The Problem with Warmode - and how to fix it

[Raelbo]

Having spent quite a bit of time in BfA both with Warmode enabled and disabled, it's become pretty clear to me that there are some serious problems with Warmode. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that Warmode itself is a bad idea. In fact I think it's a great idea, but simply that it has a few critical flaws which do need to be addressed in order to turn it into the great feature it can and should be.

I think that the fundamental problem that Warmode has is that most of the participants using it don't actually like world PvP. But because Warmode gives players bonus rewards for playing in that mode, many players feel compelled to switch it on, but then do pretty much everything in their power to avoid engaging in any kind of actual PvP.

Sure, most players like killing players on the opposite faction. But they're horribly averse to getting killed. The result is that players will only willingly engage in WPvP when they are highly certain of victory. The idea of a fair fight just doesn't enter into the equation and ultimately this makes it very unlikely for any WPvP to happen, because for WPvP to happen you need to have two opponents who both want to fight. Not only that, but what makes WPvP fun is defeating a tough opponent. Five people ganking some person trying to farm herbs may be effective, but it's also completely unsatisfying. By the same token, get ganked by a party of five while herbing isn't fun at all because really, you never stood a chance.

For WPvP to actually be worthwhile, there needs to be some sort of actual contest. What we have instead is a watered down version of WPvP where it's difficult to find people to fight, and those you do find are completely unchallenging.

Something that really hits this point home is doing the Battle for Nazjatar event. On paper it sounds like a cool idea. Horde and Alliance players get to engage in a zone wide BG type event in pursuit of winning a luctrative prize. In reality though people simply use the group finder to find a big raid group doing the event in order to guarantee victory. So what ends up happening is that everyone wins the event uncontested - Horde on one server, Alliance on another. The supposed "battle" never materialises, aside from the odd hapless individual who happens to get stomped by a massive group of 10-40 opponents before getting the hint to go find a group on another server.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I have had, on rare occasion, some fun WPvP. So the potential certainly is there - but it isn't going to fix itself, and I think there are some important changes that need to be made.

First and foremost: Blizzard needs to get rid of fake incentives to bribe people into WM. People should be playing Warmode because they like WPvP. WPvP happens spontaneously when you have people on both sides looking to fight. It does not happen when 95% of the players on the server are actively trying to avoid PvP. The reward for playing with Warmode on should be that get to enjoy WPvP and that you get to earn honor and conquest points. Giving out better PvE rewards though is where it goes wrong. In fact, I would argue that all the PvE rewards from world quests should be less in Warmode - in order to compensate for significant honor and conquest.

Which leads into my second point: I think that Blizzard need to change their attitude towards WPvP and stop putting it on a ridiculous pedestal that they feel they need to promote. I reckon that the real reason most players participate in WM is because Blizzard want us to play in that mode because they believe it makes for a better game experience. So they bribe us to switch that button on and then pat themselves on the back for achieving good participation. Really, they need to just leave well enough alone. They've given us WM, let players decide what mode we want to play in based on what we prefer doing, rather than simply choosing the mode with the best rewards. I honestly think that they're terrified that if WM participation is low that it would indicate some kind of failure of the feature. But really, I'd say it would be infinitely better to have 1/10th of the participation, but consisting entirely of people who actually make PvP happen, than having scores of tourists with no interest in anything other than doing WQs with the bonus 10%.

Lastly, Blizzard need to figure out their sharding tech to make sure that players cannot abuse grouping up in order to find a shard on which the opposite faction is underrepresented. For the battle of Nazjatar, for example, the servers need to be smarter and make sure that you cannot land up with a horde raid fighting a handful of Alliance and vice versa. As soon as players form groups, they should be transferred onto a server that has a similar number of opposing groups. If I choose to join a full Horde raid for the battle, I should expect there to be an opposing Alliance raid. And by the same token, if there's only a handful of Horde trying to win the battle, it shouldn't be possible to encounter a full Alliance raid.

[ZazuuPriest]

The only way to fix war mode is to revert servers back to pve or pvp and stop the nonsense

[CrawlFromThePit]

OP snipped for space

Lots of good points, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

Sharding is disgusting, doesn't work at all. The only reason to have a feature like that would be to fix the mistake Blizzard made in the beginning (and again in classic) to let players play where ever they want instead of forcing population control which is necessary for a decent gaming experience with WPvP. The moment one side has more people, all fun is gone and the entire thing becomes a giant joke.

