Do people still play PvP in WoW? Because I legit forgot it existed.

[DechCJC]

you're absolutely right about one thing, that is an unpopular opinion. But remember just because someone doesn't enjoy something it doesn't mean they are automatically bad at it.

A popular opinion, however, is that WoW in general isn’t very good. The difference in quality between content in the game isn’t that significant.

Considering this, it’s an unpopular opinion that WoW pve is good too.

[Tyris Flare]

A popular opinion, however, is that WoW in general isn’t very good. The difference in quality between content in the game isn’t that significant.

Considering this, it’s an unpopular opinion that WoW pve is good too.

PvP isn't really content though. It's teh same arenas and BGs over and over with nothing new each season.


Developers surely wish it was more popular because it would take a tiny fraction of the resources of developing actual content. But MMO pvp has never been able to appeal over a long time frame, since most mmo consumers don't like pvp in games for various reasons

[DechCJC]

PvP isn't really content though. It's teh same arenas and BGs over and over with nothing new each season.


Developers surely wish it was more popular because it would take a tiny fraction of the resources of developing actual content. But MMO pvp has never been able to appeal over a long time frame, since most mmo consumers don't like pvp in games for various reasons

That’s how most PvP games work, chess and football are two of the most popular games ever made and they’ve basically not changed at all.

Compared to those, WoW PvP changes a tremendous amount each season in the way characters are played. It’s pretty much the same as any PvP game, the only changes are usually balance ones.

[Prin]

It's not just about learning how to react. There's actually a very low amount of healers on higher rating brackets because the healer performance is only compared to the other healer, even if they're paired with teammates of up to +400 rating than them.

With dampening, it is almost impossible to win more than 3 rounds, and since the system is really dumb to properly create a healer dps rating separation, it's at least 4 times harder to rate up as a healer than as a any other role after 1550.

That isn't really how it works... it can but usually it's more both healers get overwhelmed by burst classes and the dps designed more around outlasting or wearing down an opponent losses. Its something I think they should consider with healer ratings. A 3-3 healer in certain matches should be losing mmr not gaining. Least at low ratings you see less after 2100

[Lodreh]

PvP is still going... there are PvP guilds and a few PvP World Quest. All in all just do what you enjoy... just curious but what does it matter what others do?

[Osmeric]

PvP is still going... there are PvP guilds and a few PvP World Quest.

"PvP guilds still exist" is a very low bar. A game could be teetering on the edge of shutdown and that still could be true.

[stigz]

we feel the same about you PvE’ers… only reason i know ur still slaying dragons is because i see you all standing around in valdrakken

[Ereb]

we feel the same about you PvE’ers… only reason i know ur still slaying dragons is because i see you all standing around in valdrakken

less than 800 people 2400+ in the ENTIRE GAME pvp is dead af what do you mean lmao!

[nvaelz]

Miss the days when 'not spending cds' was a thing, it's not so bad right now but it's all about rotating every ability in a hyped flow and it's not so bad(in isolatied situations), it's kinda annoying tho cuz that flow is capped on the sidez, so can't aoe farm noobs now since dmg potential is streamlined, feels kinda like every class is just nerfed, except healers they're OP.

Anyway, makes me super sad that we have to combo gcds so much rn, like we press that one cd into another cd and then we press some smaller cds into some ccs and then our opponent presses their def cds or whatever and everything just falls into itself like a big a$$ joke made by greedzzard TM who would do anything to decieve their users to feel theyr'e adequate in the game, wish it was Vanilla+better gearing, but it's never gonna happen, we're in the age of cosmetics and lame incentives rn.

Top level PVP is still good, it's intense and stuff but I hate that it's so hard to tell the difference between playerskills on the mediocre level, ofcourse there's still going to be healers and some dps that only press at about 25% gcd efficiency they're noticable but the players that are between 40-80% feel exactly the same, it's so bad it's lost its beauty really, unless you're competing to hit 100% but even then at 100% there's no way in hell you'll be able to 1v3 people on 70%.

Didn't use to be like that, game used to be way more brutal, I truly want to forget about PVP even tho I love it so much, I know why Blizzard sux that's my deepest regret.

I don't think it will be better soon, maybe never, I was hoping to quit WoW PVP and enjoy myself in Diablo 4 but that game is exactly the same reason as to why I'm sad about WoW PVP it's Blizzard and their way of trying to design the gameplay around selling battlepasses or keeping subscribers in deceptive ways.

