Let's talk about PvP system!

[Lahire]

"Balance" is a trap in this kind of discussions. MMORPG pvp is not made to be "balanced" like a counter strike or dota.
MMORPG pvp is just a branch on a big tree, not an independant system you can "balance" in a vacuum. It is not even the point to have balanced encounters in mmorpg, as it would remove the links of the pvp system to all the other progression systems.

I think pvpers must accept the fact that mmorpg pvp is just a part of a whole, and not a game outside of the game. RP/flavour is actually more important to the quality of a mmorpg than pvp balance, and shouldn't be sacrificed to seek it, as it innerves more systems than pvp balance does. You do not sacrifice a core element of RPG for 1 subsystem (and to cater to only 1 kind of players, because not all people engaged with pvp care about stuff like the racial imbalance).

[Erok2]

I would think of ways to incentivize PVP that are in-line with the server goals. Battlegrounds are toxic because you introduce winning and losing. No one wants to lose. Were you every angry dying in the Southshore vs Terran Mill fights? It was always fun going back and forth and if you died, you just ran back to the fray. Battlegrounds also become your most efficient path to the PVP gear so a loss is time wasted frustration. Also it takes players out of the world which is why I was against them when they were released. This system I was pondering is anti Battlegrounds, pro world pvp.

Want to incentivize world pvp? Make only world pvp give you the pvp reward.
Make honor the currency in which to buy the gear/items
Allow people to rank up to a certain rank without a standing and without decay
Allow the collection of honor to only take place in world pvp
introduce pvp 60 blue weapons with high stam/low damage stat
Create a system where you get honor by killing only those who yield experience
Create a system where you get half the honor when you are killed so it still can be enjoyed if its not always going in your favor
Create an incentive to flag for pvp? This one is tough because I am anti ganking or ruining another players experience
Add an opposing system where having overwhelming numbers actually ends up giving you less honor than those fewer players you are overrunning. Or some sort of way to incentivize balance in the amount of players. Something like 5 man groups giving bonus XP, but in this case honor. Larger than 5 man dilutes gains to promote small groups instead of raids.

Just some ideas I had for a system. Lets say we have a lvl 60 sword and it cost 1000 honor and rank 10. Rank 10 maybe just takes 3 or 4 weeks (which do not have to be done in row) of just showing up to achieve. Maybe you get 2 honor per kill and so you need 500 kills to get this item. If you pair this with other ideas that people have about making zones 'war zones' or just 'World PVP Friday' you could hopefully cultivate a great world pvp community for those who wish to partake that doesn't require anyone win or lose.

[Llimme]

Its Turtle, we slow , ¿why don't just remove the decay?, or, ¿is it necessary to be 1rst on ladder to earn points betw R13-R14?, some players have "pvp period/season", and coming back after a few months to do all the grind again, kinda bumps out.

[Nixors]

Whilst admittedly not exactly tied to the PvP system itself, I'd love to see more importance on faction leaders, and city raids.

City raids have been a huge source of enjoyment for me in the past, both offensively and defensively. It would be cool to see that be a more frequent thing with some custom quest incentivizing people to for example kill a certain amount of guards along with the faction leaders, or to defend a faction leader. You get the idea.

That said, I can only imagine the horror upon any hardcore player's face seeing a raid of lvl 60 PvP tagged players cruise through their beloved main city. And of course there's always arguments against a primarily PvE oriented event (depending on defensive ferocity) providing any PvP related rewards.

[Suwuxiv]

I think PVP in Vanilla is far too centric on gear and consumables, be it alchemy items, engineering or tea.

It would all be better if skill was more emphasized over gear and other things that you farmed. A big issue with this coming to be would be class balance. Some classes do have to crutch by with items more than others.

So removing the gear/consumable factor from PVP would not be a simple fix. Retuning classes and their abilities in PVP would be required, too. And I think that'd be more work than developers would be willing to put into it all.

[Nixors]

Whilst admittedly not exactly tied to the PvP system itself, I'd love to see more importance on faction leaders, and city raids.

City raids have been a huge source of enjoyment for me in the past, both offensively and defensively. It would be cool to see that be a more frequent thing with some custom quest incentivizing people to for example kill a certain amount of guards along with the faction leaders, or to defend a faction leader. You get the idea.