Inherently this is a problem caused by the real cancer of this game: factions. If there was no faction there would be a lot more community interaction to create groups and fight each other (of course with open chat, none of that PC race language bullshit to prevent people from talking shit) instead of running around and being "naturally grouped" with half the population by virtue of being in the same faction. No faction means no population imbalance.

That being said, it wouldn't fix some problems you mention, like the motivation to participate in WM and why the hell people get PvE reward from participating in a PvP activity. I think making such an obvious divide between a PvP and PvE mode would be the perfect scenario to have real pvp gear come back. Of course, for the weirdos out there thinking I'm talking about the appearance of items, I'm obviously talking about what matters: stats, not looks. Bring back a real PvP stat, remove vers since it's a boring stat in PvE anyway. Make PvP gear drop from Warmode and zero PvE reward from there. Make specific PvP event happen there, things like the old Silithus stuff or Halaa or Hellfire. There's so many cool stuff to do with this mode, yet it's sitting there being a copy of the PvE world for no logical reason and dev time is going into motherfucking island expeditions.

And we're paying for that, jesus christ.

[Raelbo]

Sharding is disgusting, doesn't work at all. The only reason to have a feature like that would be to fix the mistake Blizzard made in the beginning (and again in classic) to let players play where ever they want instead of forcing population control which is necessary for a decent gaming experience with WPvP. The moment one side has more people, all fun is gone and the entire thing becomes a giant joke.

You're 100% correct that for PvP to work, faction populations need to be balanced. And I would agree that Blizzard have failed on that front. Unfortunately the way the game is designed, it continues to be advantageous to be on the more populous faction, which creates the kind of feedback that leads to population instability.

They need to find a way to set up a stable form of feedback which incentivizes people to migrate to the less popular faction on a server by server basis. There are already mechanisms in the game to encourage player balance. For example, there are loot bags for dungeons and LFR for scarce roles, there is that "against the odds" buff that the underrepresented faction in WM gets that boosts quest rewards. Back in Wintergrasp they had tenacity. These kinds of rewards need to be put in place to encourage people to move towards balanced factions on every server. Simply put, if your faction is significantly outnumbered by the opposing faction on the server you're playing on, you should be experiencing a significant buff to your power, and should be earning significantly greater rewards.

As for the role of shards, I wouldn't call them disgusting, but there are definitely issues. I think that sharding is a good idea because it really can help to manage population imbalance on servers. I would even go insofar as to suggest that it is necessary. The problem is that it is too easily manipulated.

Situations like having 1 shard with a 40 man Horde raid and a different shard with a 40 man Alliance raid both doing Battle for Nazjatar unopposed should be impossible. The system should be smart enough to recognise the situation and move both raids into the same shard. And if it turns out to be impossible because, for example, there are 50% more Horde participating in the battle than Alliance - across all shards then Alliance should receive a massive tenacity buff to help to even the odds, and then the rewards for completing the event should be much greater for Alliance. Players tend to choose the path of maximum reward:effort ratio, so it wouldn't take long before faction imbalance sorts itself out.

That being said, it wouldn't fix some problems you mention, like the motivation to participate in WM and why the hell people get PvE reward from participating in a PvP activity.

As I said, I think it's a philosophical problem that Blizzard have in that they believe they should be motivating everyone to use WM regardless of their attitudes towards WPvP, probably because they have this idea that someone WPvP is what makes WoW great. I mean, it's basically the entire theme of BfA - encourage faction pride and inter-faction fighting because, clearly, in their minds, this is at the heart of WoW. But they're wrong. Faction conflict may be an enticing theme for some players, but I think for most, faction co-operation is actually more appealing.

What they should be doing is making WM appealing to people who like WPvP, while actively discouraging people who don't like WPvP. The only way to achieve this is to set up an asymmetrical reward structure, in which the rewards for playing in WM have high value to PvPers, but low value to PvEers, and vice versa. Right now, the reward structure is that WM is simply more rewarding for everyone, and that seems unlikely to change because Blizzard want us all using WM.

I think making such an obvious divide between a PvP and PvE mode would be the perfect scenario to have real pvp gear come back. Of course, for the weirdos out there thinking I'm talking about the appearance of items, I'm obviously talking about what matters: stats, not looks. Bring back a real PvP stat, remove vers since it's a boring stat in PvE anyway. Make PvP gear drop from Warmode and zero PvE reward from there. Make specific PvP event happen there, things like the old Silithus stuff or Halaa or Hellfire. There's so many cool stuff to do with this mode, yet it's sitting there being a copy of the PvE world for no logical reason

The reason is that they want everyone to use WM.

and dev time is going into motherfucking island expeditions.

