An Answer For Holinka From a Non-WoW PvPer That Does PvP in HotS.

Let me start off by saying that no intelligent conversation can be had with only 140 characters, so a blog post is required to answer your question.   I believe it was a misjudgement of yours to ask such an important question like that on twitter and expect to get solid feedback that could be said in only 140 characters.

For full disclosure I must state I do PvP on occasion.  I sometimes get together with a few friends and do some threes, do naked 5 mans for shits and giggles, maybe run a battleground once in a blue moon and have had the occasion to poke a few orcs with a stick in Ashran.  But I most definitely do not qualify as a PvPer.  I have never been good at it, I have never dedicated enough time to get better and up my game play, I have never even once had a decent rating in arena and never once stepped foot into a rated battleground.  So I do believe I qualify as what you are looking for, the average wow player.  Even if a grumpy one.

Why I would PvP in Heroes but don't in Warcraft... as told as grumpy as I can get.  Brace yourself, it's about to get weird.

1) Warcraft is NOT a PvP game

That is the number one reason I do not PvP in warcraft.  It is a rather straight forward and simple reason, one I do hope you can understand.  I play warcraft to do PvE content.  PvP is nothing more than a side game.  PvP is closest in terms of game play to pet battles, both complex and simple at the same time, both that with some skill and effort you will get better at, and both are something you can do or ignore, it is not part of the actual game.

My friends started playing when the game first came out.  Some had played other games of the sort like everquest before wow came out.  I never grasped why you would want to play an MMO version of final fantasy basically.  It is a single player game, other people are not needed, nor would they be welcome.

After three years of them talking about it I joined the game to play a fantasy genre game, to quest, to explore, to grind (yes I like to grind), to collect, to do dungeons, to do raids, and I finally realized the need for groups for content like that.  When I did start playing I instantly fell in love with the game.

At no point in enticing me into the game did PvP come into play.  At no point in falling in love with the game did PvP come into play.  At no point does PvP keep me playing the game even if I have fallen out of love with the game a great deal after two (cataclysm and warlords) really sub standard to my expectations expansions. 

Oddly enough the people, the same ones that it took me so long to start playing because I never thought I would need them, are what keep me playing.  I love my guild mates, I love the friends I made, I love the hunter community, and I love them all a very unhealthy amount for people I do not even really know for the most part.  Odd as the reason I did not start playing right away is I did not think other people would be a big deal.  Turns out I was wrong.  Happens from time to time, but not this time, this is all opinion and opinions can not be wrong.

Warcraft is not about PvP.  Never has been and never will be.  That is the number one reason why I would PvP in HotS and not warcraft.  HotS is a PvP game, wow is not.

2) Gear

Not gearing.  Please let me point out that gearing is completely different from gear.  I absolutely love the gearing model for PvP.  It is how gearing should be done in all aspects of the game.  Work for your gear, not just be handed it for killing some internet dragon and hoping the RNG gods shine on you.  PvP even has the added incentive that even if you fail you gain progress toward getting gear, unlike in PvE where you only see gear, maybe, on the super rare of most rare occasions where you might actually see something you can roll on, if you actually win.   So I am not talking gearing.  I am talking gear itself.

But I am talking two different aspects of gear.  We will call them A and B, because calling them R and W would just make no sense what so ever,

A:

If you are not one of the first in and grind your butt off from day one, you are always at a disadvantage.  Being my extremely low PvP skills to begin with the prospect of meeting up with someone decked out in full PvP gear in all my PvE gear is a MAJOR deterrent for me to get into it.

So many times I had thought I might give a little PvP a try, but fighting an uphill battle against my limited skill and huge gear gap makes it nothing more than an effort in frustration.  Sure I can keep at it and get better at PvP by doing so but there are only so many times you can die and think to yourself, if only I had my PvP trinket already, if only I had a little more health, if only I hit for a tiny bit more, when your opponent is at 1% life and wins and you realize that it wasn't your skill holding you back this time, but your gear, that you just give up and say screw it.

Gear matters in PvP some and being behind the gear curve is a huge turn off.   It is what keeps me from doing more than I know I am capable of.  As a PvEer first and foremost, I live my life behind the curve and it is not a nice place to live.  There are bugs here, icky.

B:

The difference between PvP and PvE gear is an insanely huge obstacle for me and many like me.  If there were no difference between the two it would solve issue A, to some extent, but it would also mean less for me to have to carry around in my already insanely overstuffed bags, and fewer things to do to collect that gear, and if they worked for both things I would be ready for all aspects of the game, even the side game of PvP, at a moments notice.  I'd really like that.

If my mythic gear worked as conquest gear in PvP and my conquest gear would work as mythic gear in a raid, you would see me PvPing a hell of a lot more.  No exaggeration here at all but if gear was the same for both aspects of the game I would be a full fledged PvPer.  100%.

No more would I feel like I was being held back by gear.  No more would I feel as if with my limited time I has to choose between gearing for PvE or PvP.  And lets face it, as already noted, this is a PvE game, so you know which comes first for me.

