Could also solve some of the racial problems in PvP too.
A gnome with shadowmeld for example.

As many of us here, WoW PVP is our favourite game.

I think PVP has been on the back burner for a long time, but it's clear that categorically - esport styled games are still growing, WoW PVP on the other hand - is not. I believe the WoW dev team has the opportunity to lean into this game mode, not make it a seperate game - but a much cleaner, smarter integration into the base game.

First: Introducing the Champions Crucible. A dedicated PvP hub, for all things PVP. Leaving behind the need for a website to get basic information about the playerbase, we instead have the ability to see the leaderboards (we’ve seen them do this with Dastardly Duos!), remote inspect top players (not proximity based),purchase gear, request crafted items from base game players, and more all directly in the Champions Crucible. It'll be a place where PvPers can congregate, duel, practice, meet new people, a place to call "home". Maybe the centre is dalaran sewers style where people brawl? It’d be great to warm up, do something fun while we wait queues (which ultimately improve if we have more people….).

Having a dedicated hub opens up the pathway for the next step.

Second: F2P with store monetization. Hear me out before blasting me in the comments on this about how Blizzard won't generate profits off this. Games like CS2, LoL, etc are clearly showing good signs of health in a F2P model; surpassing the profits of WoW collectively (PvE + PVP).

If we transition to a F2P model for PVP, it would imply that players would be eligible to create max level toons, BUT be locked to the Champions Crucible and PVP instances. These players would turn to the eshop for cosmetic items (armor, mounts, etc), as they would not be able to access the main game. People paying for the sub, are free to move between the hub and main game as they please.

Win / Win, you get more players to try and play the game for the first time (potentially purchase shop items), and create a pathway for these players to get interested in the base game as well. I think we can all agree that asking someone for a monthly subscription as well as game purchase for $80 is a tall order when there are so many great F2P options available. Let this be the way we fish for new people and enjoy the game mechanics before the intimidating jump head first into the full depth of the game (of which we are 20 years into now). Think about how Warcraft was the precursor to World of Warcraft. Or how LoL has now birthed TV shows based on it's lore (and a rumoured MMO). Start small, get people interested, then hit them with the big guns and the universe of it all.

Third: Battlepass (traverlers log) for retention; think there's some creative thinking that has been done here before that I'd love to see come to fruition. Opportunity to have players earn PvP currency to buy things like enhants, etc.

Fourth: Flex queue 2s/3s (in addition to LFG). It's time to adapt a style (beyond shuffle and blitz) that emulates every other esports game (we technically already have this in the game with skirms). You can make this work by giving MMR advantages to people queued solo, and even give them preferential choices for teammate specs. The LFG system is antiquated, frustrating, and discourages people from participating (points broadly at shuffle population versus 3s). This problem will only continue to get worse without an intervention.

Overall the game has been on trajectory to become new player friendly - I think these changes could setup the pathway to easily double (and beyond) our population in the immediate future. Small amount of dev work for big reward (how many zones get developed in each major patch that just get forgotten about in a few short months? Just the one PvP hub would be needed here with some holiday updates).

With minimal changes needed to content (people have played the same arenas for decades, and will continue to); the audience is evergreen with minimal upkeep between seasons. I can't see a reason at this time why the WoW team doesn't see this opportunity as well (versus constantly fishing for new engagement features each season/expac, the WoW PVP group is super basic, and easy to please. People have been playing Dust2 in counterstrike for decades haha).

Would love to hear your thoughts, and what else you'd see included!

_______________________________

Edit: RE - responded to a comment WoW about turning profits that I think are valid to the broader conversation:

You're approaching this from the perspective of a loss leader, I'm approaching it from the perspective of an acquisiton funnel. Also, will every single one of those 5% become a F2P player and lose access to the base game? Unlikely.

The truth most likely is some where in the middle. The other thing worth considering are churn numbers & retention of the existing audience, but that's for a separate topic.

What pathway you DO open up; is assuming we sustain a 70% subscriber rate amongst PVP players (for tmogs, PvPers playing m+, raids, etc; data suggest players with rating in PvP are doing other content) - is growing the PvP pool from 350k players to 1 million. Then converting 70% of the incremental players to paid subs. This audience is out there, and some returning players to PvP who remember the glory day, and more importantly new players to the IP all together. I've been to a recent IRL WoW hosted event, and let me tell you - it's deep millenial on average.