That said, I can only imagine the horror upon any hardcore player's face seeing a raid of lvl 60 PvP tagged players cruise through their beloved main city. And of course there's always arguments against a primarily PvE oriented event (depending on defensive ferocity) providing any PvP related rewards.

Those kind of capital raids are an issue lore-wise. Any kind of direct attack on a capital city could only ever be considered completely unrelated to lore, which I think is not what the staff is going for when making quests.
If e.g. the Alliance would order people to attack Orgrimmar, that would be an act of outright war, which would break a lot of the Vanilla lore.

I mean... It ain't World of Peacecraft is it ^^
Though I'm not really a lore guy so I can't actually seriously speak on the matter haha

[Lichenwitch]

"Balance" is a trap in this kind of discussions. MMORPG pvp is not made to be "balanced" like a counter strike or dota.
MMORPG pvp is just a branch on a big tree, not an independant system you can "balance" in a vacuum. It is not even the point to have balanced encounters in mmorpg, as it would remove the links of the pvp system to all the other progression systems.

I think pvpers must accept the fact that mmorpg pvp is just a part of a whole, and not a game outside of the game. RP/flavour is actually more important to the quality of a mmorpg than pvp balance, and shouldn't be sacrificed to seek it, as it innerves more systems than pvp balance does. You do not sacrifice a core element of RPG for 1 subsystem (and to cater to only 1 kind of players, because not all people engaged with pvp care about stuff like the racial imbalance).

+1 to this. we can't be too concerned with an idea of "balance" when PvP is just one part of a larger world. for instance there are many abilities and specs that are considered a waste in PvE but are incredibly good in PvP. so the whole game has to be considered, even if players conceptualize PvP and PvE as separate games, they aren't, as is the consequence of an MMORPG.

[Lichenwitch]

I think PVP in Vanilla is far too centric on gear and consumables, be it alchemy items, engineering or tea.

It would all be better if skill was more emphasized over gear and other things that you farmed. A big issue with this coming to be would be class balance. Some classes do have to crutch by with items more than others.

So removing the gear/consumable factor from PVP would not be a simple fix. Retuning classes and their abilities in PVP would be required, too. And I think that'd be more work than developers would be willing to put into it all.

i think this line of thinking is also a trap... we shouldn't be considering homogenizing classes. that is one of the many things that led to retail WoW's loss of class identity. there will also never, ever, be a purely "skill-based" system in an MMORPG, a genre where getting better gear that improves your performace is an integral part of the game. maybe, and i'm only half-joking here, we could have a special new battleground where everyone has to come in naked and with some stock wooden weapons to fight. this would allow people to only rely on their abilities. but we can't just erase/nerf/retune items, as long as any stat bonuses are still there at all, the argument that PvP doesn't rely on skill could still be there.

[Izax]

1. Vanilla PVP system is too grindy. Most ppl have a real life to live. So reduce honor decay or no honor decay to make PVP gear more obtainable for everyone. It helps close the PVP gear gap and makes PVP more skill-based.

2. Cross faction PVP probably helps even the teams of BG, and players from the same guild but different factions can have a chance to play on the same team.

3. Less than 5v5 BG is pretty boring imo. Personally I'm discouraged to join 2v2 Warsong or 3v3 AB. So lowering the bar of BG may actually cause less players to PVP.

4. AV unable to end on small pop server like this is torture. Add a timer and winning condition like AB to end AV if no side can take down the opposite side entirely.

[Lahire]

I think PVP in Vanilla is far too centric on gear and consumables, be it alchemy items, engineering or tea.

It would all be better if skill was more emphasized over gear and other things that you farmed. A big issue with this coming to be would be class balance. Some classes do have to crutch by with items more than others.

So removing the gear/consumable factor from PVP would not be a simple fix. Retuning classes and their abilities in PVP would be required, too. And I think that'd be more work than developers would be willing to put into it all.

i think this line of thinking is also a trap... we shouldn't be considering homogenizing classes. that is one of the many things that led to retail WoW's loss of class identity. there will also never, ever, be a purely "skill-based" system in an MMORPG, a genre where getting better gear that improves your performace is an integral part of the game. maybe, and i'm only half-joking here, we could have a special new battleground where everyone has to come in naked and with some stock wooden weapons to fight. this would allow people to only rely on their abilities. but we can't just erase/nerf/retune items, as long as any stat bonuses are still there at all, the argument that PvP doesn't rely on skill could still be there.

