Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Exploring the PvE vs. PvP Debate in World of Warcraft: Fairness, Imbalance, and Finding Joy in Every Playstyle

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 86

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This episode explores the controversial introduction of Plunderstorm and its impact on the World of Warcraft community. We navigate through player frustrations about the PVP elements and the debate between PVP and PVE enthusiasts, while ultimately acknowledging the mode's significant value.

• Overview of Plunderstorm and its reception
• Insights on the experiences of PVP players
• Understanding how PVE players feel about forced PVP elements
• Historical context of community complaints and reactions
• The importance of embracing diverse gameplay styles

Join us as we explore these themes and find out if embracing the chaos of Plunderstorm is worth the challenge!

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

Music. 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 episode. We'll be looking at the forums and we're going to be going over the recent plunder storm um sort of mode. There we go I couldn't think of the word. We'll be going over plunder storm and essentially how it has been received by the community now that it's been out for the next or for the past couple weeks, seeing if people are happy that it's returned, annoyed, frustrated and everything in between. But we'll start off with the weekly news. As always, the world boss for this week is aggregation of horrors. You can locate this boss in the top left of hallowful classic.

Speaker 1:

Time Walking is your bonus event for the week. This is just classic dungeons such as Stratholme, dire Maul, deadmines all coming out for the week and essentially you can buy classic items, mounts, cosmetics via Time Walking badges. This week, gravity Lapse is your brawl for the week. This is essentially Eye of the Storm and every sort of minute you are is essentially Eye of the Storm and every sort of minute, you are flung up into the air and sent down into the ground. This is a good way of traversing the map very, very quickly, so make use of this. And Devour and Fortified are your mythic affixes this week.

Speaker 1:

Devour is essentially the debuff that is put on you and you can decurse, dispel poison, cleanse totem. You can do multiple different dispel poison, cleanse totem. You can do multiple different things. Any cleanse in the game will get rid of this debuff. You simply want to do that before the timer runs out, otherwise it will heal the mobs you are currently killing and give them a damage increase. So, with all of that being said, we will start off with these sort of simple uh posts. So thunderstorm will always be garbage without pve mode because people try to kill you within the first two seconds. If all you want to do is get the grind over with it, you can stop playing this garbage mode. This is beyond frustrating. Clearly didn't listen the first time.

Speaker 1:

Either remove the cosmetic rewards from retail, make it plunderstorm only reward system, make it a plunderstorm only reward system, or give us a PvE mode. Okay, you do more PvE in plunderstorm than you do PvP. For the love of God. Pve players and people who complain like this need to get over themselves the fact that there is a pvp mode that has been introduced into world of warcraft a semi pvp mode, I should add. It's not even a full pvp mode. You can just pve you like and you start crying about it and you cry because it has cosmetics in it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I don't see anyone crying at the PvE-related content, like dungeon gear, weapons, stuff like that. I don't hear people crying that that isn't in PvP. I don't hear that people crying in PvP or PvE that you know that raid gear is in PvE or oh, my god, my brain, it's so infuriating, it's mixing up my brain. I don't hear people complain that PvE like Mythic Plus gear, mythic Raiding gear, isn't in PvP. And I get. You can say like, oh, the tier sets are still there, but they're a different colourisation, doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if they're a different colorization, doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if they're a different colorization. You can't get them by doing pvp. You cannot, okay, so if you have to struggle for several hours to get everything in the plunder storm shop you have, you just have to. Okay, now you do not have to do a single bit of pvp to unlock this. You do not have to do one bit of pvp to unlock these cosmetics. It's that simple. You can simply spawn in loot and keep looting until a player attacks you, in which case you give up, and that's perfectly fine on you. Now this is the problem when, because a lot of people enjoy pve more and because, in my honest opinion, pve players are more outspoken than pvp, pve is get their way a lot more okay.

Speaker 1:

So for pvp, what do we have? Solo battlegrounds, uh, solo shuffles, rated pvp okay, and obviously have the normal battlegrounds and stuff, but that kind of is the same as normal dungeons and stuff. So we're not going to go into all of that. But mythic or pvp is pve or pvp is have that? Pve is mythic plus collecting, plus Collecting Battle Pets, raiding you have multiple things. Even the Great Vault has Delves, mythics and Raiding.