*reason is greed, in WoW they want us to remain subbed and buy their cosmetics, so it's in their interest to make PVP a warm welcoming experience for everyone as many as possible by making it fake af but not obviously fake, they have to be smart about it so people that don't understand anything im saying here at all will remain subbed instead of being aoe grinded in the past and having no chance at all
- but thankfully on the 40-80% medicore level everyone can have a chance and will have no need to improve skillwise or learn anything at all except the fundamental facerolling over the cds rotation.

Diablo 4 could have had endgame, could have had better social systems for multiplayer but it doesn't so it's trash and the entire purpose of the journey is to enjoy the battle pass to get to the end of it and quit until the next battle pass, feels like they made a really good core game and then they limited the potential of the content to bring people in and out, but I suppose most people aren't super happy about that. I see that exact same practice in WoW since Shadowlands, but Dragonflight was worse than I could have ever imagined.

It's like, when u shoot a frost bolt and you hope it's going to crit and it's a good feeling involved with that simple action, but now it's like you press your cds and you trigger your icicles or whatever mages do and it's so much useless garbage that's supposed to "look good" and be flashy but it's also a nerf cuz good players will simply frost bolt faster than bad players, it's the rule of the jungle, it's like playing counter-strike and being able to shoot someone faster, but then Blizzard comes in, throws some absorb shields and procs and saves around, reduces dmg and makes the game much more forgiving(weaker non cd dmg)(while keeping CD OVERPOWERING POTENTIAL), but "harder" at the same time much like a clown fiesta where a bunch of clowns are

walking across a tight rope juggling multiple objects in varied weights sizes and shapes with autonavigational CDs, sure it might be entertaining and exciting but simply the silence of walking a tight rope(with no added bullsht) is way more exciting to me.

Maybe in a few years we'll have 50000 more spells and infinite loadout combinations that are all required to navigate class balance while being restricted to 10* loadout save slots, being further required to fully customize our WoW experience with many more addons(for playability)

Simplicity is dead that's why Chess is such a simple game, should simply add absorb shields to the pawns to make it "modern" and not simply refine it, like Chess.com did or however things that didn't actually deconstruct and change the game made Chess more popular, but WoW could never possibly be in such a state where the game is developed to be a good visceral experience in PVP and not a fake af lowtier sub grind by Greedzard TM* If they don't notice it's all goodTM

fkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

[ClownPrincess]

guy who only frequents places where they talk about pve: "wow nobody ever talks about pvp"

[Hungrydingo]

PVP has been terrible for awhile now. I used to be a PVPer who occassionally raided and now all my time on WoW is PVE. I've been wanting to get back into PVP so I can grind out the rest of my Battlemaster achievement but when I actually had time to sit down and try and grind out gear it was a couple month into the season I even at the lowest ratings I was running into people with 100K+ more HPs than me which means they already had the conquest gear. I was getting deleted in seconds even through survival CDs. You can get some conquest points even in BGs but it takes forever after your first win. Outside of that trying to win in arena felt pointless because every match the other team look at me, sees the low HP pool, and jumps all over me. I couldn't get any of the conquest gear so I just quit. It feels overly harsh to be so punished because when the xpac launched I didn't have time to level my main and alt and gear them out right away.

There is also just way too much going on. All the passive procs and such mean there are a dozen sources of incoming damage. Back during TBC or WOTLK it didn't feel like there were a bunch of dots or passive damage effects going off on you while the enemy was hitting you with frost bolt or mortal strike. Now every ability seems to have some sort of chance to trigger even more damage by applying a dot or exploding for extra damage or something. That could work with longer match styles with resilience ala TBC but with a burst meta it feels like you don't even have time to used half your CDs in some matches. Like I can't even get to using Shadow Blades, Symbols of Death, keep Garrote running, while working in Evasion or Cloak to try and stay alive.

[Cynical Asshole]

Yeah. I like to dabble in warmode and random bgs. Other than that...nah, I don't give a shit. I hate arena with passion, and I can never get into rated bgs anyway.

However, I hear that in 10.2, they're introducing solo shuffle bgs, so I will be doing that too, provided of course the queues aren't massive and totally discouraging, but then I suppose healers might actually be interested in this considering it won't be them vs. 2 melees sitting on their faces like in arena, so queues might actually be decent.

[Sialina]

Yes, but you have to understand they did try this in Legion.
If you remember, in all instanced Pvp combat, the stats were equalised and PvP gear only offered minor 1% differences.

And people HATED THIS. They hated not being able to overgear other players. Blizzard took away their CRUTCH, and now they had to actually use their SKILL.

Blizzard quietly reverted this back in BfA, and pvp has sucked ever since.

I have a feeling it's the other way around, I think it's the players that end up losing that have their excuse taken away. It's easy to tell yourself "I lost because I've only got 15/17 pieces of pvp gear" it's harder to tell yourself you lost because you didn't play well.

