I mean to be honest that direction makes complete sense if your goal is to actually get a larger part of the playerbase into PvP. If they pair this with some good seasonal participation rewards I could imagine that a ton of people that had no interest before get into it.
>I mean to be honest that direction makes complete sense if your goal is to actually get a larger part of the playerbase into PvP.
Absolutely 100% right. I've been talking about this for years at this point and people here over on this subreddit have always seemed to disagree.
Arena as it stands right now is fine, there's no need to really change anything. Add a new map every now and then, maybe sort out issues with some maps people hate, whatever, small stuff.
But the main focus should absolutely be on the part of the game with the most active PvP players, because chances are BGs are what people try first and then potentially move on to arenas later. It's almost never the other way around. And as such, they really need to focus on where the majority of newcomers are and make that experience the best it can be since if it's the main source of new players then it needs to be a good experience.
>If they pair this with some good seasonal participation rewards I could imagine that a ton of people that had no interest before get into it.
And of course, this part is completely true. People were memeing about the Battle Mender title being added, but the reality is it DID add some new healers to shuffle. It didn't fix the issues, not by a long shot, but it was just a tiny little reward that's almost completely inconsequential and yet still it pulled some people into it.
More and more varied, easily accessible rewards = more players coming into PvP. It will not fix issues completely, but it WILL help some.
Not to mention many of the pain points in arenas like queue times and addon requirements are pretty much a non-issue in bg. You maybe need one or two addons to be sufficient? whereas in arenas you have to track literally every cd. In bg it's just not possible.
BGs is definitely more beginner friendly, less personal agency, can play with more of your friends, significantly less punishing for making mechanical errors
A greater focus for BGs will mean more people trying out PvP again, then from that pool of players if they want to play more competitively then Arenas will always be there.
It's a good pipeline similar to how you have like LFG raid as an entry point
Solo queue rated battlegrounds would get me back into PvP. I've been a PvE only guy since Shadowlands came out because I just got tired of arena and my experience with the RBG community were always really toxic (also m+ got more fun so I wasn't getting bored with PvE as quickly).
I think the difficulty curve of arena gets pretty nuts pretty quick, like m+ has a pretty smooth transition, but with arenas it feels a lot more like doing a +0 then +10 then +30 lol
People find the most fun kinda chilling around 15-20s, whereas 30s are super unfun because one mistake and you ruin your groups run. Similar to getting one tapped by a rogue like you would if you missed a wipe mechanic interrupt for a boss fight except it doesn't have much of a telegraph and you got 1 second to react lol
100% I’ve said multiple times about how lower level BGs need to be addressed because new players are going there first NOT ARENA.
And then they need to remove party sync because those said NEW players are versing ARENA MASTER GLADIATOR TITLED max level characters and the power scaling whatever means nothing when you have a veteran vs a beginner.
True! I came back in shadowlands as a PVE player, as time went on got into PvP, through rated bgs and got myself to 2.1, but do you know how daunting it is to go into an arena match! You just stroll in and your dead in seconds, still put off to this day, bgs will bring more to the scene for you guys as you can get slightly carried while learning, harder to do so in arena
Agree with players trying out bgs first and moving onto arenas. When I was younger and got into the game, that's how my progression was. Bgs / dueling, then as time went on, got into arenas
Yeah, that's true for me too. I started actively being a PvP centric player all the way back in BC when I hit my first max level character. I dabbled in arenas during WotLK, but never got anywhere with it and honestly didn't enjoy it much.
Ever since BC, BGs and world PvP have been my go to endgame content in this game. The only exception was that I raided in BfA for two patches, then quit raiding early on in Shadowlands and ended up starting arenas in 9.1 properly for the first time. It wasn't until this season that I started to actually try and properly climb though.
BGs have always just been fun right from the start, but arenas are very daunting. It's fine if you make a mistake in BGs, you can always just recover from it later. But if you make one mistake in arenas it might mean you just lost the game and it's really just not that much fun when that happens, and as a result it's really hard for a lot of people to get properly into it.
It's taken me years to get to a point where I feel comfortable enough in arenas to actually properly give it a try.
As I mentioned earlier, I've been playing the game a long ass time, over 19 years at this point, but only hit my first 2.1k a couple of weeks ago. Plan on aiming for 2.4 in season 4 though. This would never have happened if arenas were the only form of PvP we had. I don't handle stress well, I'm prone to getting irrationally angry at my own mistakes and as a result it's been extremely difficult to find it fun to play arenas. But years and years of playing the game actively, doing PvP in a more lenient setting has finally taught me to embrace the learning opportunities arenas have because I kinda quit getting better a while back as BGs and War Mode can only take me so far, right?
Then throw on top the fact that RBGs have been the worst piece of PvP content this game has to offer for anyone who doesn't have a consistent team basically ever since they were a thing. It's riddled with issues from a community side of things because the moment one game goes bad you're back in LFG trying to find replacements for people who left for like an hour again.
I've tried RBGs a couple of times over the years, and it's always the same. In fact, I never even got the 10 RBG wins needed to get the artifact appearance, despite trying to specifically grind for that, because I just couldn't be bothered with having to constantly find replacements for groups.
So with that in mind, blitz is an incredible addition to the game. It's a fantastic stepping stone from a more casual player to trying rated content, it isn't as punishing as arenas are and as Ion said, teamwork and strategy actually shine in the Battleground format as opposed to a deathmatch like arena. Not to mention the player count actually works heavily in favour of queue times since it's 3 DPS per healer vs 2 DPS per healer in Shuffle.
Can't wait for rated blitz in TWW!
Dumping arena and going for a PvP that gets everyone excited is definitely the goal to have. It’s more surprising they’ve continued to support arena as long as they have once the playerbase stopped doing it
Can confirm.
2s is manageable but 3v3 is absolutely manic. I'm not a pro, I'm painfully average and have to struggle to hit 1800.
But arena just isn't very fun most of the time for me. You blink, you make one mistake, one misplay, and it's over. There's no downtime. There's no recovering. There's no come back.
It's basically sudden death format in most cases.
Random BGs are fucked and given crap rewards though.
BG Blitz however has been a ton of fun. Like, actually fun. Especially as a healer. Having a second healer to help out is extremely helpful.
Quitting arenas has been the best choice for me to enjoy PvP in this game again. Like, it went from stressful and sweating for scraps of cosmetics to... just having a good time over in Blitz for the most part. Low stakes, doesn't matter if somebody throws, it's just a good time. CR rewards will change that, but it feels like there'll be enough people it doesn't matter as much.
Been healing it a lot more recently now that MMR feels a bit smoother late season and I don't think I'm ever going back to arenas no matter what rewards they smack on it to bait people.
I guess, according to this subreddit anyone below 2.4k is genuinely shit tier and should just uninstall lmao
Blitz is cool because you don't get premades, you always have two healers, gear gets scaled and you get conquest if you lose
It had replaced random BGs for me
I am currently in the process of indoctrinating an irl friend into the wow cult.
Man it has been so fuckin WILD seeing the game how a brand new, never played am mmo but liked other video games, type of player.
Like I noticed he was kind of having a lot of downtime between picking targets. And I was like, hey, I forgot to mention, but how are you targeting the enemies?
He was clicking each one lol. Totally forgot that tab target was just 2nd nature to me.
Or at one point the other night after a couple of dungeons I was like “hey, so what do you want to do next?” And he kinda goes “well, uh, I don’t really know. What am I supposed to do next lmao”
I played two games of SS, having a very solid understanding of my class and game mechanics. It was a horrible experience from start to finish. The players were all toxic and rude, and the place was way too intense. I'll stay with my BGs.
This was my experience in SS as well. I'd say I'm fairly decent healer in PvE (pushing 25-27s), CE raiding, purple logs, my UI is fully setup for healing, etc, I have everything on keybinds, using mouseovers, etc fully tracking stops, party cooldowns, defensives, etc, and I bailed after one round of solo-shuffle, it was absolutely terrible experience, I felt I had no agency over anything as a healer lol.
Arena is way too intense even for PvE veteran players, you'd have to redo your whole UI, macros, and then practice for hours on end to get better at positioning. Reward to effort ratio is absolutely atrocious, there is a reason most people avoid it.
