\*Cut down on the micro cc spam from every fucking spec. \*Remove 2 or 3 buttons from the button bloated specs, by baking the effects into other active abilities, or making them choice nodes with other things. For example Monk. Most people don't play Monk because they have a ton of buttons, and unless they're really into the theme, they don't care to deal with that. PVE requires a lot fewer buttons and also PVE is at a much slower pace than PVP, but when you're in a PVP situation and have a ton of buttons AND you need to think fast, inexperienced players will get overwhelmed and have a bad time and then don't try again. The most successful PVP multiplayer games are those that are easy to understand and easy to reach a comfortable skill level. WoW PVP is none of this. WoW PVP has a ton of buttons, a ton of cc, and a ton of things you need to keep track of and also know from other classes. If I truly wanted to develop the PVP of this game, I would make it a separate mode, like Plunderstorm, and each class would have its own much much smaller action bar and abilities tailored only for PVP.

Really can’t disagree enough on just that last point. This is still an MMO at the end of the day, and players are attached to their characters. If you separated it into a different game altogether a la plunderstorm, you’ll actually have less participation because now you’re splitting your achievements between toons

WoW stopped being an MMO a long time ago. Now it's just a mega lobby that people log into and then queue up for M+ and bgs. There is little difference between WoW and Vermintide for example. You just log into the capital city and queue up for shit.

That *really* depends on how you engage with the game.  Is it possible to play this way? Absolutely. Does everyone play this way? Not by a long shot. Half of my playtime is spent engaging with the open world, for example.

There is absolutely nothing M+ and raider player needs from the open world. M+ and raids give them all the currencies they need. Likewise, there is nothing a PVP player actually needs from world content. Everything they need comes from PVP. The open world content is for mega casual noobs like achievement hunters, pet battlers, transmog farmers, mount farmers, etc... all the sorts of absolutely meaningless content that only appeals to mega casuals, the kind of players who know how to get to the Darkmoon Faire and engage with Noblegarten, all pointless and meaningless content. People literally just log into the game and queue up. There is no reason for them to be out in the world, and it's not like the game CAN be played like this, it's that IT IS played like this, and it's played like this because people whined and bitched about having to engage with the open world when they don't want to engage with the open world, and Blizzard simply obliged, and here we are now, it's all just a fucking lobby.

I think we both got a bit of confirmation bias going on, thinking that the way we play personally applies to everybody. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

Your experiences aren’t universal. I do mainly PvP and I love going about the open world, collecting mogs, achievement hunting, etc. The PvP community sticks to PvP only because it’s all they’re good at and that they know, so of course your opinion will be against what your social circle is saying, but I promise you for the vast majority of players, the game is much more than a lobby

This right here! I definitely hit my instances but one of my favorite things in WoW is being in the world. Still love that feeling! Also fishing while I wait in ques!

Every single player who levels an alt goes into the open world to quest. The best way to gear a new character was by engaging in the open world by flying in the dreamsurge zone and collecting currency, and then engaging with other players in the AH to craft your gear. Every single raider who wants to stay competitive does their weekly open world activities like researchers under fire and world boss kills, especially early in each season. All crafters, so many raiders/high level players, have to engage in the open world for knowledge points as well as rep. There's much more to add to that as well, but you get the point.

I level by dungeon spamming bro, The only time I spend in the open world is between dungeon queues, and I leveled one of ever class over the duration of DF

The whole point of me pushing r1 and getting my title and getting my mop and wod cms is it's because it's MY character. I couldn't agree more.

Exactly. For a lot of these PvP players, they don’t get that aspect. But for most of us, especially the majority of the playerbase, there’s an attachment to working on your character

agreed. these casual boomer dad gamers just want the bar lowered so low they can compete with big bois. Thats really what all these posts come down to when m0rons say this bs.

Ffxiv does that and it's garbagio.

Why would you use monk as an example…? They don’t even have a lot. Shaman and Mage are the worst offenders for button bloat

i think the Monk was the example because of me being a monk

I mean, if that was the reasoning it just makes the post even more confusing. “Most people don’t play monk because they have a ton of buttons” doesn’t make much sense because monks don’t have a ton of buttons, but it makes even less sense if the only reason they posted it was because you play monk haha

i ment it more as a monk popped in his head because he saw my monk tag haha

Ah, fair enough lol

>The most successful PVP multiplayer games are those that are easy to understand and easy to reach a comfortable skill level There's also games like brood war which are extremely janky with a massive burden of information and have survived 25 years. Or Fortnite which exploded in popularity despite the fact that [this](https://youtu.be/U8vyM-H0JpQ) is what the gameplay looked like. Or League of Legends which has over 160 characters and a massive catalogue of item builds that you adapt situationally.

That video of the fortnite battle is nothing like how the game was played on release. It took months for average players to reach that skill level, and even then, there are still only 4 structures you can build, and you carry 2-3 weapons. It's simple, but gets more complex as skill level rises. WoW starts complex, and just gets even more complex and in depth. WoW PvPers have more complexity than both league and fortnite on 1 action bar with the competition being players who have been playing for 2 decades. Not to mention the amount of game knowledge required to understand how the other 12 classes play, which is a huge advantage and plays a big role in climbing rating. Excessive complexity is absolutely a monumental barrier that stops a significant amount of potential new players from even trying WoW PvP.

those games are all easy to play. Hard to play well. WoW is hard to play, and hard to play well.

Maybe fortnite to the extent that it's a FPS is pretty straightforward to pick up. But I don't really agree that LoL or Brood war would be any less overwhelming for a new player to pick up, unless they are really familiar with other MOBAs or RTS games already. Some big advantages those games have is that matches start out slow, typically last much longer, and do a better job presenting information to you. And more than anything, they are games that are designed around one format as a priority, which remains relatively static. Compared to WoW which is constantly trying to reinvent classes and prioritize design around raiding / mythic+ while also not entirely trashing every other endgame content format.

if you played 1 champion, its super easy to pick up. You dont need to expand if you dont know what your doing. its 4 abilites and then you start grabbing items. Broodwar maybe a little harder, but i played it when i was 11, it wasnt that complicated. Make stuff that shoots. and A move into people will get you started. Playing 1 class in wow, and its an entire journey.

