World of Warcraft has had a long history with Player vs. Player content, and the state of it today is nigh-unrecognizable from the days of vanilla, but a recent change for Dragonflight in removing upgrade tiers from its gear may just be the thing it needs right now. To engage in Player vs. Player combat in Shadowlands, players were expected to first spend their Honor points on obtaining a full set of gear and then upgrading it through several ranks while being gated by their Seasonal Rating.
As a result, World of Warcraft players in Shadowlands were often suffering a huge disparity in gear power, especially if they were playing on an alt character. It didn't matter if classes were balanced when gear played such a major factor in deciding the outcome of a match. Alts had a hard time catching up to other combatants as it required burning through insane amounts of Honor and Conquest points. Furthermore, Renown levels presented an additional obstacle that prevented players from upgrading their gear. Thankfully, it seems that Dragonflight is doing away with both by establishing a very streamlined, simple system for Player vs. Player gearing.
Starting from Dragonflight's launch, when players enter Season 1, they'll only need to worry about two things: getting Honor to buy Honor gear and getting Conquest to buy Conquest gear. There are no more upgrades, and there are no more Seasonal Rating requirements for purchasing the equipment. The item level difference between the two sets is only thirteen points, and according to Brian Holinka, the idea is to minimize the gap between players starting Player vs. Player content and fully decked-out characters – thus encouraging the use of alts.
Big news: PVP vendors are up in DF beta! You'll be able to get fully maxed honor gear in a few hours from wow
The changes were noticed by vinny90x1234xx, who shared the discovery on World of Warcraft's subreddit. Needless to say, the reception has been nothing but a sigh of relief and glowing praise by the vast majority of players. They concluded that the best time in World of Warcraft for Player vs. Player content was during expansions where gear mattered the least. In Legion, players could just hop onto their alt character, queue for a battleground or arena match, and have fun. There was no worry about gearing: the focus was on playing and earning Rating. At the end of the day, that's all most players want the content to be.
Between the Player vs. Player changes and the new talent tree system in Dragonflight, it seems that Blizzard is truly committing to a "less is more" approach. Whether this system works out in practice as well as it sounds on paper remains to be seen, but the past expansions have hefty evidence that Dragonflight is moving in the right direction.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight launches on November 28 for PC.