Yes, retail is what you obtain when you try to do a mmorpg with a "balanced" and "fair" pvp.
- pvp talents are here to "balance" the experience in a vacuum
- pvp scaling in BFA was here to give more chance to "skilled" players even if they had bad gear or less levels
- classes are homogenized to balance the game (zero flavour, everybody has the same toolkit)
- gear is easily obtainable in any activity so there is no gear difference

They chose to break their core rpg progression to produce a "balanced" (but flavorless) pvp experience. I do not think it is a good idea to do the same.

Cross-faction is another homogenization idea that breaks the RP/flavour of the game. Yeah ok if everybody is orc, the experience is "balanced" (but boring and flavorless). You lose the soul of the game in the process.

[Valadorn]

1.Consider adding Resources, or Timer to AV, that would help alot,
2. Consider a Flag Reset Timer ( say 5 mins ) for the Flags in WSG, if neither team caps, the flags will just reset, that will cancel the Stalling of WSGs

3.but lets talk actual world PvP
How about Things like the Harvesters in Silithus, Towers in the Plaguelands actually give honor when captured ? and the Quest becomes repeatable to actually encourage ppl to do it ? and How about we add Different PvP Objectives and Dailies in Higher lvl zones like Ungoro, Deadwind Pass, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, Felwood, Blasted Lands and Azsara, they shouldnt force /pvp on, but the respective quests can only be completed with /pvp, that would give a nice little optional posibility for World PvP.

[Yurei]

3.but lets talk actual world PvP
How about Things like the Harvesters in Silithus, Towers in the Plaguelands actually give honor when captured ? and the Quest becomes repeatable to actually encourage ppl to do it ? and How about we add Different PvP Objectives and Dailies in Higher lvl zones like Ungoro, Deadwind Pass, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, Felwood, Blasted Lands and Azsara, they shouldnt force /pvp on, but the respective quests can only be completed with /pvp, that would give a nice little optional posibility for World PvP.

this idea is cool, kind of what i expected when I first subbed in 2007. didn't see any of that. World PvP would be cool af with some social contracts. I'd hate to have the toxic spawn camping ruin it and impede the PvE that runs through those places of interest.

[Valadorn]

Yurei, there couldnt be any Toxic Spawn camping, since you can Turn Off PvP anytime, while gathering a bunch of people to beat the CAmper is another lvl of fun :P , also there is no Automatic PvP flag for accidental Death :D so it is a totally Opt in- Opt out thing, but it would add Depth to the world :)

[Ugoboom]

The less emphasis on instanced pvp, the better. I heard of one server with only ever 1 AV instance as if it was a world zone, that would be awesome, with the end boss killed that faction's defences could reset back to starting. Would let underdog faction get kills in as each AV wouldn't be a race.

Add more pvp objectives to the world, and reward offense and defense with personal rewards like honor or some tokens for consumes and stuff, instead of vague PVE-affecting buffs like Silithus and EPL has and TBC zones had.

[Limitru]

As for the topic:

I'd would love to see something like this for the start:

- add more open world pvp incentives, give decent rewards, so it encourages players to be flagged

- a pvp area like gurubashi, but on a larger scale. let it have chests, herbs, mining nodes, etc and give it something like the tower system, where people are encouraged to fight.

- add 2 minute allrounder pvp trinket, which removes every single CC effect (sap for example)

- add respec marks, stack in 2, you get one for winning a bg or turning in 3 other marks (wsg, arathi, av)

- custom pvp battle in the open world
just think of it like the raceway
ashenvale shredders from horde vs. treant from alliance
both have set skills and you can fight each other for small awards (pvp potions, rep reflecting the pvp factions, marks of honor, stuff like that)

in general more incentives to flag in the open world and give people rewards for that