LMFAO tank god youre not in charge! This is a casual boomer dads wet dream but it would kill PVP tbh. The reason its even remotely popular is because of its depth. IF you want easy braindead gameplay there is PVE for that. Problem with PVP is ratings are deflated and rewards are awful. Thats it. You make glad mount more shadowlands levels of obtainable you will see a huge spike of playerbase. There is already casual gamemode in BGs or RBGs and Blitz ranked soon so the casuals can have fun in there but theres nothing wrong with arena gameplay wise. The issue is lack of balancing and mmr deflation and reward structure. Truly hope blizz never listens to you lifetime 1600 rated players and massively dumb down game. It would completely kill arenas competitiveness.

- agreed on scrapping FOMO Queues need to be fast. For queues to be fast, healers need to have an easier time. Rating is one aspect of it, but healing as a role is too stressful and punishing I feel Make the default PvP UI the one we see in AWC, and just let people move their frames in a way that’s comfortable for them Reduce button bloat. The more buttons you need to think about, the less time you have to be aware of what’s happening in the arena. I personally refuse to touch anything that has significant rotational complexity and bloat because I don’t find it rewarding/necessary Rated BGB. Solo queue is king, BGs are way less punishing than arena Make solo shuffle an esport, more shuffle tournaments where individual players can shine and do cool stuff

I like the Shuffle Tournament Idea, really good Idea and i was confused as to why it was never featured more as it was THE Dragonflight PvP Addition. Also the PvP UI would makes so much sense. OFC there are a few things that should be tweeked for it, but in general it would help get into it a lot.

Meh, shuffle showdown was kind of neat because the participants just played their mains and it had the whole “for fun” thing going on where people were just sending stuff, actual shuffle tournaments replacing AWC would be brutally boring to watch and the amount of anti-competitive play would be wild.

i domt know it could be something like the great push as a special event

In my opinion the main reasons why most PvE players says they dont like pvp are: * **Lack of PvP knowledge:** New players gets stuck into CC and thats frustrating. Specially for healers/casters who may spend most of their time locked when players are new and dont know positioning basics * **Lack of PvP gear:** New players normally don't have enough versatility or pvp trinket when they try PvP for first time. That lead to be dead most of time This are the main frustration reasons ive seen in my PvE friends who try to PvP. Keep in mind that PvE players will try PvP for 1-2hours just before quitting and saying it sucks. And those who give it a try and play for an entire week, will soon face the problems of not having specific talent trees/abilities for PvP. Of course, having custom mounts at an achievable goal (playing 100 games, instead of reaching 2400 rating) will make more players to come into this mode. This happened in Shadowlands season 1, where PvP gear was BiS for PvE in several classes. This caused an increased PvP activity and the game felt alive.

If there was an introductory quest line that ended up giving you PvP trinkets and explain the basics of PvP that’d go a long way imo. Maybe a few games against bots that teaches newbs what the goals are.

That’s a really good idea and the template is already in the game. Those intro quests on the airship where you attack training dummies and stuff should just become “force the target to stop casting 3x by running behind the barrel when they try to cast on you” and “use your interrupt 2x to stop the enemy from healing”

100% I replied above to a comment where i thing this is spot on. In the Monk Discord (shameless plug) we've dedicated a fair bit of time into some Sort of "basic" Sheet with just Basic class Information like Offensive / Defensive Cooldowns or general Tips into classes. But those type of Information isnt readily available. I used to think that there would be some form of "Tutorial" for pvp, like some sort of mini scenario where you Queue into and then it explains the different type of Crowd Control, that CC of the same "school" DR's up to a immunity and what to look out for. Maybe even with some sort of "Class Knowledge" Book that you can Read ingame and that basically summarizes the different classes in a way. Like you open it and it says DK: Main Defensives = IBF, AMZ, AMS (maybe even with some Form of Tooltip next to it that you can read the Names and what the abilities actually do) Main Offensive Ability: Army, Unhokly Frenzy, .... At the Same time, i think the General pvp Template Idea has been thrown around a lot and the more i play the more i think it just makes sense. Thank you for your input!

1. Reduce Barriers to entry by making gear irrelevant by scaling all gear to 529 with standard stats. 2. Add more (new) cosmetics which are grindable (don't tie them to MMR) 3. PvP wins should award more flightstones and crests 4. Priority dps queue tokens awarded to healers for wins

1. I'd love to be able to chose my Stats somewhat 2. Yes Please, its one of my biggest points that are missing 3. I have no idea why PvP Crests and Flightstones feel like such a grind, makes no sense really. 4. 100% Healers should have a benefit.

Stat picking is an illusion. You have one best stat and everything else is vers. If you look at the top 100 players of every spec, they look like they were created using a template.

hmhm yes and no, obviously there is that for classes but currently for WW for example there are 2 different builds, Full Mastery ~20Crit and 30% Crit rest mastery which is imo better but both find success

I agree with all your points and would like to add removing the pvp vault which is gonna happen next expac. Right now you have to choose to either get the best items for pve or pvp from the vault so pve players have even less incentives to try out pvp as well. Also they need to expand the non rated rewards so new pvp players can expect to get something for their effort. A renown track for pvp would be the best solution for this imo.

Definitely. My gf actually likes to pvp, but never gets much higher than 1500, 1600 so she is basically locked out of all rewards. Has been since BFA. Why is she supposed to want to pvp again? The problem isn't just getting people to play, it's stopping the current systems that make people *actively not want to play*.