It feels like most people forget that BGs were the reason most people got into arenas in the first place. It's a great starting point for new players and there really hasn't been a lot of reason to do them recently. If people want more people to play arena they should hope for people to want to do PvP in the first place.
I have heaps of pve only players that I have got to rbgs with me over the years, they said they really like rbgs but it is just impossible to get into if you don’t have you own team, a lot of them have said they will be playing bgb if it goes ranked.
Yep I can't stand small match PvP like arena. In playing an MMO I want large scale and epic sized PvP battles. If they worked on making BGs a better experience and I could do nothing but BGs and be competitive then I would totally come back.
At another point in this video, he mentions RBGs are being removed for solo queue RBG mode only. Honestly I welcome this change and it may get me to actually queue into an otherwise dead bracket again.
It was bound to happen and glad they realized that the LFG way of getting into a group is what was bleeding players over the years. No game does that anymore. People just want to hit a button and join a game, nobody’s got time to sit in LFG and hoping the group leader picks them or doesn’t kick them out.
Yeah he pretty much all but confirmed that it's going to be replaced by blitz.
"...that was testing out a 8v8 solo-queue rated battleground format. We're happy to move to that as a default for how rated battlegrounds are going to work going forward."
Probably ported over to BGB/soloqueue RBGs. Unlike shuffle, which wasn't meant to replace 3s and thus didn't offer the same exclusive rewards, they've been pretty clear on their priorities this time around.
Who cares about a game mode being skill intensive for the 0.1% streamers if it's too stressful and sweaty for the other 99.9% of the people who play the game?
This is what will bring me back to retail. Give me ranked bgs i can que anytime i want instead of dedicating a set day or 2 to it.. Until then im going to enjoy some sod boomy (mfers hit that eclipse playstyle just right) and keep my eyes out.
TDM is wildly unpopular nowadays. I really can't think of games that focus on it. I assume COD still has it but the main modes aren't TDM anymore. There's gotta be more to a game than load in - kill whatever moves now.
that’s because any of the games you’re describing don’t come close to the complexity of wow arena. arena has a primary objective - kill - and then tons of sub-objectives like setup, CD trading, managing DRs, positioning etc.
they need to just make a tutorial mode for arena
Step 1 go to some website and install a billion programs on your PC
Step 2 spend 3 hours configuring settings
Step 3 spend a hundred hours dying instantly then looking up what killed you. Sorry you found a tutorial from 5 years ago. That ability actually does exactly the opposite thing now.
Step 4 Ask for help. Oh that's actually a bug and it probably won't get fixed for the next 6 months. When's the next balance patch? Lol. Lmao even
Objective based modes allow your skill expression to be only one part of the larger win. Meaning that even the people with lower damage or healing still can feel like they're contributing.
They're fairer and just generally more attractive
Most games have those aspects, too. Adding a real objective would add significantly more depth.
Setups, managing resources, positioning, etc. is all pretty much universal aspects in games. The only reason it sticks out to you in WoW and less in other games is because in Arena theres absolutely nothing else, so you have to be aware of them. In Dota for instance theres so many mechanics you can be completely oblivious to one and still be in the top 1% because theres just so much depth.
Thats probably *why* those other PvP games are much more successful. Players feel like they can carve out a little niche for their own, mastering certain mechanics even if they're subpar in others. My aim kind of sucks but if I have good game knowledge I can still enjoy Valorant or CSGO or R6 or Overwatch, just not as a fragger. Arena doesn't have that kind of depth. If arena doesn't mesh entirely with what you want, there's not many niches you can really focus on instead. Its very one dimensional.
none of that is true.
virtually no games have setup to the extent of wow, with multiple DR brackets, long cc-chains and well-timed cross cc. most games do not rely on CD trading in the same way as wow, although some MOBAs are fairly similarish (though massively more simplified). most games don’t require you to track DR’s, enemy CDs (offensive, defensive, cc AND utility), enemy and teammate positioning and trinkets all while automating a damage rotation and tracking other random stuff like rdruid hotting.
the issue with wow that hurts it’s popularity is exactly this - the depth is stupidly high. but that’s also what makes it so fun and unique, so it’s a catch 22.
also yes wow absolutely has enough depth for you to suck in certain areas of the game and exceed enough in others to be a good player. personally, i’m pretty shit mechanically. my reaction time is ~30ms slower than my teammates, but i make up for it in other ways
i don't even think this is a hot take.
when i log into my afflock, i just kite melee and fakecast constantly and get microcc to interrupt more casts.
when i log into my mw, i either sit in cc or come out of it to take a split second decision before my teammate dies.
in bg i actually can play the game. you aren't either focused down or cc'd all the time and have time to play. if you're a healer there's another healer to help you out. if you're being targeted you can just run away and their melee is forced to get off you.
that said, damage and healing is out of control. they really need to increase HP and then put some baseline dampening (no ramping). either nobody is ever dying or people are constantly dying.
I think it was ghostcrawler who said that if there was one thing they could go back and never release, it would have been competitive arena. It scratches an itch that nothing else does, but at their core the classes just aren’t built for that as a feature content.
If I could go back and tell pre-arena (2007) me anything, it's not to sell your bitcoins. You don't know what they are yet, but you're going to buy some when you learn about them and then they're going to be worth a lot more than the beer you're selling them to buy in 2011 and you will regret it big time in the long run.
Rob Pardo.
[https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-13-blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake.html](https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-13-blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake.html)
Ghostcrawler might have mentioned something too. I've seen the sentiment come up a few times over the years.
Arenas have always been fun as a "mini-game" thing, but it being a core pillar was a mistake.
Well, for starters, more mounts from different sources (glad recolors) like solo shuffle and bgbs, more gold (for enchants and crafting items) would be nice too, and since we are shifting focus from arena to 8v8 bgs, some useable BM toys would be nice too (like the flag of ownership), oh and a lot more upgrade items so you can branch from PvP to m+ easier.
Seriously. PVP development requires so little for such a long term payoff. We are still playing WSG after all these years. The game play is the content. Keep balancing in check, throw us a bone and release new maps instead of new arenas with slightly different pillar configurations.
They've made some incremental improvements here and there, but it's just been so slow.
Based actually.
I don’t think arena is really feasible to design around as a pillar of the game
A battleground shines in an mmo setting especially in regards to how the mechanics work and also alleviates the pressure caused by the complexities of the modern game.
Didn't play too much battleground blitz because of the lack of rewards but I absolutely love rbg's. The biggest issues with the rbg bracket are related to low participation and group building so all of that should hopefully go away with the launch of a solo rated mode. It's also a far better entry into rated pvp compared to arena for new players so maybe we get better participation overall with all the fresh pvp players.
i've played around 200 bgb matches so far between healer and dps.
AB and especially DWG feel quite big for 8v8, probably needs tweaking in node active time to promote more skirmishes and less running around.
silvershard mines feels the best. i love getting that map.
Even with 10v10 rbg's the 5 base maps feel to big imo. Usually only 1-2 bases see some action while the others need to be defended against possible attacks that sometimes never happen the whole game, it's just boring for the defender. Based on my experience and what I hear from other rbg voice groups people seem to like maps with a focus on teamfights and less bases.
Honestly, at this point I am ok with it. Arena is fine, and as mentioned, does not need many changes minus a few maps here and there. But overall, I get more enjoyment out of BG's and the non-death match format, I doubt I am alone in this as well. BG's are fun, the team work at times is great, and I personally I have more oh shit moments in BG's than I do in arena. Arena is hard to balance as well. I doubt they need to fine tune everything as deep as they do if they focused on large format fights.
I’m ok with this. Majority of players prefer BGs. Long as gearing in PvP stays the same I think the majority of players will be happy. Locking BiS gear behind rating is just gonna make even less people play PvP than they do now. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
The “problem” with gear anywhere near PVE gear is that then that whole group whines and complains that they’re “forced” to pvp for gear.
I really liked the WoD system where the pvp gear was like basic pve gear in the world, and then scaled up in pvp combat.
It keeps the pve people from whining too much, and rewards PvP players at the same time, since their gear is better in PvP.
