f13.net

That's what the headline says:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/08/21/blizzard-giving-pve-to-pvp-transfers-to-friends/

It started out that I read it on the General Forums over at Blizzard here (well, that's one of them anyway):  http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1134167478&sid=1

Then I just followed the link and sure enough, it would appear the rumors were true.  Someone had an in with someone at Blizzard and Nethaera pulled the plug.  Not that I would expect Blizzard to do anything less, the guy was busted cold.  However, it does make one wonder how many others got away with it.

Meh, I'm of the opinion they should let PvE -> PvP transfers happen normally anyway.  Oh noes, you didn't get ganked leveling up. You will in the next expansion or while doing your dailies.  Folks buying PvP server accounts didn't get ganked leveling up either, and that's allowed under the Blizz EULA.

In the grand scheme of things this "scandal" type is one of the smallest we've seen out of the MMO world.  That it involves Furor (once again) is just an indication they need to fire his ass and send a clear message.  J. Kaplan disappeared after his guild's little fiasco, but here we have #2 with Mr. Loudmouth.

I'm fairly sure they made an 'exception' a year and a half ago, when they allowed FOH (Furor's guild) transfer from Hyjal (PvE) to Black Dragonflight (PvP). Of course they allowed other Hyjal players to transfer too, so it wasn't TOO obvious. :P

Edit: I just read the article, and it looks like the transfer was also for another FOH member onto BD. I am shocked and appalled at this completely unexpected turn of events... kek.


-- Z.

I agree with you on the ruleset, but those are their rules.

The problem I have with what happened, is first of all, it's not the first time.  When the rumors were first hitting the boards over there about favoritism towards FoH, well over a year ago now, it also concerned PvE to PvP transfers.  At that time, Hyjal, a PvE server was allowed to transfer to Black Dragonflight, a PvP server.  People called foul because it was well-known that FoH was suspiciously on Hyjal who was the pick to be eligible.  Blizzard (Eyonix) had this to say about it:

I realize that conspiracy theories are fun to entertain, and that what I'm about to say will be very disappointing for those seeking to expose some ugly untruth in the world of Azeroth, but the fact remains, Hyjal was chosen due to the negative effects associated with being host to such a high population of players, not because of what guilds had established themselves there.

Also, while were at it, Mr. Rogers never served as a U.S.Army sniper in Vietnam.




Guys, the transference of characters from select PvE to PvP realms was done with the intent to improve realm performance. Nothing more. Previously, we hadn't planned to open up transfers from a PvE ruleset to a PvP ruleset, and the decision was one that was under discussion for weeks. Heavy discussion, as a matter of fact. It was decided that in order to better encourage players on the chosen high population realms to transfer to our new hardware, we'd allow an opportunity for transfers to a player vs. player realm type.

We realize that there are other high population realms that could've benefited from a similar transfer, but we chose realms that we believed would benefit the most.

We may or may not do such a transfer again in the future. Such a decision will likely be made based upon the impact of the actual transfer, and feedback that's been provided concerning the decision. You should also know that we appreciate the feedback we receive on this matter, but conspiracy theories that detail assumption will be ignored.


You guys do realize that the discussions and decisions involving realm transfers are handled by our Network Operations team, and not Game Designers, yes?


And the other 6 realms being transferred, what of them? They are getting preferential treatment, according to your claims, right? Who is the big name on those realms?

http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-general/7932720.htm

Now over a year later, we see this again and Eyonix looks like a man eating crow.

How do you trust a company that comes out with an excuse like the above and then blatantly (and rather arrogantly) basically refers to the poster Vigil as a player wearing a tin-foil hat?  Or a company that is running around the Blizzard boards locking any thread they see crop up on the subject.  Judging from the volume of them, I think they would have to hire an extra person just to do the job, it's that many.

There's paranoia and then there's the truth.  Judging from the threads that won't die on Blizzard's forums, despite how fast they lock and delete them, people are pretty incensed about the latest manuveurs.  It would appear a game designer does have influence over their "Network Operations" and they don't want you thinking that.

