In a recent post on the World of Warcraft forums, a player called Soxo has taken the time the detail all the current problems with the player versus player aspect of the MMO. It’s no secret that the arena and general PvP element of World of Warcraft is much different now than it was even a few years ago. While many call for the return of the old days of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, Soxo has put together a comprehensive report on which features work and which are broken, which areas need to be fixed and good suggestions on how to approach it. You can read the full post here and if you’re into player versus player combat then it’s definitely worth taking the time to read.
Many believe that Blizzard don’t bother to listen to the ideas and suggestions of it’s community. I’m not here to dispute whether or not that’s the case, but in reply to the post, community manager, Lore, stated that the company are aware of a lot of the problems that players are currently experiencing and are aware of a lot of the broken mechanics. Here’s a little bit from his response:
“There’s a ton of great feedback in this thread, and as I tried (but seem to have failed) to get across in my first reply, we do actually agree with a lot of it. We agree that there’s still too much CC. We agree that survivability is too strong for some classes (which includes things like the number of defensive cooldowns, self-healing, etc). We agree with a lot of the concerns about the gearing process. We agree with a lot of the concerns about burst damage and offensive cooldowns.
To put it another way: we know that World of Warcraft PvP can be better than it is right now. We’re actively working on some ideas that we’re hoping will help a lot. But there’s only so much we can do in a content patch. At the end of the day, the gameplay experience in Patch 6.2 should be overall very similar to the experience in 6.1. We can improve on it, but we’re not going to make the sort of massive changes we made with 6.0 and the launch of Warlords.
I’m saying this not because I don’t think you should expect any fixes or improvements in 6.2. We’ve already made several PvP-focused changes on the PTR, and I know of at least a couple more that are still in process (or at least being considered). I just don’t want to give the expectation that we’re going to be able to address all of these concerns in a content patch.
The discussion happening in this thread has been super helpful in aligning our thoughts and goals for the future. I’m looking forward to being able to discuss what those thoughts and goals are in more detail, once we’ve gotten a bit more nailed down and are ready to share them.”
So although we’re not likely to see and game saving changes in the near future, we can hope that the future of PvP in World of Warcraft is under the scrutiny of the development team and that they are taking steps to make player versus player more fun and engaging and more fun to watch on streams and in tournaments. Are you a Warcraft PvP-er? Do you miss the glory days of TBC and WotLK? Do you think the system needs changing? Sound off in the comments below!