In your opinion, why is PvP decreasing in popularity

[LordVargK]

Not only pvp, it's the game as a whole that is dumpsterfire to new or old time returning players. I recently had a friend return to WoW after a very long time and after playing classics a lot and the only reason he played for more than a few days wss because I kept talking with him through.
Everything is waaay to complicated and ironically until endgame, too boring. He was completely bored of leveling, questing and dungeons, and had a very tough time understanding all the currencies, gear tracks, weeklies, difficulties, tier levels, crafting.
After a lot of guiding him through, he finally understood how things worked, did some m+ and doesn't find it as bad anymore. This is why WoW can't hold on to new people ... very few are willing to spend hours and hours to understand how the game works, provided they haven't quit out of boredom.

Yes, but in every other gamemode than PvP you can practice on easymode. Low m+ groups (flagging it as a learning group and only inviting low rio players is a very good way to learn imo), lfr, delves (which honestly are great for understanding your class). In PvP you just get punished and frustrated. So not only do you have to practice like in every other mode in WoW, but you also get negative feedback all the time.

My wife wanted to learn WoW because of me and she was also bored af, because everything was too fast and at the same time too boring. You can't level as a healer, because low level instances are just rushed through. After a while we just ended up powerleveling in the anniversary event. But even then, it seems WoW is not for her.

[kranur]

Yes, but in every other gamemode than PvP you can practice on easymode. Low m+ groups (flagging it as a learning group and only inviting low rio players is a very good way to learn imo), lfr, delves (which honestly are great for understanding your class). In PvP you just get punished and frustrated. So not only do you have to practice like in every other mode in WoW, but you also get negative feedback all the time.

My wife wanted to learn WoW because of me and she was also bored af, because everything was too fast and at the same time too boring. You can't level as a healer, because low level instances are just rushed through. After a while we just ended up powerleveling in the anniversary event. But even then, it seems WoW is not for her.

That's true but (unfortunately) has always been the case of if you want to pvp you first get stomped until you gear up and learn the reins. And I think that's the case for pretty much any game that's not pvp only and has some complexity and gear up mechanisms.

[Grinning Serpent]

Yes, but in every other gamemode than PvP you can practice on easymode. Low m+ groups (flagging it as a learning group and only inviting low rio players is a very good way to learn imo), lfr, delves (which honestly are great for understanding your class). In PvP you just get punished and frustrated. So not only do you have to practice like in every other mode in WoW, but you also get negative feedback all the time.

My wife wanted to learn WoW because of me and she was also bored af, because everything was too fast and at the same time too boring. You can't level as a healer, because low level instances are just rushed through. After a while we just ended up powerleveling in the anniversary event. But even then, it seems WoW is not for her.

I guess regular BGs would be your "easy mode" but it just throws *so much* information at you that you must memorize to even have basic gameplay competence. And then you get people that are often just afking and expecting others to carry them, or getting toxic because they have bad players/bad gear on their team... it's just bad.

I honestly think playing Cata (soon Mists) classic is the best way to get people into WoW or welcome people back after they've been away for years. I don't know which expansion did it, but when they separated out all the skills and leveling areas and added Chromie Time and crap... things just went wrong.

- - - Updated - - -

That's true but (unfortunately) has always been the case of if you want to pvp you first get stomped until you gear up and learn the reins. And I think that's the case for pretty much any game that's not pvp only and has some complexity and gear up mechanisms.

They need to remove the gear element. Losing a fight that you would normally be able to win, or even favored in, because you lack gear is such a stupid fucking thing to have in a PvP game. People run old content and grind currencies to get transmog gear, so that proves that players would still want to PvP to look shiny even if the shiny gear didn't have actual stats attached to it. Though in the case of PvP gear I'd probably have it have stats (equivalent to low to mid PvE sets, with the whole "higher ilvl in PvP" thing) for the purposes of combat outside of BGs/arenas. Just that your stats inside of BGs or arenas (ranked or unranked) would be set in stone and wouldn't have anything to do with your gear, only your level and your talents.

[LordVargK]

I guess regular BGs would be your "easy mode" but it just throws *so much* information at you that you must memorize to even have basic gameplay competence. And then you get people that are often just afking and expecting others to carry them, or getting toxic because they have bad players/bad gear on their team... it's just bad.

I would agree if not for the fact, that high skill players use BGs to farm currency. Just one or two of those will ruin the entire BG for you. Nobody likes getting one-shot, perma CC until you die or just the other team dominating without any chance of a comeback. You can't even surrender vote like in other PvP games, you have to either stare at your screen for 10 minutes or leave and get deserter debuff. Blizzard must find a way to make better brackets in PvP. But there's probably not enough players to even play PvP anymore so separating them would be feasable.

There is the one Brawl, where you play against AI, and oh wonder: It's by far the favorite brawl of all. For noobs because you won't get perma CCed or one-shot. For pros because it's easy currency.

[Master Factician]

• Lack of support from Blizzard(updates, etc.).
• Community sucks.
• There's far better PvP games out there.


That's about it.

[Grinning Serpent]

I would agree if not for the fact, that high skill players use BGs to farm currency. Just one or two of those will ruin the entire BG for you. Nobody likes getting one-shot, perma CC until you die or just the other team dominating without any chance of a comeback. You can't even surrender vote like in other PvP games, you have to either stare at your screen for 10 minutes or leave and get deserter debuff. Blizzard must find a way to make better brackets in PvP. But there's probably not enough players to even play PvP anymore so separating them would be feasable.

There is the one Brawl, where you play against AI, and oh wonder: It's by far the favorite brawl of all. For noobs because you won't get perma CCed or one-shot. For pros because it's easy currency.

Yup. It's also why I favor the BGs where there are objectives to be done and where fights are usually little skirmishes rather than huge brawls. CTF sucks, murderball (whatever it's called, it was added in Mists) sucks, BfG sucks (because it's way too small, whereas AB is much larger and has 2 additional nodes to fight over so even with 5 more players things are much more spread out.) Modes where capping is based on warm bodies instead of channeling on a node, like EotS, suck.

I only play Cata these days, so when I get CTF, EotS, or BfG I groan and expect it to be a miserable experience. I'm usually pretty happy when I get AV, Strand, or especially IOC, because the huge issues with PvP in WoW (Cata has gear grinding in full effect and, at least in my opinion, has pretty dogshit class balance as far as BGs are concerned) are felt much less strongly when you have objectives to be doing and fighting other players is either in small groups or is secondary to pursuing objectives.

[cerebro]

Que times

Gearing takes an eternity and you have to get shit on by geared people to get it

If you Que healer and get stuck with a low geared/skilled person, everyone gets a 4-2 but healers lose rating with 3-3