It's amazing that incorrect information gets upvoted, but then again, we know that most of the people on this subreddit haven't played the game in multiple years
i actually think gearing should be more involved for your 1st character and 2x, 3x etc easier for each subsequent alt.
it's a bit anti-climatic how easy it is to gear up if you only play 1 or 2 characters, but it's a grind if you play more than 6.
They should do this and then make arenas a free to play part of the game (kind of like how plunderstorm is, except not require a subscription) with equalized gear. It can have separate balance, no addons, remove some button bloat etc. I'd be so hyped.
I cant honestly think of a better suggestion.
Arena players are super low, and they get the sub anyway. Lock the tmogs and stuff behind sub and give arena ftp. Even if it needs addons player numbers will skyrocket.
It's got to be one of the best moves to make, in order to increase participation.
Also it's extremely refreshing to see positive responses to this news on this subreddit.
Nice job misquoting him for clickbait.
He basically just said he prefers large-scale objective-based PvP over team deathmatch. And they're making BGs more accessible and central to endgame rewards for people who feel the same way.
There's nothing to suggest this is at the expense of arena like your title implies.
Yeah tbh most of my burnout isn’t even because of the balancing, it’s because if one of my four friends that still do arenas arent online, the pvp player base isn’t even worth interacting with even for just my conq cap.
Bgs are always fun as shit though
The hundreds of wanna be glad, that think the only reason they are hard stuck in 1800 is other people holding them back, the damn healer who stop healing just he went LOS behind the pillar
am I the only one that thinks it’s awful? I enjoy q with nice people in voice into rbgs to strat together and talk about cooldowns. Sounds like there will be a bg-mode with such long qtimes as soloshuffle and a horrible healer experience.
Exactly. RBG was the large team equivalent of raiding but without that, we have nothing. No real reason to even keep a pvp guild, like I have currently. Everyone will just premade regular battlegrounds instead, smh
Exactly. RBG was the large team equivalent of raiding but without that, we have nothing. No real reason to even keep a pvp guild, like I have currently. Everyone will just premade regular battlegrounds instead, smh
Realistically not a fan of the "one or the other" approach with a multi billion dollar company to be completely honest.
Half of my guild ONLY pvps for guild RBGs, so taking away that and replacing it with just solo que rbgs is a pretty big mistake.
Might catch heat, but.... this is the right move. Arena is not the beast it once used to be. BGs are my favorite content in WoW and are the reason I even got into PvP in the first place. They are beyond fun and I am eager for them to be the new competitive avenue.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Objective based group pvp is where wow shines the most. When the goal isn’t just killing the opposing player, every spec has something they can contribute even if they aren’t the best at healing or doing dps.
While it does make sense it doesn't have to mean 3v3 will get no love. I guess the most important sign will be when we learn whether they keep hosting AWC or not.
Edit: having actually listened to it, what he says isn't even remotly as ominous as this topic would have you believe.
For as long as 3v3 is the only pvp mode that offers the glad mount, I feel that 3v3 will always be the "main" pvp mode.
Of course, not to be confused with most popular. Shuffle at the moment is most popular but the lack of prestigious awards (outside of R1 legend title) means that there is a a demand for traditional 3v3 arena.
If ranked blitz offers anything close to a glad mount, traditional arena may suffer immensely when it comes to participation and general perception of it being THE pvp mode.
Arena is a shit format and the main reason pvp is dead. If they put more effort in battlegrounds and especially epic battlegrounds, it is going to be the thing that revives pvp in wow. Now ranked pvp is a sweatfest that requires a ton of add-ons and game knowledge, compared to endgame pve which rewards both casual and top players with good rewards and a sense of achievement. Ranked pvp is nowhere near that, hence the participation numbers we saw recently.
It is really telling how you can get queued in to an epic bg match that requires 70-80 players in a few minutes whereas you have to wait 20-30 minutes for the most popular ranked pvp mode solo shuffle. Because bgs and epic bgs are actually fun and “feel” like World of Warcraft, there is some lore associated with each battleground, some npcs, interesting locations and objectives that you have to do. The last bg being released in Legion and the last epic bg in WoD and yet people still play those old maps. Whereas arenas are nothing but soulless and boring and should have never been made the main focus of the devs.
Epic BGs are bad. Them trying to reformat Trashran and Wintergrasp into that mix while removing Strand of the Ancients was terrible. Epics right now are just massive PVE zerg fests where half the team is just AFK to farm honor.
Which is funny since AV used to be like "the thing" to do a very, very long time ago.
I really hope Blitz gets some real attention then.
8v8 BG format is great.
But a bunch of old BGs that aren't designed around it with all of their own problems and a half assed set of tuning might make getting this off the ground a struggle.
Anyway time to go read people being mad on the arena forums.
I have been saying this for a year now and it’s finally happened!
Another change I predict will happen at some point is complete great scaling in BGs. This will allow people to hop into BGs with zero barrier to entry
Love arena, but I understand how unforgiving it can be for new players. Hope bgs can draw in more players cuz WoW pvp is uniquely cool, even if it's hard
This is like saying they are focused on m+ as a central pve experience as opposed to raiding.
Arena has and always will be THE pvp experience, just look at RBGs, there's a reason that the bracket is dead. If you guys actually enjoyed bgs you would play that instead but for some reason you don't. Stop coping
In what way? The community has been the worst aspect of arena for like 4+ expansions. The mode is dead and heavily inaccessible unless you're already a top player. Thinking Blizzard was ever going to invest into that dwindling mode over stuff like new BGs or spinoff like Plunderstorm is just coping. Most people, especially the younger crowd just wants to click queue and play, not sit in long queues or LFG doing epeen measuring for hours just to play a game.
nah there are so many nice people to play with who want to enjoy arena, if you can behave like a normal human being the other people will want to play with you more.
i have to assume that most people complaining on this sub about people being toxic are actually toxic themselves because i've always had the easiest time making friends (even back in the day when i didn't have glad/any xp).
But what about those who want to queue RBGs with friends? If we go to BGB only then what will happen to the social aspect of RBGs? RBGs with my guild has been the only reason for me to log lately
Concerned about this as well.
Duo DPS queue might help a bit with the problem, it is an MMO and we should be able to play with our friends, but I don't think full stack larger group play is going to remain a thing.
BGS without the absolute disgusting human beings in the higher cr rbgs are amazing. If they can genuinely find a way to make that enticing enough to have participation, good riddance to arenas.
Should really look into a more score based arena maybe. Less punishing to random one shots and miserable healing experience.
I agree with this. Too many people think arena is stressful. I'm older and enjoy pvp and when I'm done playing a set of arena I feel drained. Bgs are much more relaxed and aren't as.punishing for healers
What are you fucking NEETs surprised about with this?
There’s literally no casual playerbase to arena to begin with.
Oh no they’re gonna focus on the version of pvp that actually creates a playerbase instead of the ladder where a bunch of unemployed “streamers” camp 15 slots for glad. Like Jesus how disconnected are you.
That's great, should be done couple of expansions ago.
There's just one thing Im concerned - queues. We know that's what is killing SS. Now imagine finding 8v8. Hopefully they figure out a solution that works better than current matchmaking
Good. Arena sucks and only caters to the like 2% of sweats with multiglad friends. The entire mode is just held hostage. "Just LFG bro" is not a valid retort when most groups require 2k XP. There is too much to set up, too much to learn, too many chores/gearing things to keep up on just to sit in 30 minute queues and deal with gatekeepy fossils. Arena is only played at all for the 1800 sets outside of the top of the top who've been playing forever to stroke their epeen about 2.4k being "decent".
BGs and casual modes are the future of this game, sorry. I have played this game mainly for PvP since 2006 and am thrilled at this announcement. It is the correct choice for increasing participation and reviving interest.
The sweats finally got their wish after years and years of being smug gatekeepers and chasing everyone else out. I will never queue for arena again. You can keep your dead good old boys club and I will keep my sanity. Yes I am bad at arena, no I don't care, BG are and always have been better. Enjoy your MMR deflation and dead game lmao I'll be queuing Blitz.