I have very serious doubt that most PvPers that don't pvp anymore stopped because they can't outgear people, but instead the "lower end" rating wise stopped because they realized they were still getting stomped just as badly, but now they didn't have any excuse.

[Gigantique]

I have a feeling it's the other way around, I think it's the players that end up losing that have their excuse taken away. It's easy to tell yourself "I lost because I've only got 15/17 pieces of pvp gear" it's harder to tell yourself you lost because you didn't play well.

I have very serious doubt that most PvPers that don't pvp anymore stopped because they can't outgear people, but instead the "lower end" rating wise stopped because they realized they were still getting stomped just as badly, but now they didn't have any excuse.

That and during Legion there just wasn't much of a reason to do anything but arenas and pve because the hell was the reason to queue for random BGs?

I enjoy bgs more than I do arenas but it's still WoW so I need a carrot to choose a part of the game over the other. Whether that be gear or upgrade currency for conquest gear or whatever but if there's no progression-based reason to do content time's better spent chasing something that *does* reward you in some way.

Besides, numbers going up is fun just like in PvE

[Cynical Asshole]

That and during Legion there just wasn't much of a reason to do anything but arenas and pve because the hell was the reason to queue for random BGs?

I enjoy bgs more than I do arenas but it's still WoW so I need a carrot to choose a part of the game over the other. Whether that be gear or upgrade currency for conquest gear or whatever but if there's no progression-based reason to do content time's better spent chasing something that *does* reward you in some way.

Besides, numbers going up is fun just like in PvE

I don't understand the Carrot when it comes to PVP. I mean the Carrot is quite literally to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women", why do you need numbers and ratings?

I see people getting really emotional about their arena ratings, and I can't help but raise an eyebrow. Like...you're beating people up and winning, that's your victory condition right there, what's the number for?

[Sialina]

I don't understand the Carrot when it comes to PVP. I mean the Carrot is quite literally to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women", why do you need numbers and ratings?

I see people getting really emotional about their arena ratings, and I can't help but raise an eyebrow. Like...you're beating people up and winning, that's your victory condition right there, what's the number for?

It's the same as PvE, you could just tune everything to be the same as last tier and that'd be your win condition, I'm sure some people enjoy beating up "less geared" people as well, I don't really care about that aspect, but when PvP gear is allowed to do the "numbers go up" thing it can also be used in PvE, making it nice and quick to switch between the two. Same goes for the other way around, people with a lot of pve gear can also dabble in pvp.

It also gets more people into pvp, and yes, some of those wouldn't want to be there without the rewards, but they make good opponents for people that are not good at pvp but enjoy it. As it is right now, if you join pvp you have a very deep pool, and the water only covers the bottom 30 cm/1 foot. Is it worth it to have a few unwilling at the very bottom to make the pool a whole lot deeper? I'm not sure what I think about that myself, but it seems it's always a lot more healthy for the pvp part of the game when it works out that way.

[Gigantique]

I don't understand the Carrot when it comes to PVP. I mean the Carrot is quite literally to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women", why do you need numbers and ratings?

I see people getting really emotional about their arena ratings, and I can't help but raise an eyebrow. Like...you're beating people up and winning, that's your victory condition right there, what's the number for?

Can ofc only speak for myself personally but most of my activities in WoW are long-term reward based, be that PvE, PvP or hell achievements.

Rating is just a number for me as well, milestones to reach in order to unlock whatever cosmetic I want. Since the Great Vault is now annoyingly shared across PvE and PvP I usually decide after seeing the different colour palettes whether I'll start focusing on PvP or PvE, only do achievements that rewards something I want to use etc. But feeling that the Evoker I stacked mastery on in s1 is getting scarier during burst is as enjoyable in PvP as it is in PvE for example.

PvP is generally more enjoyable than PvE to me but remove the long-term progression rewards and I'll probably do other activities that have them as soon as I reach 1800 or 2100 or whatever my cosmetics goal for the season is. That's also why more "pure" PvP games like CS:GO etc never interested me; no long-term progression that actually affects the gameplay afaik.

I'm fine with there being a difference between someone who has been playing their character and kept them on top of the progression curve. That being said as fun as it was in MoP I don't think we should have fully conquest geared characters taking on 6-8 players in a BG and winning comfortably, there must be a middle ground of sorts. A geared AND skilled player should be a powerhouse for sure but an undergeared but more skilled player shouldn't get absolutely curbstomped without a chance that's just meh. With a disclaimer of my memory possibly being wrong I feel like WoD had a nice enough balance there, scaling everyone up to a baseline that wasn't so far below conquest gear you literally didn't matter.

