WoW's Plunderstorm battle royale mode is much more popular the second time around: 'I can just play and screw around'

pcgamer.com:

World of Warcraft's controversial battle royale mode relaunched a week ago, once again pitting PvE mount and transmog collectors against hardcore PvP enjoyers. And this time around… almost no one is complaining.

Blizzard made some smart changes to the way its pirate-themed Plunderstorm worked. The rate of earning plunder, the game mode's currency, has increased. Players are given the opportunity to choose where on the map they bomb into, and NPC mobs respawn, enabling PvE players to focus almost entirely on NPCs instead of each other (until some PvPer comes a-hunting, of course). Random horses allow players to zoom around the map.

But most importantly, perhaps, all of the new transmog and mounts are on a vendor for plunder, instead of being attached to renown levels. This means that players who are solely after the new mount, or pet, or nifty black pirate transmog armor pieces, can just grind what they care about and then jump out, instead of having to pick their way through 40 levels of reputation against people who are enjoying, you know, winning. Many players report being able to buy all the new transmog items in a single evening.

«I have to say it is MUCH more enjoyable knowing I don't have to do another maxxed-out renown track to get what I want,» writes one player on Reddit. «As such, the stress is almost completely lifted off it and therefore I can just play and screw around.»

Plundestorm is a separate game mode in Warcraft, launched from the PvP tab in game (new this year) and from the main login screen for the game. A battle royale based on Warcraft characters, it gives you sometimes-goofy abilities as random spawns and drops, which you then use to attempt to become the last player standing.

It debuted last spring, and the PvP battles quickly transitioned into forum and subreddit battles, as players debated whether having these collector-friendly rewards tacked to a PvP battle mode was a good thing.

For casual players this year, just logging in and playing