There should be no separation of gear between PvP and PvE.  I will explain this in the simplest way I can.  When in this history of forever in any form of fantasy have you ever heard of a knight running into a scuffle on the road back to town and saying, "Give me a second, I need to switch from my dragon killing sword to my people killing sword."  There is absolutely no reason for different types of gear.

On a side note, one of the best lines in the entire game is from sully the dwarf on alliance side, a jade forest quest line which I forget the name of.  He is asked to make an axe and he says, "A wood cutting axe or a people killing axe.", that was awesome because it is a joke about the difference in game even if there isn't one.  I now return you to our regular scheduled grumpiness.

3) Skills

Before I begin let me direct you to point one once again.  Do you see where it says that warcraft is a PvE game?  Okay, now lets move on.

Part of the reason I am reluctant to get into PvP is because I hold a certain level of animosity toward it for the constant changes to skills made in the name of PvP that screw up a class for PvE, or mess with it in unwanted ways.

As one example I will take the most recent changes I can find and as always will pick out something that was changed for PvP reasons.  Tranquilizing shot for the hunter class.  A change to 50 focus?  Are you freaking kidding me?  And do you know why this change was made, I do, it was made for PvP.  Screw PvP.  There was no reason to change this across the board.  None what so ever.

There is a simple, extremely simple, solution for this issue that blizzard refuses to add to the game.  Have abilities act differently in PvP and PvE.  Holy crap, did I blow your mind there with this idea.  Sure as hell seems so because no one at blizzard has a clue that you can have one ability do two different things.

Oh wait, I am wrong once again, someone at blizzard must have noticed it.  Certain things, like CC, act differently against mobs or players.  So if someone at blizzard noticed this, why has nothing been done to further that?

Have tranquilizing shot light up at 20 focus while targeting a mob and at 50 focus when on a player.  Too hard for your coders?  (hire better coders)  Here, let me solve that for you with some simple math.  Have it retain the 20 focus cost and have it have a 40% chance of removing something on a player.  I know, your mind is blown, that simple math really is hard to understand, but trust me, it works, even if I must admit if I PvPed I would be rather miffed about having my abilities be RNG based knowing the track record blizzard has with really bad handling of random.  Can anyone say over 800 UP runs for that drake?  And then I win the same drake a week later in a healer bribe bag?  F you RNG.  Blizzard and math do not get along well.

But the bottom line is that abilities should hit players and mobs for different amounts just the same way CC works for different times.  If something hits a mob for 20K, have it hit a player for 2K.  Players are already marked to be noticed in game by the (player) notation and it works for CC, so do not tell me that is not an option.  It is the obvious solution. 

I don't see any reason why blizzard has not went this route yet unless I want to fall back on the "blizzard is lazy" line which does seem to hold some water here as we already know they have some abilities that work different on players and mobs so why not all of them?  Lazy?  Maybe.  Who knows, why don't you tell us Holinka.

I can probably go through hundreds if not thousands of examples of where an ability was changed for PvP purposes that had an impact on PvE.  That is part of the reason I dislike PvP in WoW.  PvP in WoW is a obstacle for PvE sometimes and this is a PvE game.  I hate having the main focus of the game being set aside to play second fiddle to a side game.  I admit it is a weird reason for me not to want to PvP, but if I PvP it means I do not mind that PvP keeps screwing with the game, and I really can not support that, nor should I.

4) Balance

Despite the rude, obnoxious and outright disrespect you showed the people that mentioned balance on twitter, as displayed on the front page of MMOC, saying that their opinion of balance does not matter because the question is aimed at people like me and not them, I hate to break it to you but they are right, balance is a concern to me.

I will be the first to admit I love feeling OP.  I absolutely love being a hunter in low level brackets.  Winning is fun, there is no person on the face of the earth that has not suffered from a severe brain injury that would say they do not like winning, love winning even.  But for every person I love killing in a low level bracket before they even know where I am there is a person that just got taken out without even seeing me and it is no fun for them.  Want to know why?  Because losing sucks.  You know what sucks more than losing?  Not even having a prayer in hell of winning, as in the case I mention here.

Now that is low level PvP and we already know that blizzard does not give a horses ass about low level PvP, but I only used that to stress an example.  The example is that balance matters.  I will set aside my own opinion that it matters at low levels too for now, but to me, yes, it does matter at low levels too.

Don't just keep shooing the experienced PvPers to the side when they say something about balance saying you want to hear from me instead.  I give them permission, even if they are speaking against hunters, to speak for me.  But if they happen to play a hunter and at some point in time the hunter class is preforming really poorly against a certain class I am pretty damn sure they will notice it before I do.

See, I am a noob, I sort of suck, okay, not sort of but really suck.  If I keep getting owned by class A I might think it is because I suck.  But if class A is over powered against hunters those people, the regular PvPers, they will know it is not a skill issue, that there is a mechanic issue, a balance issue.

Balance matters to me, it matters a lot.  I am just not skilled enough to notice the difference of or if there is sometimes something unbalanced or I just suck against that class.  So stop being such a wholesale dick to the people that express concern about balance and instead ask them for specific cases where they think there is an imbalance.  You might actually be surprised, maybe they noticed something you didn't.  It is a fact you handle all PvP right?  They handle their class, so maybe they are in a better position to see a specific thing then you are while you are looking at everything.  No need to just dismiss their concerns and no knock against you.  They are just in a better position to notice it than you, and a more skilled position then I.

