Battle-royale battleground

[Kyux]

Do you think a battle-royle style battleground would work in WoW?

One option would be to have it as a set battleground with one map. It's FFA and you can communicate across factions in order to make small teams with anyone.

Alternatively it could be a brawl on the same map, or any of the other BG maps, albeit without the objectives active.

Or (my ideal pick) it picks a world zone at random, puts invisible walls at the boundaries, and works as a BR. Imagine parachuting into Zul'Drak, or the Hinterlands.

Thoughts? Which version would you prefer? Which version do you think would be most workable?

[Razion]

Going around a map to get different abilities might be kind of cool. Some abilities were introduced for example with Artifacts, the Heart, old armor/tier set bonuses that could be re-tooled for such a mode. In fact, any old popular trinket effects or borrowed power type effects could be perfect to keep around in this kind of mode, with new effects being added in after each expansion. Going around and gathering increasing ranks of these kinds of abilities, especially for some of those old talent tree passives from the old specialization trees or Artifact trees might be kind of interesting.

It'd be especially cool if you could use this kind of battle-royale BG as a way to re-experience old styles of how your class or spec used to play if you gathered the right abilities, or even mix and match abilities and passives from different eras to get unique combinations! I think that kind of approach might be kind of fun.

[Wuusah]

I think turning real zones into Battle Royale bgs is a cool idea. The RNG aspect of the battle royale game mode kinda makes up for the maps not being balanced for PvP.

Such a game mode would only make sense with premade groups, imo. A "solo queue" battle royale would be a shitshow because some classes are just way too strong in 1v1's. It should be arena teams dropping in the zone. So 2 or 3 player premades.

Now the question is, which maps would be the coolest as a battleground? Because I don't think Barrens would be much fun

edit: the funny thing is that with Thorghast they are already developing the tech for those power upgrades that you'd search for in a battle royale mode. The tech is already there, the zones are already there, the flying in mechanic is already there. All that is missing is Blizzard's will to do it.

[Eazy]

We had a thread about it... a few actually.
The answer was - no.

Some classes are too OP for 1v1, some classes have too much upper-hand(rogues/druids). Some players would just do pre-made. It'd have been pain(impossible) to balance it out.

Though I think that it would be fun.

[Nuggsy]

Not to come off as a jerk but.. there are enough battle royals out there right? Do we really need another?

I get it the idea for a wow battle-royale sounds cool to some people but lets not forget WoW was originally designed to be a pve game with world people added in because the two factions were at war. PvP as a whole limits the game in so many ways already in terms of balance and development. I'd rather not see them try to balance around more pvp aspects.

[Very Tired]

It would have to be DPS only. But WoW pvp tends to take to long to get kills compared to any fps game. Actual 1v1 pvp as it was now would just take for ages to finish a game. Add healers in the mix and the game would never end.

[The Butt Witch]

Given how unbalanced the various classes and specs are in PVP, such a PVP instance would have to be class-only. So basically a warrior-only bg, a mage-only bg, etc...

But yeah, I can see it.

