Are the PvP devs asleep?

[The Butt Witch]

Ashran lol. On Alliance every fucking time this pops, everyone instantly leaves, which causes the system to bring in more poor unsuspecting players waiting in the queue.

This bg is an even bigger disaster than SOTA. Wondering how long before it's removed from the game.

[Queendom]

Ashran lol. On Alliance every fucking time this pops, everyone instantly leaves, which causes the system to bring in more poor unsuspecting players waiting in the queue.

This bg is an even bigger disaster than SOTA. Wondering how long before it's removed from the game.

Why they couldn't just leave Ashran as it was in WoD is a mystery.

[Rends]

By the way, regarding Ashran, queue times seem to be in 40 min+. Worse, the fight is boring. More boring, I'd say, than it was in WoD.

[Simmias]

I just hopped into a bg the other day as my disc priest and got trained down in seconds every time. I thought I was undergeared or bad and that's why it was happening.

Now it turns out i'm undergeared, bad and on a weakly kitted class.

if you honestly think disc is weakly kitted, then it's you that is the problem.

[Prime92]

What is the problem here? Do Blizzard not know what they must do? Isn't it obvious at this point?

Holinka. They don't. To anyone playing something else than rogues/DHs it's obvious, to mentioned class mainers and retards in Irvine - no.

[Zensunni]

OP, I agree with you 100% and sympathize, but I'm sorry - PvP in WoW is utterly dead and Blizz knows it, so they aren't throwing much in the way of dev resources at it. WoW PvP has been in a death spiral for at least the last 3 xpacs, and I expect it to continue since Arena is so un-fun right now. In order to make it more 'interesting' and not just a button-mashing contest, they made it a game of CD hard-counters, and frankly while some people no doubt find this fun, most of us would rather go do something else.

[Yes but actually no]

So... Holinka wasn't the problem?

[Nuba]

So... Holinka wasn't the problem?

yes but actually no.
I mean you can remove a cancer and replace it with another terminal disease (chris kaleiki) and you'll still be dying

OP, I agree with you 100% and sympathize, but I'm sorry - PvP in WoW is utterly dead and Blizz knows it, so they aren't throwing much in the way of dev resources at it. WoW PvP has been in a death spiral for at least the last 3 xpacs, and I expect it to continue since Arena is so un-fun right now. In order to make it more 'interesting' and not just a button-mashing contest, they made it a game of CD hard-counters, and frankly while some people no doubt find this fun, most of us would rather go do something else.

There are a number of players who enjoy arena, you might not like it yourself but that doesn't make it an universal truth. BFA season 1 had the highest PvP participation since Wrath(just picture it) but still they managed to completely 180 with season 2, the entire balance changes they did destroyed the game to a point season 2 had 1/20 of the participation season 1 had. Obviously, there are other reasons to this, but even in S1 participation remained steady, people enjoyed doing Arenas more than they did raiding. In 8.1 they destroyed arenas while the rest of the game was already dead, so everyone just quit.
since you probably don't know, here is what they did in 8.1:
-made pve gear mandatory for arena pvp (as in if you don't have it, you lose to players 800 rating less experienced than you that have it).
-destroyed balance so only a handful of classes were viable.
-nerfed pvp gear drops by 95% of what it was in season 1.

8.2 didn't fix any of this, if anything things were made worse.

[Kralljin]

BFA season 1 had the highest PvP participation since Wrath(just picture it) but still they managed to completely 180 with season 2.the entire balance changes they did destroyed the game to a point season 2 had 1/20 of the participation season 1 had.

First off, i'd like to see some source on the participation rates of BfA S1,S2 and Wotlk by comparison.

Second, the entire thing can be explained by the fact that PvP actually held some decent rewards at the start of BfA.
I'm in a mythic guild where no one does PvP except a handful who have been doing it since forever, the rest hasn't touched it really for quite some time.
Now with BfA S1, some people actually did do some PvP, simply because it rewarded decent loot (at least the weekly chest), however, as soon as they had a reasonable gear level, they dropped PvP again like a hot potato, because they didn't like it, not because of "balance" or anything, they simply don't like PvP in WoW.

Simply pinning things down on balance changes is not the right way, if people previously didn't like PvP, then picked it up because of rewards, they might have dropped it again because said rewards were not that good anymore or considered said upgrades not worth the effort.

Drawing a connection between fun (or enjoyment) and participation is a tricky thing in a progression based (MMO)RPG, you cannot view things in isolation as the progression in itself can be the source of enjoyment whereas the activity might not be that fun.

Warfronts also might have amazing participation rates, are they "good content" because of that? Doubt it.

[Beatman]

BFA season 1 had the highest PvP participation since Wrath(just picture it)

Have you been around in MoP (just an example)? There were dozens if not hundreds of RBG/arena groups in oqueue. Dozens of players dueled in front of SW and OG at all times. No way in hell BfA S1 had the highest PvP participation since Wrath.

[Rends]

BFA season 1 had the highest PvP participation since Wrath(just picture it)

What? What numbers are you looking at? I don't think this is the case at all.