As someone who’s a super casual PvPer and I think best I got might have been 1600 in Legion.. perhaps I’m some of the audience here? I think your first few points are more to do with improving in PvP generally, so I guess you’re saying it’s too hard to get into and perform well? My stance is that I’ve just not dived into this enough, but could. So I think if players really want to get better, they can by sorting out their addons, UI, reading guides - the same way casuals (like myself) do for PvE content like mythic+. Personally, as someone who likes both PvP and PvE, I’m considered really casual and don’t play at a high level. So PvP would be a lot more engaging if the playing field was more ‘equal’, like a ‘rent conquest gear’ option or if there were modes that could sway the tide for casuals, giving a handicap almost (maybe like how Plunderstorm was? But I can’t say as I missed the event!). I think the way PvE content is right now, finding a balance between LFR all the way to mythic & +20 M dungeons and so forth, it really opens up a sense of achievement at multiple levels. As a casual, I feel happy getting the gear and ilvl I do at lower levels and it being really accessible, giving a sense of accomplishment. If that bracket was wider for PvP, maybe that would attract more players? Ultimately, I think PvP feels a lot more gated for performing really well. You jump into pretty much any of it and can get destroyed, or it’s hard to make an impact, which is off putting to most. I can only speak from my experience. It’s been a problem for many years though, so I don’t think there is a definitive answer.

I really like this take, never really thought about it that way but i guess you're correct. I basically assume that one of the main Reasons People can't get into is the amount of Knowledge and setup required to "deepdive". Obviously you can spent some time to read into it all, but most information isn't in some tooltip or really even Ingame for that matter. I think having some Sort of Introduction into PvP would be helpful. I like the Rent Conquest Gear approach, i think Gear Templates were a thing in Legion but weren't received all to well due to the Stat Templates being fixed. Though i think that if you could give us the free choice of what we would like to put our Points into, that would fix that Problem as well. The steep learning curve in PvP also stems from the fact that if you're new there are almost no players that are also new, but most have been playing for quite some time already.

One of the knowledge gaps that's very apparent is cooldown usage. People need to know like 30+ abilities to watch out for, but, and maybe some would disagree, but if the base ui simply showed if someone has used a major offensive or major defensive ability, it would probably help immensely. Doesn't really matter what the ability does specifically, it would help some new people not be as confused why their faces got smashed in.

For me it comes down to the mid season gearing point. During the first few weeks of a tier my focus is 100% on raid and M+. Once I’ve got my portals and cleared the raid though is when I start getting the itch for PVP.. but by this point the difference between someone in honor gear and conquest gear is enough to make otherwise even matchups feel disgusting. Sure for a much better player than me, it’s possible to get a rank one title in honor gear without enchants. But for a regular Joe like me it’s just such a massive hill to climb. Honestly I think that pvp gear should just be unlocked and free. Kind of like legion templates except we still get the option of picking our secondaries. I also agree, we should have rewards for a number if wins / matches. Similar to plunderstorm. Add in a free battle pass to pvp that can be earnt even by a hard stuck 1200 Andy who just puts in the time

This seems to be the most common Feedback i've read so far and i heavily agree with it. It just sounds like maybe "The" Best Solution for it all. Just even Playing the field.

I honestly think classes are just way way too bloated and you need to invest so many hours to learn the game that people don’t bother and it’s frustrating. Also you legitimately cannot PvP with the base UI, so a ton goes into setting things up just to even get started. Those two things I think hold people back.

Under the new “edit mode” should be a “pvp” template saved already that adds a gladius equivalent and something along the lines of the AWC ui.

Yeah. As a new player that just recently hit 1600, whilst I’m completely hooked on pvp (all I do on this game) it’s just a lot that one must learn just to be barely competitive. Whether it’s setting up your UI with the correct addons, to knowing how most specs play and what such specs are trying to do to you on a situational basis, on top of tracking enemy & ally CDs, DRs, & your own CDs to make plays…. Yeah…. It’s just, a lot. And not only that, you need to farm gear so that u don’t get completely obliterated so by default if you are a new player coming into a season relatively late, you will suck major ass for a bit. Completely understandable why it’s so discouraging for new players to get into it. Most players are just not down for such a steep learning curve that requires a good amount of time investment just to be able to “play” the game. In my case (and many others) I just like competitive PvP games. A lot. And wow pvp is that on steroids. I love it. I love the beef that arises in matches. How butthurt people can get (including myself), the thrill of good plays actually working & being panned out in your favor… it’s great! So my point is that you have to be into these sort of games to begin with + liking RPG Fantasy styles & boom, wow scratches this itch immensely. I imagine that the average player (excuse my poor Minecraft analogy) is more akin to wanting to play games in “creative mode” rather than survival/hardcore, & generally don’t like toxicity and instead want cushy environments where they feel OP… in wow pvp u gotta earn that raid boss status. So I totally get it why it’s not that popular comparatively to M+….

Simplicity in gameplay and systems, no gear, only different gears to choose for messing with stats if you want, instant max level characters so you can play any class when you want.

I have nothing realistically to do after hitting 1800. The next rung on the ladder is going from being in the top half of characters to the top 15% (2100) and top 1.5% (2400) Takes two maybe 3 sessions of 2s with my bro go get 1800 and enough wins for the mount. 4 to 7 hours over the course of the season. We have limited free time outside raids and nobody else I know PvPs. SS queues are to long as dps to tolerate or the game mode is completely unfun as a healer. If I do not enjoying playing with reasonable queues and the carrot does not seem realistic or worth while time investment to sit through the queues as something I enjoy there is simply no reason to play. Wow is a fun social activity I do to relax. There is zero interest among the people I play with to PvP. The only way to consistently get play time is to heal Solo Shuffle which is both anti social and unfun thus defeating the whole reason I play the game.

