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.