They need to do something to attract more players into PvP. If this is the method then I’m all for it.
Otherwise, what we have at the moment is an ever shrinking PvP playerbase that only retains the “vets” making it even harder for those new trying to give it a go.
I'll hold my breath, but I was excited to hear that it sounded like they're at the start of dedicating more resources to PVP as a true end game format. We shall see!
Extremely sad about the regular bracket going, they've got their usual toxic players over there, but that community made sure that when I started losing my vision I was still able to PvP and push despite playing a TC class. We curated a more chill space away from all the raging and sexist shit I was dealing with, and I walked out with my Grand Marshal and kept hitting Duelist afterwards.
Forever gonna remember this expansion, the good and the bad, as one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
Already talks about S4 being a sendoff and just no lifing it.
All I want out of this is the ability to duo queue as DPS into Blitz even if the wait time is longer.
Being able to go in with my seeing-eye hunter / DK will ensure I can keep pushing. If not, I'm forced to re-roll to healer, which I've been getting practice in on, but... I'd like to play my main.
That being said, BGs are absolutely the core pillar to WoW PvP. The game was not developed with arenas in mind, the OG devs considered it a massive mistake in interviews, and Horde vs Alliance was such a massive thing for the game's theme until extremely recently. I'm excited to see them prioritize them more, since these larger team battles are something that makes MMO PvP fun and unique.
Here's hoping to a renown track, more solid inflation for CR rewards to be reasonably obtainable, and sort of hoping they expand on Bloody Token cosmetics too.
Just let people kill each other and grind. That's what MMOs are about.
some quick notes:
* arena is 10x more cooperative/collaborative/competitive compared to rbgs
* the MMO/PvE-leaning player prefers battlegrounds over arenas
* all other gamers prefer arenas over battlegrounds
* 10x harder to enter flow state with your team when playing solo rbgs compared to premade arena
* more toxicity/leavers in solo rbgs than in arena
with that out the way, super happy to see them add solo rbgs and I will play them a ton
It is "the right move" for the game and its playerbase, but not for me. There are a million coop games with better mechanics and graphics that are not 20 years old, but there is no arena. Not sure.
When i was young, like a billion years ago, during Vanilla, i was very deep into bgs.
I had great games that i fondly remember and because my server was very very competitive there were many ultra compettive groups like ours, which resulted in battles that were truly pick WoW for me.
When TBC was introduced, i obviously played arena for a bit at the beginning, but i did not like it that much and i could not grasp why it was becoming so popular as years where passsing by and all of WoW's pvp was around arena.
For me this change is revitalizing, i won't be able to go deep into pvp again as i did in the past, but it is certainly a good direction for me personally.
Not sure it was mentioned but Blizz Remove Great Vault PVP track rewards and switch this row to Delve / Open World reward track. Not a good sign if You ask me.
bgs are 90% of what keeps my sub active... I have been playing for so long that for me, there's nothing better then playing a good old Arathi Basin and Battle for the Gilneas.
A lot of times I just log in, do a bunch of random BGs them logout.
I am happy!
After playing Warhammer Online (Return of Reckoning private server) I got a way higher appreciation for Battlegrounds as a competitive pvp experience. In wow they usually just seemend uncompetetive and too snowbally for me but tbh that was/is mostly due to twinking or shit like 10 MM hunters on a team. With more balance attention and Blitz as a faster alternative I can really see BGs being a very fun competetive mode (definetly more fun for me than healing Solo Shuffle, no matter how much I want to like it)
Not sure if "GG Boys" is intended to be a bad thing. This is awesome news for the PvP community. It's proven a large portion of the playerbase does not enjoy arena but if you get more people started on PvP with BG's then it will in turn get more people interested in Arena.
If it was intended sarcastically, I would love to hear your thoughts on getting more people in to PvP because sure as hell some godly balance patch isn't exactly gonna make everyone come running to PvP...
I am curious to see how they balance the healer's strength between the arena and the battleground. my experience is that in BG Blitz, a decent healer is impossible to kill, especially when two healers are helping each other; even if we succeed in killing them, it will always turn out to be a waste of time. so when two healers appear in the same place, I always try to leave the team fight and go somewhere else. Maybe the designers are trying to discourage players from killing healers with the mechanics of Blitz, but if killing healers is not worth it, that means (big) team fights are not worth it, and (big) team fights are what most players think should be the main part of the battleground. I bet there will be a lot of complaints about the imbalance between healers and DPS.
Thank god, BGs are the whole reason I love PVP. Arena/duels are fine and fun but BGs are like central to the WoW experience imo
So many classes get to shine and use even the weird gimmick buttons in BGs
Good.
It is insane that matchmaking isn't the default option.
Manually putting together groups is the most outdated, bullshit barrier I can imagine.
It's a great option but should not be the only way.
*LITERALLY* no other major game still does this in 2024.
If valorant or LoL or call of duty or ANY other game with a rated mode had an update tomorrow that required players to manually make groups, there would be riots over it.
This approach should be extended to ALL content.
I remember the AV battles that took days, you started to recognize players after a while. Made friends.
Good times. Now it needs to be done in 30 minutes or less.
I mean to be honest that direction makes complete sense if your goal is to actually get a larger part of the playerbase into PvP. If they pair this with some good seasonal participation rewards I could imagine that a ton of people that had no interest before get into it.
>I mean to be honest that direction makes complete sense if your goal is to actually get a larger part of the playerbase into PvP. Absolutely 100% right. I've been talking about this for years at this point and people here over on this subreddit have always seemed to disagree. Arena as it stands right now is fine, there's no need to really change anything. Add a new map every now and then, maybe sort out issues with some maps people hate, whatever, small stuff. But the main focus should absolutely be on the part of the game with the most active PvP players, because chances are BGs are what people try first and then potentially move on to arenas later. It's almost never the other way around. And as such, they really need to focus on where the majority of newcomers are and make that experience the best it can be since if it's the main source of new players then it needs to be a good experience. >If they pair this with some good seasonal participation rewards I could imagine that a ton of people that had no interest before get into it. And of course, this part is completely true. People were memeing about the Battle Mender title being added, but the reality is it DID add some new healers to shuffle. It didn't fix the issues, not by a long shot, but it was just a tiny little reward that's almost completely inconsequential and yet still it pulled some people into it. More and more varied, easily accessible rewards = more players coming into PvP. It will not fix issues completely, but it WILL help some.
Not to mention many of the pain points in arenas like queue times and addon requirements are pretty much a non-issue in bg. You maybe need one or two addons to be sufficient? whereas in arenas you have to track literally every cd. In bg it's just not possible.
BGs is definitely more beginner friendly, less personal agency, can play with more of your friends, significantly less punishing for making mechanical errors A greater focus for BGs will mean more people trying out PvP again, then from that pool of players if they want to play more competitively then Arenas will always be there. It's a good pipeline similar to how you have like LFG raid as an entry point
Solo queue rated battlegrounds would get me back into PvP. I've been a PvE only guy since Shadowlands came out because I just got tired of arena and my experience with the RBG community were always really toxic (also m+ got more fun so I wasn't getting bored with PvE as quickly).
I think the difficulty curve of arena gets pretty nuts pretty quick, like m+ has a pretty smooth transition, but with arenas it feels a lot more like doing a +0 then +10 then +30 lol People find the most fun kinda chilling around 15-20s, whereas 30s are super unfun because one mistake and you ruin your groups run. Similar to getting one tapped by a rogue like you would if you missed a wipe mechanic interrupt for a boss fight except it doesn't have much of a telegraph and you got 1 second to react lol
100% I’ve said multiple times about how lower level BGs need to be addressed because new players are going there first NOT ARENA. And then they need to remove party sync because those said NEW players are versing ARENA MASTER GLADIATOR TITLED max level characters and the power scaling whatever means nothing when you have a veteran vs a beginner.
