added stress of HAVING to win sometimes isn't what I'm in the mood for. If I join a random with a bunch of new players and/or derps and it is obvious within the first 2 minutes it is going to be a miserable loss, I can just leave and swap to another character or do something else for 15 minutes. Sure you get a lot of bad random groups, but sometimes that isn't any more frustrating than two evenly matched RBGs squads trying to wipe a kill team or efc team with 3 healers and guardian.

[Cobaltius]

Random BG's lot less stress, you don't need to be full geared, you are not constantly CCed or need specific strategies groupings etc... but you do get bots, AFKers, rage quitters and other that don't care if you win or lose.

Rated BG's more stress, top gear, gemming, enchants and reforging is required, voice communication and certain addons are a necessity, the CC's are over the top, and you need specific strategies and groupings for them, but everyone on your team plays, plays hard and plays to win.

[Deleted]

Depends, for me RBG and arenas were main reason why I played a game, but I couldn´t imagine game without regular BGs, it was place for me to just relax and enjoy PvP gear.

[Deleted]

I hate normal bgs, but thats only due to players.

[Deleted]

its too easy to slay derps in normal BGS. It doesn't promote higher game play, coordination or communication.

To use an analogy with poker: I don't want to play against the best poker players in the world, I'd rather make money. For the same reasons, I play pvp to win.

Now, if you are just relying on great gear or whatever and spamming opponents down you'd have a point. But you can make great plays against "derps" as well. In fact, in some ways it is more challenging the correct ability to use is not always as obvious as it is in RBG's, for the simple reason you often have no idea what a poor player will do.

- - - Updated - - -

In my personal opinion, Rated BGs and Arenas are both awful.

Rated BGs are awful because you either:

(1) Need to be in a dedicated PvP guild with a fixed Rated BG schedule, which is a commitment not unlike raiding. I want a game that fits into when I want to play, not a game that dictates my schedule. It's why I no longer raid. (Also, I find it masochistic and non-enjoyable.)

(2) If you're not in a dedicated PvP guild, then you're going to be doing Rated BGs in pick up groups that (a) take forever to form, (b) frequently don't even make it to queue after you've been waiting for an hour, (c) definitely fall apart after the first loss.

I also find the gameplay of Rated BGs unengaging, because they're full of players who know what's going on, so gameplay devolves into the same kinds of encounters. The whole fun of random BGs is running into a wide range of player gear and skill, and unsynchronized actions; you never know what you're going to get. In Rated BGs, you know exactly what you're going to get - a team with 3 healers and 7 DPS, playing one of a handful of strategies, most of which involve a big group fight where the two teams try in vain to land a kill against overpowered CC and healing.

I find arenas similarly frustrating. I play with my wife, which means we play 2v2, which is just an awful bracket. It wouldn't be so awful if it wasn't for how overpowered healers are in 2v2. We don't play 3v3 because that would involve scheduling with another person, so again we wouldn't be able to play when we want to.

Normal BGs (non-rated) are great for us to play as a team. We can play whenever we want, it doesn't dictate our schedule; we get to feel smug because we usually outperform everyone else; and most weeks, we get to win a majority of our games, even as Alliance.

So yeah, absolutely - yay normal BGs; nay rateds and arenas.

This. Totally this. A thousand times this.

[ophion1990]

I've never been a big arena fan, I do like RBGs however. BGs are fun because they're more casual and you can literally que up and play them, RBGs require a good team and are usually planned ahead of time, kinda like a raid. It's what I like about HS and stuff aswell, you play when you wanna play, not when you have the people available to play with. That said I just like BGs alot because they're pretty tactical, you don't just beat the other team in PvP, you have to handle objectives as well in order to win.

[Bodega]

Hell nah. They get WAYYY too annoying.

[Korgoth]

Not since they removed the ability to full queue groups. I think the most fun I had in pvp is probably a tie between a couple arena season (3,4,6) and Guild AV after BWL back in the day. Something great about getting a guy an Ashkandi then queuing up as a guild and just down right but raping some Alliance.

[Deleted]

I prefer normal BGs, it's low stress and as someone said, good to test my surviability against multiple players.

I did enjoy rated play a lot, but not these days, not when PvP is currently like it is.

[Dabrix32]

i never liked Arenas I came up playing the massive battles in DAoC where sometimes 200 people would be fighting at once. To me Arena defeats the purpose of WoW. The game is about the constant conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. Large scale PvP should have a place in WoW where you can find 100 v 100 fights or even 150 vs 50 fights where the under dog 50 win. But there isnt large scale PvP in any form. WG was a lot of fun and they tried to add that massive battle feel to it and for a while it was fun. But then the filthy casuals cried that every fight was 100 vs 20 so Blizzard ruined Wintergrasp making it basically a massive 3v3 arena map officially killing the zone. Seriously its not Blizzard's fault your side was bad and no one wanted to show up for WG. No need to ruin it for the rest of us who enjoyed it.

But then again WoW isnt even a game where PvP is taken seriously. Not only do the Devs not give a shit about it but even the pro gaming circuit dropped WoW.

[Thallidomaniac]

I like normal BGs because I can queue for them at anytime I want. And for some reason, whenever I do RBGs or Arena, I get a bad guilty feeling whenever we lose, whether it was myself at fault or not. I don't seem to get that feeling in normal BGs.

Plus, watching people rage in BG chat never gets old.