And we're paying for that, jesus christ.

Yeah, let's not go there. I actually happen to quite enjoy islands largely because of the dev time that went into fixing them (also because I have played them moderately, and never tried grinding 100 in a week). IMO the game is richer for providing a variety of content designed for different people, and the issues afflicting WM don't exist because of a lack of dev time, but because of philosophical problems.

[kappalol]

I would put everyone (many realms) with WM ON on a huge shards. reward still should be better than WM OFF but with everyone in one place, it would force those people with WM ON to engage in PvP as it should be just because of many people trying to fight over mobs. That's war mode. Everyone in one world fighting over resources and not 100 different WM ON shards. One huge battlefield.

rewards ofc should be much better to compensate for everlasting pvp. like 50%+

Imagine a world where you turn your self to pvp and you know you cant leach that system and must decide if it is worth to you,

But that would need a better server which can handle like 500 people in one zone and not start to lag as shit when 60 people fight.

[Raelbo]

rewards ofc should be much better to compensate for everlasting pvp. like 50%+

Why "ofc"? That's pretty much contrary to the argument I have just made, without any reasoning. As I said, one of the biggest flaws with WM is that it is does give better rewards. The very idea that players need to be compensated for engaging in PvP is of course absurd because it basically admits that they're trying to get people to do something that isn't fun.

Imagine a world where you turn your self to pvp and you know you cant leach that system and must decide if it is worth to you

That's exactly what I imagine and I think it would be a vast improvement. People would sign up for WM because they want to make WPvP happen, not in spite of the fact that the don't want to make WPvP happen.

I mean, sure, the reward structure should never punish people for choosing WM, but the rewards need to be PvP specific, not outright superior, especially to someone who, in all honesty would just rather leave WM off.

[kappalol]

Why "ofc"? That's pretty much contrary to the argument I have just made, without any reasoning. As I said, one of the biggest flaws with WM is that it is does give better rewards. The very idea that players need to be compensated for engaging in PvP is of course absurd because it basically admits that they're trying to get people to do something that isn't fun.



That's exactly what I imagine and I think it would be a vast improvement. People would sign up for WM because they want to make WPvP happen, not in spite of the fact that the don't want to make WPvP happen.

I mean, sure, the reward structure should never punish people for choosing WM, but the rewards need to be PvP specific, not outright superior, especially to someone who, in all honesty would just rather leave WM off.

Its ofc because there would be a lot of people and world pvp should not be the primary source of honor (you have BGs to for that) and if you fight over a herb node it should reward you more for winning that fight not less.

WM ON world should be "rich" one on everything. Fewer nodes but much more rewarding. AP, gold. but there is that pvp thing which means you have to fight for it. No one would want to be in that world that is less rewarding than in the normal one. Or create zones in the world that are rich for specific resources.

So actually just merge WM OM Shards now to increase the density of players by 1000% or more and increase rewards.

The scenario where 10 horde and 10 alliance fight over one ore node which has 50 ore seems quite like fun instead of fighting for node which has 2 ore.

Also everyone should have all the gathering profesions.

[Raelbo]

Its ofc because there would be a lot of people and world pvp should not be the primary source of honor (you have BGs to for that) and if you fight over a herb node it should reward you more for winning that fight not less.

WM ON world should be "rich" one on everything. Fewer nodes but much more rewarding. AP, gold. but there is that pvp thing which means you have to fight for it. No one would want to be in that world that is less rewarding than in the normal one. Or create zones in the world that are rich for specific resources.

I hear you. Now please listen to me.

What you're suggesting doesn't work out that way, and that is why WPvP is broken. Because when people sign on for WM they sign on for the extra rewards but not for the PvP. In the end what ends up happening is that people don't fight for that node, they just go find another. The WPvP experience becomes frustrating because everyone you are likely to defeat makes sure to avoid fighting, and the only people who will fight you are those who heavily outmatch you - typically 5 man groups searching for lone players.

Honestly, if all a player cares about is getting the most herbs, they should categorically not be going into War Mode. It's that fundamentally simple. You go into Warmode because you want to have a PvP experience while playing. And while I have no objection for being rewarded for playing in Warmode, it becomes self-defeating if those rewards are not directly tied to actually engaging in PvP.

