We don't need them anymore.

[FeyFavilla]

Is there any disadvantage for playing ranked over unranked that almost noone wants to play ranked?

Stress, mostly. The pressure to perform and anxiety to be screamed at for causing a loss. Ranked PvP has always, in any game, been the most toxic part of the community since it comes with the highest stakes that are often entirely dependent on other players. There are plenty of people who do not PvP at all for that exact reason, though at least in unranked you only waste the time for that particular match, not also risk the rank of your teammates.

It is actually a big enough problem that WoW added a PvE mode to the PvP weekly rotation a few years back to get people to interact with the gamemodes they made for PvP. And it was so wildly popular it caused issues with the queue system.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Stress, mostly. [...]

Stress and anxiety to perform is most certainly something tied to Ranked, yeah - but being screamed at in this community, at least in EU, is something I have experienced as often as I can count on half of a hand. Generally bad behaviour if it is done in ingame chat is easily punishable with a GM report, so that keeps things at bay.

On the other hand... the mode is just not worth the time investment, plain and simple. Stress and anxiety can be moderately mitigated if not overcome, but if you got no reason to even stay other than "I like pvp but I want to play in my skill bracket", then it's not worth fighting your inner demons over it.

I love ranked pvp, I dont even have any anxiety about it - and it's still not worth doing it for me, there's nothing worth the effort at the end of the road. That's time I could be playing ranked in games that reward me, or getting other stuff done.

[Valence]

Is there any disadvantage for playing ranked over unranked that almost noone wants to play ranked?

It's like someone deciding to increase the challenge and go beyond just running dungeons and story raids in pve, and jump in savage+. Suddenly you have a lot more expectations on your shoulders, and depending on your involvement/skill level - lightcore casual, midcore, semi hardcore, hardcore/week1 clear, world first - this isn't different from ranked pvp where similarly depending on your league/rank, you'll have increasing expectations and skill required to perform.

And like for pve, it can be a toxic cesspool the more you climb, unfortunately, because people are babies in their heads.

Stress and anxiety to perform is most certainly something tied to Ranked, yeah - but being screamed at in this community, at least in EU, is something I have experienced as often as I can count on half of a hand. Generally bad behaviour if it is done in ingame chat is easily punishable with a GM report, so that keeps things at bay.

Ingame it's essentially about ignore marks because people know they can't really push further without GM retaliation - funny that GMs don't seem to care about ignore marks though, it's in the TOS but they do them I guess. They're a regular occurrence and pretending they barely exist or that you can count them on half the fingers of your hand is not helping. I've even seen someone use them on JP (gold/plat) of all places. Oh, and of course, the usual body teabagging, yeah, this occasionally happens, saw a lot of people do that to each other last time I tried playing on EU crystal+.

Out of the game it's where the cesspool begins, at least on EU. People create their own circle jerk discords because they're unhappy that the main ones suddenly start moderating toxic behavior, and most of the regulars actually migrate to said discords, which should say enough about the community as a whole already. Then you have streams that can usually be filled with complaints from the streamer about player X or Y in non ambiguous terms, angry players, and twitch chats that just indulge in shitting on others and since it's an inbred community where everybody knows each other it actually further enforces the echo chamber. People keep complaining or foaming at the mouth about others but will never try to actually take a long and hard look at their own failings and whatnot. That's the reality of the meta, which you can shield yourself from somewhat by just not joining any of those places, then you're essentially more or less blind.

I think I've honestly been lucky not to be screamed at too much, but I've read things for sure.

[FeyFavilla]

Stress and anxiety to perform is most certainly something tied to Ranked, yeah - but being screamed at in this community, at least in EU, is something I have experienced as often as I can count on half of a hand. Generally bad behaviour if it is done in ingame chat is easily punishable with a GM report, so that keeps things at bay.

On the other hand... the mode is just not worth the time investment, plain and simple. Stress and anxiety can be moderately mitigated if not overcome, but if you got no reason to even stay other than "I like pvp but I want to play in my skill bracket", then it's not worth fighting your inner demons over it.

I love ranked pvp, I dont even have any anxiety about it - and it's still not worth doing it for me, there's nothing worth the effort at the end of the road. That's time I could be playing ranked in games that reward me, or getting other stuff done.

I disagree, sorry.
While I have not gone into competitive in this game in particular I have in my fair share of multiplayer games in the past. I can tell you from experience after having slacked on my rewards one season and being forced to grind CC, because I would not be able to get my rewards just from daily frontlines anymore, that if you do not perform and your team loses you have about a 50/50 chance of one or more of your teammates spamming one of the callouts aggressively before either going afk or just leaving. I know not everyone is like that but the pressure to perform is very real and the negative, toxic feedback is too. And if unranked, which most people will play first, is this bad, then they will absolutely not even want to try ranked, especially since it is just pretty common knowledge in any game how angry ranked players tend to get, no offense to anyone in here. The environment just breeds a lot of tension. I get that.
Even in frontlines, that are so damn casual, will you have more often than not people screaming at each other in chat. It's just not a fun experience for some. I know that this is exactly what others like tho, so not arguing it's bad content, just answering the question why someone would avoid specifically ranked PvP. Folks are scared of it for a reason and sometimes even just one really, really bad experience can stop them from trying ever again.

[ACE135]

I think there's nothing to lose when you play ranked. You get the same as winning or losing in unranked but with the bonus of getting the chance to rank up if you win in ranked mode.

[Valence]

I think there's nothing to lose when you play ranked. You get the same as winning or losing in unranked but with the bonus of getting the chance to rank up if you win in ranked mode.

Yeah that's a good point, and I'd say once you reach above gold/platinum this is definitely something to keep in mind, you'll also be paired with players that don't keel over in comparison to your own level.
Casual games are all fun and good, but past a certain point they can make you aware very painfully of the skill discrepancy.