Alright. I'll agree with Merusk, who cares if they let people transfer. Getting ganked at low levels still doesn't buy you the right to do the same. It's just being an asshole, regardless. People get ganked and griefed enough without having to put up with some kind of martyrdom for 65 levels. More power to people who can use contacts to circumvent it. The only thing I can see they did wrong was to get caught red-handed. That was awkward.

What happened to the good old days of corruption, when staff would run around killing people on GM accounts, or creating items to sell on eBay, or giving their buddies free lewtz?

*looks at Eve board*

Oh yeah.

Jeff/Tigole is actually alive and well and doing the promo's for WotLK, believe it or not.

http://www.curse.com/articles/details/2842/

And that's just it.  People aren't so dumb not to know this happens.  I saw it back in a MUD before Everquest even started so to think they don't cheat is kinda naive.  I just can't believe their spokes-people.  Do they even believe what they write?  Because both Eyonix and Tseric are going off on that guy as if he's nothing but a conspiracy theorist.

While Eve got caught taking even bigger liberties, I'm sure not that naive to believe Blizzard isn't just as guilty.  They just need to lose the arrogant, self-righteous attitude.

You are thinking of GFrazier.

Also, there's no evidence Furor was involved other than the fact that the person transferred was from FoH.

Kaplan's been all over the place, non-stop, since the game came out. He's now one of the lead developers. That's not disappearing.

The real issue is that the recruitment pool on pve servers is nil and you cannot transfer to a better server because, well, there's no place TO transfer. It's a ridiculous rule.

It's a combo-move.  Always happens in the same sequence, no variations.  Individuals in the dev company do favors (it's human nature), people on the internets get up in arms about it (even though everyone knows this kind of stuff happens all the time), and the devs post some sort of response downplaying the event and cooling down the masses.

We don't want to see indications of wide-spread corruption:  we want the illusion that it was a once-off occurrence, and that the little guy who did it will get punished badly for doing it (that's the indication that it's not widespread corruption).

Blizzard should change the policy and allow pve to transfer to pvp, but until they do, they should come down hard on people who are involved in favoritism.  Hard, as in, fire their asses.

The CMs just end up looking like assholes, especially because - well, they acted like assholes.  Familiarity breeds contempt, and when CMs end up publicly treating players with contempt, it's time for them to find a new job.

I wonder what sort of other favors FoH has received?

You're right, I was.   You're also right about no direct evidence, but that it's FoH is enough to warrant some looking in to on Blizz's part.  Unless there's some naive belief that the friends he made while leading FoH really don't talk to him anymore.

I can guess at the mild stuff:  fast response to petitions (which is nice when, for example, Onyxia bugs out and doesn't give loot on you), looking the other way for some of the petty illegal stuff like account sharing, buying gold, names in violation of the policy, and probably heads' up warnings whenever serious petitions were levelled against them (if any), so that they'd have a chance to remove the offense / fix it and avoid permabans.

The serious stuff, anybody's guess; we could sit here all day making up conspiracy theories.

Dont forget posting naked pictures of fat uber guildmasters and their fat and hairy wives.

I'm abit surprised at all the ambivalence twords this.  The fact that its human nature doesn't really excuse it.  Every day in every job people must reign their baser instincts to function professionally and act in a manner that enables them to keep their jobs and move forward in their careers.  In other lines of work, giving favor's to a given set of customers that is clearly against your companies stated policy can most certainly get your ass fired.

Also puzzled at the pro pve-to-pvp transfer stance many of you seem to have.  Why is it kocher to level up in the comfy nest of a pve server then transfer at level cap so that you can grief other players at their more vulnerable stages of development whilst you enjoyed complete safety from such predacious behavior?  At a policy level, this would likely create an enviroment where their were fewer characters 1-69 on pvp servers, as some (many?) would opt to level up on pve and transfering in, leaving even fewer people to group with for lower level instances, and even less cases of one of the most fun things in WoW, random world pvp between 2 players who happen to be questing in the same zone.

