So... Wait, we're serious with this?

[Blamblam41]

I'm going to preface this with a 'wat' and a 'why' and bring in a quote from the front page here.

The team isn't 100% sure why players are hesitant to engage in PvP combat. Is it the fact that there is a person on the other end, so they feel pressure and stress, or is it the behavior of the character on the other end.

So, right. Why do people avoid PvP, exactly? It couldn't be the fact that PvP in this game can be intoxicating without the other party even trying to be toxic. This lack of awareness is almost fucking legendary, honestly. The idea that they don't know after a decade of PvP servers, /pvp toggle and shoehorning WPvP into almost every expansion why people tend to avoid PvP is fucking laughable.
Of course some players do not like PvP. I honestly fail to see how they don't know, but it's because it involves A) Fighting against a player (which has more skills, health, mobility than any sort of mob, AI or not) B) Taking time away from what they were already doing in the open world (they act like there suddenly isn't enough to do, again.) and C) The lack of reward for actually successfully engaging and killing another player is just astonishingly bad for anyone not looking to get a quick dose of dopamine and adrenaline.

They couldn't be less aware if they were a turtle inside it's shell inside a box inside a lead crate at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

[Arrashi]

Yeah, apparently "Because its bad and unenjoyable" as reason still evades them. Maybe in next 10 years they will figure that.

[Echoherb]

All I know is I would be happy if PVP was a completely separate thing entirely including on the forums, so I don't even have to think about it or interact with PVPers whatsoever. Not forcing pve changes because of pvp was a big step in that direction, but now it seems like they are trying to force pvp again with the warfront stuff.

Edit: I know the warfront stuff is pve now, thanks.

[Maljinwo]

So, right. Why do people avoid PvP, exactly?

Being boring is apparently stressful

[Heladys]

Stupid fun Tarren Mill vs Southshore was fun even as a non-PVPer.

Soon as they layered all the "nuance" and horseshit via incessant stun locking and over-heavy CC and counter gameplay maybe that made it more fun for PVPers (and good for them, they deserve fun), but it made it an unwelcoming hell for casual or reluctant PVPers.

What they need to do is have a LFPVP, a normal PVP, and a Mythic PVP bracket and pare down the ability sets respectively.

[Louz]

I actually let out a loud "hah" when reading that.

Don't know if that's some deep cryptosarcasm that my mind cannot comprehend - or they're simply really that out of touch.

Who logs into the game and thinks "yes, today I feel like getting shat on by some random guy(s) without a chance of fighting back".

[Shiandra]

The most fun with PVP I have ever had, was not in WoW.

People are gunna cringe, but Tera has this thing called Kumos Island, that is the most freaking fun thing EVER. You have two sides of combat, the players and then the player controlled raid boss godling creatures called the Kumos. The objective is to find the candy hidden, keep it from the kumos and take it back to your ship. However, the kumos know exactly where the candy is, they are uber beasts, there are three of them and when all three are together the biggest kumos (mama kumos) can heal.

It is freaking crazy fun and that is the only time I have ever enjoyed PvP. Now, if Blizz implemented something like that...I would SO be game, because the people who are players and who get to be kumos is totally random. Also, when you have the candy you can't attack and your movement speed is cut down to 50%. It's just all kinds of awesome...

Also, all the gear is the same, all the levels are the same and everyone, except the kumos because by design they are evil, is well, equal. You have all your abilities, but the playing field is really well balanced.

[Lex Icon]

funny thing is the game would probably be more profitable if they just spent a little dough on people handling the PvP that actually enjoys it. after that they'd hardly ever have to fund anything concerning that again. some cosmetics here and there and maybe a new map every 5 years or so to keep it "fresh".

unlike PvE where they have to come up with new stuff continuously.

[LazarusLong]

All I know is I would be happy if PVP was a completely separate thing entirely including on the forums, so I don't even have to think about it or interact with PVPers whatsoever. Not forcing pve changes because of pvp was a big step in that direction, but now it seems like they are trying to force pvp again with the warfront stuff.

Warfront is a PVE content.