TL;DR: Gear progression is at home in a long-term game like WoW but there could absolutely be a smaller gap between the baseline and top geared players.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I used to do a lot of RBGs, but the gamemode has stagnated since Legion. No new maps added. I've gotten the Vicious Saddle mounts I wanted and you can only play on the same maps so many hundreds of times before it gets old and stale. Nowadays I only occasionally join a premade epic BG for the war experience, preferably Alterac Valley and Wintergrasp, since no other current fantasy game offers that (WvW in GW2 has been broken since 2016, FF14 lol). When you get to fight against an enemy premade, it's really, really fun. But that is rare. Also, the honor grind for the prestigious pennant is ridiculous. Doubt I will ever do enough PvP to get that at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

So what happened? has everyone just realized that it's bad?

Another issue with PvP - besides the stale gameplay experience itself - is that a tremendous amount of time is spent finding or forming groups. For arenas this is an absolute nightmare, since the good players are already networked and playing with each other. If you aren't already in, then trying to get into a network on your own is difficult. Trying to get people to join Discord is like pulling teeth, and people leave after one loss, and people shit on their teammates all of the time. So you wind up with a 33% win ratio in Arenas. Grouping in RBGs is much more fun. People are less inclined to shit on a teammate when there are other people listening. It's way easier to network with other players, your winrate is higher, and so on, but at the end of the day it's a gamemode that has been stagnate for 7 years.

- - - Updated - - -

I dont understand the argument, how hard is it to counter others abilities? Its not ehm rocket science.

For arenas, there are far, far too many different gamechanging abilities you have to keep track of (racials, trinkets, class specific abilities, spec and talent specific abilities, etc), for an arena you are facing 2 or 3 enemy opponents. You have to use an addon to track what stuff your enemies have on cooldown, and darting your eyes back and forth between that when you're already having difficulty playing WoW's piano rotation and keeping an eye on your HP bar and your allies' HP bar and the positioning of everyone is too much.

- - - Updated - - -

I think there's just far better games to play if you want to do PVP-type stuff. If you want to PVP in WoW you need to grind out a set of gear. Which means your first 50 bgs are going to be shit. I'd rather just play OW, HotS, Valorant, etc.

I can't think of any other current game that provides a somewhat satisfying fantasy war experience like WoW does.

- - - Updated - - -

This is already putting a large barrier of entry for players. And the skill gap is ever increasing. New players don't wanna get into pvp, because when they try, they get their asses kicked by players who know what they're doing. And the difference between your average butting mashing WoW player and a PvPer who knows what they're doing is day and night.

Another issue is that when a new or returning player tries to hop into PvP, they get shit on by veterans for not knowing everything. The veterans cannot imagine that there is someone who isn't as experienced as them and do not see an opportunity to teach and make a friend. Instead they just shit on them and drive them away. No wonder the PvP scene is shrinking.

- - - Updated - - -

World PvP is dead.

Sadly. One of my fondest memories of WoW was participating in huge, RP-PvP campaigns during MoP. You don't see any big wars like that happening today.

[thunder4o]

Alot of people still do play PvP.Im one of them,im mainly PvP player since Legion.PvP has its problems,but the biggest problem for a smaller part of playerbase to play PvP is just way too hard to get into and learn how to play it properly without giving up meanwhile.WoW Arena/PvP as a whole is unique thing(many times ive said to my friends that Blizzard are standing on gold mine,as they did with Warcraft Dota).No other game PvP comes even close to WoW Arena/PvP,fluent movement and responsivness of the game make the expiriance unique.About the CC part of the PvP,thats the way it should be the PvP in the game,this is the way that shows which one got better understanding of the game.If we dont have CC or we got way too low CC,it wont be PvP at all,it will be PvE parsing on the practise dummies.I could talk with hours about how hard is the Arena/PvP in WoW but i see alot of people already got it.Easily i can put it next to hardest RTS Esport games!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have a feeling it's the other way around, I think it's the players that end up losing that have their excuse taken away. It's easy to tell yourself "I lost because I've only got 15/17 pieces of pvp gear" it's harder to tell yourself you lost because you didn't play well.

I have very serious doubt that most PvPers that don't pvp anymore stopped because they can't outgear people, but instead the "lower end" rating wise stopped because they realized they were still getting stomped just as badly, but now they didn't have any excuse.

The game does not show players a path to get better. The hostile PvP community certainly does not help either. PvP knowledge is esoteric. With Google's search engine becoming increasingly dysfunctional, it becomes more and more difficult for people to find guides, and they are usually terminology heavy and written for people who are already veteran PvPers. There is no onboarding ramp for newbs.