*Lorewise, this map is a large floating island located at the center of a manastorm in Outland.
*The eye of this manastorm keeps moving around the map, as well as shrinking. If you get caught outside the safe area, you take arcane damage every second for as long as you are in the storm. This damage because heavier every time the eye changes.
*Every 5 seconds, a burst of very small arcane damage pulses over the island. The point of this is to prevent the abuse of stealth/invisibility. When you stealth or invis, you have 5 seconds of it at most.
*When you enter this BG your gear becomes nothing, all the stats are gone, it's just cosmetics.
*Once you have entered this BG, you can't switch specs.
*You get a new bag in this bg, which entirely replaces your own inventory, you can't even see your personal inventory, and it's much smaller than your personal inventory.
*You can’t put equippable items in this bag. The bag is only for consumables. The equippable items go only on your character.
*You can’t unequip items by dropping them in the world. Only way to unequip items is to replace them with others.
*You obtain blue/epic/legendary gear from chests scattered across the map. These items are not RNG when it comes to stats, they have the best stats for your specs, but they are still RNG when it comes to quality and armor slot. The chests also include health pots, buff flasks, buff pots, special bandages,but also gnomish/goblin devices such as stealth detectors, shield domes, sentry turrets, all with a limited power source etc.
*When you click on an item in a chest in order to loot it, it automatically replaces whatever you have equipped, and your old item goes into the chest. You can also pick it up again if you want, and it will again switch places with what you have equipped. You can’t destroy an item by dropping it, it will always switch places between your paper doll and whatever container you are interacting with.
*When it comes to consumables, they go in your very limited bag, of possibly 5 slots. You can consume them on the spot or keep them for when you need them.
*Players will be able to be looted of items they had equipped, as well as any consumables. Obviously the same rules as above apply.
*Occasionally a powerful NPC spawns somewhere on the map, and its location is signaled to all players. This NPC has a ton of HP. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but it's very tough. When it dies, it has a high chance to drop epic/legendary items. Considering this NPC is tough, it's unlikely for one single player to be able to solo him fast enough that he doesn't get any competition.
*Obviously, in order to win you have to kill all enemy players, but I would add one more thing to keep it interesting. When you/party are the sole survivors, a portal opens at a random location in the safe area and is signaled to all players still alive, and you have to reach it in order to extract. If you get caught by the manastorm and die, you lose just like all the players that died. Hahahaha!

[Astator]

FFA map was not a great success in Warlords of Draenor. It was nice for a weeks until a bunch of carry sellers arrived...

[maulgryve]

Sounds fun, but classes as is - rogues would just stealth their way to final circle. Make it where they can't stealth as often and you majorly nerf them.

[Tyrannica]

FFA and 1vs1 systems with a reward structure and competition are long overdue in this game.

It can all be balanced, first step would be to allow only DD to compete in specific FFA and duel content.

Not sure about the communication, in strategy online games chatting with the opponent was no issue and actually fun, in wow, due to the toxic community it would be a risk. It was a non issue in smaller competitve communities.

Everything can be abused or sold, if people are willing to do so, arenas, rbgs etc.

- - - Updated - - -

We had a thread about it... a few actually.
The answer was - no.

Some classes are too OP for 1v1, some classes have too much upper-hand(rogues/druids).

There are many items that can detect stealth, just allow them. WoD made good progress creating new ones, disallowing stealth in the colloseum.(a bit too radical, tho)

[enigma77]

Sounds amazing, would like.

[Dellis0991]

I really do hate BRs with all my soul.

[Thelxi]

We already had the coliseum in WoD and it wasn't that great. It'll be cheesed by certain specs and abused by grouping to no end.

[Eazy]

There are many items that can detect stealth, just allow them. WoD made good progress creating new ones, disallowing stealth in the colloseum.(a bit too radical, tho)

Stealth is a crucial ability for rogues. You cannot just take it and call it "balance", it's like using an item to immediately kill every hunter pet.

[Ladey Gags]

Unpopular opinion: battle royale is one of the most unfun game modes ever designed

Please keep it out of my WoW

[Daymanmb]

We had something like this in WoD, It was quite fun.

[Trinkie]

Unpopular opinion: battle royale is one of the most unfun game modes ever designed

Please keep it out of my WoW

But it has been in the game since Vanilla, twice infact.

[Tyrannica]

Stealth is a crucial ability for rogues. You cannot just take it and call it "balance", it's like using an item to immediately kill every hunter pet.

Not, that it matters, if you can resurrect a pet infinite times and the item has at least a 2-5min cd.

Item based anti class abilties are still better than what the wod colloseum did, i mained a rogue, dk and shadowpriest in wod, and the rogue was the one with the hardest time to win it the legal way as stealth was just not allowed at all.

I don't expect that those items affect abilities like shadow dance at all, either.