[facelesssoul]

Being stun-locked and corpse camped+T-Bagged by toxic players who have "issues" is not fun at all.

Players will usually go for the weakest/least-skilled players and proceed to grief them because it's allowed. I invite anyone with a player with crappy gear or level lower than 110 to go to the underbelly and see what kind of nightmare will spread on the whole world, especially in important spots. The canned response would be that a player should stand up to organized griefing by bringing friends to help out which makes for 'interesting gameplay'.

Blizzard have been deluded for a while that by punishing solo play they will 'encourage' players to make 'friends' and be 'social' thus increasing attachment to the game which would reflect on subs.

[Raetary]

but now it seems like they are trying to force pvp again with the warfront stuff.

for the love of god, warfronts are not in any way pvp content.

[Wrecktangle]

Nearly all of my best memories from vanilla are in some fashion a remnant of WPVP and I am not an avid PVPer in this game. I am a huge fan of the FGC and other competitive games (and am competitive in general).

I remember running into a kid from school in the arathi highlands, who I knew played on the horde side and we had like a 30 minute straight fight before he finally edged me out (Sham vs. Pally) right outside that troll village to the southeast. It was exciting the entire time, but because we could both heal, it took forever. The lunchroom nonsense the next day was priceless. He knew it was me and I knew it was him and it was unscheduled and just happened naturally.

Another time was me and a buddy (War and pally) were waiting for our party outside of RFK or RFD, not entirely sure which tbh, but 2 other horde players crossed our paths and we had a complete battle. Later that day, my friend and I got together and went out to get something to eat, only to overhear a group of guys talking about WoW at the booth across from us. We turned and talked to them and found out they all played on the same server, but were horde. 2 out of 4 of them were talking about how they were salty they lost to a pally and war outside RFK/RFD earlier and once we realized we were the same people it got incredibly awkward. They wouldn't talk to us anymore. Either way, priceless.

Those examples obviously stick out more than normal because they had IRL complications, but there's dozens of other examples like me crossing paths with the horde grand marshal equivalent and beating him in EPL, and then he called his buddies and we had some nice duels there after. Some good fighting outside Tyr's hand or STV. Duels outside of IF, etc. Stuff like that.

The major issue with Wpvp stems from unfair encounters (i.e. level 60 rogue ganking you at STV), when you just get steamrolled because you're outnumbered 2/3+ v 1, or when you're camped.

The ability to toggle yourself and be put into the same shard and offer increased rewards literally fixes all of those problems. I fail to see a single downside so I can certainly echo the dev's frustration.

[Luko]

Haha, the closed off perspective of people who already PVP is pretty humorous. "Lols it's just crap and boring, which isn't at all because I've been doing it for a decade. How could people possibly stress over a game lols"

It's stress. It's performance anxiety. It's just as much socially-awkward people avoiding social pressure as it is perfectly functional adults not wanting to fall into the griefing/BM cycle that competitive games have become.

[xpose]

World PVP can be super annoying when all you want to do is finish a quest and leave. How blizzard doesn't see that is mind-boggling.

[MoanaLisa]

PVP is fine for a choice. I'm not really a fan of PVP. I'm not really very good at it for one thing and have no desire to spend any time getting better at it. Lots of people feel that way. And, let's face it, there are more than a few bad actors on the PVP side that do stuff like corpse/graveyard camping and the rest. It's an unnecessary hassle and I honestly don't give a damn about the 'war'.

But I've had some fun with PVP over the years, primarily in doing city defense and things like that. It's a choice though, always.

A lot of people have an idea of what they want to accomplish in a play session and fighting off other players isn't part of that. Blizzard has never understood this as they still believe that "if you try it you might like it". But people's minds are made up for the most part. The best Blizzard can do is leave the option and then move along. BfA seems to have it about right.

I once told Holinka when he was asking about this that if my character was going to be dying a lot I'd rather it be to an NPC script than to other players or groups of players out just to disrupt questing and the like. I think there are tons of people just like that. I'm perfectly fine dying because I messed something up. I'm not a bit fine about being ganked.