5) Healers

Remove healing completely from PvP and I will be a happy camper.  Ever since my first foray into PvP I have had an issue with healing in it.  Okay, maybe not my first foray into PvP, I sort of lie a bit there.  That was me answering a call that Astranaar was under attack and being killed by a level 70 (assuming here as for when I started and the fact he was ??) warlock that apparently had an itching for some flame basted night elf.

I know healing can not be removed, it is part of the game, but something really needs to be done about it.  There is no worse feeling than blowing everything you have on someone and 15 or 20 seconds later when they are near death because you played your hand perfectly they get a heal, a single heal, that restores nearly all their health.

At times last expansion it felt like I was tugging on supermans cape, spitting into the wind, pulling the mask off the old lone ranger and then I messed around with a healer.  These are things you don't do.  (+1 for reference)

I would spend the better part of 30 seconds whittling down the healer to have them squeeze in one heal despite all my efforts to stop it and be back to full heath.  There are no situations more annoying than that in game, and you are talking to someone that had a 0% wipe on heroic (now mythic) garrosh twice.  I am more accepting of that than I am a healer restoring all their health with one heal.  At least I know I will get that smelly orc down sooner or later, but that healer will last forever.

The fact you need to chain CCs, use interrupts, use knockbacks, you name it, only to get them low and then just one small mistake, or not enough gear to get them down and you have to wait for everything to come back off cooldown to try it again.  And you are talking to someone that plays the absolute best class in the game in terms of being annoying (that is not a rogue) in the form of a hunter.  I can interrupt you, knock you back, CC you, and keep doing it all day long, but there are holes, small ones, and if the healer gets a heal off in any of them I am at the beginning.  No thank you.

Healers are just too strong in PvP.  Sadly, unlike the other things I mentioned, I have no easy fix suggestions for this situation, it is in your ball park now.  Fix it will you.

BTW, I lie, becoming a pattern here, or maybe just a theme of the post here that is begging for someone to notice, I have the solution for PvP healing, but you would not like it.  It would require a little bit of work, a lot actually..  And for a company that refuses to have abilities like arcane shot hit players or mobs for a different number I doubt you would want to do this as it is even more work.  But what the hell, happy reading, crib notes version.

Players should have two health bars.  One for PvE damage and healing and one for PvP damage and healing.  If either of those health bars reach zero, you die.

How it would work is simple really.  When you are out in the world or in a dungeon or raid or what have you and fighting PvE content all damage you receive takes health away from your PvE health.  All healing you receive heals your PvE health bar.  When you get hit by another player it takes health away from your PvP health and when you are healed and PvP health is lower the heal is applied to your PvP health.

The healing part can be a little trickier, it would need to be designed that the heal is always applied to the health bar that needs it more, percentage based.  So if your PvP health is lowest a PvP heal based on PvP healing lands on your PvP health and if your PvE health is lowest a heal based on your PvE healing lands on your PvE health.  It might sound a little weird, but it really isn't as hard to work in as it might sound.

In instance PvP, your PvE health bar will never go down so all PvP healing is on your PvP bar and when in instanced PvE content your PvP health bar will never go down so all healing will be PvE healing.  Sounds interesting to me.  Actually, sounds like an answer to me.  Answers are good, they go with questions well and holinka asked a questions right?

Also this could be used as a great way to scale the game as a whole.  Noticed that for PvE we needed to have our health pools doubled for PvP reasons this expansion (see reason 3), well, with this that would have never been needed.  Just have PvP health go up and not mess with PvE.  So simple in theory it is scary, even an orc can do it.

End Note:

Hope my opinions helped.  Sure there are more, but these are the ones off the top of my mind.  Remember they are only my opinions and are not representative of any one but a party of one, namely me.  But you asked and I answered.  I do understand that much of what I said sounded grumpy, but hey, it is who I am and I have a part to play, just like you do Holinka.  I did my job, I played grumpy, I acted grumpy, now you can do your job and do something about it, if you wish.

If I have one word of advice I can give you, not from my smart ass self or my grumpy self, but from one person that has to talk to a lot of people for a living to another.  Stop using twitter for questions like this and make a forum post instead.  On both the US and UK forums at the least.  You might take stuff like this as a joke, but I am pretty sure the people that employee you and the people that pay the people that employee you don't.  PvP might not matter a hill of beans to me, but it does to them, and twitter is no way for an adult that wants to have a serious conversation to communicate.

Good luck fixing the impossible problem, it is a task I would not wish on my worst enemy, feel free to mail me directly, would be nice to chat with you.  Hell, talking to anyone would be nice, it gets lonely here with fang ripping up the flooring again.  Oh well, remember, you are always welcome in dolanaar, I always have a pot of coffee on the stove.

TL;DR version:

I play warcraft for PvE reasons, and I play HotS for PvP reasons, that is why I don't in one and do in the other.  One is a PvE game, the other is a PvP game.  As simple as that.