Not to mention its harder to level on pvp servers, especially in some zones.  One of the reasons i prefer pvp servers is i believe it selects for more tenacious, determined players.  No im not saying all pvp server players have these traits, im just saying % wise its fair to say pvp servers have abit more of it.

I can't really see any positives to allowing pve to pvp transfers other then lazy fucks saying I WANT IT who incidentally are exactly the sorts of maggots i dont want to play with.

You're right. That's why PvE servers are more progressed as far as raids go and have higher populations of level 70s.

Oh, wait. Neither of those two things is true.

I misread that. Delete me.

Haven't kept up with post-tbc raiding scene because i dont raid anymore but pre tbc...

D & T - Korgath - PvP (#1 US guild on alliance) KT 1st
Overrated - BDF (later Korgath) - PvP (#1 US guild on horde) C'Thun 1st
Nightmare's Asylum had the Nefarion 1st, Stranglethron PvP i believe.

I think Fury alone was a PvE 1st (ragnaros).

From a post i recently found about post-tbc guilds (feel free to double-check the veracity):
1 .Nihilum EU-Magtheridon - HORDE PvP
2 .Forte EU-Kazzak -ALLY Unknown (couldn't find this server)
3. Last Resort EU-Kazzak -HORDE unknown
4 .Meet Your Makers EU-Vek'nilash -HORDE PvP
5 .For the Horde EU-Destromath -HORDE PvP
6 .Death and Taxes US-Korgath -ALLY PvP
7 .Bad Omen EU-Dentarg -HORDE PvE
8 .Aurora US-Mal'Ganis -HORDE PvP
9 .Celebrity EU-Balnazzar -HORDE PvP
10. Glamour EU-Stormscale -ALLY PvP

So even if the realm "Kazzak" is PvE, progression is still heavily weighted twords pvp servers.

You just proved Angel right.  Way to agree with him.   :-D

Interestingly enough on fohguild.org there is no discussion about this particular drama (at least none that I could see), however there is a more general discussion about how a lot of PvE servers are having population problems, especially Horde side, and that 'serious' raid guilds all want to get onto PvP servers.  Not so much for ganking in Hillsbrad, but because there is a larger pool of serious raiders on the PvP servers, and you can transfer/guildhop/poach between PvP servers, but if you jump to a PvE server, you can't go back. 

I find it interesting that this is the shared belief - whether this imbalance is true or not is another matter - that some servers don't have enough people on em.  Maybe at least in NA WoW is finally plateauing?

Frankly, given that leveling is a small piece of the game and that most pvp occurs in the battlegrounds, I just don't care if pve players transfer over.  It's not hard to level on any sort of server.  Getting ganked in STV?  Go level up in Desolace.  Etc.

I started on a pve server at launch, got my rogue to 53 within a month or so and then grew so incredibly bored that I started over on a pvp server.  I've levelled 2 to 70 and a third to 61. 

The state of the game now is such that it's hard enough finding people to instance with that any distinction between pve and pvp is minimal.  Who cares, really. 

The people I feel sorriest for are those on dead servers.  Not only should they be able to transfer to a living server, but it should be free.

However, favoritism is a different kettle of fish altogether.  Whoever did that should be canned.

In terms of a total population play, there isn't really any evidence to support that. There's less people in primetime compared to the BC launch, but still a lot of people more then pre-BC. (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-707.htm)

In terms of raiders and server-type, I think it's the Dwarf Priest argument, except for once I'm not on the gimped side of it (and thus have to really think through my responses). You make a decision at an early stage of your character/account's development that severely hinders you much later on and that doesn't strike me as quite fair.

I think people should be offered a once-per-year PvE -> PvP transfer as long they aren't transferring within three months of an expansion release.

http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/

Look over the first page and tell me how many pvp versus pve servers you see. The argument that raiding and levelling on a pve server is easier is completely false.

