The inconvenient truth of world PvP & why to turn War Mode off and roll PvE in Classic

For as long as I can remember PvP players have been telling me two things. To get the most out of the game you need to play with on a PvP server (or with WM on) and the PvP is imbalanced, these two things are often expressed at the same time.

There is no design solution to the War Mode problem as the problem is not with the design it’s with the participants. The nature of player vs player, when compared to player vs environment, is substantially more competitive as there is a “winner” and a “loser” as opposed to a puzzle to be overcome. All players want to be on the winning side, when this doesn’t happen there is a request for balance. What this ultimately is asking for a request “to change the game so I can win more often”. Over time the desire to win has lead to three outcomes; class homogenization and faction imbalance, as player seek to point out any advantage one class over another and eventually re-locate where the imbalance favours themselves or stop playing altogether with the same outcome. In early “vanilla” wow the problem was less pronounced as the eventual outcomes were in their infancy.

Any solutions proposed will always have problems, these being there will always be a winner who wins at the expense of a loser. Secondly and more importantly and if you take only one thing away from this post let it be this; there will always be more “active” PvP in individual imbalanced situations. This is because of the lower risk for one party, typically the aggressor, this being incentivie for the initiation of combat.

Solutions proposed, like handicaps, sharding “visibility” and increased incentives will not resolve this problem, they at best will only tip the scales from Red to Blue or Visa Versa. This is because there will always be individual encounters that favour one side and these will be more likely to result in combat as previously outlined. Furthermore, we already have numerically even matches in PvP instances.

The only solution possible would be for participants to police themselves and only initiate conflict when the situation is roughly equal, however, this is impossible in practical terms to due to the nature of I’m sad to say most players.

The ultimate answer we’ve had for years, it’s the PvE server. For those of you who not played extensively on PvE servers, I’m able to inform you that there is wPvP on PvE servers. Now before you scream hypocrite at me hear me out. As players can easily avoid “unfair” situations ad-hoc now only situations where both players feel confident result in PvP. Of course there are servers that will favour single factions, this however is driven by the number of available players for PvE content.

I’m looking forward to Classic. However, I’m expecting the forums to light up with “buff”,“nurf” and “how to fix” posts as players express their discontent that for a situation they both asked for and initiated. While the initial experience of wPvP in WoW classic may be great each server will eventually be single faction favouring by the actions of the players on said server, as players adpot the "win at all costs mentality " that is ubiquitous in PvP. Leading a lack of opposition and PvP dieing on the server.

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I agree no design solution, but then I don’t have a problem with WM. I don’t think participants are a problem either. They play WM as intended, depending on the motivations WM creates.

Judging by the amount of negative posts on WM, you are in the minoraty. I don’t have a problem with they way WM works atm, but thats just me, you and a handfull more. Would be surprised if blizz will continue with WM ,the way it works currently, into 9.0.

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Todays battles were great overwhelmed by 2 a 3 Horde raids vs 1 of us (not even full) and the lag… THE AWEFULL LAG! I had a 10 second eyebeam and it broke the record! Last time I did battle for Nazjatar before 12am! How did this get past beta at all? This is unplayable not only due to lag but the faction imbalance ontop of it when events starts or when you are on Mechagon or rare farm island.

The thing is, it’s known that people are more likely to take the trouble to post something they don’t like. They obviously like something about WoW, but forum is not full of, ‘I like xyz’ posts. Because anger is very motivating, and they see others complain, and so expect solidarity. You get some interesting replies when disagreeing with them :smiling_face:

Blizz’s difficult task is to sort genuine issues, from issues that going by forum are important, but in reality are not a sigificant complaint or is exagerated.

For example, lots of shard balance complaints. Yet in our survey, players feel outnumbered half the time or less. That’s what I would expect based on my own experience. When someone is annoyed, and wants agreement, very tempting for them to exagerate. Blizz have the actual data, they know the score, and I suspect it’s not far off our survey results.

I doubt WM will significantly change in 9.0. It doesn’t need to, therefore why put dev effort into that. If they can add more to it, mix it up a bit for 9.0, I’m all for that tho.

The only problem with WM is sharding/CRZ and being able to go to a different realm(shard) with the LFG tool.

If it was back to only players on your realm are the ones you see the fights would be better and there would be no lag.

This has already been covered. While the sharding will ensure they are the same number of players form each faction on the shard. Actual combat will more often in local areas within the shard, when there is a imbalance due to the risk/reward incentives already stated.

I feel i may have misled most of you and should have referred to the problem with wPvP as opposed to war mode. Warmode its self being a solution to a PvP problem, which is self-evident.

Imbalance in subzones has always been in WPvP.

Agreed, this was the point that I was alluding to in my original post.

The outcomes of this for the game have also already been discussed.

Which leads to

This is the cause of the implementation of war mode. But this will not solve the problem as already discussed

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