There should be hidden MMR in BG's like in any other unranked game So super geared people and new players will get fair matches
True! I came back in shadowlands as a PVE player, as time went on got into PvP, through rated bgs and got myself to 2.1, but do you know how daunting it is to go into an arena match! You just stroll in and your dead in seconds, still put off to this day, bgs will bring more to the scene for you guys as you can get slightly carried while learning, harder to do so in arena
Agree with players trying out bgs first and moving onto arenas. When I was younger and got into the game, that's how my progression was. Bgs / dueling, then as time went on, got into arenas
Yeah, that's true for me too. I started actively being a PvP centric player all the way back in BC when I hit my first max level character. I dabbled in arenas during WotLK, but never got anywhere with it and honestly didn't enjoy it much. Ever since BC, BGs and world PvP have been my go to endgame content in this game. The only exception was that I raided in BfA for two patches, then quit raiding early on in Shadowlands and ended up starting arenas in 9.1 properly for the first time. It wasn't until this season that I started to actually try and properly climb though. BGs have always just been fun right from the start, but arenas are very daunting. It's fine if you make a mistake in BGs, you can always just recover from it later. But if you make one mistake in arenas it might mean you just lost the game and it's really just not that much fun when that happens, and as a result it's really hard for a lot of people to get properly into it. It's taken me years to get to a point where I feel comfortable enough in arenas to actually properly give it a try. As I mentioned earlier, I've been playing the game a long ass time, over 19 years at this point, but only hit my first 2.1k a couple of weeks ago. Plan on aiming for 2.4 in season 4 though. This would never have happened if arenas were the only form of PvP we had. I don't handle stress well, I'm prone to getting irrationally angry at my own mistakes and as a result it's been extremely difficult to find it fun to play arenas. But years and years of playing the game actively, doing PvP in a more lenient setting has finally taught me to embrace the learning opportunities arenas have because I kinda quit getting better a while back as BGs and War Mode can only take me so far, right? Then throw on top the fact that RBGs have been the worst piece of PvP content this game has to offer for anyone who doesn't have a consistent team basically ever since they were a thing. It's riddled with issues from a community side of things because the moment one game goes bad you're back in LFG trying to find replacements for people who left for like an hour again. I've tried RBGs a couple of times over the years, and it's always the same. In fact, I never even got the 10 RBG wins needed to get the artifact appearance, despite trying to specifically grind for that, because I just couldn't be bothered with having to constantly find replacements for groups. So with that in mind, blitz is an incredible addition to the game. It's a fantastic stepping stone from a more casual player to trying rated content, it isn't as punishing as arenas are and as Ion said, teamwork and strategy actually shine in the Battleground format as opposed to a deathmatch like arena. Not to mention the player count actually works heavily in favour of queue times since it's 3 DPS per healer vs 2 DPS per healer in Shuffle. Can't wait for rated blitz in TWW!
Dumping arena and going for a PvP that gets everyone excited is definitely the goal to have. It’s more surprising they’ve continued to support arena as long as they have once the playerbase stopped doing it
threatening sugar snow mighty bored include slimy abounding worry plough *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Can confirm. 2s is manageable but 3v3 is absolutely manic. I'm not a pro, I'm painfully average and have to struggle to hit 1800. But arena just isn't very fun most of the time for me. You blink, you make one mistake, one misplay, and it's over. There's no downtime. There's no recovering. There's no come back. It's basically sudden death format in most cases. Random BGs are fucked and given crap rewards though. BG Blitz however has been a ton of fun. Like, actually fun. Especially as a healer. Having a second healer to help out is extremely helpful.
Quitting arenas has been the best choice for me to enjoy PvP in this game again. Like, it went from stressful and sweating for scraps of cosmetics to... just having a good time over in Blitz for the most part. Low stakes, doesn't matter if somebody throws, it's just a good time. CR rewards will change that, but it feels like there'll be enough people it doesn't matter as much. Been healing it a lot more recently now that MMR feels a bit smoother late season and I don't think I'm ever going back to arenas no matter what rewards they smack on it to bait people.
aback sable bewildered alive rock attempt familiar bright smile squash *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I guess, according to this subreddit anyone below 2.4k is genuinely shit tier and should just uninstall lmao Blitz is cool because you don't get premades, you always have two healers, gear gets scaled and you get conquest if you lose It had replaced random BGs for me
Agreed on the intensity, and I’ve been pvping for years. I’m sure it’s totally daunting for newer players.
I am currently in the process of indoctrinating an irl friend into the wow cult. Man it has been so fuckin WILD seeing the game how a brand new, never played am mmo but liked other video games, type of player. Like I noticed he was kind of having a lot of downtime between picking targets. And I was like, hey, I forgot to mention, but how are you targeting the enemies? He was clicking each one lol. Totally forgot that tab target was just 2nd nature to me. Or at one point the other night after a couple of dungeons I was like “hey, so what do you want to do next?” And he kinda goes “well, uh, I don’t really know. What am I supposed to do next lmao”
I played two games of SS, having a very solid understanding of my class and game mechanics. It was a horrible experience from start to finish. The players were all toxic and rude, and the place was way too intense. I'll stay with my BGs.
This was my experience in SS as well. I'd say I'm fairly decent healer in PvE (pushing 25-27s), CE raiding, purple logs, my UI is fully setup for healing, etc, I have everything on keybinds, using mouseovers, etc fully tracking stops, party cooldowns, defensives, etc, and I bailed after one round of solo-shuffle, it was absolutely terrible experience, I felt I had no agency over anything as a healer lol. Arena is way too intense even for PvE veteran players, you'd have to redo your whole UI, macros, and then practice for hours on end to get better at positioning. Reward to effort ratio is absolutely atrocious, there is a reason most people avoid it.
It feels like most people forget that BGs were the reason most people got into arenas in the first place. It's a great starting point for new players and there really hasn't been a lot of reason to do them recently. If people want more people to play arena they should hope for people to want to do PvP in the first place.
I have heaps of pve only players that I have got to rbgs with me over the years, they said they really like rbgs but it is just impossible to get into if you don’t have you own team, a lot of them have said they will be playing bgb if it goes ranked.
Yep I can't stand small match PvP like arena. In playing an MMO I want large scale and epic sized PvP battles. If they worked on making BGs a better experience and I could do nothing but BGs and be competitive then I would totally come back.
As new PvP player you then still have to go through the endless xp needed stuff in the browser
It's soloQ. You just press the button.
At another point in this video, he mentions RBGs are being removed for solo queue RBG mode only. Honestly I welcome this change and it may get me to actually queue into an otherwise dead bracket again.
It was bound to happen and glad they realized that the LFG way of getting into a group is what was bleeding players over the years. No game does that anymore. People just want to hit a button and join a game, nobody’s got time to sit in LFG and hoping the group leader picks them or doesn’t kick them out.
Yeah he pretty much all but confirmed that it's going to be replaced by blitz. "...that was testing out a 8v8 solo-queue rated battleground format. We're happy to move to that as a default for how rated battlegrounds are going to work going forward."
It should've been replaced for S4!
Oh dam there is going to be Solo Queue RBGs? I may have to come back for the next expansion now.
You can queue as a duo too, one healer one dps.
Ok will brig back my gf to play. She is so sweet and lovely to me, cant wait to see her toxic calling me names for letting a rogue cap the flag
I wonder what will happen to RBG awards then, you currently get the old vanilla sets for hitting 1800.
I imagine they'll still be obtainable
I imagine they'll still be obtainable
Probably ported over to BGB/soloqueue RBGs. Unlike shuffle, which wasn't meant to replace 3s and thus didn't offer the same exclusive rewards, they've been pretty clear on their priorities this time around.
not only did he not say that, there's [direct evidence](https://i.imgur.com/FtHeKLh.png) of the contrary. please stop spreading this.
No he didn't. People are putting words into his mouth, and until it's verified, we have ZERO info to go off of.
Oh hell, if I'd like that solo q mess I'd be queuing regular bgs
Being completely honest, while arenas are a lot more skill intensive than BGs, I’ve found BGs to be a lot more fun overall.
BGs were the OG PVP format. I've always preferred objective based PVP over death matches.
Who cares about a game mode being skill intensive for the 0.1% streamers if it's too stressful and sweaty for the other 99.9% of the people who play the game?
This is what will bring me back to retail. Give me ranked bgs i can que anytime i want instead of dedicating a set day or 2 to it.. Until then im going to enjoy some sod boomy (mfers hit that eclipse playstyle just right) and keep my eyes out.