I laugh at this comment.  Posting statics and say this reflects lack of increased effort and time spent hiding from hunting 70's, quest exp lost due to needing to avoid hotzones, time spent in back-n-forth ganking of other players against whom you hold a grudge...  The random mage aoe grinding like a pro, he rounds up his mobs, frost nova's, and begins his flamestrike that he will follow up with a CoC... only to get backstabbed by a NE rogue (watched this happen in netherstorm like 3 times last night).

Are you even aware how many people habitually park their 70 in the same zone their alt is questing, so that when the inevitable gank occures, they can log on their main and retaliate?  While leveling my priest this included almost everyone i grouped with that had a 70.  Its a given that you will get ganked, its a given that the normal human response to such is retaliation, at least for those who are able.  Those without the means must eat humble pie and hide.

Statics dont reflect that.  I honestly can't believe people try to make this argument except for a need to protect their ego from a percieved assault.

As someone who's leveled on a PvP server you do get ganked, you do avoid STV for the most part, but no, I have rarely been camped.

Now, if you retaliate by bringing out your 70 and then provoke them into bringing their main/friends, then yes, you'll get into a pissing match. When someone in my guild gets camped we set a rule long ago that: a) you probably aren't being camped, so just go about your business and b) if you are getting camped, we only send people to establish superiority long enough to get the character out of the zone, not to start a war.

If you want to start a fight, it's easy to start a fight on a PvP server, but if you just want to level/do dailys and mind your own business, you can do that just as easily.

Because players might find it fun?  This argument sounds a lot like the whole "I suffered through [game feature X], now I deserve more than someone who didn't" line, which seems out of place in a game whose only purpose is entertainment.  If someone wants to do it, and it won't screw with the gameplay, why not let them do it?  What makes someone who levelled on a PvP server more deserving of the "privilege" of ganking lowbies, while someone who levelled on a PvE server is less deserving?  For that matter, why make someone who's levelled one character on a PvE server and another one on a PvP server unable to transfer the PvE character to the PvP server?  It just seems like a weird restriction to me.

If the worst case scenario you can come up with is that people won't level alts on PvP servers, then so what?  I don't see the drawbacks you're talking about there.  Difficulty finding groups for levelling would be lower if everyone was migrating to PvE servers to level.  And if world PvP is the most enjoyable thing in WoW, why would people level on servers where the only difference is that you can't do it?

Edit: me have trouble with grammar, fix order words of

Thanks, I play on a PvE server. Given that it's apparently a hideous experience levelling on a PvP server, one that is so heinous PvE players shouldn't be allowed to transfer since they have it easy mode, would you care to explain how PvP servers are roughly three times as progressed? I mean zone ins for raids must be a cesspool of wanton gankage where it takes a half hour to zone in. This is bearing in mind that Blizzard's entire argument against it is that it's easier to level and, more importantly to their line of reasoning and the type of game WoW is, easier to get epics in raids.

I also didn't get the chance to thank you for making my point for me above, so thanks!

Look in the Rickshaw. ;)

It's not a lack of players, it's a lack of Horde-side players. Some of the older normal servers can have a 3:1, 4:1 or worse A:H ratio. Less Horde players = Harder to recruit for guilds, worse server economy, etc, etc. A benefit used to be better BG queue times but now with the cross-server BGs, the honour changes & the changing nature of the newer servers means that this is less of an incentive...plus, you know, playing on a PvE server means that BGs tends to be more of a digression anyway, for a significant percentage of the playerbase.

It's a positive feedback loop as well, which makes it worse. PvE Horde player/guild looks around, sees small Horde playerbase, and decides to reroll on a PvP server (which have much closer to 1:1 ratios - the newer PvP servers are even Horde-biased) purely for a larger player pool. The A : H ratio on his/her old server then gets fractionally worse...leading to the next person to look around and say "You know what? There's just not enough Horde players left on this server. Time to reroll"

What Blizzard ought to have done, months (if not years) ago is to have seperate queues, server capacity status, etc. for Alliance & Horde. I mean, what's the point of flagging a server as High Population if all that means it that it's got three thousand Alliance & under a thousand Horde - Blizzard ought to be encouraging people to roll Horde on that server & discouraging Alliance, instead of just blanket "The server is nearly full"

Yes, it's inexcusable!  It's also impossible to fix or do anything about it.  You go ahead and cancel your account over this, if you want, making sure to let Blizzard know just how inexcusable it is in your "why are you cancelling?" survey.  But as far as trying to get more people to do the same, hahahahahahahaha.

