I did not experience anything WoW since the end of BC till Legion pre-patch, but as someone who’s doing mainly WPvP - modern WoW experience was not what I was expecting at all…
In Vanilla/BC all WPvP began from faction conflict first, then individual famous/infamous players and guilds. Every time someone started something, it always was “Horde/Alliance is in that zone…” and then “certain players/guilds are there”. Absence of more scripted/structured PvP modes also helped.
When I came back, it was very weird to see restrictions, for having characters of both factions on the same server, lifted. Hearing/reading that I shouldn’t kill someone because it’s a Horde alt of someone in the guild - was kinda baffling at first. Then horde and alliance just questing together…
Nothing like that was ever possible before - servers were closed ecosystems (no sharding), faction restrictions - there was already a conflict and players just needed to go with it.
Nowadays to have any kind of rivalry - it takes a lot more effort from players, and “not taking” an easy way is not an option for way too many players in WoW… With players playing both sides on the same servers - I’m yet to witness any kind of rivalry, because from what I’ve seen so far - it’s just friendly trash-talking with occasional emote and a flag, and that is the extent of it.
Without this initial mechanism for conflict - faction restrictions & conflict - majority of players changed so much that they are looking for external motivations, like rewards, to even consider participating in War Mode / WPvP. At least that’s how it looks to me. Nothing wrong with rewards for an activity, but just look how many Horde players don’t want to opt in just because Alliance has 1 (only freaking ONE) more quest ONCE/TWICE a month… or Alliance don’t because this quest is not up…
Plus sharding/phasing, players appearing and disappearing… it’s impossible to meet, and to make it possible, something that was “just go in this zone” before, now would require quite a HUGE effort. Again, not many players in WoW are willing to do effort when there is an easy way to do something else.
I play quite often on normal realms and I never see same players twice, in my WPvP stats addon - very few players from normal realms have more than 1 kill, and mostly because they ressed and were killed again, and not because I met them a second time.
Normal realms for me feel like random team death-match from zone to zone, doesn’t matter who it is, red is dead, kill kill kill, let’s change a map, off to the next zone… I understand the appeal of that, it’s nice to have a constant flow of targets, but I wouldn’t want to play like that always, it’s still a MMORPG game, not a Quake…
At least I play on RP realms and meet same players quite often. I have my “rivalries” lol, with some players dropping everything they were doing and jump to fight me as soon as they see me. Too bad it’s only about 10-15 like that, others mostly behave like “kill me or don’t, idc, I do my WQ…”.
I don’t think guild rivalries are possible with the current state of the game, because game simply doesn’t have any tools or mechanics for it anymore, but I applaud to anyone who’re still trying.
I don’t think WPvP itself is dead - far from it. It’s transformed into a more Quake team death-match type with randoms. Cross-realm Communities and Guilds are there for you to get someone you know on your team, and unfortunately that’s it for WPvP.
Maybe in the future Blizzard would do something similar to layering, combines servers together and have more stable population and community on these new connected realms, with LFG limitations for War Mode.
Right now, I’m having fun with current constant flow of targets, and waiting for Classic to go with it’s WPvP I like a lot.
Btw, will Honor Capped go for Classic?