I played arena in earnest from about season 7 to the first sesason in MoP - two of those times I actually pushed for rating (because I wanted that sweet looking s9 and s10 Elite set) but other than that it was just to get points to buy me some upgrades I needed. I lost interest in MoP and havent really done arenas since then. For me it was pretty much the end, when ret wasnt able to play like a support without having to play a healer myself. I just liked to be able to do both (obviously not good but "ok") and with the pruning and general balance I felt like being crazy agressive was the only way to go, which is not why I played PvP. But yeah, I was also one of those wierd people, who enjoyed 2v2 when healers werent just "the" way to do everything, devolving gameplay into target dummy PvE fights with the occasional cc/interupt. I know I am in the minority and while I feel like it is kind of a shame, that I cant play the want to play in arenas, there are other things I can be doing in WoW anyways to tickle my fancy.edit: and ofc there is blizzard balancing (tm) - that $%^& is awful and after many many years of playing a lot of PvP (not just Arena) I am convinced they arent trying to balance stuff, their vision of balance is people just switching from one crazy OP thing to another every 1 or 2 seasons.
Thats a brick wall of text, we need graphs or at least numbers, percentages... Or make poll so you can state results of asked players as: 4 at 10 players never played pvp and 2 at 10 dont want to give try in future, every third player desnt find pvp content intresting, 10% of players find pvp their main reason of playing.People need clear data, not blog posts about this topic.
A fluff piece at best. I mean, I know we're bored and waiting around for the xpac, but come on...
Arenas are the one thing I will never ever do in WoW. I might try things I'm not familiar with. Arenas are the one thing I actively avoid. Never saw one from the inside.
For me, PvP was 99% of what I did through MoP. That was the height of their PvP design and I stopped after that. The best PvP gear should be from PvP, not catering to raiders because they need the advantages. Luckily for Bliz, I ended up liking M+ or I'd be long gone.SL is bringing back what, 2 pieces of PvP gear? Don't think it's enough.
I've been a dedicated casual throughout my WoW gaming life, dipping my toes into the water in different aspects of the game over the years. My main focus/love of the game has always been the exploration, questing and story of the game, but mixed into that have been periods of trying other content. I'm not and never will be a hard core raider or M+ player as those facets don't interest me, but I did used to enjoy and really have fun in pvp back in late Vanilla, BC & Wrath. Back then I found other casuals like myself who had great fun doing world pvp mostly with the occasional BG's, and the towers in Terrokar, fighting over the stadiums in Hellfire or large Wintergrasp battles were awesome fun (or Southshore going further back). Dabbled a bit in warmode during BFA in the hopes of reliving some of those memories but found it simply frustrating on my server playing Alliance, with bands of Horde hunting around and then camping their kills without enough Alliance to help out - no fun. Perhaps that was a matter of the times I tried it being an Aussie playing on a US server, maybe others jumping in and out had more balanced factions and had great fun at the times they played.I do agree a separation of sorts has to happen regarding pve and pvp, although not as complete as some would ask for. I think that pve gear should at least make someone competitive in a pvp setting (and the same for pvp gear in pve), but there should be higher levels of gear available specifically to each setting so that those whose favourite area of the game do not have to jump into other areas to get BiS items for their preferred gaming options. Mythic raiders or M+ players should not have to pvp to get their gear, and pvpers should not have to pve to gear up either. Both pve & pvp gear at the mid levels though should be good enough for players of either side to experience the other in a reasonably competitive way without penalty. I'm not saying that Blizz has to go back fully to resilience/pvp power but some sort of implementation to give a different flavour might help.In saying that it would still depend on Blizz giving any sort of crap about pvp outside their beloved arenas, which I don't see happening anytime soon (sadly for those of you who are dedicated to pvp). For a start you'd need to have them take balance issues seriously for each part of the game instead of their current pet area - stop nerfing/buffing abilities game wide because it's too strong/weak in arenas/mythic. Code a trigger that buffs/nerfs abilities when a player enters the problematic content for that ability. If ability x works great in open world pve content but is too strong in arenas/mythic then trigger a nerf when a player zones into that content, and vice versa if something is too weak in mythic/arenas but good in the open world.
Never done Arena. Done a few BGs. Most of them I think was for the "What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been" achievement for the Children's Week stuff.. lol
Removed
why do we need to change classes if it is enough to get a imbalanced trinket for arena?
Why does Wowhead allows such low effort content? Is this livejournal now?
Let PvP offer some easy, good purples. I can lose 100 battlegrounds if I'm getting that sweet piece. But I won't get any purples if I can't kill a boss or I can't complete a M+ dungeon. And that's good enough motivation for a lot of people. Everyone understands PvP. You fight other players, that's all. That's simple and understandable and everything else just comes naturally over time from your desire to win more than you lose.By contrast, M+ and raids have a much higher barrier to entry for someone who's completely new to the game. People expect you to do a lot of research before you even see the content and you have to find the groups yourself.
Absolutely nothing good has come from Blizzard's pursuit of Esport glory. Thanks, Arena.
Would have been cool to talk a bit about how out of control and ridiculous CC was in Mists PVP.
This article started out interesting but devolved fast into just personal opinion. I don't know where the author gets the source of what's "popular with players" but it's definitely not the actual players I've been around for 15 years.Over the years I've evolved in my likes and dislikes with the PvP system. In my opinion the "best" gearing architecture is when all gear works in all places so you can float and do whatever you enjoy. In my opinion the "worst" gearing architecture is when you're forced to do content whether you enjoy it or not.When the arena system came out I played on an RP-PvP server. World PvP 24/7. You HAD to start a character at level 1 and suffer through endless ganking to reach parity. Very painful arrangement. PvP gear was different from PvE gear so you had no choice. When the Arena system came out all the best PvP weapons were from Arenas, and those weapons made a lot of difference. If you didn't want participate in that scripted dance you were screwed.I prefer the all gear works in all places setup. I like to PvP, both world PvP and battlegrounds, but have no interest in the slightest in arenas. I'm making no claims about how "popular" that opinion is but that's my opinion.
As others have said, this is just a click bait blog post, an opinion piece. The title and preamble suggested facts and figures which got me interested. I expected better...
Is this CNN News?
providing pve bonuses for pvp activities is completele BS.
lol pvp in wow, not even once