This is also a Feedback i read in here a lot. Id consider myself still somewhat casual though its not really fitting but casual as in I work fulltime, have hobbys outside wow, do sports but have the time to play 3 monks somewhat regularly, but after reading here i realized how far outside of the norm my own PoV really is. I appreciate the feedback truly

IMO if you truly want to change things and not band aid it - Rework MMR from the ground up. The system has so many issues with how its used when it comes to things like shuffle and even to a lesser extent regular arenas. Placements can suck, streaks can suck, its not fair to all players equally, and most important, it does not do a good job of placing people based on their skill across the board. Too many games with people who are just way, way better than others. - PVP needs separate gameplay from PVE. This is a massive band-aid to rip off but it needs to happen. Currently it looks like hero talents are going to be in pvp and weather or not they have adjustments, its going to suck. Just a laundry list of shit you need to learn across the board to be able to compete. Its obscene how much you need to know to even "start" really pvping. On top of that, ability bloat is insane. Balancing stuff is a nightmare because of how much there is, and competing with pve even WHEN they adjust separate for pvp, pve always will win out. And even that is a major problem because good fucking luck knowing what is difference specifically for pvp when you can only tell when mousing over it during a pvp situation, and even then, not always. They need to make classes have unique skillsets in pvp. This is a huge change, it could suck for a bit, but its required. - healing needs to be changed. The current role they play in pvp is flawed. Sure it often ends up "working out" at high level play. Too bad 99% of the pvp playerbase isn't at that level so isn't playing that game. And guess what you need to make the mode work? A playerbase, not just the top 1% and everyone else who thinks they will be in the top 1%. The large surplus of players that make it so queues don't take 5 hours will go away eventually. They already are. You can't have a game that is shit for them until they put in tens of thousands of hours. Most won't put it 10 dealing with this shit. - lfg needs fixed. We don't need shuffle to be the only way to get a group. Have it so you can set conditions, put yourself in a queue, and be put in a group with people who meet those conditions. No bullshit looking through lists. No people vetting for massively overqualified partners. This issue is hard to picture solving now, but if you solve everything else and actually get people to START pvping, this will work. Thats just the beginning honestly. Rewards are a whole other ballgame, but they are considered a band-aid solution to the overall problem. If you fix rewards, you temporarily get participation. You don't maintain it. Eventually people get what they want and don't wanna deal with the bullshit.

Always boils down to high barrier of entry

Maybe I don’t see it as much since I’ve been playing forever, but there needs to be two things. Rewards and incentives for casuals and a change to how rating is to better spread the difficulty curve. TLDR a better natural progression/difficulty curve for people to be more comfortable in a PvP setting. If we had more rewards in casual play like random bgs that gave an amount of rewards with a reasonable pacing (not every 50 to 100 honor levels) then more people would be willing to play and dabble in casual play. Then in turn, learn how better to PvP over time. Finally when they are comfortable they will try rated play. Which leads to the next point. I’ve been playing a long time, and there have been so many times in recent expansions where a new season comes out and friends and I are climbing and we haven’t even broken 1500 personal rating but our Mmr is still from like last season at like 1900 yet we fight teams that have like 1200 Mmr and the skill difference is laughable. At the same time I feel bad because these guys to them must have won a few and were excited only to get quickly humbled. I don’t know of any other way to demotivate someone to keep playing faster then that.

Make a bar that you fill that gives you rewards similar to a battlepass. It doesn’t matter your rating you just fill it faster if you win a lot. And make some very very prestigious titles and stuff for the very top that win really a lot, but basically all participants could earn those sweat loots 99 times out of a 100.

BALANCE. This is a very big one. Popular PvP games are well balanced. League is a prime example, most champions are close to 50 % winrate, and if they aren’t, they get buffed/nerfed accordingly. The balance in WoW PvP is … extremely bad in comparison. Just extremely bad. Power disparity is enormous between the best and worst specs. Also, tuning seems completely random and will often be game-warping, i.e. changing a strong spec into an unplayable one or vice versa. This is basically a repellant against players interested in a competitive experience. Other factors are button bloat and the need for add-ons. Both makes the game harder to access for newer players.

Remove all the passive bloat and need for weakauras, abilities sometimes do 100k and sometimes do 500k if the stars align witch isn’t good game design. Make it so every ability isn’t an aoe cleave. Bring back longer ccs and remove a lot of the micro ccs. Boom

I think it's a mix of two things. Default UI is not fit for purpose and is lacking too many things that put you at a huge disadvantage. This is true for high level PvE too that your UI will be molded to hell and back, but the difference is you can do pug raiding at a casual level basically with default UI and do fine and if you end up joining a casual pve guilt they will help you set it up. But even the most basic players in arenas are using molded UIs because the community is shrinking and there's no influx of new pvp players really. This means that initial leap to arenas is huge. The second is that unlike PvE casual PvP doesn't really prepare you for more advanced pvp. Dungeons will introduce you to pve mechanics and make you at least semi prepared for the step up to raiding. But BGs are completely different from arenas on a conceptual level. BGs do not prepare you for arenas in anything more than the most basic "allows you to learn what your buttons do" level. All this means that there is a very casual pvper community. But it just exists in BGs never steps up to arena at all.

The worst part is that you need an addon for everything, nameplates, arena frames, auras, range display, and action bars. And this makes the game lag so much, even on the beefiest hardware attainable. With 20-30 add-ons I myself have to play with graphics at minimum.

Yeah, that is one of the biggest Things in my opinion. Whenever i help someone with their UI, its always "Wait that isnt shown baseline??" And i cant find a good reason for that. The UI should be customizable for those things, sadly with how small the Community seems to be getting, its hard to justify the amount of work that needs to be put into it i guess.

As someone who’s first pvp season ever was this one, my main hardship as a healer was the pressure, difficulty ramping, and gearing. (Got 1800!) Healer pressure is standard in pve and there’s unsurprisingly healer shortages there too. Pve the solution needs to be a rethinking of damage profiles and the incentives of the DPS to not stand in fire. PvP is already in a place where if you don’t kill the other healer or at least cc it, the fight never ends. For PvP, remove tons of the CCs that classes hurl at each other and instead create DPS dampening effects for longer durations. Then remove defensives. This puts the onus on personal responsibility rather than the healer. You can then cut the healers output too. Gearing in PvP is dumb. Make everyone max level and select what secondaries you want. Fight on equal footing. A 510 pve player gets globaled by a max gear 528 PvP player so badly it’s depressing.

Just stick the best item level gear into PvP like they did in Shadow lands season 1 and see the most players you ever will in arenas haha

While i agree out of some selfish reasons i think PvE would hate it to have to do PvP. I would surely enjoy it though.

