War Mode WPvP Survey - Sharding, Phasing, Classes, Community

PVP War Mode and World PvP
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I’ve created an anonymous survey to see how the War Mode forum community feels about sharding, phasing, classes, and community in WM. 10 questions, takes about 2 minutes. This survey is designed to narrow down what the WM community perceives as WM’s greatest issues. WPvP ethics seems a non issue according to the player rules survey - is the real issue sharding, phasing, classes, community? Some or all? Only first 100 responses will be included.

Edit: At 7 responses - I added extra options to q 9 and 10, possible alternatives to the other option. If you already responded with ‘other’, you can change your answer if you want.

Survey Questions
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NLS7DMT

Survey Results
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-65CP63R5V/

Take the player rules survey too!

Take the War Mode activity & satisfaction survey as well!
Take the lag survey!

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most of the time the answer i wanted to choose wasnt there.
like there are different kinds of sharding in bfa zones, and other zones etc

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Taken all your surveys so far. Also, hiiii @Wispr <3

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Good point, this survey and the other two are simple overview surveys - to get a feel for the general situation. I have a 10 q limit on the survey as well, so I kept each q simple and to the point, and allowed for some q variety.

It’s ok to skip a question, better than feeling forced to answer in a way you don’t like.

After these overview surveys are closed, it could be fun to choose a question to break down futher into its own dedicated survey, for a more detailed view on it.

If you or anyone else has feedback on questions that could be expanded on, let me know.

@everyone (edit: everyone in WM forum)

At 7 responses - I added extra options to q 9 and 10, possible alternatives to the other option. If you already responded with ‘other’, you can change your answer if you want.

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This thread will soon have every EU subscriber on the forums coming here. Sneaky, I like it.

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I adjusted my everyone :slight_smile:

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I’m not really sure it would work like that, would be immensely fun if it did!

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RNG-players-around me is a problem - it doesn’t even take into account players from the same guild or friend list (even bnet friends). I play on RP realms, players pool is smaller than Normal, so at least I have better chances to meet same players again and again.

But I don’t think you can look at sharding without LFG, because by itself it doesn’t have many problems, only with addition of LFG - all the bad stuff truly shines.

When I killed some players on an Assault, got a bounty and quite often - some player is very offended, but they don’t go for local/general chat, they go for easy-LFG near some WQ and hot drop me with RNG players appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing without any chance for revenge, or ever meeting them again - that’s not fun. Yeah, I can kill/troll/piss off that player again, but it still wasn’t fun or enjoyable.

Same, when you meet in local a few players, you all join together, proceeded with killing as a group, but in return even with more than enough enemies for a counter group - couple of them LFG drop you from a nearby WQ - also kinda sucks. Yeah, I can do the same, but the thing is - appeared out of nowhere, disappeared, and all that just a hollow meaningless experience.

That phasing anomaly place in Nazmir assault was fun for first 1-2 times, then it’s just annoying BS. But at least it doesn’t clear bounty/assassing buff, like water near tortollan/CoA WQs in Drustvar does. So annoying, about 40yd into the water and bye bye buff/bounty, so you stand there thinking is it worth it to chase that DK/Shaman/etc into the water… Similar problematic places in Voldun and Tiragarde.

But… there are also good things.

From sharding - only one - there is always someone to pew-pew at, well, at least much MUCH more often than not.

From LFG:

In any situation, when there is no one to call. Like, with only me online in Community/Friendlist, no willing Allies in local, and me with a bounty on my head thinking it’s a good idea to go in Drustvar with CtA quest in it, solo… hehe

Group to hunt me was very quick, so with flying from FP to FP evading them, the only group I found was LFG from normal realms on our RP shard - and it was fun, we fought, killed, died, killed more - awesome! Even if after that they disappeared into nothingness - we still talked, used strategies, etc, and played together long enough for it to be meaningful.

Just like all those raids to protect/loot bounties and/or counter-camp FPs in 8.0 - that was really fun, again, probably because players were playing together for more than just quest/WQ.

Or when you just want to snowball-stomp everything in your way, but not many in local want to do the same…

So in the end (maybe as a summary of all surveys):

To me, it looks like, current War Mode/WPvP is chaotic (as it should be), but it’s also quite scripted (WQs, Assaults, new objectives…), and because of “sharding-RNG-player-meaningless” way to much - it’s holding on those scripted elements to provide incentives for WPvP to happen.

Sandbox should provide tools, without hand holding or “go there do that” scripting. Just tools for players, who are playing in that sandbox - to build their own sand castles so to say - if players want to hunt, they should be able to, if they want rivalries - just as much, etc.

Current approach is more of “here we built sand castles for you - go play”. Curated experience and sandbox do not mix together well, they are way to opposite for it. I don’t mean that WPvP objectives are bad, not at all - they are great, but only when there are players for meaningful interactions around you, in a MMO.