Speaker 1:

Pvp was taken out. The PvP section was taken out of the Great Vault. So you tell me who gets it easier in world of warcraft pve is who can unlock nine different slots in their fucking vault for the week, or pvp is who have to wait for about I think it was around 15 weeks for the conquest cap to be removed, the conquest cap. You could get get a full set of pve gear within week one of doing mythics within week one. Okay, and yes, there is going to be some time gated stuff behind it, such as you might not get enough valor stones or something like that, and it might take you a while, but you couldn't get more than two pieces of conquest gear in the first week of pvp. If you are trying to save, you certainly can't, and if you didn't save, you would be scraping at sort of the lower end priced items, which isn't great. It isn't great at all. It's absolutely crazy.

Speaker 1:

So here's my problem with people complaining about plunder storm being a garbage mode. It's not PvE and it never will be. If you do not want to do this optional and I repeat, optional game mode, do not play it. It's that simple. Do not play it and do not complain about it, because it is an optional thing. People wanted optional stuff to play.

Speaker 1:

This is why Torghast in Shadowlands was hated, because Torghast was actually not an optional thing. You purposefully had to do Torghast each week, otherwise you would fall behind. This is the same with your souls collecting and the anima collecting. In Shadowlands, you were forced to do your homework every week and do these things in Shadowlands Plunderstorm you do not have to at all. Even those that missed Plunderstorm when it first came out.

Speaker 1:

You have the items from the first Plunderstorm in this plunder shop, okay, so you can still collect these things. They aren't going anywhere. Plunderstorm might disappear for like a few months again, but the reality is it will come back and it might come back with a different map. It might come back with new abilities, it might come back with many different changes, but the cosmetics will still be there. You are not forced to collect them all within the first two minutes of the game releasing. You can do one Plunderstorm game a day and you would complete the Plunderstorm store like get everything and collect everything before Plunderstorm would leave as a game mode and come back Genuinely. You would Now. It's just absolutely insane.

Speaker 1:

But people who complain about Plunderstorm and that it needs a pve mode need to get over themselves. Plunder storm is more pve than pvp. Prove me wrong. I will argue that you do about 60 of the game pveing okay, and that's on like an average game. This isn't people seeking out just specifically pve or pvp. This is you drop somewhere and you start fighting and then, after you stop fighting them players, you're going out and just farming mobs. That's it. All you want to do is drop into Arathi Highlands and kill mobs. I have news for you you can do that in retail. You can literally do that in retail. You can do that in Classic. You can get a level 30 character level 30 to 40 in classic, run to a raffy highlands and start killing some mobs. Okay, that that is what you can do.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is a pve mode. You can just stay in a raffy in pve. That's what you want, right? Um, and you're going to say, oh, but it's about the cosmetics. Well, what about the greens that drop in Arathi Highlands? They're cosmetic, aren't they? So it's absolutely crazy. And it's not like. The cosmetics are like insanely good. To be honest, I think a lot of them are kind of average at best in. In all honesty, I think that they're average at best. So, genuinely, it's crazy that people want to complain that it is not a pve mode when you have so many different pve modes timeless aisles, you have pet battles, mythics, uh, raiding, you have delves.

Speaker 1:

Now you obviously have the new zone. What is it? Siren aisles. You have multiple zones like this that get added every single patch. What do PvP players get?

