Don't you think the people who spent hours and hours to get this gear in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair deserve a "peak" over those who don't spend this amount of time?

Those people sacrify a lot to get this equipment. Not every PvE build (nor Equip) can be used for PvP and so they need something different (or a lot of gold to change their build on a daily basis).

But something to think about:
We have had two members at Rank 14 and they bought all this shiny pvp stuff. Now they wear this equipment in instances when they don't tank so it must be something good. Invest some (ok .. a lot) time and you will get nice equipment through pvp.

Do you really want to see no difference between a guy who playes one hour a week and a guy who invests more time? Gear is a measurement for "invested time in the game"
 

How to improve WoW´s PvP:

- set all players back to level 20
- equip them with a standard green set
- deactivate all UI mods

and the final and way best method to fix WoWs PvP game:

Close down WoW.exe and start quake3.exe when players enter "battlegrounds".

Im telling you 5 years from now, we still will try to fix the PvP in WoW II. or WoW I. or Random_MMO_PvE-PvP_Mix_03. It´s like trying to mix oil with water. I just see all these WoW "PvP" videos where people trying to show of their skills. In 90% of these people only show off them outgearing their enemies: "See Paladins are great PvP DPS, cause my Sulfuras wiped out this auction house equiped lvl 50 like nothing!" "That´s awesome dude!"

I think PvP in WoW is great as like it is, cause its forces you to raid to keep your chances in the PvP game. Its like combining two grinds in a perfect way, to keep everyone running. It´s brilliant but it has nothing to do with players comparing their skills and it never will be. The worst thing they could do is to trying to regulate this, i mean the best advertisment for their endgame, is to getting cut to pieces by some players of your servers endgame guild in battlegrounds. Sure it sucks first, but after a while everyone will think "man i need this guys gear, so let´s raid". It´s working like a charm.
 

Don't you think the people who spent hours and hours to get this gear in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair deserve a "peak" over those who don't spend this amount of time?

No, I don't think so. Because PvE and PvP are unrelated activities. The basic principle of PvE is being rewarded for having spent time. The more you play, the higher your level, and the better your gear.

The basic idea behind PvP is that artificial intelligence is too stupid to provide you with a deserving opponent and fun combat. The fun in PvP lies in two people with the same basic chance of success fighting against each other, with the outcome of the fight being determined by skill. Using BWL gear in PvP is equivalent to doping in sports. It gives one of the participants an initial advantage over the other, which in most cases can't be overcome with superior skill, so in the end the less skilled but better geared participant wins.
 

So you want a fair fight? No chance in WoW. Even with the same gear the different classes nad races prevent such an idea because it is too hard to balance it. Also PvP in WoW hardly relies on skill. When a warrior charges he has a huge advantage and if he has Cooldown on his deathwish he is in serious trouble. Do you resist a Fear or not? Do you crit three times in a row or not once in the entire fight? WoW is too fast to overcome a lucky/ unlucky series of dice rolls no matter how short.

But the worst part is: Most of the players don't want to fight fair. I play on a RP-PvP Server but I am not interested much in pvp. So I usually don't start a fight but get attacked sometimes. No attack (and I mean _NONE_) was under "fair" conditions. 5+ lvl higher, 1on2+, against a mob, while eating/ trinking and so on.

You can say "Ok, thats just Open PvP but what about the BG?" Well, last week I was the first time ever in a BG. Me and my buddies entered the BG and about ten hordies left at once. All of them were from one of the Top- PvP guilds and nearly as good equiped as we are. So only the random stayed and of course we slaugtered them despite being outnumbered. We did this four times this evening, hoping to face them but they kept running away. I was told this is normal behaviour but it killed my interest in PvP entierly.

I played a lot of counterstrike before WoW and I completly agree: the most fun was against an equally skilled and equipped opponent in a 1on1. But I can't do this for hours, sometimes I need to relax and just don't want to move inch by inch with all my sense turned to max. Fortunatly most of the time one side had a serious advantage due to position, money (and therefore equipment) or just a lower number of "n00bies" in their team. ;)
 

Imagine if Blizzard offered 2 types of battle ground: Type A allowed players to use all the gear they had accumulated and Type B gave players a standard kit out. Which would be more popular I wonder?
 

Lots of stuff for me to comment on here I see. This is a problem that I saw a long time ago.

If you are interested in PvP and not so much PvE (And then espescially raiding.), or just can't, this is really a problem. I'm a prime example of this. I've got two L60's. Both of them are equipped in mostly blues, and one actually has one epic (the Lobotomizer). At the moment my account is inactive for the very reason covered in this post. However, while I still was active I spent most of my online time in the BG's (those chars are on a PvE server). But of course, having a job and stuff to do in RL I just don't have the time to commit to getting rank 14. Well, unless I want to neglect my job and RL of course, but there's no way I want to do that. So basically I would spend all of my online time in PUGs in the BGs getting slaughtered by people in BWL gear knowing that I would never ever get good enough gear to be able to have any chance whatsoever against them. In conjunction with my inability to raid the honor system creates a wall that I just can't pass. This is because of that while WoW rewards time spent online in PvP the worthwhile rewards are only attainable with a lot of time online in as few sittings as possible.

If one guy spends two months or whatever getting to rank 14 and then drops all PvP activity he will still have better gear than another who might have spent as much time in PvP, just not all that time in a row. Here is where all that talk of being rewarded for online time really fails. If that should really be true then the second guy above should also have the same gear as the first one. The difference would be that while the first one got his gear in two months while the second one could get his in, say 4-8 months.

