Prepare to be enlightened as we unravel the complexities of World of Warcraft's PvP ranking enigma. Brace yourself for a paradigm shift as we dissect the surprising revelation that an 1800 MMR now places you in the top 15% – a stark contrast to seasons past. Our latest episode takes you on a journey through the EU shuffle's current landscape and scrutinizes the accessibility of elite sets, which remain frustratingly out of reach for 85% of PvP gladiators. We don't just highlight the problems; we offer tangible solutions, advocating for a revamped, inflation-free rating scale and proposing a more equitable distribution of rewards. By pushing for transparency and consistency, we aim to foster a PvP environment where players are encouraged to engage throughout the entire season, not just in the last-minute frenzy.
As we venture deeper into the World of Warcraft PvP saga, we explore how PvP has shaped the heart of the game since its inception, and how the current player distribution affects the competitive arena. The conversation turns analytical as we consider implementing a percentile-based ranking system akin to those seen in games like Overwatch, providing a clearer picture of a player's true prowess. We tackle the skew in MMR distribution across Solo Shuffle and 3v3 Arenas, and the consequent impact of meta changes – remember the demon hunter heyday? The episode concludes with an impassioned call for a ranking system that represents skill accurately and boosts participation across the board, ensuring that the PvP battlegrounds remain a place where every warrior has their fair shot at glory.
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. I grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this midweek episode. We'll be going over PvP mainly and we're going to be looking at the MMR and kind of what we could possibly do to help it out. What are the problems with it? You know all of that sort of stuff. So, without further ado, I do have a post here and I will be sharing some of my own stats as well. But essentially this is how the post goes. Right now in eu shuffle 1500 is average, 1800 is top 15 immediately. You've got something. That's a problem there, because 1800 I never associate with being very high.
Speaker 1:
Um, in my personal opinion, I always associate 1800 as where the average sort of player ends up at the end of the season. Um, in my opinion, the main realistic and appealing rewards for most players are the elite sets. Right now, 85 of players don't have the full elite sets. Uh, yes, if you're going off of the stats, 85% do not have the Elite sets. If it is true that 1800 and above is top 15%. Now the Elite sets used to cost, or used to be able to get them at 2.2k MMR, and then it was 2k and then it was 1800, as it is today in Dragonfly. Now that's slowly been going down, unless um sort of gate kept behind the rating system. But to have 85 of the player base right now not have the like elite sets according to these uh like that, then that is pretty bad. I'm not sure if it takes into account alts and stuff like that, but you know it is what it is. Most players stuck 1500 to 1750 with no rewards and waiting for the last three days of a five month season to maybe push. No matter what, in any sort of mmo, if you do have an injection of inflation, this will always happen. I'm afraid um, people always have the will always wait until that last week of the season because that is when MMR is at its highest. Therefore there is the least amount of resistance, and that alone is a problem because it means that there's less participation over the course of the entire season.
Speaker 1:
And obviously you want, you would rather have more of a steady season where people are constantly playing, rather than just nothing happening for five months and then a giant influx at the end of the season. It's kind of like mythic plus. If you were to do mythic Plus all within the last week of the season, you would have the same amount of pushback as you would at the very start of the season. There is no inflation. There's no anything. There is just how quickly can you sort of do your dungeons, essentially to get the most out of it and to get your Mythic Plus rating. There is no inflation in your Mythic Plus rating. Now, as people do more and more Mythic raiding and get better gear, then there's some sort of inflation, but it's nothing in comparison to PvP.
Speaker 1:
Pvp does have a set amount of injected inflation into the system, which varies from season to season season, which is a bit stupid. They should do it on a fine uh set amount each week, but that still brings it in the problem of people waiting until the very last week because there's less resistance and that's when you'll just be able to get the highest that you can be within the season, which is not okay, and that's when you'll just be able to get the highest that you can be within the season, which is not okay and it's something that shouldn't be in the game. It should be avoided essentially. Now, with regards to inflation, I don't think there personally should be any. I think every single season you should find the medium of what people want, essentially, like, let's put, you have a scale of zero to three thousand rating yeah, something along that line, if no inflation at all. If people want to get their rank one at the very start of the season, they can do. They can just go for their three thousand rating and go from there. Um, if people want to do it the last day, they can without any like worries or fears.