Yeah it got all the boosters rock hard too doing 1800 carries, I quite liked it personally but I can see the same about seasons where we have to do pve and I also hate that

haha yeah thats the selfish reason im talking about i am certain it would pay for a lot of Expansions in advance. I hated doing M+ for Djaruun + Seal on my monks this season for example and i could see why PVE Players hate it when they have to get 2.4 for just a weapon.

Basically, they will hope that battleground blitz will cover some of the pitfalls that make arena so unpleasant. They will not change anything though. The main focus is to balance around m+ encounters and power spikes every 90 seconds to 3 minutes.

Make a post where you criticize the meta and find out why. Community is toxic. Arena gameplay is PVE (damage based meta). BiS means raiding/ mythic + for many classes. Good luck fixing these issues.

I am aware those are actual gameplay Issues. And i am aware that class identity is getting left behind in some forms more and more now that M+ seems to be what is balanced around. But there are also other issues than just those. Im not saying you're wrong but i believe that there are different ways than just to say its shit to give actual feedback someone can look at. If you'd check the Monk Discord, i have been voicing my anger about the generalization of Specs (especially melees) a lot recently. Every class feels like a bruiser with high Consistent DMG, a Burst CD, maybe a Stun and a bit of utility, feels like of you take away the Nameplates there is no way to tell what class your facing. IMO Windwalker is the biggest offender of that, i miss us being a glass canon, a lot of the higher Skill ceiling is gone now that you just want to press forward.

For sure and you've given a thoughtful reply to all the posts here. You are a rare exception within the community of someone who is willing to painstakingly analyze the game in order to try to improve it. I might not have worded my criticism of the game very well but basically what I think needs to happen: 1)Gearing: BiS for pvp should always be PVP gear. It should come from a conquest vendor and progress with rating as it did in the past. No need to get a legendary or a mythic+ ring to feel like you have the edge with gear. 2) Gameplay should emphasize using ALL of your toolkit in order to land kills and in order to survive. Not just whoever pumps the most forces the healer oom and can't drink etc. 3) People need to be more open minded about their team mates advice and opinions with regards to strats. There are multiple paths to victory and if people were more respectful of each other their games would likely go better.

And again i find myself agreeing with you and a lot of others here. All the points are spot on and even if that might sound dumb, im happy so many of us seem to acknowledge the right problems and maybe we can voice that as a community in a way blizzard hears/reads this

One issue I haven't seen mentioned so far is how split the playerbase is now. We currently have 5(?) versions of wow running: retail, SoD, cata, vanilla (I think those servers are still up?), and mop remix. With so many versions and pvp being dead in most of them there's less opportunity for new players to try rated pvp, and it sometimes pulls retail pvp players away from the ladder, like cata launch is doing right now. 

Better rewards, rewards that can be used for pvp/pve interchangeably. Keep the BIS for pvp in PvP and pve in pve tho. Fix the premades in EBGs. The old elite sets are fine, if needed bring back recolors if they must come back.

There needs to be some form of balance/change between arena rating being the way people gauge skill, Because to me, wow pvp should be way more than just arena score. Don’t get me wrong arena is great fun, but it shouldn’t be the final form of pvp in wow to me, What I mean is that a lot of the people who are glad are very smart and understand the 4D chess of high end arena, Some specs / comps will have a much harder time reaching the same ratings, (even with player pilots of similar skill). There are achievements like battle master, Khan and such that are 1% or less of the population, And actually are less common than grand marshal, and only .5% away from the same pop as glad titles (according to data for Azeroth). And I feel a lot of that area of PVP is neglected, If you play a non meta spec or a tank or something not popular, you’re going to instantly be at a disadvantage before you even get to play arena. I think it feels bad for those players that want to join in. I know you can re roll but some people play wow as an MMORPG and may not want to re roll to a flavour class, If you played prot paladin from vanilla, you can’t realistically push high rating in arena, does that make them bad? Not necessarily. there should be some way that those type of players can get a decent progression that feels good as a player. There is also sadly a lot of alt smurfing and boosting going on in arena for the ranks. Now that happens in alot of games but it feels more repressive in wow as the player pool for pvp is so much lower. More Cosmetics overall would be cool, I’ve already got all the vicious saddle mounts, There’s nothing really to use them for now. Let glads and such keep their unique rewards. Just add more various toys mogs and such for completion. Be it for currency or achievements, re-colours of old season rewards etc. I use the old vanilla mog from my AV Rank (lieutenant commander), I think it’s re available if you get over 1800 RBG ? But nobody plays that mode anymore. Arguable the first elite sets, and those can be gotten now again, there doesn’t seem to be to much outrage? I don’t mind that others can get it now either. And have yet to see anyone else in the same set. Kill 1000 orcs above 1800 rating? Cool you get a orc skull for your mog, something random like that. I think the RPG aspect is often overlooked, I think if you’re into pvp there are better games to just pvp in. No other pvp game would require you to level, get gear, enchant / gem it, learn comps, DR, adons, binds etc like wow does. It’s so in depth it can be daunting for new people. I think that depth is actually a strength of the game overall. The base UI is awful. You should be able to que for an arena and see all the information needed without needing adons. Adons are great but the game should have that functionality baseline. Or have no adons at all.

I’m not super experienced, even though I’ve enjoyed PvP since TBC, and I play for a while every now and then. I agree with some of the other comments that providing a UI where you can see all buffs, cds, etc is probably not even the first thing that stops new players from trying or sticking to PvP. I think that’s more for people who are already into it and want to get better (that’s where I am right now). I think the most biggest thing is how overwhelming it could be being in an arena and trying to attack someone and not even know what’s going on. One solution I always thought would be cool is to have some sort of scenario or instanced content with bots, just like running dungeons with bots, similar to the proving grounds, that starts out pretty simple, bots won’t cc or interrupt, etc, in the first level; and as you do the silver and higher scenarios the bots will do more advanced things. Once you finish the scenario the first time you’d get a good amount of honor or conquest to help you gear up. Another interesting thing would maybe have some introductory quests that ask you to do specific tasks during a match. Like, interrupt a spell 10 times in arena or apply crowd control effects to 10 enemy players in arena, etc. It sounds super simple and that it might be annoying or boring to do, but maybe new players could use that sort of tutorial. It could even be more complicated, but I think it could be a place to start since that might help remove some of the overwhelming feeling you get when doing arena for the first time, for example.