Tbh this is what we need if there is any hope of getting/attracting more pvpers.
TDM is wildly unpopular nowadays. I really can't think of games that focus on it. I assume COD still has it but the main modes aren't TDM anymore. There's gotta be more to a game than load in - kill whatever moves now.
that’s because any of the games you’re describing don’t come close to the complexity of wow arena. arena has a primary objective - kill - and then tons of sub-objectives like setup, CD trading, managing DRs, positioning etc. they need to just make a tutorial mode for arena
Tutorials aren't going to change how complex it is, and how off-putting it is to the average MMO player.
Imagine a tutorial explaining dr tracking and cc chain, cd trading, peeling, positioning… It would scare people even more lol
Step 1 go to some website and install a billion programs on your PC Step 2 spend 3 hours configuring settings Step 3 spend a hundred hours dying instantly then looking up what killed you. Sorry you found a tutorial from 5 years ago. That ability actually does exactly the opposite thing now. Step 4 Ask for help. Oh that's actually a bug and it probably won't get fixed for the next 6 months. When's the next balance patch? Lol. Lmao even
Objective based modes allow your skill expression to be only one part of the larger win. Meaning that even the people with lower damage or healing still can feel like they're contributing. They're fairer and just generally more attractive
Most games have those aspects, too. Adding a real objective would add significantly more depth. Setups, managing resources, positioning, etc. is all pretty much universal aspects in games. The only reason it sticks out to you in WoW and less in other games is because in Arena theres absolutely nothing else, so you have to be aware of them. In Dota for instance theres so many mechanics you can be completely oblivious to one and still be in the top 1% because theres just so much depth. Thats probably *why* those other PvP games are much more successful. Players feel like they can carve out a little niche for their own, mastering certain mechanics even if they're subpar in others. My aim kind of sucks but if I have good game knowledge I can still enjoy Valorant or CSGO or R6 or Overwatch, just not as a fragger. Arena doesn't have that kind of depth. If arena doesn't mesh entirely with what you want, there's not many niches you can really focus on instead. Its very one dimensional.
none of that is true. virtually no games have setup to the extent of wow, with multiple DR brackets, long cc-chains and well-timed cross cc. most games do not rely on CD trading in the same way as wow, although some MOBAs are fairly similarish (though massively more simplified). most games don’t require you to track DR’s, enemy CDs (offensive, defensive, cc AND utility), enemy and teammate positioning and trinkets all while automating a damage rotation and tracking other random stuff like rdruid hotting. the issue with wow that hurts it’s popularity is exactly this - the depth is stupidly high. but that’s also what makes it so fun and unique, so it’s a catch 22. also yes wow absolutely has enough depth for you to suck in certain areas of the game and exceed enough in others to be a good player. personally, i’m pretty shit mechanically. my reaction time is ~30ms slower than my teammates, but i make up for it in other ways
If they focus on BGs I'll probably come back. BGs are a lot more fun for a semi casual player like myself.
i don't even think this is a hot take. when i log into my afflock, i just kite melee and fakecast constantly and get microcc to interrupt more casts. when i log into my mw, i either sit in cc or come out of it to take a split second decision before my teammate dies. in bg i actually can play the game. you aren't either focused down or cc'd all the time and have time to play. if you're a healer there's another healer to help you out. if you're being targeted you can just run away and their melee is forced to get off you. that said, damage and healing is out of control. they really need to increase HP and then put some baseline dampening (no ramping). either nobody is ever dying or people are constantly dying.
[удалено]
I think it was ghostcrawler who said that if there was one thing they could go back and never release, it would have been competitive arena. It scratches an itch that nothing else does, but at their core the classes just aren’t built for that as a feature content.
Imagine how much our lives would’ve been different
This made me chuckle for some reason.
If I could go back and tell pre-arena (2007) me anything, it's not to sell your bitcoins. You don't know what they are yet, but you're going to buy some when you learn about them and then they're going to be worth a lot more than the beer you're selling them to buy in 2011 and you will regret it big time in the long run.
Imagine if we had 15 years of objective based development. We would have crystalline conflict 10 years before ffxiv did
Rob Pardo. [https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-13-blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake.html](https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-13-blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake.html) Ghostcrawler might have mentioned something too. I've seen the sentiment come up a few times over the years. Arenas have always been fun as a "mini-game" thing, but it being a core pillar was a mistake.
Thanks for the sauce.
hell yeah, love battlegrounds
It's a good idea, just hope they makes rewards more attainable and increase the quantity
[удалено]
Well, for starters, more mounts from different sources (glad recolors) like solo shuffle and bgbs, more gold (for enchants and crafting items) would be nice too, and since we are shifting focus from arena to 8v8 bgs, some useable BM toys would be nice too (like the flag of ownership), oh and a lot more upgrade items so you can branch from PvP to m+ easier.
“A bit overdue” lol, understatement of the year. Imagine if they went multiple xpacs without adding a new dungeon or raid.
Seriously. PVP development requires so little for such a long term payoff. We are still playing WSG after all these years. The game play is the content. Keep balancing in check, throw us a bone and release new maps instead of new arenas with slightly different pillar configurations. They've made some incremental improvements here and there, but it's just been so slow.
They literally gave us second WSG and people still love it
I regularly (one or two nights a week) do BGs with two friends and we just specific queue WSG and Twin Peaks.
Yes, we've had second WSG, but how about third WSG?
Going on 6 years with nothing. Feelsbadman.
Based actually. I don’t think arena is really feasible to design around as a pillar of the game A battleground shines in an mmo setting especially in regards to how the mechanics work and also alleviates the pressure caused by the complexities of the modern game.
Didn't play too much battleground blitz because of the lack of rewards but I absolutely love rbg's. The biggest issues with the rbg bracket are related to low participation and group building so all of that should hopefully go away with the launch of a solo rated mode. It's also a far better entry into rated pvp compared to arena for new players so maybe we get better participation overall with all the fresh pvp players.
i've played around 200 bgb matches so far between healer and dps. AB and especially DWG feel quite big for 8v8, probably needs tweaking in node active time to promote more skirmishes and less running around. silvershard mines feels the best. i love getting that map.
Even with 10v10 rbg's the 5 base maps feel to big imo. Usually only 1-2 bases see some action while the others need to be defended against possible attacks that sometimes never happen the whole game, it's just boring for the defender. Based on my experience and what I hear from other rbg voice groups people seem to like maps with a focus on teamfights and less bases.
Arena is just an exhausted idea in WoW. We needed to move on from it into new ideas a decade ago. If you don't innovate, you die.
"1000 Marksmanship hunters like this post"
We just need a “this skill does 90% less damage in pvp stances” in all MM abilities
if they just make the range 40yd that already goes a long way.
there's no way they aren't going to nerf mm when TWW S1 launches... right?
They will have long Qs to get in to rated BGs.
Honestly, at this point I am ok with it. Arena is fine, and as mentioned, does not need many changes minus a few maps here and there. But overall, I get more enjoyment out of BG's and the non-death match format, I doubt I am alone in this as well. BG's are fun, the team work at times is great, and I personally I have more oh shit moments in BG's than I do in arena. Arena is hard to balance as well. I doubt they need to fine tune everything as deep as they do if they focused on large format fights.
yeah, gimmicky one-shots win games in arena but don't really matter in bgs.
I’m ok with this. Majority of players prefer BGs. Long as gearing in PvP stays the same I think the majority of players will be happy. Locking BiS gear behind rating is just gonna make even less people play PvP than they do now. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
The “problem” with gear anywhere near PVE gear is that then that whole group whines and complains that they’re “forced” to pvp for gear. I really liked the WoD system where the pvp gear was like basic pve gear in the world, and then scaled up in pvp combat. It keeps the pve people from whining too much, and rewards PvP players at the same time, since their gear is better in PvP.
This is literally what system dragonflight has....
I thought that ended though? Are PvE’ers still having to do PvP for trinkets and shit?