- bring back benches, tables, etc. to gurubashi. place was a hub for pvpers before and is now mostly dead ever since the change of scenery
if not for that, bring in something like an outlaw pub. a meeting place to que up, dueling, crafting, pvp dailies and stuff alike. would obviously be very cool in an open pvp area and result in bar brawls and alike.
____________________________

as for everything else said in this topic:

toxicity is not a factor of pvp engagement. it is well known fact, that people shit themselves over loot, bad raid perfomance, bad leadership, etc. toxicity in wow is a player problem, especially on servers with people from all over the world. ignore is there for a reason. gms can be contacted in case of that. do those two things and don't let it affect you. (i mean like serious insults, threats, etc.) if the matter is serious, i'm pretty sure the staff will do the best thing and get rid of those players.

moving people to another realm would also devide 2 small communities into 3, which is absolutely the worst for small pop servers. right now the server is seperated by HC and normal, which already makes it a pain for normal players to find any dungeon while leveling or even grouping, while the world already feels empty enough. a lot of the pvpers also raid, so excluding those, who want to pvp, losing raiders/pver's in the process. (or even players completely)

pvp assaults on cities, ganking, and alike are a community problem, that needs to be solved by said bunch.
don't blame pvpers for interacting with the games intended mechanics. if people ride into your city and kill npcs, you form a zerg and teach them a lesson for as long as they continue to try it.

and last thing to be said, that a lot of people complain about overgeared players and the usage of items (alch, engi, etc.) and that it's not about skill, which is not the case. the skill sealing begins with your personal playstyle, the willing to analyze and then optimize it, as well as learning from each encounter.
when i look at how some people play in general (bad or non existent keybinds, clicking spells, not taking full advantage of your skills), i do not wonder, why they are bad at pvp for example.
for me it is the same like it is in the FGC, you get bodied until you learn from what you have done wrong and try to find a solution to fix it. how often have i looked at footage of me taking an L in wow pvp and then saw the problem later on footage and got ideas of what i could have done better for my next encounter.

and you know why? because i didnt interact with a boss that stands still till you beat it, but instead another person, who thinks on their own and tests your reaction, decision making and gives you the incentive to play outside of the box.

on an end note:
gear is a reward and in a RPG absolutely crucial. you NEED to feel more powerful, than someone with less gear. if that wasn't the case, there would be little incentive to play in pve or pvp. if you gear upgrades don't make a good difference, you might as well wear no gear at all.

// Tenjin

[Yurei]

Turtle should jsut remain PvE/RP focused. PvP would ruin that.

[Leozan]

for me it is the same like it is in the FGC, you get bodied until you learn from what you have done wrong and try to find a solution to fix it. how often have i looked at footage of me taking an L in wow pvp and then saw the problem later on footage and got ideas of what i could have done better for my next encounter.

---

on an end note:
gear is a reward and in a RPG absolutely crucial. you NEED to feel more powerful, than someone with less gear. if that wasn't the case, there would be little incentive to play in pve or pvp. if you gear upgrades don't make a good difference, you might as well wear no gear at all.

// Tenjin

Id say its hard to use the FGC as a comparison on gear scaling since most fighting games don't have adjustable stat values as rewards. The difference between two ryu players is literally the skill one has over the other, not one having 2x attack dmg/hp. Even in poor matchups like grapplers vs zoners, a decent game should have some mechanical options for the grappler to bypass projectiles and close distance. I'd chalk that up to skill and understanding your class/fighter which you do mention.

I do agree that feeling powerful is a great incentive to competitive play, but I'd argue outwitting your human opponent with your experience and skill feels better than just steamrolling poorly geared grunts. I feel incentive for pvp should be that endless variance of competition against opponents first. It also helps grow the pvp scene as losing players will have an easier time catching up to vets (at least in stats, skill wise its up labwork as you mention).

Gear progression is another incentive both visually and mechanically (stat boosts), but if the divide between gear is too great it becomes an annoying hurdle new players have to struggle through (and not in the good way). Technically at the end of the day eventually everyone should get high rank gear, but I doubt your incentive to play will end then. For me it would increase.

[Snowwolf]

I skimmed the thread, so pardon me if I am repeating anyone else's thoughts.

1) pvp should be consenting only. My good pvp experiences have been in battlegrounds. My bad ones involve some asshole murdering me or my quest giver for laughs. (great way to start a new expansion, this guy camping the quest giver for a few hours.)

