What if World of Warcraft's Arenas were decoupled from the rest of the game?
Now, I don't mean that it's a separate program from WoW itself --although that could be an intriguing possibility-- but what if in the interest of getting new players into Arenas Blizzard essentially removes some of the roadblocks from getting people into Arenas?
In this case, I'm envisioning the following:
- A player must have a subscription to WoW to participate in Arenas.
- When you enter into an Arena fight, every player is set to a standard set of gear and their max level. It doesn't matter what your current level or gear is, everybody gets the current Season's PvP gear and is set to max level. Once the match is over, you return to your regular level and gear.
- Customization (transmog) of your appearance is allowed, but offers no bonuses. They're just skins for the standard gear underneath.
- Your class buffs are allowed, and every player is given access to a standard number of potions/scrolls/etc. based on their class, plus the PvP Trinket that breaks incapacitation. That's it.
- All of your class abilities are still present for a max level toon.
- All addons are disabled for an Arena match.
- Arena victories yield rewards as standard, but since Arenas are temporary events, you can use your rewards to buy gear used in other PvP activities (such as Battlegrounds and World PvP).
- If you want to play Arenas as they are now, you can under a separate naming convention. Call it 'Old School Arenas', maybe? Some people would hate to give up their addons to play, but others won't mind if it means they can play as soon as they subscribe to the game.
What this standardization process does is that it eliminates the grind and the gearing process from getting a player into Arenas. A player can create a toon and go straight into Arenas if they wish, or they can level and run dungeons, raid, or play in Battlegrounds. If you want to customize your PvP experience in the standard fashion --complete with addons and the grinding for gear process-- there's Old School Arenas to go play with.
Anyway, it's something to consider.
#Blaugust2023
They actually did something close to this in BfA with ilvl suppression and class templates that I think it was a purer distillation of what "skill over gear" was all about, where I could go toe to toe with a Warlock on a Shaman and use my abilities, skill, and knowledge to defeat a warlock who wouldn't even target my Tremor. I thought it was a great system but people hated the lack of gear progression and missed the feeling they got from being able to go nuke other players (horizontal progression).
ReplyDeleteIt also didn't really increase pvp participation as much as I think they expected. I didn't pvp much but that was when I was trying to get KSM so I didn't really have time for anything else, and pvp for me has almost always been a secondary or even more often tertiary activity.
Did you still have to grind to max level to get into that version of Arenas? If so, then yeah, there's still the max-level gatekeeping going on, which means that increasing participation in PvP is still limited to the people who nominally play the game to max level.
DeleteThat the PvP crowd distilled by that limitation would be reluctant to give up their built-in advantages doesn't surprise me. If there's one thing the WoW population in general loves, it's pressing every advantage to the utmost. Or, as my Questing Buddy once observed of her Warlock, why use a flyswatter to to swat a fly when a nuke would do?
Still, the problem is that Blizz isn't thinking of "let's grow the size of the community," it's more "what can we get the community we have to do more of a specific activity?" That myopia is costing them in the long run, because... reasons? Or maybe they just gave up on growing the population and are in turn trying to turn as many WoW players into whales as possible by promoting use of the cash shop or game services as possible.
To be fair, mechanically, everyone who bought Legion and BfA got a character boost. Whether or not you see that as a good solution or not, it still addressed the the leveling complaint. Of course now you don't get one unless you pay extra.
DeleteI guess the question I have is whether that boost is for max level prior to the expansion or with the expansion. If you still have to level throughout the expansion, then it's still not exactly the same thing. There's that price of admission in that whether or not you're interested in the leveling experience, you still have to do it. It's kind of as if Activision had required every person who plays Call of Duty to do all of the campaign before you can queue to play multiplayer.
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