Something about shades of gray or something.

Maybe what Blizzard should do is merge instances like the battlegroup servers were merged.

Server-mergers are bad PR.

Are you having that hard a time finding a group ?

Firing/reassigning someone doesn't undo the problem. The only to do that is to, like, undo the problem. Net gain zero, technical and PR wise. Unless there's truly a systemic problem, you don't need to go all psycho on the guy.

There's so much to complain about with WoW, and they've gotten so much heat of late, this is chickenfeed.

Oh, and I support PvE to PvP transfers. You're trying to grind to level 70. That's the goal. How many people do you (the general you, not you Sog) really think would end up on one particular service? You think it'd be a giant sucking sound to PvP? I doubt it. If you got a few dozen people per server, that's not going to screw up the world. And it allows people to get what they want.

Heck, Blizzard could charge $50 for this, and make it one time ever per account.

Apparently some people are finding it very difficult to do end game instances due to being on a low population server.

I'm on a high-pop server, and finding Scarlet Monastary groups remains a bitch. I finally had to get a guildie to handle the Armory for me. I have to go back to the Library -- I need a staff upgrade, and he's got a nice one.

Lower instance grouping pretty much doesn't happen on my server.  People get 70s to run them through stuff.

I assume this is the case on most servers with post-60 population, and seems a normal part of the mmo experience (and a flaw at that which could be remedied fairly nicely - see CoX's sidekick option).

But when you can't raid the endgame - as so many people want to do - that's really a tough problem that needs a solution of some sort.  Server mergers or just instance merges?

Or force the issue and allow pve to pvp transfers.

WoW at the endgame is raiding. Whether that's good or not is a different argument. The pve servers, even the medium and high pop ones, are almost universally in a very poor state. Everyone in their right mind supports the change: the casuals who want to spice things up but chose poorly, the guys who want to play with some friends but their friends are on the pvp server,  the raiding guilds who want to recruit a gem on a pve server, the raiders on pve servers who have a shitty recruitment pool... everyone is grumbling about this because it's fucking dumb.

This isn't some secondhand thing here. We've essentially crapped out on raiding because even though we're on a medium pop pve server there simply is not a recruitment pool of decent players. It's not there and it's not going to be there. If they actually institute the lowered levelling time pre-60 in a timely fashion (HA!) there are strong indications we may reroll. Yeah, that's a good solution for server crowding: force everyone to hit up the pvp servers if they're interested in endgame content, make the pve servers even worse as far as in-game talent and don't change a thing.

Pretty much 90% of the top raiding guilds are all on PvP servers.

Just sayin'.

It all comes back to the horde/alliance population imbalance from the beginning. If Blizzard had made even one serious attempt at keeping some form of population balance on the whole, I think a lot of these issues would have been less glaring now. A lot of the "problems" can be traced back 2+ years.

But at this point, Blizzard does not care about what the health of their population is, as long as they retain a good amount of people until the next expansion, they are happy. And even with the "poor" state of raiding on PvE realms, a lot of their customers who like to raid will continue to play, and many of them will do so and pay 25 bucks every 3 months to change realms.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I recall the population imbalance being actually pretty marginal on PVP servers. I don't think this is a matter of imbalance at all; just a matter of people wanting to keep their options open. I briefly rerolled on an Alliance PVE server to level up with a friend before quitting that character, partially because the population was just horribly stupid and partially because I would never have had the chance to transfer that character to a PVP server if I so desired later on. I think it's that second factor that has caused PVP servers to be more populous.

FoH on their first Kael'thas kill got an Ashes of Al'ar (1% droprate) which went to Furor. FoH on their first Illidan kill got one of the Legendary Blades of Azzinoth (rough 5% droprate). Probably coincidental of course, but who doesn't like more flames for the fire?