[Nuba]

All you need to do is base participation on rank 1 spots (since rank 1 = 0.1%, then you just *1000)
BFA season 1 had, in Europe alone, around 412000 players participating, in the US it was like 80% of that number but you get the deal.
these are WOTLK level of participation in terms of numbers, but the game had 10x more subs than it does nowadays, I can also atest to how fun BFA season 1 was in comparison to how terrible season 2 was, it was night and day comparison.

to put it into perspective EU Cataclysm season 1 had a little bit more than 300k players participating

[Rends]

All you need to do is base participation on rank 1 spots (since rank 1 = 0.1%, then you just *1000)
BFA season 1 had, in Europe alone, around 412000 players participating, in the US it was like 80% of that number but you get the deal.
these are WOTLK level of participation in terms of numbers, but the game had 10x more subs than it does nowadays, thats how much fun Arena PvP was in BFA S1.

Where is data on the number of rank 1s in BFA season 1? 412 players on rank 1 in BFA season 1 for EU would indeed be a lot. But if there are so many, then it seems to me they changed the formula and rank 1 is no longer 0.1% of all participants.

- - - Updated - - -

Frankly, I call shenanigans on the 412,000 players participating in ranked PVP in EU in season 1 right out of the bat just based on sub levels. The EU likely has something like 1,000,000 players at all. Half of them participating in ranked PVP is a pipe dream. The ratio of players participating in ranked PVP was always on the level of raids above normal, about 10-15% at best. If some measure tells us that BFA season 1 in EU had 412,000 players participating, something is wrong. Either players are getting counted multiple times, or the ratio is no longer 0.1% or something else is going on.

[Nuba]

Where is data on the number of rank 1s in BFA season 1? 412 players on rank 1 in BFA season 1 for EU would indeed be a lot. But if there are so many, then it seems to me they changed the formula and rank 1 is no longer 0.1% of all participants.

- - - Updated - - -

Frankly, I call shenanigans on the 412,000 players participating in ranked PVP in EU in season 1 right out of the bat just based on sub levels. The EU likely has something like 1,000,000 players at all. Half of them participating in ranked PVP is a pipe dream. The ratio of players participating in ranked PVP was always on the level of raids above normal, about 10-15% at best. If some measure tells us that BFA season 1 in EU had 412,000 players participating, something is wrong. Either players are getting counted multiple times, or the ratio is no longer 0.1% or something else is going on.

Oh so you have no idea how things are done, ok, Ill explain: there is a minimum entry level for you to be "counted" as a participating player, its 1-weekly-cap worth of arena wins (1000+ rating), rank 1 is still 0.1%, and if you play with multiple characters you're counted as multiple participation.
I played with 4 toons and idk about other people, maybe thats the avarage, nonetheless its still a high number of people playing, and still higher than anything since Season 8 (last wotlk season)

[Druitz]

And now s3 is dead. 2.1k mmr and can't even find anyone to play with as healer.

People played in S1 because of rating inflation. Once ppl realized blizzard fucked up with rating they started playing for free glad because 2.4k bfa s1 was equal to 2.1k - 2150 in legion. People had 3.5k rating - that was insane.

And now you see a lot of s1 "gladiators" on 2k mmr

[Boo Radley]

if you honestly think disc is weakly kitted, then it's you that is the problem.

Let me file your reply under "internet authority guy with a massive penis who I and everyone else by default gives a fuck about their opinion" so you feel better about yourself.

Okay good now go be a faggot somewhere else.

[Linri]

Lol Ashran, the BG no one knew what to do in.. has made its triumphant return... for your (lack of) enjoyment!

While I do like the re-vamp of the older PvP matches (WSG / AB) with new models.. I would LOVE to see Winter AB occur at random, and not during the events.. That would be really fun.

Also, I think it would be cool in WSG if the glaives and catapults were firing at each other over mid... wanted that for IDK how long.. that would make it seem like a really cool fight to win.

[Dejiko]

I get trying to manage a healers output in a confined enviroment like arenas but oh boy
it doesn`t translate well to battlegrounds.

The mana regen nerf on my disc priest makes for an experience that`s well beyond awful when you`re trying to heal
10+ people all whom are taking regular hits for high amounts of damage.

Kind of wish battlegrounds and arena functioned differently at this point.

[Acidbaron]

In my opinion it is just easier to accept that those that wanted competitive PvP or even casual PvP have long ago moved over to other genre's far more devoted to PvP.

MMO's aren't really attracting that many new players, some MMO's either go for full PvP sandbox focus or more for PvE (does FFXIV even have pvp?) and that makes sense between all the moba's, battle royals and so on is there really a large audience still for a PvP platform that requires you to invest quite a lot of time in gearing (a lot of time in comparison to the before mentioned).

I would say not really.

[Raugnaut]

I dont think it was very good S1 of WotLK.. but yeah.. it's pretty pretty good for most of WoW's existence.

S1 of WotLK was dominated by Death Knights, who kinda countered, well, everybody else pretty much.

Personally, I don't think the issue is classes, but rather gear. This is the first expansion since... Actually, this is the first expansion period in which PvP gear was NOT the obvious choice for players in PvP. Sure, you had the occasional trinket, weapon, and sometimes set bonus that was just powerful in PvP, but this is the first expansion in which PvP players HAVE to PvE for the best PvP gear, whether that be OP as fuck trinkets, specific azerite pieces, or even one of the dozen pieces of various gear they have that has additional effects that makes it oh-so-slightly better for PvP.

And yea, there are class discrepencies, but on top of gear?

Blizz dropped that ball SO hard for PvP balance this expansion. Ah well, at least we got WG back! (Plus... how many new arenas? 5?)