To put it bluntly, when I play in Warmode, most of what I do is identical to non-WM, just with extra rewards. I am not being rewarded for anything other than turning on a button and validating Blizzard's impression that "hey, Raelbo really loves WM!". I don't. I am there because the carrot is juicy. When I see Alliance, I mostly just take on the attitude of live and let live. And you know what? Most of the Alliance players I come across do the same. The only time PvP happens at all is when a 5 man Alliance group is farming kills and me as the solo player just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that's not really PvP. It's just me getting splattered in a fight I have zero hope of winning. So it doesn't add to my enjoyment. And to be honest, I can't see it as particularly satisfying for those Alliance players either because I cannot put up a serious fight.

Warmode is fun when I am chasing actual PvP objectives and the Alliance are trying to do the same. But it is very rare that it happens, precisely because of the reason that the vast majority of people in Warmode are not there to chase PvP objectives. They are there to reap the benefit of the 10% bonus rewards while doing their emissary quests.

The scenario where 10 horde and 10 alliance fight over one ore node which has 50 ore seems quite like fun instead of fighting for node which has 2 ore.

This is fun if you like WPvP. And if you like WPvP, then the ore really is an afterthought. It's hell if you don't like WPvP because then what happens is that people enable WM in order to get the more lucrative reward, but end up hating the experience. That is the opposite of healthy for game.

Like I said, the rewards in WM should be tied to actually engaging in PvP. It should not be possible to reap the extra "rich" rewards by simply enabling WM but then bypassing PvP.

Simply having a super-rich node is a terrible idea. The game should require that you kill other players if you want to access those riches. For example, having a herb that spontaneously grows out of the corpses of dead players, there's a possible idea.

[schwarzkopf]

The only way to fix war mode is to revert servers back to pve or pvp and stop the nonsense

Warmode is identical to PvE and PvP servers without the $25 price tag to change servers when you want to play with friends.

[kappalol]

I hear you. Now please listen to me.

It works if you have 7 nodes in the zone. trust me. If you are there and see node which rewards 50+ ore you will go for it. And this "rich" world is about this exact thing. you will not go for the next node because there will be again several players and again again and you don't have to even find one few minutes. people who will want stable rewards will be wm off which would work like normal WM OFF.

Simply. you must do pvp if you want to get anything there. ofc you can be lucky and get something without competition but it would be rare. WM on should be totaly different world and game style.

Also as I said there would be many more players than now. like 10-20x more. there would be players everywhere.

Gaining things from players could be something added also. get several mats from the corpse of each player (from their backpacks).

[Bumbasta]

I think WM is fine as it is. Really cool system.

[Daedius]

Bring back stat scaling that we had in Legion, it actually made it more participative... the thing I hate about MMORPG PvP is the heavy reliance on gear. Hardly fun to see a warrior with 450+k health and you just tickling them.

[ZazuuPriest]

Warmode is identical to PvE and PvP servers without the $25 price tag to change servers when you want to play with friends.

except its not, you can just turn it off or on to get 10% increased rewards when it suits you and youre almost never in any real danger of getting killed by the other faction. Its a joke. Remove warmode and only allow PvP servers to have the zone assaults and gear rewards that do along with that. People who play PvE servers dont deserve that shit anyway

- - - Updated - - -

Bring back stat scaling that we had in Legion, it actually made it more participative... the thing I hate about MMORPG PvP is the heavy reliance on gear. Hardly fun to see a warrior with 450+k health and you just tickling them.

yeah why should people put in the work to be able to beat other players up...

[CrawlFromThePit]

You're 100% correct that for PvP to work, faction populations need to be balanced. And I would agree that Blizzard have failed on that front. Unfortunately the way the game is designed, it continues to be advantageous to be on the more populous faction, which creates the kind of feedback that leads to population instability.

They need to find a way to set up a stable form of feedback which incentivizes people to migrate to the less popular faction on a server by server basis. There are already mechanisms in the game to encourage player balance. For example, there are loot bags for dungeons and LFR for scarce roles, there is that "against the odds" buff that the underrepresented faction in WM gets that boosts quest rewards. Back in Wintergrasp they had tenacity. These kinds of rewards need to be put in place to encourage people to move towards balanced factions on every server. Simply put, if your faction is significantly outnumbered by the opposing faction on the server you're playing on, you should be experiencing a significant buff to your power, and should be earning significantly greater rewards.

As for the role of shards, I wouldn't call them disgusting, but there are definitely issues. I think that sharding is a good idea because it really can help to manage population imbalance on servers. I would even go insofar as to suggest that it is necessary. The problem is that it is too easily manipulated.