That sounds like the Thing in WoD that you had to do to Queue Dungeons. I actually like that, would love if it would flash your Screen red if you play with a Bot Healer and you run into his line of Sight. Really nice idea

Judging by blizzard forum/wowhead comments every time something is gated behind the tiniest pvp activity I would say it's a lost cause by now.

The problem has often been that it was gated behind arena/rbg. In both of these settings you need tons of preparation or you get steamrolled. With blitz, I am more hopeful than ever.

Too much visual clutter and too much to track. Need to prune some abilities and rebalance some of the classes. Way too much mobility and micro cc in the game

Season ban all griefers on sight. This includes wintraders and multi leavers too.

but wouldnt that just be a slight fix for the existing players

It would make a lot less people quit yes

i might be biased, but i dont think there is as much griefing and leaving, no?

They should make a spec overview, like a raid journal for different classes. I was trying to get a friend into PVP and realized just how important class/spec knowledge is. Understanding what their offensive and defensive cds are and all that. They should find an in game way to at least let people easily see an overview of that stuff

It’s the ui/addons. I’ve had tons of my friends want to try pvp and I start showing them the addons to instal and profiles to import and by the time they start pvp they’re all set

Murder button bloat. Make classes not so ridiculously complicated to play. Remove the ridiculous combos. Casting x to get buff into x to stack this and now do x, ask for x buff and then pop CD and go. The game has 10,000 things that need to be tracked all the time to really keep things together and that needs to be brought way way down. Make the game fun and easier to play. PvP will grow exponentially and WoW will probably get more players. I know 3 people personally that tried and quit WoW because it gets to be crazy complicated to play your class and actually just fulfill your role at the low end.

simplicity. LFG revamp. more options to play rated solo with a simple queue button. everything every other team based game has lol. make it more accessible and simple. we are at a “100 hrs of pvp then u understand the basics” kind of conversation

Reward structure reworked. MMR brackets into proper leagues. Reworked DR system to simplify cc.

Make losing and wining give the same amount of Conquest points - let honor be the currency that is rewarded more for winners. Increase sustain dmg Remove most of the defensive and offensive cds - be something more unique and check the class fantasy (as an example I will say that DH checks these requirements perfectly) Remove most of the CC - no need for a class to have stun, incap, disarm, knocback...all types of cc in their toolkit Remove most of the mobility abilities - I think WOTLK nailed this perfectly where there was a perfect balance between classes Delete vulpera from the game ofc.

Separate client, f2p, on steam 😂

Information parsing and complexity, nothing else comes close. This game's learning curve at the start is a cliff. Even PvErs trying pvp won't understand what is even happening to them. DR tracking would be entirely useless for beginners, though nice as a default option for sure. Nobody needs all these additional timers when they're still struggling to understand what is going on in the first place and don't have their rotation etc mastered. Gear/power discrepancy is a big one as well, but at least BGB does reduce it. FOMO, big lack of rewards and shit ui all add up though for sure

It needs to be simplified. People here won't like that, but the reality is the game is too complex and while making things easier to see will help, it wont change the fact that there's just too much to track for new players. The game is bloated, especially for healers and we won't get new players until it looks playable to people looking at the game. Go look at a good pvp streamer and put yourself in the shoes of a new or casual player.

Hands down, the biggest issue is que times IMHO. If you can’t play at all, nothing else matters. To fix this you need more healers playing. Reward them. Give them gold, titles, mounts, whatever. I don’t care. Just get them to Que up. Yes, making the game more easily understandable visually will help. Making cooldowns and buffs more apparent will make their job of countering them easier. Reducing micro cc would help too. A lot of good suggestions on this thread. But none of them matter if we can’t actually play the game. And to do that, we need healers in the Que. That has to be priority #1.

Remove addons, have solo Q arena not solo shuffle, as a healer cyclone has stopped me from taking pvp seriously. Fear spam, poly spam, cyclone spam is dumb. Wonder if stupid blizzard realized people are playing g the order version of the game because they ruined retail. WoW will never be LoL. All serious pvper’s left for other games. This why there are no healers in pvp.

The biggest deterrent of playing pvp is playing with other people. The problem are the “people”, and this unwelcoming toxic community. Here’s _my_ hot take, only improve SoloQ. Obfuscate names in arena as “arena 1/2/3”, disable whispers, say, any type of communication between players. If you _really_ need a simple way to communicate, add a simple UI which you can click to select a target or a strategy you can vote on before each match (something like “go healer”, “cc healer”, “cleave”). Harsher leaver penalties. 30, 60, 120 min for the first 3 left. 720 hour arena ban thereafter. Resets daily/24 hours after last abandoned match. The problem is not gameplay or reasons to play. The problem is some idiot dps not using defensives correctly, insulting the healer in a very elaborate critical message, such as “wtf noob heal”, the healer getting offended, leaves, fucks the other 4 back to the lobby: another 20mins waiting because somebody doesn’t know how to STFU and someone knowing they get insta queue and have their ego bruised. Same goes for 2/3s. Toxic cesspool, degenerating on the first loss. The less people interact together, the lower the toxicity, the higher the enjoyment.