2) I like the idea of FINDING pvp. Like the world objectives. I like making the CHOICE to flag and claim a tower or whatever.

3) I really like that warfront thing I saw someone mention. I found those really fun on retail, even if they're not actually pvp.

4) small scale pvp sounds pretty neat. 5v5 or something small scale might help with queues?

I don't think separating the pvpers from the pve is a good idea--but I do think that it should be made very clear that any kind of dickish behavior is not okay. Like, people say "oh, the community will solve those problems on their own by not grouping with them" but that's really short sighted. The community isn't a singleminded omnipotent hivemind. There are new players every day. There are people who don't always remember names. There are people who will go "eh whatever"....

"Let the community deal with them" basically rewards shitty behavior because it doesn't' actually work. Not enough people will put their foot down and refuse to put up with it to actually discourage it, and shitty people are, at best, mildly inconvenienced, but who cares because there are always people who don't know any better, or don't care.

But the point of these thread isn't what we like about pvp, it's about fun ideas for pvp. I don't have much for that, but I'll think about it some more. <3

[Albel]

Make dishonorable kill matter. Spent your afternoon killing flight masters? Maybe the SW guards kill you on sight now, criminal scum.

[Limitru]

Soo, i had some ideas for an open pvp area.

Pirates Island:

- FFA flagged at all times
- Lot's of chests, herbs, mining nodes all over the island
- Captains chest that spawn every couple of hours with lots of unique items inside
~~~ Example: Pirate Related Gear (Admirals Hat, Shirts, Rapier, maybe associated craft recipes, maybe even some gadgets like the Gun that drops in Strat Live or some other flavourful stuff)
And a quest item, that lets you turn it in for : Bag of Herbs, Bag of Leather, Bag of Ore, Bag of Marks of Honor or even Bag of Gold. Repeatable!

I'd even go as far and leave the idea of a Captains chest by side and just pack the island with chests and npcs. Every chest contains that said quest item, so people will naturally interact with those, since they contain loot and potentially even more on a relativle short respawn. (30 minutes for chests, 15 minutes for nodes)

So the idea is, that you have a port guy to the Pirates Inn on the Island.
The Inn basically acts like the neutral hubs and lets neutral guards attack you if you pvp within, so you always got a safe place to retreat, but also check in with yer mates and talk about the adventures on the Island. Put some battleground and arena masters right there as well, so people can relax and que from the hub.

Then you just go out and around the area and explore what is has to offer and trying to collect treasures, while Pirates, Crabs and potentially other high level NPCs roam the area, as well as players. So you gotta always be on your toes or got to form a small crew to be safer within the said area. Since pirates aren't faction specific, it allows for xfaction grouping (like in gurubashi as well).

The most important thing is however to chose rewards that specifically makes you WANT to come back. I think getting an item that will let you chose the reward (whatever your focus is, pvers might take the herbs/ore, pvpers the marks of honor or gold) will greatly improve interaction and make people want to come back. On the other Hand you get cool little pirate cosmetics and stuff like that.


______________________________________________________

@Leozan:

Yeah the comparission was more based on the skill level improvements, that you have in FGs.
Obviously you got gear as a factor, but if you are smart about it, you can outplay geared characters, which happens all the time, at least on all the pvp servers i've been on.
Why i drew the comparission is to make clear, that skill begins with the smallest things in WoW. Starting at stuff like comfy, but also quick to press keybinds. Its kind of essential to first of all have all spells in your toolkit binded (at least all skills you are going to use in pvp), which a lot of people don't, or have like absurd bindings like F1-F8 for main spells. While this might be comfy for pve, it's something really counterproductive in pvp, since you gotta reach far away from your movement keys. Then you gotta learn matchups and what is effective against which class and how to solve unfortunate matchups. Ofc a geared rogue has a much easier time to shine and one shot someone in a stunlock, than a not so geared rogue. However if Rogue A has lots of gear, but lacks the basic fundamentals of pvp gameplay, Rogue B with less gear, but a higher skill and/or understanding can outplay you.

