With World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria now only weeks away, here’s what Lead Producer John Lagrave told us about the changes coming to PvP, and how Blizzard are addressing issues players have had with matchmaking and PvP gear.

Some

players have noticed that the rated Battlegrounds are looking a little

empty. Getting a team of ten together for a bit of a ruckus is less

popular than it used to be and doesn’t always provide for a fair,

balanced battle. When Pandaria arrives next month, Blizzard are hoping

that players will once again return to these arenas to enjoy some more

evenly-matched combat. Improving matchmaking, said Lagrave, was the key.

“We

think the system needs a bit of work in that regard. It’s tricky,

because [casual] players often suggest ‘Let me see what’ll happen if I

can just get ten people together,’” he said. “We’re re-evaluating some

of the incentive structures, and maybe some of the flexibility in terms

of size of each group you have to have in order to get more people in. I

think one of the problems that we ran into is just that there isn’t a

large enough pool at any given time.

“The

matchmaking can take a while, which then leads to a matchmaking

algorithm that prefers to match people of equal skill against each

other, but ultimately finds people who’re just available, period. And

then those mismatches end up being disheartening for players who are on

the end of them, who then get discouraged. It’s not as welcoming a

system to the group of roommates who want to take their ten player raid

and say ‘Hey, let’s do some Battlegrounds.’”

Lagrave

also talked about altering the balance between PvP and PvE equipment,

which can be a source of frustration for some gamers: “We really haven’t

been happy with the experience of a person trying to make a transition

from PvP to PvE,” he said. “The new system gives players a base

resilience and shifts the value of PvP gear partly in the offensive

stats, so that while a raider who walks into Battlegrounds wearing a

whole set of raider gear won’t be as effective as the arena player in

arena gear, they’re actually going to be way closer than most of the

cases online.”