TL;DR long queues and being destroyed makes me a sad F2P
I just wanted to share my perspective of this change (if it remains permanent).
I am fully F2P and haven’t had gametime on my current account (used to play and twink back in Vanilla/TBC with a sub). The reason I play right now is for the PVP. The gearing, exploration, questing, grinding, and farming is all, to me, only enjoyable because of the PVP goal at the end.
The things I enjoy about the PVP is that it is possible for a pure F2P to be able to (eventually lol) gear up to about 95% the strength of a vet, and the games are frequent with usually short wait times.
I enjoy being able to get fast and consistent BG queues. I am in Aus, on Oceanic servers which are tied in with the NA servers BGs. People from the NA region servers make up, usually, the large majority of all the players in the 20’s BGs I play in. The usual times of the day when I am available for BGs are often very scattered compared to that of the peak times for NA.
With this change, two things are happening, which affect me negatively. Allow me to QQ moar:
- Queue times have gotten longer.
Unsure if this is just teething and the adjustments are because it is middle of the week and it hasn’t settled yet, but game queue times have so far been MUCH longer. With me not being always able to queue up in “peak” times, this could make a casual game or 3 be a significantly longer experience than what it has been. I like being able to have a quick game here and there when I don’t have time for a longer session.
2.
Getting completely and utterly destroyed by 29’s.
Some of the games I’ve played, since the change, have been incredibly rewarding. With 20’s on either side, it’s much harder to kill or be killed in an instant. Healers on your team are likely to have
more than 125 int and 5 haste so your team is able to survive longer. Probably feels like what organised 10v10 games can feel like (RIP timezones)!
However, there have already been some people joining games which are 25+ and locked XP. Most topped a few of the charts and were individually very hard to deal with. 1v1 was out of the question.
Not all of them were amazing. Some had mediocre gear, and the meta hasn’t caught up yet and there is no definitive BIS yet. But also, the ones who
are making 29’s haven’t yet had the chance to. I predict in a week or 2 that there will be a much greater percentage of people playing their 29’s after they have gear and enchants, and things are going to be much more difficult for anyone who isn’t 29.
I see people saying that the 29’s “aren’t that much stronger” and it isn’t a huge deal – I thought so, too, until I encountered some of the more geared ones. I don’t stand a chance against them L
I have a hunch that these two things will get worse. People will find better gear and destroy the unsubbed 20’s, queue times will get longer, which will cause more people to stop queuing, which will cause queues to get longer, etc.
If this continues (long queue times and feeling like a leveller in BG-crate gear) then I might tour out, sadly. I was very excited for DF talents and was planning to make a 2nd (Vet) account in order to unlock timewalking and more RDF dungeons for my other account. I would have paid some amount of cash money for the game in order to gear up and stuff, but I have no interest in a long term subscription in order to play a 29 to stay relevant. I have even less interest in paying a subscription in order to wait half an hour in order to get a game. I liked the casual nature of it with no pressure to “use it or lose it” that comes with a subscription based game.
(and yes I know that my main is a hunter lol I do appreciate the irony but it is one of the few classes that allows me to fully, entirely, 100% solo and no help gear my own toons – I'm making more toons on my other account in order to let my hunter carry it through dungeons. My points still stand, my Hpal or WL also don't want to be hitting like soft noodles or being unable to out-heal a single DOT from a 29 or being chain stunned like no tomorrow against the DIPs etc. and they also don't want to wait 30 minutes for each and every game)