I can literally talk from experience on this server as well, where i came fresh out of HC with green shit gear and still made 90k honor in my first week. While getting stomped on and beaten for weeks, we still won matches because little things like a Clutch Heal or Silence, maybe even a lucky fish on Blackout turned the tides around, giving the team an oppertunity to make plays of their own.

And especially with bad gear, consumes and pvp gadgets will make you overcome the fear of getting one shotted right away. Lot's of those are easy to get and very inexpensive. (Free action potions, swiftness pots, teas, combat pots, swiftwatch, skull of impending doom, medicine pouch, engineering items, etc).

Besides that, getting to r8 while leveling takes just 1 HK per week, which allows you super easy and early access to powerful gear. So the cap to get to decently good gear is so low on turtle, that this actually should not be a problem.

@Snowwolf:

Idk, Turtle WoW has been the only server, where we could almost freely roam around the major cities doing our thing, while having almost no people to fight against us. On every other servers i have been, the enemy faction has been eliminated on the spot as soon as people caught them in their city. Heck, even out in the wild i come across people forming groups to counter ganks. Situations like that encourage teaming up and bonding with your faction members imo.

[Leozan]

I can literally talk from experience on this server as well, where i came fresh out of HC with green shit gear and still made 90k honor in my first week. While getting stomped on and beaten for weeks, we still won matches because little things like a Clutch Heal or Silence, maybe even a lucky fish on Blackout turned the tides around, giving the team an oppertunity to make plays of their own.

Love the pirate island idea and can certainly imagine well geared players getting outplayed by less geared players (warmane is an great example imo). Just had a proposal on what I quoted above.

Would you be against the idea of a lv60 quest where players had to turn in crafting mats for low grade pvp gear (exclude jewelry and trinkets) that’s 30% worse than the rank 6+ rare quality gear?
-Each slot would have a separate quest
- It would simply be a way for new players to get sub standard pvp so there’s less of a burden on the teams.
- aesthetically the armor/weapons would look very basic and either be red/ blue colored respectively (copy a respective low lv green quality armor set)

[Limitru]

Honestly i like the idea a lot. It also incentivizes people to gather in the open world, which i like a lot. It can also be a good counterpart to the Rep Gear we got, which is mostly good for pve. (lack of stam/armor especially, which is pretty important)

On the other hand, you can specifically target slots, that are pretty much bad or nonexistent and combine that with useful effects.

Example:
Theres a Belt from Tailoring, that removes movement impairing effects on a relatively large CD.
Take that effect and put it on those items.

Little things like that on offpieces make them extremely useful and enhances your toolkit, while being a good choice for fresh 60s, its a nice niche one for well geared players as well.

[Leozan]

Alright that’s a fair middle ground I can get behind.

Damn that tailoring example is excellent. Ya I forget how many odd items have unique abilities attached to them. That’s something to consider as well.

[Paw]

When I think of pvp on this server I am thinking the way of the panda. Why do we fight? To protect home and family. Maybe here the tenuous pact between the horde and alliance might not evaporate like in other places and we build rp and pvp around this theme. Does that sound reasonable?

[Xantros]

After reading most of the thread, I have some things to say and some ideas.
I am not an avid PvP-er but I did my humble share of it back in the day. In general, the most fun I had was in BGs or big open-world arranged battles, where teamwork was essential. The least fun I had was in world PvP. To get jumped by a lvl 60, when I'm only like 25 is really not fun, especially zone like STV aka Vietnam.

This is how I see it: PvP IS part of the game as much as PVE but some things need to be addressed.

The Good:
- Leveraging Teamwork to Success I believe holds greater value than individual gains.
- The Double Edged Sword: The Excitement Factor: "I am not in a safe zone, I have to be vigilant, ready for anything".
- The Sense of Accomplishment that you have reached a high Rank through diligence, skill or effort.
- PvP servers = high population, always.

The Bad:
- Class and Faction (Population) Imbalance often makes the server PvP one-sided. People will not switch to losing side...
- The Double Edged Sword: The Fear Factor "Oh no, I want to lvl but I can get killed at any time... *shivers* ".
- High Toxicity: Let's face it. Most toxic players are attracted by PvP because they can live out the power fantasy of crushing noobs and taking names. Has always been like that, in any game. Now it is one thing to beat someone in a BG who has less skill or less gear. But to take your lvl 60 to a lvl 25+ zone and kill everyone on sight, repeatedly, corpse-camping or going into the city, killing the flight master/banker/quest givers etc. that is just doing evil.
