So, like, what is the actual intended purpose of warmode?

[Soon-TM]

Sure, let's compare 2007 to 2020, for sure tech haven't improved at all.

Sure, tech has evolved, but even to this day the servers lag to hell and back (world lag, not mine) when trying to do the PvP weekly during an invasion in peak hours. I think I will just leave wm permanently off while levelling.

[Blodia]

*giggled* what? oh, nothing? That's ok.
I don’t care what they do with organized PvP, these are their problems, I’m talking about niche that they actually manually buried with new design, about its return on original form and let all these "modes" be left to the "experimenters".

Thier status is that there are no PvP servers, which means there is no wPvP, there is organized PvP, but with both legs are shot and it has great chance to get into coma if something significant won't be done.

There won't be any meaningful world pvp anymore due to cross realm systems. There also won't be any meaningful participation in it unless there are benefits for the participants. The game knowledge and player mentality changed, the entire metagame changed. Look how it worked out for Classic. People weren't interested in epic tugs of war in Hillsbrad, they weren't interested in massive raid bumrushes in BRM. They were out there to farm honor, if they couldn't do it efficiently they packed up and left for another zone. A lot of them weren't even there for fun - they had a clear objective which was ranking up and not amazing pvp experience.
Without incentives, rewards and risks it's just gone. If they meet an enemy faction player alone in the world and it would be an equal fight and not a stomp on their side, most players will pretend the other faction player isn't there anc just continue doing their thing, because actually fighting would delay them from their current objective, and if there's a risk of losing then there's even less reason to bother.
"Random encounter" world pvp is dead and there's nothing that can bring it back.

[Alkizon]

Blodia
There won't be any meaningful world pvp anymore due to cross realm systems. There also won't be any meaningful participation in it unless there are benefits for the participants. The game knowledge and player mentality changed, the entire metagame changed. Look how it worked out for Classic. People weren't interested in epic tugs of war in Hillsbrad, they weren't interested in massive raid bumrushes in BRM. They were out there to farm honor, if they couldn't do it efficiently they packed up and left for another zone. A lot of them weren't even there for fun - they had a clear objective which was ranking up and not amazing pvp experience.
Without incentives, rewards and risks it's just gone. If they meet an enemy faction player alone in the world and it would be an equal fight and not a stomp on their side, most players will pretend the other faction player isn't there anc just continue doing their thing, because actually fighting would delay them from their current objective, and if there's a risk of losing then there's even less reason to bother.
"Random encounter" world pvp is dead and there's nothing that can bring it back.

I partially agree, but enterprising guys, whom I have happiness and honor to know, even in this situation came to very interesting and original solutions. Therefore, my opinion remains the same, question needs to be resolved, but it's necessary to start somewhere and the most appropriate first action is to return PvP servers. So simple and straightforward.

Such gesture of goodwill... they made LFR for degenerates, WM for special wild "hardcore PvPers" (even typing this is funny), but nothing for ordinary people who just want to play on "normal" (= freedom) rules.

[Blodia]

I partially agree, but enterprising guys, whom I have happiness and honor to know, even in this situation came to very interesting and original solutions. Therefore, my opinion remains the same, question needs to be resolved, but it's necessary to start somewhere and the most appropriate first action is to return PvP servers. So simple and straightforward.

PVP servers mostly ended up heavily dominated by one side or the other, which is why cross realm systems started happening among other things. People interested in world pvp had nobody to pvp and people on the less populated faction or peer pressured into rollimg there moved servers or quit. You even have a fresh 2019 emulation of that going on in Classic. Horde dominated servers become more Horde dominated, Alliance dominated servers become more Alliance, a fraction of a fractiom of them is even remotely balanced. It doesn't work nowadays.

[cuafpr]

working as intended, want to PVP PVP.. don't don't. the bonus is no where near enough for me to enable it, never have and no plans to.

[Alkizon]

PVP servers mostly ended up heavily dominated by one side or the other, which is why cross realm systems started happening among other things. People interested in world pvp had nobody to pvp and people on the less populated faction or peer pressured into rollimg there moved servers or quit. You even have a fresh 2019 emulation of that going on in Classic. Horde dominated servers become more Horde dominated, Alliance dominated servers become more Alliance, a fraction of a fractiom of them is even remotely balanced. It doesn't work nowadays.

Well, they have a way to rehabilitate now for incorrect launch of Classic. I don’t see anything wrong with that, having fulfilled all necessary conditions for balance in advance, they have tools (although, given meager fullness of BFA servers, there will be enough connected unipolar realms; redistribution will be required, but it's like fire in London, someone will say that it was terrible, and it was, and someone will say that it was inevitable event, which also had some fundamental benefits). I’m not saying that it will be quick and easy, no no, but at the same time, rolling stone gathers no moss. If they want good design, they have to work "a little"... but if they don't, well, is this not the root of evil here?

