Does Blizzard understand the community aspect of Classic pvp?

[Esiahdistaja-magtheridon]

Blizzard has spoken of the importance of server community and so called spirit of classic wow. But after the introduction of cross-realm BGs without even battlegroups limiting them, I seriously started to doubt them. Let me explain in somewhat lengthy way.

I’ve started playing in vanilla, and played through multiple expansions. Skipping some raids and even whole expansions there and here, but always returning to the game. I’ve also played on two private servers before classic: Anathema and K3. In vanilla wow (Chromaggus server btw) I ranked to r13. I do still remember dozens of people from Chromaggus that I played against. All my friends who played with me still remember. Now that AV is so hot stuff probably most horde casters from Chromaggus who played a lot of AV still remember this sole BM specced dwarf hunter whose big red cat harassed the **** out of us. I remember three enemy faction premades by their guild/name. I played before and after the introduction of cross-realms in Vanilla, and I can honestly say I don’t remember ANYBODY from cross-realm bg time. I only remember Crushridge as a server, because we used to call them “pizza-ridge” or “pasta-ridge” due to them being (and speaking) mostly Italian. They were considered very negative thing to have in your team. So for me personally, the introduction of cross-realm enhanced only negative aspects of the pvp game.

Now tell me, honestly, do you think I’m going to form such life long memories and rivalries with these opponents? i.imgur com/bAcY41H.jpg Is there even the slightest chance I’ll remember any of these people even if I meet them again (which is unlikely), or even if I face them 10 or 100 times in the current AV? Because I do believe, that I wont.

This brings me to my point: I’m very frustrated that Blizzard, despite their talk about understanding the community aspect, have absolutely gutted the chance for any feeling of community with this current cross-realm setup. Literally all private servers I have played have managed to cater me better and more vanilla-like pvp-experience than Blizzard is currently giving.

The limitations could be technical, in which case Blizzard should try to overcome them. But I am very afraid, because there shouldn’t be any technical reason why they couldn’t offer us even the battlegroups. Like limit the amount of people you’ll face by even that little bit. But no, its just faceless mass game after another.
I understand that some people might prefer this retailish type of pvp over the vanilla one I so much enjoyed, but this is not the kind of pvp that made life lasting memories in vanilla, and what made people roll on new private servers year after another, looking for the classic experience.

[Bewarê-frostmane]

The trap
Many past designs ignored Dunbar’s Layers and naively assumed “more is better.” They ignore friendship formation and assume “it just happens.” They ignore social groups and arbitrarily mash players together.
In reality, these assumptions are actively harmful and cause the following:

• Fewer in-game friendships . A flood of strangers swamp the reciprocation and proximity mechanisms that generate friends. Poor identity, persistence, reciprocity, and consent systems mean these strangers never convert into friends, so there are fewer meaningful relationships in the game.
• Increased toxicity . Large groups of strangers naturally breed toxic sub-groups. Players engage in violent rejection of out-groups in order to protect their experience and intergroup conflict becomes the cultural norm. Such communities are hard to reform and poison long-term retention.
• Scope creep . The additional systems necessary to manage large groups of strangers substantially increase the scope of your game.

What players need
If players have not filled all the slots in their primary friend network, they suffer. And, in response, they are intrinsically motivated to deepen their existing relationships or build relationships with new people. Striving for belongingness is one of the strongest human motivations. They will naturally seek out activities that help them make friends and belong to something bigger than themselves.

https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/featured/ph18r8.htm

[Elf-zandalar-tribe]

Pretty much. On the “vanilla connections” forum for my realm all that people would talk about was how they recognized eachother from battlegrounds, and it was fun for me to recall a whole bunch of familiar names that I thought that I had forgotten. It was totally worth 20+ minute queues, because people all hung out at the battleground entrances, dueling, chatting and starting fights with the hordies. Great community.

This? Log on, play a battleground or two, get your fix of fun for the day, log off to do something else. Don’t move for more than 10 yards in-game. Don’t recognize anyone you played with (except in the lower brackets where there’s fewer people, fortunately). Rinse and repeat.

Retail lite. Zero sugar.