- The Slow Grind: Grinding is not fun unless it is for a cause like AQ event.
- Level based "Matchmaking" does not account for skill or gear. Newer players will suffer.
- Losing in a BG makes feels like a waste of time.

What we know:
- Cross-faction BG could solve the low-pop/ faction imbalance issue BUT the Turtle Devs don't know how to do it and I think the factions are hard-coded so it probably can't be done.
- Honor Decay is an uphill battle.
- Community cannot deal with toxicity very well.
- Classes could be tweaked for better balance but that would be what Blizzard has not managed in 15 years...

Now for some ideas:

Already mentioned:
- I agree that there should be some Honor Gain/Decay stopping Glyph if it is possible, which would take the stress off.
- Pirate Island with choosable treasure loot, tough mobs and exploration rewards is a neat idea. There could be more areas like that.
- Open World battle events are always welcome. Gives the game more life.

My ideas:
- Skill Based BGs: Once I played Neverwinter Online and there they had a BG system where everyone in the BG had increased HP and lowered damage % based on your lvl. So me as a lvl 12 could fight 4x higher lvl players for an extended time. This works great with a capture the flag/occupy zone game.

So, I propose to have a tabard, with stats according to your class + damage, high stamina/hp and mitigation. If possible, this tabard should nullify other gear stats and only be usable in BGs. For classes who use weapons, either give an alternative weapon with tweaked damage or reduce that to a small amount where the stats and skill bonuses would matter.

IMO this would make some of the Good Aspects shine: Teamwork, Sense of Accomplishment and elevate the class uniqueness. no more gear stomps!

Keep in Mind: Need to balance melee to casters with the weapon damage and spell damage.

That is my 2 cents, I hope I helped Now I sleep... zzZZ

[Djijin]

The Tabard idea Xantros mentioned could be used to choose your faction in BG's. Perhaps an RP solution. Some reputation factions would defer to a side that is aligned to either alliance or horde.

It would be handy to know who is short in the queue, so you can choose which side you fight for, but you pick a tabard (that only is visible in BG and overrides your current or no tabard) so an alliance could play horde or vice versa, but in an aligned faction with horde/alliance. That way they aren't technically horde, but show up as that faction assisting horde just that once.

The key would be it being visibly easy to tell which side is needed more (or simply be told one side is currently lacking), and the tabard letting others know how and why they are on the other faction. At least this is by choice and not randomly, forcing those not willing to participate in faction swapping for BGs.

[Valadorn]

Just a tought, are the people saying to remove PvP gear so they can also play, the same that said that if they remove the +3 from AV more people will join ? Cuz that solution didnt increase the number of horde, all it did was halve the number of alliance. Taking away pvp progression will do the same, it will Just kill the pvp community, why are u guys so determined to keep the people that enjoy pvp content more out of pve content ?

[Paw]

I'm just gonna put this in here because I would like to remember you that what's important.

Now that it's all said and done. Let's continue!

[Jimmicz]

I’d favor a more horizontal progression where the main divide against old and new players is mostly skill based than gear based.

As for a system implementation, I’d guess expand or retune gear stat/requirments. There could also be lv 60 custom crafting quests given by battlemasters that simply have players turn crafting mats to get low grade starter pvp gear for new players (even have it look low grade, basic red vs blue cloth/leather/mail/plate armor). *I’ll have a better example of this end of the week.*

There's no such thing as PVP gear in Vanilla as none of the stats are purely PVP related, like T2 set is useful in PVP and rank 14 gear is very,very good prior AQ40 gear for raiding when it comes to certain classes. so what you need is an easy way to get geared up - which should be available via the dailies with custom factions if I'm not wrong, PVP gear became a thing in TBC with the introduction of resilience.

[Jimmicz]

Your entire post can be summarized as "I don't like PvP and I don't want it where I play."

I like to PvP, and I wouldn't want to be "on a different server".

If you like PVP you should be on PVP server though...

[Valadorn]

Battlegrounds are part of PvE servers too, I dont see why you guys are so against it ?

[Jimmicz]

Blood Ring is going to be cross-faction and have reputation rewards at some point. But turning other battlegrounds cross-faction won't happen. 1. I do not know how to do it. 2. It goes against everything WoW is about.