Speaker 1:

Pvp players in the next patch get one new arena, one new arena map. Okay, the last time a arena map was added was last expansion, but it was at the start of the expansion, not Codun Proving Grounds. It was at the start of the expansion, not codon um proving grounds, it was okay. So dragonflight came out in 2023, I believe somewhere around. There might even be 2022, I can't remember, but essentially this is when it was released. So every couple of years we get a new arena map for pve. You get new map pools every single week. Now, obviously, I know it's not brand new like content, but every single .1 patch you get a new dungeon, whether it be a normal dungeon or a mega dungeon or anything like that. You get revamped mythic plus pools. You get a new, new raid. You get new like pve content that you can do on the zone

Speaker 1:

itself. On siren isles, you can get a like new ring. You can farm currency cosmetics there. People in pvp don't want to do that and yet you don't hear pvp players go oh my god, I hate the siren isles. Make the siren isles be able to be like purchased for honor or something. Have you ever seen anyone who, from pvp, say that, no, you haven't. I bet you haven't because it doesn't exist? All you see is pve players say, oh my god, like this is ridiculous. The heartbreak, like thunderstorm needs to make sure that it's accustomed to PvE players. No, it doesn't. Okay, let PvP players actually have something for once. And even then, this isn't fully PvP. I will state that

Speaker 1:

again. Most of the game is played PvE-ing and you can essentially become top two in the game without having to kill anyone. Okay, you can do that. You can go through entire games, not kill anyone, and come second in kill anyone. Okay, you can do that. You can go through entire games, not kill anyone and come second in the game. Okay, so you automatically get a load of plunder for it to spend on cosmetics. It's absolutely crazy. It's just so infuriating because look, this is the next forum post Wish for non-PVP plunder storm. Am I the only one that wishes for a non-PVP plunderstorm event? I hate PVP and do not like to be forced into it. To do content Okay, you are not forced to do it. You are simply not forced to do

Speaker 1:

it. Secondly, go to Arathi Highlands and kill some mobs. Okay, that is your job. Go to Arathi Highlands and kill some NPCs In Classic, in Retail, wherever you want. This is your PvE plunderstorm experience. That's it. Enjoy. You know, if you want, like Orbital Strike as an ability, you reroll Boomkin, go to Arathi Highlands and you simply use Orbital Strike to kill something. If you want slicing boomkin, go to arathi highlands and you simply use orbital strike to kill something. If you want slicing winds, go windwalker monk. You get slicing slicing winds, which is a ability. These are all abilities that are in, obviously, a plunder storm, but you have slicing winds as a windwalker monk, so you can experience plunder storm this

Speaker 1:

way. Now do you see how ridiculous this sounds? Because, like, obviously I'm telling you to just log into the normal game version and go to arathi highlands to kill some mobs. But this is what you are asking for. You're asking to be dropped into arathi highlands to kill some mobs. That is what pve players some anyway, I'm not going to say all of them, because it isn't now this is what some pve players are wanting. They want to just go into arathi. It isn't Now. This is what some PvE players are wanting. They want to just go into Arathi Highlands and kill NPCs. This is what that

Speaker 1:

is. This is your non-PvP plunderstorm, and it's just incredible to see the amount of people that can't wrap their head around PvP players getting something that they enjoy and PvE players just don't like it. It's that simple. You think pvp players are going oh my god, yes, another raid for the next patch. This is exactly what I've been looking forward to as a pvp player. No, it isn't. It just simply isn't. It's absolutely

Speaker 1:

ludicrous. And when do you ever see any sort of comment like that? Where it goes? Yeah, as a pvp player, I think that all the loot that's in the raid should be purchasable by honor or conquest. I think that this is a bit ridiculous, because I want to look really cool when I'm doing my arenas, hence why I want to buy all of the raid gear with conquest for the cosmetic. Do you realise how stupid that sounds Like? It's absolutely ridiculous. Don't get me wrong. Pvp players have absolutely wild takes, but I don't see PvP player posting on here. All I see is the amount of outrage that PvE players have for stuff that is released for PvP, whether it be a cool gear set or Plunderstorm. That, again, I will state, is not full Pv

Speaker 1:

pvp. You can pve and it is a majority of pve that you do in this game mode. Um, it's just, it's just wild and I can't don't get why people don't understand like this. This is the next one as well. Please stop locking in-game rewards behind terrible grinds like plunder storm. Okay, did this