Speaker 1:
Uh, this way, people who are like 1500 can have something to push for and it isn't based off of inflation. So it's very much. Okay, I'm 1500 and there is only zero to 3000 rating. You know, I don't have to worry about inflation at all. I don't need to wait. I want to push now. I feel like pushing now because I feel like I'm playing really well this week. You know something like that and my goal is 1700 or something like that. We'll go with that and they can actively see their progress. They don't need to wait until, like, the end of the season to see see their progress. They don't need to wait until like the end of the season to see, oh okay, like, I managed to get my 1700, but that's only because inflation has been rising for the past four or five months. You know that kind of deal. It kind of deflates the purpose of the achievement. That makes sense. Um, anyways, finishing the post system? No sense. Should reduce the criteria for elite sets or add more inflation. That should be top 5%, not top 1%. Saw someone suggest a top 1,000 leaderboard for elite players. Sounds good and top 1 to 0.1% of players still have rank one titles to fight for. Yes, I do think it should be a percentage based. I don't think it should be based on your current rating because, again, the rating will always be a problem if you're injecting inflation. People always want to push it at the end of the season, um, which just kills the game off during like the mid part of the season when people actually want to play and just want to play for fun. You know that kind of deal.
Speaker 1:
Now I consider myself decent at the game, pretty decent. I'm 2,400 in shuffle, 2,460, something like that. I don't know that's from playing 100-odd rounds. I can't remember how many exactly, but it's 100-odd and that's relatively good. Now the thing is, I would like the mount. No, not the mount, I would like the title for you know, winning 100 rounds above 2,400 rating. I can't be asked to queue. That's the point of the past two seasons. As long as I get 2400, I'm happy. But I'm about 2k in threes now. This is with playing hundreds of games.
Speaker 1:
Now this could be that we're just not as good as we think we are. But I've gotten a glad mount before and this is when I was a lot worse at the game, and herein lies the problem. I'm 2K now but I'm higher placed on the leaderboards. I'm top like 4,000 players or something in EU. So I'm higher placed now than what I was in Shadowlands Season 2 when I was 2,700 rating, when I was like top 6,000 or something, which shouldn't make any sense, should it? So I've gotten better because I've gone up 2,000 ranking in EU, but the MMR is 700, like rating less than what it was when I was like 6600th or something in EU.
Speaker 1:
How does that make sense? It's because inflation was like messed up in, in, like they skyrocketed at Shutterlands, uh um, what is it? I'm saying the words too much. They skyrocketed. Shadowlands, uh mmr, and rating ridiculously high. So rank one night right now is about 2900 to 3k. Yeah, that's like the highest player in eu. Now, back in shadowland season two, that was their like rank one player in eu was about 3600 and above somewhere around that. How does that make any sort of sense? That is a 700 mmr or rating difference and yet it's the same people who are rank one now as who were rank one in Shadowlands. So you tell me, how does that make sense? Because it doesn't. It shouldn't the MMR shouldn't fluctuate that much between one expansion.
Speaker 1:
Now I think, ditch the MMR inflation entirely and go with a different system. I'm not sure what that system would be. I would like to suggest just a fixed MMR, kind of like what Overwatchwatch had in overwatch, one where you had, you know, one to five thousand, uh, mmr, but make sure people can't go below a certain mmr, so 700 or 500, something like that. Um, because people will actively throw to see how low they can get, which isn't good at all. Now, if you do this, you'll need to maybe adjust where people are and what the rewards you get are and stuff like that. That's fine. But as long as there's no injection of MMR and people don't wait until the last second of the season to play, because people will still be keeping an eye on their like positioning at the end of the season just in case someone has overtaken them and they do need to make a last minute push to like, get that spot back and reclaim it. So there is always going to be that. Still, there's that last day of the season type of um rush almost, but it allows people to be more active during the season and have it have more meaning um. So I think go with an overwatch style system that they had in overwatch one. In my opinion, I think that that was a very good system and I didn't see really any flaws with it. Um, there were obviously a couple, but there's going to be a couple with any sort of um like inflation or system that you put into place or competitive, no matter what. I mean. League of legends probably has its like, has its own uh ranking system and that will have problems with it. Um, you know overwatch does now overwatch did previously, like at the start of overwatch 2. You know there's many different systems out there that you can use for this sort of thing and all of them have their flaws and benefits, but I don't think this supports a live and active player base when you're wanting to keep PvP alive.
Speaker 1:
Pvp is a very big, fundamental part of World of Warcraft and, although some people are like, no, it isn't a lot more people play PvE. It's a big part of World of warcraft and, although some people are like I know it isn't, you know a lot more people play pve. It it's a big part of world of warcraft. It has been since burning crusade, since classic, even with ranking systems where you know the old 1 to 14 ranking systems like it's crazy. Um, I think that it should be percent based. Who gets like top one percent or whatever you can also do top 500, you know, like in overwatch, all of that stuff. It just makes it a lot easier for people to track how good they are and to see them going up and down and stuff like that and just where they basically are in the world or region. Rankings would be nice, like something like that would be amazing. Um, but gladbound is currently top one percent of players.