I mean, if rogues are as weak as in MoP first season(s12) doing little dmg and made out of paper, unnerfed stealth in battle royals wouldn't matter much, but thats an approach i would really dislike.

- - - Updated - - -

But it has been in the game since Vanilla, twice infact.

Only one was instanced and that was the wod colosseum.

There were multiple battle royals in wpvp.

Gurubashi in vanilla, darkmoon faire in both i made grandmaster with an unholy dk solo, which was quite fun, at 1 point i had to combat a pvp guild on my own, unrated pvp can't get more challenging.

Several battle royals wpvp events in legion like operation murloc and the one in highmoutain and stormheim.

Battle royals are really fun, if people play it fair, and don't abuse it with friends or try to cheese it. Most of the times people played fair - just the wod colosseum was riddled with premades.

I bet, now in 2020, blizz has the tech to make it fair for everyone, i just would really restrict this to DD specs and provide self-efficiency. Some house rules need to be enforced onto players to make this work in such a specific pvp modus, its not like you can be tank and healer in arena 2s skirmishes either.

Maybe the pvp talent of sub rogues "shadowy duel" should be a mandatory for battle royals.

https://www.wowhead.com/spell=207736/shadowy-duel

Not really going to happen with the current dev team, caring for pve only, but if any sort of pvp activy will be continued, this games needs more pvp modes, and less of the same maps of the existing team and faction pvp we allready have.

[RelaZ]

WoD Colosseum already implemented this. It was a shitshow of epic proportions. I.e. it was horrible. It was people huddling up in corners with multiple classes having almost zero chance of winning due to bad 1v1 utility or healing.

Even if they did make a battle-royal BG with a larger map it would still turn out the same way. In the end (with the zone closing) it'd be 5-10 people all hiding 60 yards from one another and whoever has the most immunities and self heals wins.

Oh, and not to forget the pacting. The silent "this guy is weak so we all target him first" that always happens in FFA WoW scenarios.

Unfortunately, while a cool idea, this would not work in WoW.

[Tyrannica]

WoD Colosseum already implemented this. It was a shitshow of epic proportions. I.e. it was horrible. It was people huddling up in corners with multiple classes having almost zero chance of winning due to bad 1v1 utility or healing.

Even if they did make a battle-royal BG with a larger map it would still turn out the same way. In the end (with the zone closing) it'd be 5-10 people all hiding 60 yards from one another and whoever has the most immunities and self heals wins.

Oh, and not to forget the pacting. The silent "this guy is weak so we all target him first" that always happens in FFA WoW scenarios.

Unfortunately, while a cool idea, this would not work in WoW.

Maybe battle royals should be done the dalaran way, an arena with its strict rules, 5vs5 but they go 1vs1 until all players are eliminated with 1 survivor.

I have to say that worked quite well for most dds.

The only ones that currently are underperformung are enhance shaman and shadow priest. I think every other dd spec got a 5:0 win.

class devs just need to make sure every class has a really strong self sufficient DD spec, something like a ww monk, uh dk or arcane mage, and before shit hit the fan, pre-legion demo lock.

Arena provides eyes to deal with rogues and ferals, they have high success rate in such games, but are not completely dominant, i see often enough a warrior, lock or mage win it, too - or even a survival hunter, but usually these guys are duel experts.

Interesting to see the overrated havoc dh rarely performs well in such an arena, seems actually the poor guys need buffing in that kind of pvp mode, leech sucks, if your moblity easily can be controlled by slows and you cannot heal without uptime, while others spam it behind a pillar.(vivify, vivify see my endless energy heal!) or just eat/bandage.

Blizz could launch this by using the brawl system, to see if it works and becomes popular.

In any case i prefere this, over the current brawl, that requires you to be a range dd or heal, or you get insane lagg or just autofocused by multiple people on the open field. Did Southshore vs. Tarren Mill multiple times this week on a melee and mage, and only the mage could kill lagg free.

Such a horrible design....really, i am waiting for that battle royal and discard Southshore vs. Tarren Mill maps from the game.