Speaker 1:

guy? Firstly, I'm not I'm gonna read out the like message in a second but firstly, did this guy complain when grinds that were behind pve content like such as the anima cell, the lost souls, all of the shadowland sort of content, did he complain when you had to do that? Because I bet he did not. When you had to go out and farm anima and graceful offerings to buy cosmetics and gear from your oh what is it? Your covenant vendor, which is all pve related, because you had to do world quests. You had to kill specific world bosses, not world bosses like rare bosses within the world. None of it was related to PvP. I bet he didn't complain then. I really don't think he did. And what about like the Korthia stuff, when you know you had to do the research, grinding and stuff and that probably had some cosmetics behind it? Again, did he complain? Probably not, but it's like that. I just don't get it. So thunderstorm is terrible. I don't care what you say, it's pure misery. Okay, that's fine. If you don't like it, don't have to play it. But he goes on and says mop remix was at least fun. Guess what mop remix was? It was pve orientated, it was aE

Speaker 1:

event. I hated doing it as a PvP player. I didn't say anything. I thought it was a cool game mode that had cosmetics behind it. And the thing is I don't see anyone. I didn't see any PvP players like speak up in the forums. That went, oh my God, like why are all the cosmetics locked behind me, having to level an entirely new character okay, an entirely new character figure out a new system of power, which was the infinite cloak, which, by the way, was really good. I thought that they did mop remix really well, but again, I wanted the cosmetics. I didn't want to play mop remix. I thought it was boring as anything. I just wanted the cosmetics. But I didn't complain about it at the time because they, like they were able to be farmed in the like time span that I had to play it. I wasn't forced to play it and so I didn't and like that's the thing you aren't forced to get these

Speaker 1:

cosmetics. But it's just insane that this guy says plunder storm is terrible, but mop mop remix was fun. The difference is in plunder storm you have a bit of pvp. That's that's the difference. That's why he hates plunder storm. It is a skill issue. Okay, I'm gonna say it is a skill

Speaker 1:

issue. It's one of them things um, this is just awful, but they make you play it. If you want mogs for WoW, they make you play it. They actually they have your hands tied behind your back and say you have to play this all day, every day, to unlock every single cosmetic in the game. No, they don't. That's called sarcasm. They do not. It is absolutely crazy and I cannot believe that people think this Like yes, if you hate it, that's called sarcasm. They do not. It is absolutely crazy and I cannot believe that people think this like yes, if you hate it, that's fine, you do not have to play

Speaker 1:

it. But again, all I see is pve's. Now, again, I will stress this enough, it is not all pve's. I know some enjoy it, some don't, really are not bothered by it. But these are the people who go yeah, no, this is terrible, it needs to go, and it's like how is it terrible? It's an addition to the game that you are not forced to play and you can log on to it every now and again to have a bit of fun on a battle royale type world of warcraft experience. How is that a negative impact to the game, Please tell me? Apart from yeah, it's just terrible. Like you are not proving a point at all. You really

Speaker 1:

aren't. Why do we have to play some Fortnite Battle Royale for WoW rewards? It's miserable. Okay, did you catch that? Why do do we have to play? You don't have to. You simply don't have to. You see, in the main menu you have this option at the top that says world of warcraft uh, the war within, or plunder storm. It will navigate you to the wall uh, within, world of warcraft, the war within, and you do not have to do anything. You do not have to click that plunder storm button. You can simply log into your character. Okay, like you are not forced to do this, not in the slightest. And it's absolutely crazy that people think that you are. I just don't get it. I really really, really

Speaker 1:

don't. I think that people just hate it because there is a bit of pvp in it. Okay, that's, that's all, that's all there is, and, like, whenever there's been a pvp-esque type fight in a raid, there hasn't been one for a very, very long time. I think the last one that I can remember is probably trial of the crusade, um, and that is like very far back, that's 2008, 2009. So when trial of the crusade comes out, there was a boss and this boss was essentially the alliance or horde faction whichever the opposite of your faction was, and you had to kill certain npc. So one of them might be a resto druid, a disc priest, or it might be a shadow priest and a resto shaman, or it might be warrior rogue mage and a resto druid. You know, it mixed it up. But these, um, this boss obviously incentivized pvp, so it incentivized cc'ing, using kicks, using cooldowns and stuff, because these mobs couldn't be tanked at some points and people didn't like it. Pve's didn't like it, so no wonder they don't like plunder storm because they can't