Speaker 1:
Now the amount of people that are currently playing is obviously not as much as what we would like. Um, so hopefully more people do get like a more able to play. Um, it's absolutely crazy the amount of people that are like saying that it's fine and a lot of these people are 2400 in solo shuffle but they have never gotten above 18 like 50 in threes and that shouldn't be a thing. That shouldn't be a thing. Either solo shuffle, mmr like, is inflated really high, or the threes like bracket is essentially deflated really really low, and that's that's not good at all. So here's the like, essentially the percentile of things. So you have 100 of people and the amount of people that covers in eu is 2800. Yeah, so you have 100, around around 30,000 people who are contributing in Shuffling Season 3 in solo shuffle.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you were to take 100% of that, the highest player is 1800, lowest player is obviously 1k or not below, because it doesn't take that into account. It's 1k essentially if you are to go, or not below, because it doesn't take that into account. It's 1K essentially. Yeah, if you are to go to 85, 83% around there of the Solo Shuffle percentile, that's around 2,700 people, not 2,700, 27,000 people, yeah, out of 30 000 and that is above 1800 or above, yeah, so it's it's absolutely crazy. You have 3000 people above the 1800 bracket in solo shuffle that are, you know, pushing on and actually wanting to get more. So it shows that people just want the Elite set and Solo Shuffle is the best way to do that because of, essentially, the MMR gains, which is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:
If you were to look at Arena, let me just pull up the stats here you are looking at something that is kind of crazy. You are looking at something that is kind of crazy. So, okay, this is a graph that, oh, wow, that is a lot of demon hunters. Oh my God. Demon hunters make up 20% of the like things that are played. That's kind of crazy. But essentially, like it doesn't have the distribution, there we go, there we go, sorry. So you have total players about 5,000 people. Yeah, we'll say 5,000 people.
Speaker 1:
In this, like season three, like 3v3 bracket rating, 100% of the percentile is at 3K and I can barely see that 3K actually, oh my God. So the total amount of people in 2,900 rating-ish is 18. Let me see if I can even hover over this. It's so tiny, it's like I don't think I can. It won't even let me hover over this. So I'm guessing it's one person, one person that is 3k or above, which is absolutely crazy. So you have 5,000 people in this pool and at 3,500 players you have the percentile is 65%. Yeah, so 1500 players above 1800 are playing in season three, three V threes, and that's crazy. So you have like the same amount of people playing at 1900 as you do at 2100, which should never be a thing. It should be a constant downsize in the graphing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:
The average player where it peaks the most is 1500, 1600 and 1700, and again, this is your average. Like players, this is where I expect your average players to be. But when you get to about 2400, you have 907 players there, which, again, fine. If you really want a super exclusive mount, that's fine, but it shouldn't be that low, especially when rank 1 is, I suppose, 18%. It does make sense for them to be very high and top 0.1%, but at the same time you are the.
Speaker 1:
The averages are all out of whack because I'm playing people who, for example, just picked up a demon hunter when they were very powerful and they were at my rating and they'd never been there before, just simply because they were playing the meta spec. That shouldn't be a thing and they shouldn't like be able to be that on it with a demon hunter and that's just because demon hunters were overpowered at the time. You can kill them. They were doing insane damage. You know all of that different, like bits and bobs.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of contributing factors to it, but essentially it's a problem where a lot of your player base isn't getting above 1900 um, or 1800 I should say and the fact that the participation rates are so low. They are ridiculously low, like for, like, the players. Oh, here we go. No, no, I was looking at them, I was looking at us, sorry. Oh, my god. So okay, I'm looking at this. A load.
Speaker 1:
So a graph's meant to go up where it peaks and then it goes back down. You know, because of the more skilled players, what this graph does is go up to 1500 and then it just evens out until 2100. 2100 is on the same like level amount of players as 1600. Is that? That shouldn't be a thing. Like, when it gets to about 1800, it should deflate, it should be going down this graph like in size, because there should be less players at that rating, because it's a more difficult rating to be at, essentially. But no, 2,100 in that bracket range is the second highest amount of players behind 1,600 in the game in EU. That's stupid to think. And then it's just this massive drop. You have about 2300 players in 2100 and then you have half of that in 2200 at you know, 1200, which is crazy. And then in 2900 you have 18 players. You don't have anyone above 3k. It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:
Now, I'm not saying everyone should be 2400, I'm not saying that at all. But 2100 rating shouldn't have the same amount of players in it as 1600, which is the average player. It shouldn't be. They definitely need to look at the system and re-jig it almost to maybe an Overwatch-style system, in my honest opinion, an Overwatch 1 style, I should say. But yeah, it's absolutely crazy. It feels like everyone's just waiting for that very last week of the season to do anything, and that's not really great. That's not how you want to keep the pvp scene alive for world of warcraft players, in my honest opinion. But that is it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. As always, do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff are happening over there. Thank you all very much for listening and go, val a friend, goodbye, do do. Thank you.