How PvP Combat Rekindled My Love for WoW

If you told me six months ago that I’d end up writing an article on this topic, I’d have written you off as certifiably insane. After all, if you’ve read almost any of my articles about World of Warcraft, you’re well aware that I used to avoid player-versus-player (PvP) combat like the plague. So what’s changed? Why do I suddenly find myself doing nothing but random battlegrounds all day and actually having quite a lot of fun?

Well, not to give the game away right at the start of this piece, but the true answer to those questions is that I have no earthly idea. However, I absolutely do not mean to say I can’t hazard a guess anyway, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. To be brutally honest, I had completely lost interest in World of Warcraft a few months ago. I just got bored of leveling all my characters through Shadowlands content, since that can easily become tedious even though the Threads of Fate system ensures players don’t have to continuously replay the expansion’s story if they don’t want to.

Because of that boredom, I stopped playing entirely back in about late March. I canceled my subscription and everything because I didn’t anticipate that I would want to play again until closer to the release of the upcoming Dragonflight expansion, whenever that ends up being. In fact, Shadowlands is easily the expansion whose content I’ve played the least since it launched, with the qualifier that I only became truly able to play without technical difficulties back when Warlords of Draenor was current.

For context, I went through Legion’s content and got characters to max level during its reign no fewer than twenty times because I so thoroughly enjoyed what that particular expansion had to offer. Shadowlands, in contrast, just hasn’t been able to hold my interest for various reasons that I don’t really want to get into here. I took a lengthy hiatus until Patch 9.1.5 was released and only came back to the game then because that specific update allowed players to skip the Shadowlands introductory quest line provided they had gone through it at least once.

As I mentioned, I thought I was going to end up taking another long break from the game until there was new content to explore that actually interested me. That was until the thought entered my mind out of nowhere just a few days ago: “You know what? I feel like doing some PvP. I don’t care how well I do, I just think it’ll be a change of pace.” So that’s exactly what I started doing. I had embarked on a journey with no specific end goal in sight, and that was just fine with me.

I think one of the primary reasons I’ve always avoided fighting other players is because I’ve never been particularly skilled at it. Granted, there will always be times when you’re leveling with War Mode on and a higher-level enemy player decides to be a jerk and attack you. There’s not much you can typically do in those situations, and since that exact scenario used to happen to me so often, I did everything I could to avoid it from then on. I’ve done that for years, even back when dedicated PvP servers still existed.

However, I figured the best way to improve at fighting other players was to start doing it in a more structured environment. Upon opening the Player-Versus-Player menu by pressing “I,” I found that provided I was playing on a character between levels 51 and 59, there was a chance I could earn a box that may or may not contain new equipment just by doing random battlegrounds. My teams didn’t even have to win in order for me to earn those boxes, and I figured new gear couldn’t hurt regardless. That’s why I threw caution to the wind and started queuing for battleground after battleground.

I have quite a few characters in that particular level range, and at least one character of each class, so I essentially have my pick of whatever I want to play. What’s more, I quickly learned that you can still earn character experience from participating in things like battlegrounds. Not as much experience as you’d get from spending the same amount of time doing quests, mind you, but I think it’s still a decent amount. That meant I could potentially get more characters to max level if I took part in enough battlegrounds, though I knew it would probably take quite a while.

I decided to start out with my level 51 Beast Mastery Hunter on the Alliance. I figured that I’d be better off if I began with a ranged damage dealing class that could take a few hits and stay standing, unlike a caster class with which I would probably be less familiar. The first battleground I was placed into was Temple of Kotmogu. I thought that was great because the temple tends to see quite a lot of fighting due to the nature of its central objective.

I think I’ll remember this round of Temple of Kotmogu for quite some time. If I’m not mistaken, it marked the best I’ve ever performed in PvP combat in all my years as a WoW player. I didn’t get a screenshot of the final scoreboard because the enemy team won rather easily, but I distinctly remember that I almost had a positive ratio of killing blows to deaths. I’m not sure I had ever scored a killing blow before, but I racked up six of them that round with seven deaths.

I can almost hear all the PvP experts out there laughing at me for being proud of a score like that, but I’d say that’s not too bad for someone who has been completely averse to player-versus-player combat in general for several years. I’m most assuredly still learning, and I know I’ve got a mountain of learning left to conquer, but I think I can do it. I still haven’t managed to pin down exactly what sparked this desire in me, but I’m glad to be on this journey.

I would never have expected PvP combat to be the thing that keeps me playing. However, I see no reason to complain about having a new justification for returning to a game I’ve loved since childhood. Heck, I might even do nothing but queue for random battlegrounds from now until the day Dragonflight releases. I just hope I have more than just a single max-level character by then!