[Nobleshield]

I think the entire purpose is to prepare people for the eventual phase out of non opt-in PVP at some point. Since War Mode basically removes the server divide, there's only normal/RP now and not normal/PVP/RP/PVP. If people don't have War Mode on, then PVP doesn't exist outside of instanced content with some rare exceptions when there's something like Gurubashi Arena or Wintergrasp.

I'm actually curious how many people put war mode on versus not, because I think those numbers would show that PVP isn't as serious as people like to claim, and provide more proof that sometime in the future I think they'll get rid of it completely outside of BGs and maybe the occasional free-for-all area. War Mode offers the perfect opportunity to make cross-faction PVE a thing like it should have been for years now since it segregates players with it on or off, while giving people who care about PVP an option to do it and with zero impact on BGs and Arena whatsoever since those are instanced content.

When you have to bribe people to engage in WPVP it kind of shows that it's fallen out of favor, doesn't it?

[Amariw]

I think the purpose is to encourage fun, non instanced pvp. The problem, i agree with the OP, is in the execution, which simply does not achieve that. The way the rewards are set up ("kill x enemy faction anywhere" quests), and the fact the rewards are very relevant to PvE make it very simple to make gank groups around hotspots, and encourage the players to find the "enemies of least resistance" which won't put up a fight so it can get done quick.

A much more effective system, in my opinion, would create designated pvp events (tbc Halaa city in the nagrand zone, tbc hellfire towers, classic silithus sands and EPL towers are all pretty good time tested examples). Their design, as in the after mentioned examples, would encourage small scale pvp over several areas in a zone and would be a recurring affair with the rewards tuned as such. After some initial hype wears off, this will encourage only those who enjoy the activity to partake in it, especially if the rewards are pvp focused. Every so often you will have abnormal and heavily organized participation, and that's ok too when its seldom, but by and large it will be small skirmishes with people who like it, unlike WM quests today.

[Thetruth1400]

Warmode's intended, yet failed, attempt was to balance PvP as PvP servers had become so one faction lopsided it wasn't funny.

What they failed to realize though, is that the faction imbalance was severely worse than they thought in favor of the Horde globally that it was doomed to fail from the start.

They could never give both factions a satisfying experience.
- If they balanced it on a 1:1 person aspect, which would give those shards balanced game play, it would mean so many shards with only Horde players on them, which isn't satisfying for the Horde.
- If they balance it so it's as close as an even distribution of players of their respective factions across the shards, it results in the Alliance being overwhelmingly outnumbered, Blizzard's own words to describe the imbalance, which is not a satisfying experience for the Alliance.

In other words, it was a lose / lose situation from the start. The only way to fix the imbalance is to get players to switch factions and that means giving actual incentives, not a piddly 20% extra Azerite (Warmode in general gets 10% so I'm not counting that in the extra benefits) at max level to the underrepresented faction.

That also means Blizzard offering free transfers from one faction to the other to solve the balance issue. They could offer 1 free transfer from the faction that is outnumbering severely to the minority faction every 3 months, make it so they don't save up (use it or lose it) and lock it down when the balance is closer to actually even.

[Nightstalker]

To get alliance players to turn on Warmode for 25 kills per week, teleport to the next hub and turn it off again. This behaviour is downright pathetic.

[klaps_05]

To attract horde players to alliance. I mean, if you are a guild that has a stable core, why wouldnt you go alliance for an insane 25-30% bonus? Given that it now also affects Visions rewards, this means as alliance you can get more sockets faster on corrupted gear you dont want, in addition to breezing through AP levels.

[Blodia]

Warmode's intended, yet failed, attempt was to balance PvP as PvP servers had become so one faction lopsided it wasn't funny.

What they failed to realize though, is that the faction imbalance was severely worse than they thought in favor of the Horde globally that it was doomed to fail from the start.

They could never give both factions a satisfying experience.
- If they balanced it on a 1:1 person aspect, which would give those shards balanced game play, it would mean so many shards with only Horde players on them, which isn't satisfying for the Horde.
- If they balance it so it's as close as an even distribution of players of their respective factions across the shards, it results in the Alliance being overwhelmingly outnumbered, Blizzard's own words to describe the imbalance, which is not a satisfying experience for the Alliance.

In other words, it was a lose / lose situation from the start. The only way to fix the imbalance is to get players to switch factions and that means giving actual incentives, not a piddly 20% extra Azerite (Warmode in general gets 10% so I'm not counting that in the extra benefits) at max level to the underrepresented faction.

That also means Blizzard offering free transfers from one faction to the other to solve the balance issue. They could offer 1 free transfer from the faction that is outnumbering severely to the minority faction every 3 months, make it so they don't save up (use it or lose it) and lock it down when the balance is closer to actually even.