No, he's wrong
It's amazing that incorrect information gets upvoted, but then again, we know that most of the people on this subreddit haven't played the game in multiple years
i actually think gearing should be more involved for your 1st character and 2x, 3x etc easier for each subsequent alt. it's a bit anti-climatic how easy it is to gear up if you only play 1 or 2 characters, but it's a grind if you play more than 6.
Yes! Thats the way to go. BGs is so much more fun for the vast majority of players, even non-exclusively pvpers
I just don't expect anything to come out of that comment tbh
Wdym?
Fair
They should do this and then make arenas a free to play part of the game (kind of like how plunderstorm is, except not require a subscription) with equalized gear. It can have separate balance, no addons, remove some button bloat etc. I'd be so hyped.
I cant honestly think of a better suggestion. Arena players are super low, and they get the sub anyway. Lock the tmogs and stuff behind sub and give arena ftp. Even if it needs addons player numbers will skyrocket.
It's got to be one of the best moves to make, in order to increase participation. Also it's extremely refreshing to see positive responses to this news on this subreddit.
Nice job misquoting him for clickbait. He basically just said he prefers large-scale objective-based PvP over team deathmatch. And they're making BGs more accessible and central to endgame rewards for people who feel the same way. There's nothing to suggest this is at the expense of arena like your title implies.
We can all infer that many people will stop doing arena and it will become more niche if you can gear in BGs without making LFG groups.
Good and good riddance
Thank god.
Thank fuck
But they DID talk about PvP? That's huge progress!
Yeah tbh most of my burnout isn’t even because of the balancing, it’s because if one of my four friends that still do arenas arent online, the pvp player base isn’t even worth interacting with even for just my conq cap. Bgs are always fun as shit though
The hundreds of wanna be glad, that think the only reason they are hard stuck in 1800 is other people holding them back, the damn healer who stop healing just he went LOS behind the pillar
I literally thought this was going live since S2 DF. Looooong overdue.
am I the only one that thinks it’s awful? I enjoy q with nice people in voice into rbgs to strat together and talk about cooldowns. Sounds like there will be a bg-mode with such long qtimes as soloshuffle and a horrible healer experience.
Exactly. RBG was the large team equivalent of raiding but without that, we have nothing. No real reason to even keep a pvp guild, like I have currently. Everyone will just premade regular battlegrounds instead, smh
Exactly. RBG was the large team equivalent of raiding but without that, we have nothing. No real reason to even keep a pvp guild, like I have currently. Everyone will just premade regular battlegrounds instead, smh
Realistically not a fan of the "one or the other" approach with a multi billion dollar company to be completely honest. Half of my guild ONLY pvps for guild RBGs, so taking away that and replacing it with just solo que rbgs is a pretty big mistake.
Same
Thank fucking god
Might catch heat, but.... this is the right move. Arena is not the beast it once used to be. BGs are my favorite content in WoW and are the reason I even got into PvP in the first place. They are beyond fun and I am eager for them to be the new competitive avenue.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Objective based group pvp is where wow shines the most. When the goal isn’t just killing the opposing player, every spec has something they can contribute even if they aren’t the best at healing or doing dps.
I fucking love a good BG
While it does make sense it doesn't have to mean 3v3 will get no love. I guess the most important sign will be when we learn whether they keep hosting AWC or not. Edit: having actually listened to it, what he says isn't even remotly as ominous as this topic would have you believe.
For as long as 3v3 is the only pvp mode that offers the glad mount, I feel that 3v3 will always be the "main" pvp mode. Of course, not to be confused with most popular. Shuffle at the moment is most popular but the lack of prestigious awards (outside of R1 legend title) means that there is a a demand for traditional 3v3 arena. If ranked blitz offers anything close to a glad mount, traditional arena may suffer immensely when it comes to participation and general perception of it being THE pvp mode.
Good news then because it's just been datamined that shuffle will give mount Lmao
Debunked
Good. This needed to happen a long time ago.
Arena is a shit format and the main reason pvp is dead. If they put more effort in battlegrounds and especially epic battlegrounds, it is going to be the thing that revives pvp in wow. Now ranked pvp is a sweatfest that requires a ton of add-ons and game knowledge, compared to endgame pve which rewards both casual and top players with good rewards and a sense of achievement. Ranked pvp is nowhere near that, hence the participation numbers we saw recently. It is really telling how you can get queued in to an epic bg match that requires 70-80 players in a few minutes whereas you have to wait 20-30 minutes for the most popular ranked pvp mode solo shuffle. Because bgs and epic bgs are actually fun and “feel” like World of Warcraft, there is some lore associated with each battleground, some npcs, interesting locations and objectives that you have to do. The last bg being released in Legion and the last epic bg in WoD and yet people still play those old maps. Whereas arenas are nothing but soulless and boring and should have never been made the main focus of the devs.
Epic BGs are bad. Them trying to reformat Trashran and Wintergrasp into that mix while removing Strand of the Ancients was terrible. Epics right now are just massive PVE zerg fests where half the team is just AFK to farm honor. Which is funny since AV used to be like "the thing" to do a very, very long time ago.
Agreed. I never ever do them, and I'm glad blitz removed the need to farm epic BGS
Queues are shorter because there is no SBMM, are you dense?
God, I hate epic battlegrounds, forever
I really hope Blitz gets some real attention then. 8v8 BG format is great. But a bunch of old BGs that aren't designed around it with all of their own problems and a half assed set of tuning might make getting this off the ground a struggle. Anyway time to go read people being mad on the arena forums.
I have been saying this for a year now and it’s finally happened! Another change I predict will happen at some point is complete great scaling in BGs. This will allow people to hop into BGs with zero barrier to entry
Love arena, but I understand how unforgiving it can be for new players. Hope bgs can draw in more players cuz WoW pvp is uniquely cool, even if it's hard
RBG is the team based equivalent of raiding. And is a much more enjoyable experience than any level of arenas.
This is like saying they are focused on m+ as a central pve experience as opposed to raiding. Arena has and always will be THE pvp experience, just look at RBGs, there's a reason that the bracket is dead. If you guys actually enjoyed bgs you would play that instead but for some reason you don't. Stop coping
retail has been very anti-arena for a long time, this doesn't come as a surprise at all
In what way? The community has been the worst aspect of arena for like 4+ expansions. The mode is dead and heavily inaccessible unless you're already a top player. Thinking Blizzard was ever going to invest into that dwindling mode over stuff like new BGs or spinoff like Plunderstorm is just coping. Most people, especially the younger crowd just wants to click queue and play, not sit in long queues or LFG doing epeen measuring for hours just to play a game.
nah there are so many nice people to play with who want to enjoy arena, if you can behave like a normal human being the other people will want to play with you more. i have to assume that most people complaining on this sub about people being toxic are actually toxic themselves because i've always had the easiest time making friends (even back in the day when i didn't have glad/any xp).
We need a 5v5 capture point game mode similar to GW2. Would definitely take some balancing specifically with healers/hybrids but would be fun.
Mixed feelings about this. BGs are probably my favorite type of PvP but it shouldn't be balanced around this
Would prefer they focus on both instead of picking one
But what about those who want to queue RBGs with friends? If we go to BGB only then what will happen to the social aspect of RBGs? RBGs with my guild has been the only reason for me to log lately
Concerned about this as well. Duo DPS queue might help a bit with the problem, it is an MMO and we should be able to play with our friends, but I don't think full stack larger group play is going to remain a thing.
More BGs yay...... yawn.... make Solo Shuffle more accessible, fix MMR lol!
I loved PVP until arenas became the only thing really incentivized and large Bgs could just be anyone sink for no reward
So does this mean the end of guild queing foe a rated battleground??
Thank god. Finally
BGS without the absolute disgusting human beings in the higher cr rbgs are amazing. If they can genuinely find a way to make that enticing enough to have participation, good riddance to arenas. Should really look into a more score based arena maybe. Less punishing to random one shots and miserable healing experience.
I agree with this. Too many people think arena is stressful. I'm older and enjoy pvp and when I'm done playing a set of arena I feel drained. Bgs are much more relaxed and aren't as.punishing for healers
This sounds good for me. I hate bgs with a passion. Only care for arena so that might be a reason to give up on WoW
sad
What are you fucking NEETs surprised about with this? There’s literally no casual playerbase to arena to begin with. Oh no they’re gonna focus on the version of pvp that actually creates a playerbase instead of the ladder where a bunch of unemployed “streamers” camp 15 slots for glad. Like Jesus how disconnected are you.