Situations like having 1 shard with a 40 man Horde raid and a different shard with a 40 man Alliance raid both doing Battle for Nazjatar unopposed should be impossible. The system should be smart enough to recognise the situation and move both raids into the same shard. And if it turns out to be impossible because, for example, there are 50% more Horde participating in the battle than Alliance - across all shards then Alliance should receive a massive tenacity buff to help to even the odds, and then the rewards for completing the event should be much greater for Alliance. Players tend to choose the path of maximum reward:effort ratio, so it wouldn't take long before faction imbalance sorts itself out.



As I said, I think it's a philosophical problem that Blizzard have in that they believe they should be motivating everyone to use WM regardless of their attitudes towards WPvP, probably because they have this idea that someone WPvP is what makes WoW great. I mean, it's basically the entire theme of BfA - encourage faction pride and inter-faction fighting because, clearly, in their minds, this is at the heart of WoW. But they're wrong. Faction conflict may be an enticing theme for some players, but I think for most, faction co-operation is actually more appealing.

What they should be doing is making WM appealing to people who like WPvP, while actively discouraging people who don't like WPvP. The only way to achieve this is to set up an asymmetrical reward structure, in which the rewards for playing in WM have high value to PvPers, but low value to PvEers, and vice versa. Right now, the reward structure is that WM is simply more rewarding for everyone, and that seems unlikely to change because Blizzard want us all using WM.



The reason is that they want everyone to use WM.



Yeah, let's not go there. I actually happen to quite enjoy islands largely because of the dev time that went into fixing them (also because I have played them moderately, and never tried grinding 100 in a week). IMO the game is richer for providing a variety of content designed for different people, and the issues afflicting WM don't exist because of a lack of dev time, but because of philosophical problems.

Yes shards are too easily manipulated and that refers to my first point about Blizzard letting players do whatever they want instead of controlling the population. It sounds like I want a tyrant to control the people, but I'd much rather have 1 tyrant force things to work correctly than have millions of plebs doing everything in their power to destroy the balance to serve their selfish wishes.

The problem with giving rewards to the outnumbered side is it doesn't really motivates people from the bigger side to switch over because they already tasted all the insane benefits of being on the winning side: aka, not dying everytime you go out the city. That in itself is a gigantic reward, much better than receiving some bonus that becomes obsolete.
A second problem with that kind of design is that its only goal is to NOT EXIST. Let me explain myself, when you create a reward designed to attract people in hope of rebalancing both sides, it means that once the sides are balanced, the rewards don't exist anymore. So from a production perspective it's not a big return on investment because it's either not gonna work at all (like we see today) or you make a reward so big, it actually works for a moment and then it's no longer obtainable because sides are equal.
Not to mention it gives the impression of "pity reward for losers" that anyone with a "winner mentality" that get from being on the winning side even if they don't really deserve it, wouldn't want to jump over just to get some bonus and feel bad about it. Also they would have to make all their friends transfer as well, it's just a freaking mess trying to convince people to change faction on top of not even giving the faction transfer for free. It's just not a good option any way we look at it.

I don't really think they want everyone to use WM, they certainly want the participation to increase but they're well aware that a vast amount of people have absolutely no interest in losing the control of their character for twice the time it takes to get killed. The only appeal of WPvP is killing people, like you mentioned in your first post I believe, people are mostly having fun when they have very high chance of victory, anyone questing alone feels like crap with WM on, that's why you see more people if you turn off WM, even if the reality of the game is that sharding and phasing through quests basically puts you alone in the world, I never see anyone when I level an alt, WM is just a free 10% exp boost.

[Zarithras]

War Mode is a simple feature to allow anyone on any server to engage in world PvP without having to pay for a server hop.

BfA is an expansion centered around the faction war. Therefore, Blizzard dangled a few carrots in front of players to get them enabling war mode. This becomes very apparent when you consider them increasing rewards for the underrepresented faction. They simply want players enabling war mode so they can push the faction war narrative of this expansion. Also, my conspiracy theory is Blizzard execs were challenged with expanding WoW esports, and they wanted to do that via PvP tournaments. Giving everyone on any server the ability to engage in PvP more often, and directly tying PvE rewards to it, was their way of increasing PvP engagement.

Your notes about War Mode causing players to only engage in outnumbered fights, gank, and group into raids to win objectives isn't tied to war mode. This kind of gameplay has existed since vanilla, and we can even see it in Classic. Blizzard isn't to blame here. It's the player base.

