I felt compelled to write this post, because I've found a game that delivers well beyond and far above your average MMO's PvP experience. The "feeling" that we MMO consumers so desperately chase is often to replicate our best memories from our past games, and as a PvP junkie, I found those experiences from World of Warcraft!

Before you all jump on me and say "ESO isn't supposed to be like WoW," that isn't the point of this post. I love that ESO is different, but there are similarities to every great MMO that they share in common. WoW in its heyday is a great case to examine to help illustrate my points. I will attempt to explain exactly what I loved about WoW's PvP, relate it to what I find awesome about ESO's PvP, and in the end, try to give advice on how ZOS should focus development to keep that "feeling" going strong!

The reason you should read this post is to:

1. Identify what you're trying to re-create with an MMO experience so that you can help ZOS do it.

2. Help me refine my message so that ZOS gets it loud and clear!

The reason I'm writing this is because of the PvP damage changes that are incoming (Total 50% reduction to damage, 50% reduction to shields, no Stam regen while blocking, etc) in order to make fights last longer without lasting forever (Looking at you Ward Sorcs and Permablock DK's) and not see people insta-die due to burst (Looking at you, 100-0 NB gankers). I know they are still tweaking numbers and mechanics slightly, but the obvious need for some changes are there, and I am glad the devs are working to fix the "overly explosive" nature of small combat PvP.

First of all, I really think of 1.6 patch (the patch we're currently on now) as equivalent in a lot of ways to WoW back at lvl 60 Vanilla. There were a lot of amazing things about that time in WoW, which also included some underlying problems that the devs would spend the next 10+ years trying to "fix." This eventually amounted to homogenizing everything - nerfing fun combos of classes by getting them to share DR timers with one another (DR = duration reduction) on their CC abilities and reducing the effect of "OP skills" into very flat and uninteresting versions of their former selves (Looking at you, Mortal Strike)! There are things that needed to change, but my first point is that things NEED TO FEEL OVERPOWERED in many senses! Sure, the spell animations need to look cool, but I need to feel like I just REKT that fool with my OP skillz. This is another way of saying that I need to see diversity in class skills. Nightblades have cloak, double take, and fear that allow them to be played as no other class can be played (as an example). Sorcs have Bolt escape, hardened ward, and insta-cast crystal fragments (as another example) that make their capability to be defensive and then turn around and combo an opponent into oblivion. Each class has a unique playstyle and important skills that give clear advantages in various scenarios. While I don't like infinite bolt escapes or perma-dodge rolling (which need to be toned down a bit and they have been addressed in the next patch), these play styles need to be preserved! We need to always feel like we're overpowered, because we'll keep coming back to play (clearly evidenced by WoW's devs).

What I didn't like about lvl 60 WoW PvP was the bursting from 100-0 was commonplace. Note however, that many people much preferred 100-0 bursting to the never ending fights that became more commonplace as time went on (as evidenced by the clear decline in popularity of PvP and the game in general over the years since the 2nd expansion Wrath of the Lich King). In fact, it eventually became impossible to kill someone unless you 100-0 bursted them due to their attempt to drift away from bursting. Making players more tanky isn't going to work -- Reducing damage by itself isn't going to work. In WoW, I found myself needing to CC a player for a long time to get a kill, wishing for zero resource regen in combat to end the endless fights, or team up with a friend to get that 100-0 kill on a player, because healing and resource regeneration outscaled damage output. Damage output needs to outscale resource regen and healing, but the issue is when you throw too many players into the mix, damage quickly gets out of control when people focus targets.

This leads me to my first change: Don't tone the PvP damage down by another 30% -- A competent ganker needs to be able to kill a competent player in a 1v1 scenario, or at least quickly wear out their resources due to making their opponent play inefficiently and THEN kill them. I believe magicka/stamina costs on certain abilities (I like to call them OH CRAP buttons) are too low, and offer too much utility for their cost in some situations. Healing ward is a prime example... 1 healing ward = 15,000+ hp instantly when you're at 10-20% health... I use this to great effect in ESO currently, and find that I am able to survive in 1vX scenarios easily as a magicka NB just because of the insanely high shield amount at low hp. The up to 300% increased shield amount is clearly causing some fights to go on longer than they should, and this deserves a magicka cost increase or an effective decrease as HP goes down. I'd be in support of an "up to 150%" increase in effectiveness OR a steep increase in mana cost, but 300% increase is a big problem. The overall reduction in effective shields isn't going to help -- this is specific to this ability. There are other abilities that need tweaking, but this is just one good example that everyone has access to.

WoW PvP at level 70 in Burning Crusade Expansion was truly the pinnacle of the game's PvP offering. World + Arena + Battleground PvP was semi-balanced, with many class combos considered the "meta" and "overpowered" while still allowing for much diversity in the types of classes used. People may argue this with me, but we really had a great diversity of success at high levels (I hit gladiator with many different class combos myself).

I'd argue that the forum whining in WoW was never stronger than at The Burning Crusade. People don't like to die, and they are selfish in their recommendations. The n00bs that would rather talk about how good they are instead of showing it in game are often the ones that cry about balance (but don't play enough to realize they can overcome their issues by changing or improving their play). The decline of WoW occurred when people stopped feeling so overpowered on their own class and felt the need to re-roll to the "FOTM" (Flavor of the month) in order to be competitive.

To conclude, PvP should be explosive and reward great play. WoW's first expansion exemplified that, and should be used as a case study for excellence in balance while still maintaining that feeling of being overpowered. It wasn't perfect, but it was close.