I feel like starting with the foundations of pvp to improve participation is fundamental. - create a rewards track like they do with almost every blizzard game and most other popular games. Over time you can earn all the rewards that season just for playing the game. The better you play the quicker you get the rewards. - New achievements and associated rewards for non ranked gameplay giving another reason to grind out non ranked games. - Increase the number of rewards in PvP via the rewards track. Have a currency you earn to purchase the rewards, have new armour tints of new or old gear, more vicious mounts etc. there are so many mount models it's easy to slap on some PvP style armour and call it a vicious mount. - BGs are fun anyway, but they could make standard bgs more 'blitz' like with random power ups. It couldn't hurt to have more maps as well. - The above could help with participation and give PvErs more of a reason to PvP. - Arena I feel is fine aside from MMR issues. Maybe split the brackets 100 cr apart and once u get to a certain bracket u can't drop down? This might filter out players better and make lower Cr players feel like they are on a level playing field. I understand this could affect certain brackets creating a low population in some but maybe with an increased player base it would balance out better? I'm sure there are some more and better ways but for me the main thing would be a season reward track. Having a reason to grind bgs and skirmishes would be great.

gear cant be a thing. gotta plug and play with everyone on same playing field. mmo gear treadmill aspects are unsustainable in the PvP gamer community I should be able to convince a friend to play and be in a match with them later that day, like Fortnite or CoD. Prepping/grinding/levevling for a game's "real" content is an outdated concept in 2024

In-depth, class-by-class, spec-by-spec, and map-by-map PvP tutorial mode

Battleground blitz will be a game changer, watch

Definitely need a better UI for it that's for sure

Queue times

Fully agreed on all points. Also and mostly and really the main thing "Onboarding". Most of the comments here mention that it's confusing to get into for many reasons. A tutorial and an introduction using bots would be great... like every other game out there.

Solve the queue/lack of healers  in shuffle.  Players want to pvp but they can't because of queues. 

The game is too hard for new players, especially PVP. It’s brutal and offers almost zero chance of learning and improving. I’m a seasoned wow player, on off since vanilla, and PvP in all its forms to a reasonable level ~2-2.2k in RBGs and arena, but I’ve just returned after a 2 year break and the game is brutal. Arena is a Zerg fest which if you don’t know what to do you will be dead within a few seconds with no idea why. After a few rounds of this they will just quit because it isn’t fun. On top of that every class has a million buttons to press now and if you don’t use all of them you get Insta-killed or do zero damage. Furthermore seems most classes have a ton of buffs and procs that change how you play, but the game is not intuitive at all with these. TL;DR I believe the game is too complex and far too fast paced for new players to enjoy.

Less buttons and, idk how they could even do this, make it easier to understand buffs/debuffs. Like everyone knows you can’t hit a bubbled Paladin; but a ton of players still try to CC Evokers with Nullifying Shroud active. CC/Micro-CC isn’t even that bad.

Queues are just too long. There's too many different game modes and restrictions for the size of the player base. Make one bg, one 3v3, and one unranked of each or just one that can do either. 

Keep gear and tier sets. The problems are: 1) gatekeeping old shit (not everybody has to have all the things, but you can reward if you get gladiator this season the current glad mount plus a saddle for an old glad mount. Once per season per account.) 2) UI. THE BASIC, STOCK UI SHALL BE GOAT BY DEFAULT. I can't stress this enough. Yes, nowadays skill capped saved our souls, but in order to get the full of it you have to pay 20bucks (and this is every expansion for WA / etc to be remade and updated). This shall be done from blizzard's part 3) remove addons, WA (that are not tracking your character) and any other additional wheels. This in turn will mean that devs can simplify the pvp because they don't have to keep in mind that you are tracking everything like a nuclear reactor's pannel 4) reduce power creep. Cut off splash damage 5) stop balancing classes like they are now (the archetype). What do i meam by that? One class can have mega damage but doesn't have survability. One class does have movement speed and mobility but dies in a stun. Make them more even. You can't have a season 3 DH like it has godly mobility unhealable pressure "but it dies in a stun if he used his blur and immunity". This in unhealty. I get that maybe for 3k players it is balanced because you play pixel perfect but it is a terrible experience for 0-1800 players. YOU HAVE TO BALANCE THE GAME NOOB FIRST if you want people to join. I don't care, and neither them, that if you kite the dh behind the pillar making los to this healer, but not yours, and you double chain stun, kept your burst for that, tickle them 2.75 seconds, alt CC their healer and polymorph the other dps THEY ARE CERTAINLY DEAD. This is shit. And not just DH, many other classes too. 6) reduce the amount of hard cc. Especially micro cc. And cyclone. God remove spammable CC. Cyclone has to go. No discussion. I think these are the main points

Get rid of grinding gear and make everyone on an even playing field. remove solo shuffles and force people to make friends in an mmo.

Running addons has never been an issue, they also do that in PvE and no one seems to be complaining. More rewards could be an incentive to play PvP that's for sure. I think that the main problems with PvP and arena in particular are : - learning curve : you can't enter in arena to play for fun and get better the more you queue (at least not instantly) you need to have basic knowledge of your class and the classes you face and how to react to their cooldowns. Unfortunately, there isn't a solution for that. - meta is usually very static : there's always some classes better than others depending on the season but the fixes and updates doesn't shift that much the meta making it repetitive and thus not enjoyable in the long run - community : let's face it, if you're going home after work to play arena, you don't want to be criticized for how you played your character. Whether it's at low rating or higher, players tend to be really competitive and honestly toxic to some extent. There aren't that many solutions that could reward/punish good/bad behaviors that aren't too drastic and well, you can't get rid of the players that make PvP still a thing. To conclude, I'd say if we start by changing PvP meta more often, we'd see many more classes played and could perhaps see players want to try it. Adding some rewards can also make it more attractive.

I do wonder if someone couldn't make an addon that helps with the visual clutter for newer players. When it comes down to it the basics of class skills that heavily affect pvp are: stun, root, ms, absorption etc. If there was an addon that had a simplified expression of these skills that was classless as an indicator of current affects I think it would be less visually overwhelming. Sure this simplifies the understanding of how certain class spells interact with these various conditions but really a large part of the complexity is knowledge of all class skills when in essence alot of these skills come down to similar base affect. Who knows though. I'm not a new player and I haven't queued arena since SL.