Speaker 1:

pvp. Now, some pveers can, but most of them do not like the idea of pvping. Most of the pveers want to sit there in a mythic plus dungeon and simply go, yep, I'm pressing my damage rotation, and then you just win the dungeon because it's the same like abilities over and over again. It's like clockwork in mythic plus and you can sit there and say, oh, I bet you haven't done mythic plus or you're not good enough to do mythic plus. I do pvp for, like the majority of my retail wow experience and gaming, I have done mythic plus this season, after not doing it since about shadowlands, season one or two, and I'm 3k rated in Mythic Plus. It took me about two to three months to do. It's not that hard, okay, it really isn't that hard. So I will tell you again that and I've said this before in other content PVE, like PVEers, will have a tougher time adjusting to PVP than PVPers adjusting to

Speaker 1:

PVE. It's just one of them things. There are very few cases of this. One of the most notorious ones is Trill, who plays for Liquid in both their raiding scene and their PVP scene and he has stated this is something that he has stated that pvp is harder. Okay, mainly because, like it's just more, you've got to think on your feet, like quicker, and that's what pve players hate about plunder storm. Sometimes you have to think on your feet and you have to understand the cooldowns that people have. If you understand, oh, this person has slicing wins. It's anywhere between a six second cooldown and a 10 second

Speaker 1:

cooldown. Then they start to play around it and this is the adjustments that people can't make as pve players and that's why they hate it, because they are getting out skilled in these matches by people who do know some form of PvP in World of Warcraft and that's why they want a PvE only game mode, because they want to sit in Arathi Highlands, kill some mobs and still be rewarded because they took the like sort of mind numbingly boring way out of it. It's not that simple. You will not get a PvE mode of Plunderstorm. Suck it up up, deal with it. Either accept that you are going to die, like in this mode, or accept that you might not get some like a lot of plunder in one game but you might be able to hide and camp in a bush and come second in like this, like last game or something or the next game. There is no in between. If you don't want to pvp, you are not even forced to pvp. It kind of ruins the game mode in my opinion, because I think having a like sort of shit show happen everywhere is really enjoyable, but you are not forced to pvp at all in the game and that's just facts. That is facts. So people need to get over

Speaker 1:

themselves. When it comes to Plunderstorm, I think it's such a good game mode and I think that a lot of people are glad that it has been added back. I genuinely think so and I hope that it's there to stay. I hope that they constantly add it back and add new maps to it, new abilities. You get to pick your map. I do hope that they bring back trios or quadruples for the game modes, because I think it's quite fun to even have that option. But I do think that Plunderstorm is a massive win for Blizzard. I really do. I think that it's such a good game mode and it deserves to be in the game as a permanent feature, genuinely. So that is where I will end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for

Speaker 1:

listening. Kind of turned into a little bit of a rant, but some people need a sort of firework up their ass to say like get over yourselves because the content is out there. And I get that you don't like the content, but it's still content and people will enjoy this content. But just because you don't doesn't mean you have to shit on it. It's one of them things you don't see me shitting on like, oh, a new raid is coming out. That's awful. Why is it not 10 new arena maps or like a rating system change for arenas or anything like that? No, it's just yeah, okay, that's a new raid, it looks cool. I, I won't be playing it, but it looks cool. You, it's that sort of thing. You've just got to accept it that there's content in the game that has been recently released that you won't like. It's that simple. But yeah, before I start ranting again, thank you all very much for

Speaker 1:

listening. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening. The happening the etsy shop is currently on holiday. Um, I am away at the moment. Um, so the etsy shop is currently down, but it will be back up within the next couple weeks. You'll know via the uh podcast episodes, so do keep an eye out for it. I will let you know when it's back up, but all of the stuff will still be up there, all everything ranging from the ashbringer sort of um weapon all the way down to small figurines. All of it will be up there. Don't you worry, it will come back. But thank you all very much once again and go with Valor friend. Goodbye all, thank you.