It's absolutely true that sharding tech doesn't play well with world PvP. However, don't blame war mode - these problems would have existed on PvP servers regardless. I'm not sure what the solution here would be.

[Raelbo]

It works if you have 7 nodes in the zone. trust me. If you are there and see node which rewards 50+ ore you will go for it.

Works to achieve what exactly? To get people who like WPvP to fight? Sure. But I am still not sure I am getting my point across, which is that if you put things like that into WM, then it attracts a lot of people to WM who would not otherwise be there. And if most of the people playing WM are those kinds of people, then suddenly those epic battles you imagine just don't happen, because those people aren't going to go for it unless they believe they are going to win. Otherwise it's just too much hassle and annoyance.

Don't forget that BfA already has something very much like this: the war supply chests that drop in Warmode. They're actually a good idea because people are motivated to get them, and you have time to gather your numbers. But even then, far more often than not, they are uncontested because it's clear that one faction has a better presence. Anyhow, those chests are exactly the sort of thing that are a good idea for WM because they are a reward that is lucrative to a PvPer with little/no appeal to the the tourists.

Simply. you must do pvp if you want to get anything there. ofc you can be lucky and get something without competition but it would be rare.

Well here's the thing: That is what WM was supposed to be. The reason I made this thread is that how it was supposed to turn out is not how it actually turned out. People take the path of least resistance and having to fight other players to get something is more like the path of most resistance. So most players avoid it.

Last night I was doing an Azerite quest in Vol'dun. There were at least 4 Alliance and 2 other Horde (I am Horde) doing the same quest at the same time, basically side by side, carefully making sure to not attack each other. Why? Speaking for myself, I simply couldn't be bothered to take the time to get aggressive. I would have been risking them ganging up on me, and the other Horde players might not have helped me. And then it would have just taken me 3 times longer to get the quest done. Hell, even if I was successful, I would still have lost time.

Come to think of it, my approach to WPvP is generally consistent with what Nash predicts in game theory, which pretty much means what you should expect most people to do. I don't tend to attack the Alliance without provocation unless they are clearly an easy kill with low risk of my getting killed (if I see a low geared player doing WQs in WM I pretty much see it as my duty to make them work for the bonus rewards). But other than that I am generally happy to live and let live with anyone who looks like they might be able to put up a decent fight. Of course if they attack me, well then I am going to fight back, and if I kill them I am going to keep killing them until they manage to get away. And then I go back to being placid. And it is my observation that the vast majority of players take a very similar approach.

WM on should be totaly different world and game style.

Agreed. Unfortunately, the way it is now, for most players, it's basically the same game style as non-WM, just with better rewards. Yes there are WM specific objectives - the battle for Nazjatar, supply chests, call to arms, but those are entirely optional and I suspect most players hardly even bother with them (except when they can do them without actually having to PvP). And that's the problem. The equation for deciding whether or not to turn on WM shouldn't be: "I get better rewards from doing my daily emissary quest in WM". It should be "I get rewarded in PvP currency for doing PvP, how much do I like PvP?".

- - - Updated - - -

The problem with giving rewards to the outnumbered side is it doesn't really motivates people from the bigger side to switch over because they already tasted all the insane benefits of being on the winning side: aka, not dying everytime you go out the city. That in itself is a gigantic reward, much better than receiving some bonus that becomes obsolete.

This simply means that the systems need to be strong enough to overcome the penalties of playing on the less populous side.

A second problem with that kind of design is that its only goal is to NOT EXIST. Let me explain myself, when you create a reward designed to attract people in hope of rebalancing both sides, it means that once the sides are balanced, the rewards don't exist anymore. So from a production perspective it's not a big return on investment because it's either not gonna work at all (like we see today) or you make a reward so big, it actually works for a moment and then it's no longer obtainable because sides are equal.

I totally get that the goal of the system is, as you rightly point out, to not exist. That doesn't mean it's a problem. The return on investment is that you have a stable player environment which makes for a much better game experience.

Not to mention it gives the impression of "pity reward for losers" that anyone with a "winner mentality" that get from being on the winning side even if they don't really deserve it, wouldn't want to jump over just to get some bonus and feel bad about it.

While I don't doubt that for some that might be the impression. But it really seems to me like a pretty immature way to feel about it. Back when Wintergrasp was current, getting a huge tenacity buff never felt like a pity reward. It felt like an earned reward for the fact that as the outnumbered side you were having to fight much harder for the win.