I think, all off the good things could still be there, without all of the bad things, if system similar to that was implemented - [Suggestion] Use Layering from Classic to improve Sharding

Just look at Classic WPvP videos from current Beta - chaos and fun, because players around you mean more than “appeared/disappeared” - with that you have community and that community can create WPvP objectives on the fly, again just look at videos from current beta.

When you have that - scripted things, like Assaults & Towers, will be additional tools for organization and fun, and not main attraction as looks like they are designed to be in modern WoW.

Blizzard probably thought that something like that would happen with Communities, but unfortunately, even here they underestimated a power of RNG - I don’t see it’s working, it’s way to inconsistent for anything meaningful to happen naturally, and it requires way too much effort to even try to make it happen.

Plus make Bounty/Assassin buff more persistent, so you couldn’t drop it by phasing/queue/porting/etc. Because it’s so flimsy right now that you can drop it even by going in current content zones like Darkshore/Arathi…

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Surveys are still in progress, but it looks like the WM community is most dissatisfied with things they can’t control.

  • Can’t control - sharding/phasing tech (which affects in game community), class design, lfg.

  • Can control - our own behaviour, and affect the actions of others in game.

WPvP ethics are a small issue for community compared to what some claim. Because we have control. Biggest community perceived issues are ones only Blizz can control - tech.

I personally am happy with WM, perhaps because I don’t feel that loss of control with sharding, etc. I accept and work around them.

  • A player disappears? Victory.
  • A group appears? Challenge.
  • Lfg is how I meet that challenge.
  • Class design? I only play 1 spec and it does the job.
  • Community? Happy with communities feature.

That’s from my point of view. But for sure, it seems that most of WM community have a hard time accepting things they can’t control. Almost like anxiety.

If ONE of the big issues could be fixed, sharding, maybe the other issues would feel less bad or just become smaller.

Average WM satisfaction is 72% at time of writing. Better than predicted, someone said it would be 20%. But what is that remaining 28%. A chunk of it is sharding anxiety. Layering could help reduce anxiety and stimulate community in game, that or some other solution, to get that 28% down - Hopefully in 9.0 we’ll get WM 2.0! Unless… Blizz might be satisfied with 72% satisfaction!

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Yes, there is tech that we, players, can’t control, but the problem is not this lack of control - the fundamental problem of that tech is that players feel the need, or simply want, to have control over what it does it in the first place.

Anxiety? hmmm, that’s a new one, haha. I don’t think it has anything to do with anxiety, and everything to do with how meaningful/important players who are around you and interactions with them.

For quake style game-play - login, pew-pew-pew, logout - sharding is great, for a deeper interactions I think it’s important for players around you and against you to have more meaning than just “some mage/druid/warrior/healer/etc” or just a number on a kill counter.

Anxiety means that there is some kind of fear involved, but when there are just RNG players around - I doubt there is any fear - mostly don’t care - lack of any emotions, that’s the problem, imo, not all the time, but it’s still there. And then when that RNG player did something to get any emotion - they sharded away, and no getting back at them - so not only interaction itself has very little meaning, but frustration can also add.

Group can be a challenge, and I always welcome it, but when it’s “appear & disappear” type of a group - it doesn’t really matter how good my LFG is.

I quite often sharded to normal realms, and at prime time, especially with CtA or Assault, it was always fun - constant pew-pew-pew, great! But then, when I want to remember any of the fights - I have no idea about even one name I fought against, just a number of kills/deaths, and maybe “that rogue/DH/etc” - classes because it was a good fight or fun trolling. Just classes basically, like names and players don’t matter.

On RP I met same players quite regularly, with quite a few we dropped everything and started to fight each other every time, I know names. So it’s not just a Rogue/Hunter/Shammy… it’s someone with a name, for better or worse, we can troll each other, lure into traps, I/they can take revenge, “Haha, so now situation is in my favor, yeah, come and get it!”, etc. It gives a possibility of a story between us to actually happen and be more meaningful than just “hey, I fought someone”.

I went on hunts across shards quite a few times, I posted a lot of different things players can do to manipulate sharding to what seems to be a possible limit (very small), and I think I know if not all tricks to do it, then at least the most of them. And it’s not really fun to play this meta-game with tech instead of playing the actual game, but way too often there is no other way, and that is also a problem.

I still had a lot of fun in WM, it was awesome, for me it’s the best feature of BfA, the one kept me playing. But to get the most of it I had to play around tech and use workarounds, and I don’t think that is what player should be doing.

In last Dev video - I saw Blizzard learned from Classic reboot about “classes and not just specs” and how pruning was not good. Maybe they will also see the community aspect, and go for an idea of big layers of combined realms in battle groups for faction balance and consistent community.

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Well, stress then.

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For those who in WM for % & PvE - yeah, stress is definitely there, haha.

But for those who chose WPvP - I don’t think it’s an issue at all, we all kinda in constant search for thrills of stressful and not so much encounters.

But maybe for some it (stress) could be a result of too much frustration from issues that happen.

Anyway, so far I like that Blizzard learns from Classic, well at least they tell the do. Maybe new tech and some old design ideas can make something new and improved, better for all.

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