I'll compare all this to Daoc (Pre-TOA. I stopped playing a while after TOA was released.) which in opinion had a much more well thought-out PvP system. There max level was more or less an equalizer regarding PvP. The epic armour was somewhat easily attainable. Comparable to doing Scholo or something once in a 5-man team. You could get better equipment of course, but the difference was relatively small. Definitely not as huge as it is in WoW if you would compare a char in greens/blues with one with full BWL gear or better. Strategy and tactics had more importance than gear.

Now also compare the PvP rewards in both games. In WoW there's of course the honor system and in Daoc there was realm points. There's two big differences between them. The first of course being that realm points gave abilities and not gear. The second that realm points were awarded pretty much according to time spent in PvP, and not necesserily consecutive time. Of course there was difference between people with higher realm rank and those with lower, but it wasn't that hard to get around realm rank 5 for example with a bit of time spent in PvP.

Blizzard has indeed managed to tune their game so that people that can't play for long consecutive time (Usually referred to as casuals.) are at a disadvantage at almost each and every turn. These are also usually referred to as being about 90% of their paying customers. Then they throw them some bone now and then (Tier 0.5 comes to mind, what a fiasco.) but fail even with making that something worthwhile. The rest of the time they keep adding stuff for the remaining 10% of the players. It does indeed seem to me like they are spending 90% of their time making things better for those 10%.
 

The problem with PvE raiders smashing PvP players will only continue until Blizzard puts in a ladder system. I've thought it out and I think one of the few systems out there that would work would be one based off honor rank. If you go strictly off gear then players would just equip green gear before joining a queue. I discuss my reasoning further here:

http://relmstein.blogspot.com/2006/08/wow-battleground-topic-3-ladder-system.html
 

I have high hopes for Fury fixing the PvP disaster that is in all the MMORPGs. It might not, but the idea behind it gives me hope.

http://www.unleashthefury.com/
 

Are you making an adjustment for cloth and leather armor? I mean, if you put a mage in plate armor, it wouldn't be very fun to PvP him, even if you have the same set.

Still, the hardest thing about PvP (for my main, anyway), is shamans and totems, but that is because I am inept.
 

A little thing to note with the picture given of the super team is with no team changes they are likely pretty beatable despite all the legendaries. They are standing in the WSG room. Have not completely analyzed the armor but must be mostly warriors and paladins. Could be a hunter in their somewhere. No shaman because they are alliance.

In WSG a horde group with druids, shaman, mages and balance of other classes should have no problem taking their flag. Sneak in with druids. Ice and totem to let your druid get outside easy with the flag. Only issue would be killing their flag carrier but with concentrated attack should be doable. After all who has ever known a pally with a legendary weapon to actually heal instead of DPS?

They likely will dominate the kill stats but not necessarily always win a WSG against a smarter balanced blue equipped team.
 

I used to love PvP with my Druid...of course I was in the 40ish level bracket where gear really didn't make the man (or cat in my case). In this range it was more about what spec you were and how you played your class. Skill really did make a difference. As soon as I rolled into the 50s, where higher-level instance items/gear were now available to players, I lost interest. Skill and playstyle became a smaller factor next to insert "static drop I've been farming for the past week to get to one shot you with" here.

I also found the battle being more about hacking up players with said shiny items vs. attempting to adhere to the objectives of the BG (yes. There really are flags in WSG. Grab one and bring it back. Ok?)

I'm very interested in the BG changes which match up players based on rank/gear quality. If it works, it could renew my interest in PvP/BGs.
 

Using BWL gear in PvP is equivalent to doping in sports. Well said Tobold.
 

I think the ladder system would work if, at the time you joined the queue, a snap shot is taken of your character and the gear they're wearing, trinkets, etc.

Then when you actually enter the BG your character will automatically be equipped with their "snap shot" gear and nothing else. No switching of weapons or armor in the BG will be allowed. When you leave the BG for whatever reason, AFK out, etc, you will be re-equipped with the gear you were wearing immediately prior to entering.

I think I mentioned in another post that the casual players sick of getting slaughtered by 12-year old Grand Marshalls in full Epic PvP gear would jump at the chance to enter a BG where everyone is wearing the same Tier x gear.
 

I just noticed that there's a new preview of the expansion on pc.ign.com which handles some changes of PvP. Some seem good at first glance, and others not so good. Having the factions fight over a town with unique vendors with items not possible to buy anywhere else in an MMO where one faction usually outnumbers the other by far? Ludicrous...
 

I hear what you're saying, and it's a tempting idea to believe. I used to believe it. Since then, I've played in PUGs filled with guys in epic gear, and organized groups filled with guys in blue gear. The guys in blue win; the guys in epics don't. Organization beats the heck out of gear quality, and anybody who says otherwise is only playing in PUGs.

Yes, sure, there are epic trinkets and what-not that allows mages and whoever to turn into massive destroyers. But that only matters on the 1v1 fights -- an organized group can outplay a guy who can, in the end, only nuke one guy before all his cooldowns are up. A clever flag carrier, a good midfield, an adaptive and responsive team that communicates -- that's what wins battlegrounds.
 

(That being said, I'm also looking forward to the changes in the expansion -- the current ladder system is busted and encourages people to play 14+ hour pvp days if they want the epic rewards.)
 

Tilt:

Sure, if the epic guys don't care about the strategy of winning the BG or just don't have a clue the blue-equipped ones will win. That's just because kills doesn't matter in the objectives for winning. But if the epic ones just have a roughly similar level of strategy the blue ones will lose in about 90%, if not more, of the cases.
 

I think this is a great change to the PvP system
 

well i think that we should leave it just the way it is. If people put so much time into it to get the best gear then they should have it. Thats the whole point of the game is to become the best and own everyone in pvp.
 

so all the people that dont like it can quit for all i care thats the fun of the game to try to be the best and once your there to own everyone else!