Also they would have to make all their friends transfer as well, it's just a freaking mess trying to convince people to change faction on top of not even giving the faction transfer for free. It's just not a good option any way we look at it.

While this is true, the fact is that people transfer anyway. It's how the faction imbalance got into this state in the first place. And right now, the force driving people to change is simply feeding faction imbalance because, as you say, that's what we're rewarded for doing.

I don't really think they want everyone to use WM, they certainly want the participation to increase but they're well aware that a vast amount of people have absolutely no interest in losing the control of their character for twice the time it takes to get killed.

Just because a vast amount of people have absolutely no interest in losing the control of their character for twice the time it takes to get killed doesn't mean they'll avoid WM. It just means they'll avoid PvP. And the way WM works in practice, it's totally possible to use WM (for the extra rewards) while still (mostly) avoiding PvP.

The only appeal of WPvP is killing people like you mentioned in your first post I believe, people are mostly having fun when they have very high chance of victory,

The point I was making there is the fundamental problem with WPvP and why it's really not all it's cracked up to be. Because having fun in WPvP requires that another player not have fun. Which just really means that WPvP mostly entails frustration because most potential encounters engage someone trying to avoid the conflict, and someone trying to engage with someone who is doing their best to avoid it. In the end, the fun ends up actually happening when you end up fighting in groups in fairly even contests, which only really happens when you have a strong enough incentive to take the risk.

Unfortunately what WM doesn't do well is give people who aren't already keen on WPvP, enough reasons to want to engage in PvP.

anyone questing alone feels like crap with WM on that's why you see more people if you turn off WM, even if the reality of the game is that sharding and phasing through quests basically puts you alone in the world, I never see anyone when I level an alt, WM is just a free 10% exp boost.

As someone who plays both modes (WM on for my main, WM off for my alts), it is my perception that WM on is the more popular choice by a significant margin. I base this on how much activity I see in the group finder tool and when forming pugs for Mythic dungeons. Maybe it's different on Alliance?

Regardless, it's pretty clear to me from my experience that the rewards of playing with WM on outweigh the risks even for someone with no interest in WPvP.

[schwarzkopf]

except its not,

EXACTLY the same ... you are literally on a different server

So much so that your party members can't see you when you are both standing next to the same summoning stone.

[Daedius]

except its not, you can just turn it off or on to get 10% increased rewards when it suits you and youre almost never in any real danger of getting killed by the other faction. Its a joke. Remove warmode and only allow PvP servers to have the zone assaults and gear rewards that do along with that. People who play PvE servers dont deserve that shit anyway

- - - Updated - - -



yeah why should people put in the work to be able to beat other players up...

They can put in the work for cosmetics, like any other PvP game, as they already do for pvp mounts in WoW.

PvP should be about skill, not gear that just trumps out. Reason why a lot of people don't participate, aside from balancing issues to boot...

[Kralljin]

I only agree with one point: Sharding needs to be fixed.

In general, it's a totally bonkers system for a game with an open world.
I am fine with stuff like Layering on Classic, but the ability to simply choose your preferred version of the world is just too much power for the player.

Want to kill some elites? Don't wait or ask people for help, just jump to a shard where people are already killing those elites.

It's utterly unimmersive for the game if you can just jump shards until you get what you want.
Some people would hate that change, but it's solely because it makes things harder / take longer, which is just a general problem with a playerbase where a good portion hates RPG aspects in their MMORPG.

Regarding the rest, i disagree.

World PvP as a game mode is simply not attractive, period.
Blizzard tried multiple times to give World PvP some content:
In Classic you had the EPL Towers or the Silithyste.
In TBC you had Halaa, Towers in Hellfire / Zangarmarsh / Terrokar.

The result? People didn't bother, because it wasn't worth it and not really fun.

If you're handing out Honor instead and Conquest instead of the usual rewards, you'll have a problem:
If those rewards are worse than Arena / Random bg's, even those people who are interested in these rewards might not bother.
If those rewards are superior, then you have the same effect again where some people just want the quick rewards.

If you remove / nerf the bonus / usual rewards from World content, people just aren't going to bother with it.
And that's the problem in an open world, if there aren't enough people, you don't even have World PvP at all because you can't find any enemies.

Warmode is a modern solution to the PvE / PvP Server split and there is nothing else to this system to be honest.
Simply because i started on a PvP server doesn't mean i solely go out into the world to kill other people, i want to kill them if they're in my way, that's it.

[CrawlFromThePit]

This simply means that the systems need to be strong enough to overcome the penalties of playing on the less populous side.

