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To all those who keep whining about Blizzard turning World of Warcraft (WoW) into a PvP game, I’ll voice again the evidence to the contrary.

Gear

The ease at which one can “grind” for PvP gear is not indicative of the ease most people have to actually earn them; most people who PvP for top-end gear, like those pulling high ratings in the Arena, are similarly trying to win Battlegrounds and Arenas. This is much the same as cutting-edge raiding guilds using top-end players to crank through new encounters. For every PvP player who does the bare minimum to earn Arena Points, Marks of Honour, and Honour points themselves, there’s a “casual” raider along for the ride once a guild has an instance on farm status, who is also doing the bare minimum to earn Badges and epic drops.

The difference between the hardcore PvP enthusiast and the hardcore raider is that the former cannot earn PvE gear by turning in Marks of Honour. However, the hardcore PvE raider can (as of patch 2.4) turn in Badges for PvP pieces. This gives the raider many more options for gear than the PvP enthusiast, who is limited to the latest season’s gear plus the Vindicator’s pieces. In other words, players who limit themselves to PvP get the major shaft when it comes to gear selection, while hardcore raiders get the prime choice of instance drops.

Never mind that raiders who have their instances on farm status are guaranteed multiple drops per run. PvP enthusiasts, meanwhile, grind honour for hours without necessarily even earning a single piece of useful loot. Add to this the threshold for some PvP requiring a specific personal Arena rating. This means that to earn the remaining pieces of an Arena set require that the player acquiring it have established their role in combat, whereas no such requirement is intrinsic when it comes to raiders. That is to say, while we can assume that almost everyone in a raid is pulling their weight, there can still be a couple here and there who don’t, and the fact that they’re along for the ride is more indicative of them being on welfare than anyone else.

Instances

The number of Heroic dungeons and raids available to the late-end-game PvE player cannot be counted on one’s fingers. All of this content happens to have been released during or after the release of Burning Crusade, which was admittedly necessary because of the increased level cap. Nonetheless, Burning Crusade brought only a single new Battleground to the table, while the existing three were slightly tweaked. Where is the Battleground love? Isn’t it time for new PvP content, especially considering that the only way to buy PvP gear is from Marks of Honour obtained after completing Battlegrounds? The World PvP material is a nice addition to the game, but utterly pointless given the rewards for completing the respective objectives. For this content to matter, the rewards need to be akin to Badges, and the respective loot needs to be accordingly appropriate.

Every new instance brings new encounters, and each major boss therein brings with him a new strategy for beating him. Battlegrounds, meanwhile, have remained relatively static during their history, offering no new strategies. Eye of the Storm was a step in the right direction, but only a small step. Meanwhile, PvE enthusiasts not only have a larger pick of gear, but a larger pick of instances to choose from.

Lore

Every Battleground has a story, and a real-world location to zone in from. Some even have quests associated with them, giving Battlegrounds some semblance of connectivity to the rest of WoW’s background. Just as Blizzard hasn’t added new Battlegrounds, the lore behind PvP encounters is pretty poor. In the PvE game, every race has associated quests that earn reputation, and reveal parts to a greater story. Meanwhile, Battleground encounters offer relatively little in the way of a greater story, and little in the way of race association. There isn’t even a Battleground that focuses on the plight of the Gnomes or Tauren, while every other race is in some way accounted for in a Battleground scenario.

What of it?

Fixing the gear issue is easy: let players exchange honour, Marks of Honour, and “PvP Badges” earned from World PvP quests/achievements for PvE-appropriate gear. If Blizzard isn’t going to lock out top-end PvP gear to PvE players, then the opposite should be true as well. Make the PvP grind longer by adding a high honour/marks/badge price to each offered item, but at least let players earn Tier-level gear in some way. This will do exactly what epic PvP gear is supposed to do outside the PvP context: encourage more raiding by allowing some players to skip certain drops in the PvE instance/raid progression.

Admittedly, this is exactly what a lot of PvE die-hards are against, because they feel PvP rewards useable in a PvE context somehow diminishes their accomplishments. In reality, the rewards for completing a PvE objective shouldn’t be reflective in the gear a character wears, because that gear, like it or not, has uses outside the PvE context. That is to say, if PvP gear shouldn’t be advantageous in a PvE setting because it wasn’t earned by completing PvE objectives, then similarly, PvE gear shouldn’t be useable in PvP areas. Obviously, such a rule doesn’t work, however, because of a little thing we call World PvP; in the end, we have a great world outside instances, and in this world, both PvE and PvP elements stand together, particularly on PvP-labeled servers.

So what’s the solution? Give PvE players first crack at PvE loot by making choice PvE loot via PvP rewards costly, and make the reverse true as well. That way, no PvE gamer will have a full set of PvP gear (and vice versa) if they’re not dedicated to the respective gameplay. By the time most hardcore raiders earn the badges necessary to purchase the best PvP gear, that gear will be outdated because a new Arena Season is on the way.

To make up for the limited selection of PvP gear, there should again be Battleground-specific rewards, perhaps grinding reputation with the requisite faction, earning Marks of Honour, etc. The Arena Season gear is great, but there really ought to be a larger selection of level 70 gear for PvP enthusiasts, considering the same is true for their PvE counterparts. Even if these Battleground-specific rewards are tied to a Battleground rating system akin to what sid67 proposed recently: just as with Arena teams, allow players to form consistent Battleground teams for long-term reward objectives.

Unfortunately, the idea of Battleground teams may be too much for guilds to handle, but that’s in chief part because the current guild system is poor and not social enough. For Battleground teams to truly work, there needs to be dedicated chat channels for these teams outside the guild context, and just as today’s guilds should be rated based on PvE progression, Battleground teams should be rated accordingly.

Come to think of it, some gear should be restricted to certain achievements, and that’s exactly why players should be able to ally themselves to very specific teams, be they Arena teams, Battleground teams, or Instance teams. Let them reap a reward or two specific to their respective accomplishments, even if it’s just a mount, a title, or a cool trinket.

In the meantime, let’s focus less on the PvP bashing, and really look at the chief focus of Blizzard’s continued development of WoW. The players need to push for balance across the PvP/PvE spectrum, even if that balance is simply for the sake of fairness in gear, because right now, it’s still in the favor of PvE raiders.

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