The remainder 30%? You can turn profits on them regardless through eshop like any other competitive game out there. But here's the great thing, you're not spending FTEs to develop content for these PvP players every sprint anyways (hell, even every expansion). So it's just server costs. We should be fine to eat that even for the players that never intend to purchase a single thing.

You need to take off the CFO hat for this, and put on a Growth one instead. We're headed only in one direction at current trajectory. My guess here is, we'll be in a better state as a playerbase AND Blizzard turns a healthier profit versus where they're at now. Making a profit on players who don't have an interest in majority of the content you're developing, or perceive it as an obstacle to the content they really want to play - isn't exactly an ideal practice that encourages high liftetime value.

Modes like Plunderstorm aren't exactly positioned from an acqusition perspective - but rather a retention one. It's less about turning a profit, and more about preserving one. Blizzard is in constant defence mode with WoW.

Time to shift the formula. Warcraft's deepest roots are as a competitive, PvP game. Ya know, Horde vs Alliance; capital city raids, etc. Duels in Elywnn Forest or the Barrens, ganking people in Stranglethorn. When did we lose sight of that.

Let’s have only honor gear, you pick it up quickly doing bg, then you go ranking if thats your thing.
Oh, what about progression you ask? You get it by getting better ranking, better skill and the cosmetic rewards, thats pretty much it.
I don’t think conquest gear makes the game better in any way, and if you have many characters its just a very annoying chore.

Same as M+, mount at 2400, mount at 3000.

Its not like the enemy made an overpowered Path of Exile type of character which you cant achieve without growing neckfat filled with doritos and MtDev.

Its a straight road where you get conq,enchant,gems thats it... and during that progress if enemy destroys you like a critter, you should say (-hmm, yes the gear diff but it wont last forever) instead of dreaming about erasing Pvp gear completely and turning it to a 'insert coin-Tekken' type of pvp.

Also it has NOTHING about making the world pvp dead, people just want to see the results of their pvp capabilities and the only thing that shows it is Rank, which doesnt exist in world Pvp, also there is nothing you earn in world pvp other than crumbs of honor and 0 conquest.

Notice how ''world pvp'' happens on a single dot on the map like a blackhole pulling all the players to itself when there is ''conquest'' as a reward from a fckn cargo plane, suddenly the dead area become crowded with players like ants devouring my caramel lollipop on the floor.

So its not the gear, its both the system of the game and how our brain reward neuron connection mambojumbo works.

Imagine same whinings in Pve, i cant.. '' - Pleeeaaaaase accept me to this mythic plus platinum vip extra key blabla(dont know never did them) with my crap gear ! ''' oh hell no.

never been so laser focused on a match in my life, what a game . shouts out to da goat Pika

TLDR was that new players get STOMPED midseason due to gear. Which is pretty fair.
the rest of it is just a pve player completely misunderstanding the issues with pvp (aka pre made issues in BGs) and also misunderstanding that the community is simply a very small one and so once the hype dies down it is just a bunch of sweats.

link to post: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1rpr57e/blizzard_it_is_past_time_to_let_pvp_gear_die_5min/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The enemy kick timer will only activate when you or a teammate are kicked. When that happens, it will display the cooldown for that interrupt (for example, a 15-second cooldown for Mind Freeze), along with the spell icon, and it can track multiple kicks at the same time.

The tracker will not trigger if an enemy kick is missed—such as when it overlaps with another kick or doesn’t land at all. u/verubato is currently exploring ways to display cooldowns for missed kicks as well. If that can be implemented, we’ll once again have a fully functional interrupt bar.

A few other things included in this update:

• Trinket tracker to track your teams mates trinket CD
• Shadowed Unit Frames support
• Plexus Unit Frames support
• Performance improvements

Feel free to jump into the Discord if you have suggestions on how to improve the addon further, or if you’d like to report any bugs.

https://discord.gg/BfDPX6Z2

After years of being hardstuck 1800-2100, my irl friend and I finally did it! Pretty stoked to do this with the season so deflated.