[Deadc3ll]

Pretty easy to tell that there's some heavy bias in this thread in regard to PvP but ignoring that and suggestions that would make the game worse off, the reason wPvP is not fun and not well received are still pretty evident.

There are several reasons why wPvP is the drizzling shits a few that come to mind immediately seem to also be the positives for the bg/arena queuing system.

Here's a case: You find yourself getting farmed in the open world by 1,2 maybe even a group of players. They are sitting on your corpse waiting for you to respawn and as soon as you pop you're struck down like a wild animal and killed again. They're sitting on your face repeatedly, it sucks. When does it end? Well, really it ends when you switch characters and accept the ultimate defeat and possibly ruin your plans to play that character, level your alt etc. or get your own buddies to come kill them so you can get away. 10 chances to 1 you're logging off, and even if you do get your buddies involved and like the idea of fighting back the game tends to not handle large battles well so once it hits a large size you're watching a slide show even with the strongest of computers.

Even if you're getting crushed in a BG or Arena there's a timer or and end in sight (or you can leave I guess). WPVP only ends when someone eventually submits and stops having their fun.

[Tehterokkar]

World PvP is a joke. 99% of the time it's someone better geared/higher level going out of their way to kill people, attacking them at the most advantageous moment possible(eg. when they are not at full health, or fighting something).

World PvP has never been anything else since Vanilla where some actual battles might have developed(in the patches before battlegrounds), but even then the vast majority was mindless ganking of lower level players and/or lower geared players(or if you played an OP PvP class like Rogue or Hunter).

The PvP moment where 2 parties meet at random and are both thinking "Oh, it's a member of the opposite faction, we must fight!" is so exceedingly rare these days.

The other factor is obviously reward, why should someone waste their time trying to kill other players when it rewards them with nothing? You are much better off ignoring other players and getting your daily world quests out of the way than spending 15-60s fighting another player.

BfA's rewards for PvP-toggling might be good on paper, but again you still aren't rewarded for actually killing other players. You only get more rewards from doing the same old world quests and ignoring other people. At the chance of 1 random player sometimes attacking you, some might ignore that and take up on the increased rewards from daily tasks.

I will laugh my ass off if this system mutates into something all the top players use just because of the better rewards(meaning faster Azerite system progress) and ignore the PvP factor completely. Then we are back to square one.

[Claymore]

Yeah, I honestly kind of laughed at that one. I feel like, at a certain point, you just have to step and say "Players don't like this. Maybe we should stop trying to force them to?".

Look at Warlords of Draenor. Ashran was a fucking miserable failure, by any possible metric you could ever hope to measure it by. From the very start, players said they didn't want it. They wanted Karabot and Bladespire Citadel (or at least Karabor). But instead, they force Ashran down our throats, the more unenjoyable, forgettable piece of shit they could throw together. Seriously; it's bad enough to waste resources on Ashran, but to make that the SOLE "Capital" of Draenor? I genuinely wonder if the person behind that still has a job.

I feel like there's probably just one, high-ranking guy at Blizzard that really wants World PvP to work, and he's twisting everyone else's arms to try and make it work. But it's never going to. The game is too different from Vanilla, it fundamentally CANNOT work.

Personally? I think Blizzard needs to dump PvP entirely, and if players want to PvP, just give them a completely separate game. Trying to balance every spec against every other spec is a foolish endeavor.

Either that, or create a special "Gladiator" class that *ONLY* PvP's, and all players have access to it. Give it four or even five specs, and just leave it to itself.

[EbaumsTipster]

Personally? I think Blizzard needs to dump PvP entirely, and if players want to PvP, just give them a completely separate game. Trying to balance every spec against every other spec is a foolish endeavor.

Cannot wait for this to come out so people will shut up about PVP.

[McFuu]

Cannot wait for this to come out so people will shut up about PVP.

I liked to PvP in Vanilla, but that mainly stems from how broken it was. I don't think I would ever look back at Vanilla and lament for how good the PvP was, because frankly it sucked, I could just cleverly Twink at certain levels or preferred to play stun lock rogues which were second only to Hearthadins and Permafear locks in annoyance.
That being said, I will be ganking people in Classic when it comes out, sorry for ruining your day classic players.