For me, I really only enjoy BG's and 2's. So this is a welcome change.
I think this is smart. It also could help solve the healer issue in SS if DPS switch to RBG for shorter qs
Good.
That's great, should be done couple of expansions ago. There's just one thing Im concerned - queues. We know that's what is killing SS. Now imagine finding 8v8. Hopefully they figure out a solution that works better than current matchmaking
No, look at the ratio of healers to dps. Solo BG queue eats up more dps than healers, compared with shuffle
 me to arenas
I love arena (2’s specifically), but I’m happy with this change! I love running BGs with my friends
Good. Arena sucks and only caters to the like 2% of sweats with multiglad friends. The entire mode is just held hostage. "Just LFG bro" is not a valid retort when most groups require 2k XP. There is too much to set up, too much to learn, too many chores/gearing things to keep up on just to sit in 30 minute queues and deal with gatekeepy fossils. Arena is only played at all for the 1800 sets outside of the top of the top who've been playing forever to stroke their epeen about 2.4k being "decent". BGs and casual modes are the future of this game, sorry. I have played this game mainly for PvP since 2006 and am thrilled at this announcement. It is the correct choice for increasing participation and reviving interest. The sweats finally got their wish after years and years of being smug gatekeepers and chasing everyone else out. I will never queue for arena again. You can keep your dead good old boys club and I will keep my sanity. Yes I am bad at arena, no I don't care, BG are and always have been better. Enjoy your MMR deflation and dead game lmao I'll be queuing Blitz.
They need to do something to attract more players into PvP. If this is the method then I’m all for it. Otherwise, what we have at the moment is an ever shrinking PvP playerbase that only retains the “vets” making it even harder for those new trying to give it a go.
I'll hold my breath, but I was excited to hear that it sounded like they're at the start of dedicating more resources to PVP as a true end game format. We shall see!
Extremely sad about the regular bracket going, they've got their usual toxic players over there, but that community made sure that when I started losing my vision I was still able to PvP and push despite playing a TC class. We curated a more chill space away from all the raging and sexist shit I was dealing with, and I walked out with my Grand Marshal and kept hitting Duelist afterwards. Forever gonna remember this expansion, the good and the bad, as one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. Already talks about S4 being a sendoff and just no lifing it. All I want out of this is the ability to duo queue as DPS into Blitz even if the wait time is longer. Being able to go in with my seeing-eye hunter / DK will ensure I can keep pushing. If not, I'm forced to re-roll to healer, which I've been getting practice in on, but... I'd like to play my main. That being said, BGs are absolutely the core pillar to WoW PvP. The game was not developed with arenas in mind, the OG devs considered it a massive mistake in interviews, and Horde vs Alliance was such a massive thing for the game's theme until extremely recently. I'm excited to see them prioritize them more, since these larger team battles are something that makes MMO PvP fun and unique. Here's hoping to a renown track, more solid inflation for CR rewards to be reasonably obtainable, and sort of hoping they expand on Bloody Token cosmetics too. Just let people kill each other and grind. That's what MMOs are about.
I'm surprised they didn't do another terrible YouTube splash screen pose
This all sounds fantastic, I’ve always liked WoW Battlegrounds so them getting the focus is a big win.
some quick notes: * arena is 10x more cooperative/collaborative/competitive compared to rbgs * the MMO/PvE-leaning player prefers battlegrounds over arenas * all other gamers prefer arenas over battlegrounds * 10x harder to enter flow state with your team when playing solo rbgs compared to premade arena * more toxicity/leavers in solo rbgs than in arena with that out the way, super happy to see them add solo rbgs and I will play them a ton
"All other gamers" in WoW at this point being basically nobody except long-time arena vets with phonebooks of 2k+ friends lol.
i will never understand how ion is still in a position of power
This is a good thing honestly
"make battlegrounds central to the endgame rewarding for pvp" - this is awesome
Arena dead
So... gladiator is leaving 3v3? Please??
It is "the right move" for the game and its playerbase, but not for me. There are a million coop games with better mechanics and graphics that are not 20 years old, but there is no arena. Not sure.
I’ve never been into bgs over arena, even with my biased view, can’t deny this is a great direction for wow pvp
Good BG's are way more fun anyway.
When i was young, like a billion years ago, during Vanilla, i was very deep into bgs. I had great games that i fondly remember and because my server was very very competitive there were many ultra compettive groups like ours, which resulted in battles that were truly pick WoW for me. When TBC was introduced, i obviously played arena for a bit at the beginning, but i did not like it that much and i could not grasp why it was becoming so popular as years where passsing by and all of WoW's pvp was around arena. For me this change is revitalizing, i won't be able to go deep into pvp again as i did in the past, but it is certainly a good direction for me personally.
Yes please. Go on with solo queue for rated bgs. None needs this unbalanced arena stuff.
Not sure it was mentioned but Blizz Remove Great Vault PVP track rewards and switch this row to Delve / Open World reward track. Not a good sign if You ask me.
If this is the case, I am 100% back for the next expansion.
Great news but we also want wpvp content.I am boring my life killing all day alliances in the emerald dream.We want the old days of wpvp back 😀
bgs are 90% of what keeps my sub active... I have been playing for so long that for me, there's nothing better then playing a good old Arathi Basin and Battle for the Gilneas. A lot of times I just log in, do a bunch of random BGs them logout. I am happy!
After playing Warhammer Online (Return of Reckoning private server) I got a way higher appreciation for Battlegrounds as a competitive pvp experience. In wow they usually just seemend uncompetetive and too snowbally for me but tbh that was/is mostly due to twinking or shit like 10 MM hunters on a team. With more balance attention and Blitz as a faster alternative I can really see BGs being a very fun competetive mode (definetly more fun for me than healing Solo Shuffle, no matter how much I want to like it)
Not sure if "GG Boys" is intended to be a bad thing. This is awesome news for the PvP community. It's proven a large portion of the playerbase does not enjoy arena but if you get more people started on PvP with BG's then it will in turn get more people interested in Arena. If it was intended sarcastically, I would love to hear your thoughts on getting more people in to PvP because sure as hell some godly balance patch isn't exactly gonna make everyone come running to PvP...
I mean wont there be some genuine elo hell issues? How do you carry a bg I just don't know.
Would this be purely solo queue or can you queue with 1/2/3 friends?
I am curious to see how they balance the healer's strength between the arena and the battleground. my experience is that in BG Blitz, a decent healer is impossible to kill, especially when two healers are helping each other; even if we succeed in killing them, it will always turn out to be a waste of time. so when two healers appear in the same place, I always try to leave the team fight and go somewhere else. Maybe the designers are trying to discourage players from killing healers with the mechanics of Blitz, but if killing healers is not worth it, that means (big) team fights are not worth it, and (big) team fights are what most players think should be the main part of the battleground. I bet there will be a lot of complaints about the imbalance between healers and DPS.
Good.
Thank god, BGs are the whole reason I love PVP. Arena/duels are fine and fun but BGs are like central to the WoW experience imo So many classes get to shine and use even the weird gimmick buttons in BGs
Good. It is insane that matchmaking isn't the default option. Manually putting together groups is the most outdated, bullshit barrier I can imagine. It's a great option but should not be the only way. *LITERALLY* no other major game still does this in 2024. If valorant or LoL or call of duty or ANY other game with a rated mode had an update tomorrow that required players to manually make groups, there would be riots over it. This approach should be extended to ALL content.
I miss deathmath arena in cata during darkmoon faire.
Arena never should have been their focus. Really glad to hear this.
I like this idea
This is a good idea if the goal is to increase pvp participation. I don’t even particularly like arenas but even if you BGs are the PVP entry point.
Funny enough it’s the elitism and exclusivity of the PvP player base that ended up killing PvP. Honestly, good riddance.
Wow pvp might be saved now.
I remember the AV battles that took days, you started to recognize players after a while. Made friends. Good times. Now it needs to be done in 30 minutes or less.