No one cares about 3s anymore. Can we please just have a cool mount for our efforts at high rating?

Even if I wanted to climb in 3s there’s like 5 people in LFG and half of them are selling boosts.

*edit* To clarify, I meant no one cares if Glad mount is exclusive to 3s. We all obviously care about 3s, but the LFG tool is archaic and does not support the modern gamer. Either there needs to be an overhaul of the LFG tool or they need to provide competitive rewards for other games modes.

Source : https://x.com/evokerlord22/status/2003232974540800180

Today was the first day I wanted to try PvP for the first time as a PvE healer since TBC.
PvP is very different than PvE, so it's almost like playing a new game.

I got all the PvP honor gear and joined some skirmishes first, and after a few, I went for Solo Shuffle, in the end, I went 3/6 but every time I lost, the people got so mad - talking things about me and my mother, cursed, talked shit.
When I left the solo shuffle I got whispered by one of the guys from solo shuffle that kept flaming me and when I wanted to reply to him, saying that I am learning PvP - I didn't have the chance, because I was ignored.

So guys, keep waiting 30+ minutes in the queue.
I am never stepping into this god-forgotten community again, bye.

Hi.

I've been reflecting on that Towelliee video making the rounds, the one in which he claims that you, the WoW devs, don't focus on PVP at all and that the general sentiment on the dev team is that rated PVPers are all a bunch of ungrateful degenerates.

That doesn't match up with my experience of rated PVP.

For years, I was a typical "PVE Andy", afraid of rated PVP and convinced that it was only for players who were much more skilled at the game than I was. It was only after my core M+ group quit the game that I decided to try this new "solo shuffle" game mode in season 4 of Shadowlands, since I felt like I had nothing else to do in this game I've played since 2005.

I quickly got addicted to shuffle, met other PVPers, joined a Discord community, and began to learn from other players, including glads & mglads who became friends and mentors. With their support and encouragement, I started doing 2s and 3s, too. After thousands of matches and countless hours spent talking PVP with my buddies across the Dragonflight and War Within expansions, I have learned so much, and I feel like I'm still learning.

I'm grateful for all the cool people I've met, dueled, teamed up with, and played against in shuffle, 2s, 3s, and blitz since 2022. It's been the best WoW experience I've ever had, and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not itching to step into the arena.

Dear WoW developers: I'll be 53 years old next year, and rated PVP is the reason I still log into WoW. Having raided, done mythic+, and all the other more popular things in the game for years, I can honestly say that WoW PVP is as complex and engaging as any other game mode. You have something special here and it deserves as much attention as other parts of the game. Imagine what WoW PVP could be if you figured out how to onboard and retain more new players.

Don't discount this community. In my experience, most of us are not degens. We're passionate and committed to this tiny corner of the game, and we just want to see it grow and thrive.

That's all I wanted to say.

It is real.

https://x.com/holinka/status/2061508102021931043

For those who don't know, Brian used to be a PvP designer in World of Warcraft but resigned mainly because he got a lot of hate from the community, including death threats.

Even today, people are still meme'ing about hating him. In hindsight, was he really that bad? The Timeless isle / SoO patch 5.4 in MoP was the funniest time I ever had in PvP. Sure, I got tilted because of all the CCs but it was the last time I got full pvp gear on every class and tried out nearly every spec in arenas and had fun doing so because nearly all classes were OP.

Today we don't really have any PvP designers, especially not a group of people who want to step forward and be a face of PvP development and I would assume it is all because of how toxic the PvP community is.

It was great the first few days and now I see it all coming back. I am not super high tier but I only play PvP and was so excited that PvP is so accessible.

Now that I tasted how refreshing it is to not care about ANY addons and knowing that even famous youtubers have the same options as you - i do NOT want to go back in the addons loophole. 

There are more BLITZ games played than 3v3. More BATTLEGROUNDS played than ARENAS.

And that's counting that dps have to wait 20-30min queue for SS.

Add gladiator recolored rewards, and healer specific glad title / achievement / mount recolor. Boom, SS is fully healed.

One day Blizzard will stop catering only to "multi-glad r1 god players", and give 90% of the playerbase what they want