But what IS strong enough? They thought the 10% bonus was enough to bring people in WM, turns out not really. They thought the extra bonus to the smaller side would help, turns out not enough. I'm not even sure they understand that the problem is not really the participation, but the total player pool being imbalanced in the first place.

I totally get that the goal of the system is, as you rightly point out, to not exist. That doesn't mean it's a problem. The return on investment is that you have a stable player environment which makes for a much better game experience.

They game has been surviving for this long with crazy population imbalances, would mass advertising of "we finally balanced the faction population across server" really bring enough people back to justify making this change to the game? I would love to see it but I'm guessing that most people who already left the game wouldn't come back for this change in particular.

While I don't doubt that for some that might be the impression. But it really seems to me like a pretty immature way to feel about it. Back when Wintergrasp was current, getting a huge tenacity buff never felt like a pity reward. It felt like an earned reward for the fact that as the outnumbered side you were having to fight much harder for the win.

It feels good when you are on that side, because mentally you see your 2 options: 1. getting rekt, or 2. getting help from the game itself cuz you can't get anything done with the amount of people you have. From the winning side though, it feels like you're destroying your opposition so hard they they need a pity reward to make them continue. As you are winning you never feel like you want to be on the other side getting the buff, you would rather stay on the winning side and "win without buff". The same kind of mentality about beating raids before they get nerfed.

While this is true, the fact is that people transfer anyway. It's how the faction imbalance got into this state in the first place. And right now, the force driving people to change is simply feeding faction imbalance because, as you say, that's what we're rewarded for doing.

Well yeah this goes back to another point I said, maybe not in that post I can't remember, I just think there should be more control on where people can make toons or transfer. This is just my opinion and a discussion for another time/topic but I think every single imaginable pvp encounter in the game no matter what the circumstance is, should be absolutely fair and equal. This means controlling the population of every faction and every realm should have an insanely high priority instead of being 98% ignored like today.

Just because a vast amount of people have absolutely no interest in losing the control of their character for twice the time it takes to get killed doesn't mean they'll avoid WM. It just means they'll avoid PvP. And the way WM works in practice, it's totally possible to use WM (for the extra rewards) while still (mostly) avoiding PvP.

Yeah that's true, that comment was mostly in line with the idea that offering PvE reward for participating in PvP is not the way to go.

The point I was making there is the fundamental problem with WPvP and why it's really not all it's cracked up to be. Because having fun in WPvP requires that another player not have fun. Which just really means that WPvP mostly entails frustration because most potential encounters engage someone trying to avoid the conflict, and someone trying to engage with someone who is doing their best to avoid it. In the end, the fun ends up actually happening when you end up fighting in groups in fairly even contests, which only really happens when you have a strong enough incentive to take the risk.

Unfortunately what WM doesn't do well is give people who aren't already keen on WPvP, enough reasons to want to engage in PvP.

I agree with that, and I think the core of this problem is the way PvP is designed in this game. It's about preventing your opponent from playing the game instead of actually outplaying them. I don't know why this idiotic idea of stun locking and shit is even legal, people should be allowed to fight at every single moment/second/frame of the fight. Making a game mode that gives other players the right to decide when you are forced to stop playing is pretty fucking garbage in every logical standard, not to mention some classes have the right to be permanently invisible on top of having more CCs than most and not pay for this by dealing less DPS. I mean, let's be real for a minute, the amount of ridiculous situations stemming from bad design/balance in WPvP FAR OUTWEIGHS the amount of time you get a good/respectable fight.

As someone who plays both modes (WM on for my main, WM off for my alts), it is my perception that WM on is the more popular choice by a significant margin. I base this on how much activity I see in the group finder tool and when forming pugs for Mythic dungeons. Maybe it's different on Alliance?

Regardless, it's pretty clear to me from my experience that the rewards of playing with WM on outweigh the risks even for someone with no interest in WPvP.

The group finder tool when looking for mythic dungeon groups puts everyone together.
If you're looking to do a quest in the world, like a world boss, then you will see only groups that have the same WM as you (on or off), this was not in BfA at the start, which is fucking baffling since it should have been designed BEFORE WM itself to make sure such ridiculousness doesn't happen, I mean seriously putting people together who can't even see each other, like wtf Blizz?

That being said, it is true that I see more groups with WM on now, but when I level an alt I clearly see more people around me with WM off than I do with WM on, which is weird because as you say, the reward clearly outweighs the risk.