Too late. Your solution should have happened expansions ago. Alliance was bleeding people simce TBC, first due to racial ability imbalance favoring Horde and then due to the fact that racials lost their weight (not counting WotLK human representation in arenas) and most competitive players were on Horde side. So the obvious solution for any new or existing aspiring competitive player was to pick Horde. For a guild master of a guild attempting to raid at top levels Horde is where there's a larger similarily minded recruit pool, for pvpers that's where you find more competitively minded pvpers and so it went on for years and years. People and guilds gave up and transferred due to lack of human resources on Alliance, and now we're here, the end of 2019 when Alliance has next to no representation in high end content.
And there is nothing save for the nuclear option of removing faction barriers that can help with this, it's simply too late. The snowball gathered momentum and just rolls over every non-invasive attempt Blizzard does.

[Ashiraya]

The funny thing is that even I agree with that.

If Blizzard isn't going to provide an entire open world dynamic CENTERED on PVP, then disabling flight while war mode is on is the simplest and easiest way to make the supposed WPVP players happy. And if we're lucky, they'll finally STFU about how harmful flight supposedly is and move on to scapegoating something else.

I like this suggestion, because it would benefit me as well. If it disabled flying, it might actually become inconvenient enough to use WM that the 25% bonus isn't worth it.

Meaning I can turn on peacemode again without feeling like missing out, which sounds trivial but actually brings a bit of peace of mind.

[SirCowdog]

I like this suggestion, because it would benefit me as well. If it disabled flying, it might actually become inconvenient enough to use WM that the 25% bonus isn't worth it.

Meaning I can turn on peacemode again without feeling like missing out, which sounds trivial but actually brings a bit of peace of mind.

You actually bring up a pretty good point.

Having War Mode disable flight, but provide a bonus in gold/exp/rep/whatever, but having normal PVE mode provide flight would make a real choice with more parity.

It's not a perfect solution, but it is a pretty good starting point.

[Jazzhands]

To get alliance players to turn on Warmode for 25 kills per week, teleport to the next hub and turn it off again. This behaviour is downright pathetic.

So what, we should leave it on so we're constantly rolled over by groups of Horde at any decent WQ in newer zones and basically can't get anything done?

[Didly]

Watch a video by a Youtuber that actually enjoys world pvp: https://www.youtube.com/user/Soullscape/videos

I think you'll get it. It's not about ganking all the time, it's about going out there and getting into some trouble and having fun.

- - - Updated - - -

So what, we should leave it on so we're constantly rolled over by groups of Horde at any decent WQ in newer zones and basically can't get anything done?

Speak for yourself. I would recommend finding friends in the MMO you're playing. You'll find you will start doing the rolling, not be rolled.

Crazy suggestion, I know.

[schwarzkopf]

So stop people having to pay $25 every time people want to change from PvE to PvP server.

[Justpassing]

Removing PvP servers.

[Jazzhands]

Watch a video by a Youtuber that actually enjoys world pvp: https://www.youtube.com/user/Soullscape/videos

I think you'll get it. It's not about ganking all the time, it's about going out there and getting into some trouble and having fun.

- - - Updated - - -



Speak for yourself. I would recommend finding friends in the MMO you're playing. You'll find you will start doing the rolling, not be rolled.

Crazy suggestion, I know.

I have plenty of friends, many of which I've been playing this game with for years. None of us enjoy PVP very much, let alone world PVP, but we'd be dumb to pass up a more or less free 415 on newer toons.

The fact that Blizzard has to basically bribe people into wPVP says a lot. It's not a thing most people enjoy, because 95% of the time it's completely unbalanced which makes it either super shitty or super boring depending on the side you're on. There's nothing fun about rolling over people with a 2-1 advantage unless you're sadistic, and there's nothing fun about getting rolled over by a squad with twice your numbers. The rare semi-equal brawls can be fun, I've been in a few when I do AOO, but they are far in few between, no where near frequent enough to make Warmode interesting enough to warrant the massive amount of time I'd generally waste trying to get WQs done, and on top of that whenever they do happen I typically just think "Huh, this is kinda fun, good thing there's Arena so I can constantly have battles like this when I want".

And, pretty funny. I actually checked out the channel you linked, first video of him in IF, went about 4 mins in. It was him, getting his ass handed to him by two random people so hard he had to kite and run into the Tram, where they apparently couldn't follow him due to sharding. Yeah, real good stuff. Good for him if he enjoys having to run away all the time from being outnumbered, but it's not for most people, and Warmode participation clearly shows that.

[Anoikis]

Remove PvP from Retail, except the BG's. Give them a PvP-Version of World of Warcracft with no flying, no safe zones and no item progress.
Where every Char starts at max level and every player has the same item level.
Then let them compete against each other until they rot.