Ranking on Turtle is much easier comparing to the original Vanilla, removing decay would make it even more easy in my point of view.

Do you know how much you have to play to get to R14 even on Turtle?

/ Sorry, I shouldn't ask a rhetoric question like this: You might have guessed it - it's a lot. I'd say it's playing every night, for about 3 months (give or take a bit). A two week vacation will throw you back a month.

What would you think about just reducing honor decay (e.g. from 20% to 15%) to reduce the pressure?

it is 3 months exactly if you hit standing 1 every single week. I mean I do get that you might not have the time to do it, but then that's for you to decide if the grind is worth it or not and not for the devs to make it easier for you so you can have the reward you want. It's like asking for Raids to be easier just because you don't have the time to progress them....

[Limitru]

So, I propose to have a tabard, with stats according to your class + damage, high stamina/hp and mitigation. If possible, this tabard should nullify other gear stats and only be usable in BGs. For classes who use weapons, either give an alternative weapon with tweaked damage or reduce that to a small amount where the stats and skill bonuses would matter.

IMO this would make some of the Good Aspects shine: Teamwork, Sense of Accomplishment and elevate the class uniqueness. no more gear stomps!

Keep in Mind: Need to balance melee to casters with the weapon damage and spell damage.

I think the core idea is good, just not viable.

This would be a horrible thing to balance out, especially with classes that outshine any other class that are a lot more gear depended. Some classes would gain an insane amount of hp and mitigation that way. Give this to a shadow priest or bear druid and you have just that. (Keep in mind, you can still pop consumes as well, expanding that even more.)

I don't know why people are so obsessed with making vanilla balanced.
It's just simply insane to me, that people want to deny others accomplishments in regard of gear to make it easier for them, instead making them learn and invest time to get to the same point. At this point might as well take out all stats on all items and make them all cosmetic only.

Until you realize, that that wouldnt solve any problem as well, because some classes depend on the gear a lot more, than others.
That naked rogue? yep, he is still going to kill you in one CC chain.
That warrior not having a good weapon anymore, making them effectively useless against everyone.
Some speccs even live completely of good gear and trinkets, like POM Pyro to oneshot people.
And they should get one shotted. People worked for that and should be rewarded with such.

If you want balanced pvp, you gotta look anywhere but Vanilla PVP. (unless you completely change everything about the classes, game mechanics)
I'm all down for mages and rogues having reduced CC durations on Sheep and Sap in pvp. But simply reducing the duration on players would nerf their abilities. Instead the solution is a 2min CD trinket, that just removes ALL CC's, wearable by any classes.

[Jimmicz]

Whilst admittedly not exactly tied to the PvP system itself, I'd love to see more importance on faction leaders, and city raids.

City raids have been a huge source of enjoyment for me in the past, both offensively and defensively. It would be cool to see that be a more frequent thing with some custom quest incentivizing people to for example kill a certain amount of guards along with the faction leaders, or to defend a faction leader. You get the idea.

That said, I can only imagine the horror upon any hardcore player's face seeing a raid of lvl 60 PvP tagged players cruise through their beloved main city. And of course there's always arguments against a primarily PvE oriented event (depending on defensive ferocity) providing any PvP related rewards.

If you are ranking raiding a city to get 500 honor bonus for killing the Faction leader is the most silly thing you can do because you will get more penalty with Dishonorable Kills than you gain by killing the Leader.

[Jimmicz]

Well anyway as somebody who ranked on the classic I think most of the stuff you guys mentioning comes from a lack of people taking part in PVP. There's not much the devs can do about the pop.

What you can do though, is to introduce a TBC-like system with toke exchange npcs. That way people can farm honor at their own pace and won't be losing out by taking a break.

Removing Rank Decay would make Rank14 completely ridiculous and you would end up with everybody in BG having rank 14 gear.

+ adjusting the BGs to the small pop - meaning scale AV down to like 10vs10 or something, so the games can pop more often.

Making it more balanced? In a team-based environment, not sure how doable that is... From what I can remember BGs here were imbalanced because it was 3vs3 instead of 10vs10.