This might be a hot take, but reduce the influences from professional players like Venfukki, Pikaboomer and all those other streamers who think they know what's right for the game. They only really started caring about PvP's popularity when it was affecting them personally. They quite literally don't have the best interest of the game at heart despite playing it for a living. Another thing what they should do imo, is make random (epic) battlegrounds synchronize in terms of gear. Not like in Legion, but like with Battleground Blitz. Where there's just a maximum ilvl cap you can achieve. That way you don't have conquest geared neckbeards breathing down on the new players and scaring them away. Force premades to fight against other premade groups, even in random battlegrounds. Don't queue them up against randoms. If not this, change how the queue system works. Right now, if you're like, the first few honor levels, you'll be matched with other low honor levels in random battlegrounds to make your life easier. But it takes way longer to learn the game currently than it takes to proceed past those initial honor levels, making it easy for low levels to end up in matches with experienced players despite not having a clue what they are doing. They should perhaps make this class or character specific as well.. I recall just starting out, having honor level 25-50 or something at some point, before swapping my class. Never played that class before, and got matched against super experienced players. The reward structure should obviously be more rewarding. But rewards should also be achievable.. like many have said in other comments, because of Mythic+, the game is heavy with all kinds of micro cc spam and the entire game seems and feels designed around who can lock the other player out of being able to play the game the longest. It's infuriating gameplay, and yet Blizzard wonders why PvPers are toxic: It's quite literally because the entire PvP game mode feeds that kind of behaviour. It's just not fun, and from what I hear all around in the community.. majority of players see achieving Glad as a chore they have to do because they have done it before and they need to prove that they can do it again. I've seen very few people who actually enjoy the grind, let alone people who actually enjoy arena and pvp in general because of this toxic situation that's currently going on with micro cc and the entire game being designed around that. Classes should get pruned too. If not for the entire game, at least for PvP. The gamemode should have skill floors and skill ceilings, but those don't have to be designed around the number of buttons. There's too many buttons for the majority of classes. To take Demon Hunter as an example, sure. The class gets branded as a 4-button spec, and it has a very low amount of buttons. But to make good use of those limited amount of buttons, is what makes it fun. Oh, remove tier sets from PvP entirely. Just remove it. It is what creates FOTM and causes people to consistently re-roll to new classes every season because the tier set that makes one class will break another class. It's not healthy for the gamemode. They have already proven that they are incapable of balancing PvP, let alone balance an extra addition to the situation in the form of tier sets.

Literally simplify everything, remove the majority of buffs/debuffs/procs and make all ranked pvp only solo queable with optional war games style premade/grouping. Remove arena and double down on BGs and add a battle pass style of progression like plunderstorm had. This makes me throw up in my mouth but it would work

id prolly quit if there wasnt any arena anymore

For sure, but 50 people would replace you. The question is a lot different if it has the constraint that it needs to have more mainstream appeal AND retain it's current playerbase.

Players need to behave. Was in Blitz in Week 2 of the newest season and one player was flaming others for not being full gear. And also if you are a new player and don't know other classes, you will get stomped on. The learning curve is really high. To be good you need to know what other classes are capable off.

I replied above to a post similiar to this, id love the Idea of something that gives you basic information to the Specs. Like Main Offensive / Defensive abilities. You know a bit like League of Legends Champion Preview, ofc thats pretty far fetched but you could instantly read up on what the classes mainly do.

Bring back MoP PvP 🤝🏽

could you give me a rundown as to what was great about it :-)? i didnt play it back then

Sure thing. But the best is you are searching: „Why MoP Was the best…“ If you want to specify just hit me up! I will take my time then! But the vid shows everything!

Thank you! I'll give it a look, thanks for the recommendation :-)!

Also Ww Monk PvP 5.4 or something… Monk was at its prime. More of a supporting in and out das. Loved it. Playing Monk since MoP till now

Yeah i saw some gameplay on a Private Server and it looked so much better than now, while i main it and still love the class its current brawler Design doesnt suit my style that well.

Im not able to describe it better! 12/10

There’s no easy fix for this. Swirly dodgers don’t want to touch PvP (unless there’s some power gain tied to it like in Shadowlands) and people who don’t play WoW don’t care about trying out a 20 year old game because they probably think they’re 20 years behind.

im mot expecting a fix, im more curious what people view as the problem

My wow manifesto; 1. Make wow 2. Purge all other forms of the game, retail, classic, everything. 1 game. No player fragmentation. Fresh start for everyone. Far less to learn for new players. Less classes. 2. Make some pvp and pve gear viable in both forms of content. Pvp players will need to play pve for BIS. Pve players will need to play pvp. More participation from all players. Both sides will complain, but it is for the greater health of the game. 3. Never add demonhunter to the game. 4. Profit

i'll sign. You got me at no DH

PVP Rewards.

Stop making PVE items better than PVP items. I don’t want to PVE at all so I shouldn’t have to PVE to have the BIS item

low shuffle q times there done

So this gets brought up a lot. The Problem with that is that we're lacking the healers to sustain this. Nows the Question how to fix it. What we need is more People willing to heal and more new people in general so you dont start healing at 2k MMR

give them more than 50s and 50conq as game, double inflate healer mmr because its only 1v1 instead of 2v2 like dps, healers no longer a problem, blizz just lazy if you're new you're going to solo shuffle no pressure of teammates, you sit 30mins, then a player leaves or you insta die 0-6, think wow I just sat 30mins for this and never do it again, if qs were 3mins easier to say aight i'll try again

I very much disagree with your last point as far as the mounts go, this is not the same as pve and it would completely destroy the purpose of trying to push glad if you can just get the mount much easier next season/expansion

And why is that? What is the "prestige" of the Glad Mount? People usually say "But i dont respect X Player because he got Glad in S2 of SL where it was easy" or "Yeah that guy is washed he got his Mount in WoD" There is exactly 0 Reason to keep it locked up. People tend to think that you get respected for being a High Rated Player or for riding around the World on a Glad Mount and while those mount do get attention for how rare they are. Just look into Lontar / Tyga / ... Stream and listen to them talking about the people they face, everyone is either Dog, Boosted or just trash at the Game. I want to make sure you know i respect your Opinion, i just don't get what would make those Mounts more special than say a Mythic Cutting Edge Mount. Those are "Rare" Drops and just require luck.