The 1-60 game isn't that bad if you only try to find PuGs for popular instances. For alliance I haven't ever really had trouble finding pugs for Deadmines, (ugh) Gnomer, Uldaman, Sunken Temple (because everyone HAS to get their dumb class quest done). You can find the odd group of people who wanna hit BRD/Maraudon, but most people don't bother with those anymore.

I can NEVER get a pug for Shadowfang Keep despite it being a kickass instance. Blackfathom Deeps/Razorfen Bore 1 and 2 I can kinda live without.

This is on Proudmoore, which is a release-day PvE server with a piss-poor recruiting pool. If I didn't like the people in my little guild so much I'd ditch in a second for a better server. PvP servers lick my balls though. Fuck any server where some asshole can ruin my questing/grouping.

Alliance to Horde ratios:

All 70s: 1.4 : 1
PvP 70s: 1 : 1.1
PvE 70s: 2.1 : 1

Also, I don't really think it's a serious issue for the vast majority of the player base. But when some well progressed guild says "LF1 *your class/spec* with *your stats*" and your response can only be "God damn transfer restrictions" that sort of feeling tends to bubble up with stories like these.

As for the low-level instances... one 70 can trivialize ZF or lower, so they're probably not going to get run much in an actual PuG.

tell me more about this

Someone said he meant GFrazier and I think they must be right because I don't remember any fiasco involving Legacy of Steel.

cool. tell me about that instead.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=1884.0

GFrazier was/is Blizzard's Web guy (it's not clear if he's still there). He ran his own guld callled "Kali Compton" which was one of the more visible and vocal ones during Beta. They were basically hated by everybody (Alliance and Horde) for their PvP zerg and ganking tactics and corpse camping. Shortly after release Blizzard instituted a strict guild naming policy which include a restriction on including real life locations in the name and such. People complained that Kali Campton violated that rule but nothing was being done about it. GF either deleted some of those posts himself or get a moderator friend to do it and I think he got somebody banned in game as well for posting some personal but publically available information about him on the forums. When all that was discovered his guild was disbanded and he promptly "disappeared" from the face of the Internet never to be heard from again.

Good.  I remember that.  He was fucking stupid.

He's still at Blizzard. He replied to a suggestion I sent in about searches on the Armory.

Yeah, but it's more than that. The endgame is designed around being mobile and having a full field of vision now. PvP players learn early on to heal on the move, to always watch out around them, as they level. On any given pve server people don't learn that early on. Also, where do you think the housewives and sixty year old guys wanting to see what their kids are up to go? Not gank central.

So you don't just get a concentration of players into griefing and ganking on a pvp server but a concentration of GOOD players. Then it compounds itself because a good player in a mediocre guild finally says "Fuck it" and heads over to a pvp server, too. Seriously, I'm not hyperbolising when I say that the player base is not good enough to do the backend raids on most pve servers. We've crapped out post-Gruul because we cannot find people who can do this shit and it's the easy stuff. My server has one Vashj kill; other pve servers are even worse where you have a Gruul kill, some KZ clears and that's IT.

He can be at Blizzard if he wants.  As long as he's quiet.

Thanks. BTW reply #5 from Schild is worth some lolzors.

And he thinks he should be paid to consult for MMORPG companies :-D

As with all these games, it seems that expecting people not to cheat when the opportunity arises is like telling them not to breathe.  Everyone expects it, even accepts it, but the bottom line is, the game loses its integrity and it pisses people off when they find out.

With that said, somewhat of a fix may lie in having your employees play on their own private server.  That way they can get the experience needed to see the problems in the world but not try to mesh with the general public.

It seems to me that even by working for the company, you are privy to even water-cooler information that would give you an advantage and that's not good for business.

I never heard that one.  Interesting.

The advantage is bigger in a PvP game than in a PvE game.  And for both, you could make sure that whatever advantage there is, it still takes a large investment of TIME to reap the rewards.

  When they do increase the exp pre-60, whenever that happens, I won't be one bit surprised if they use that as an excuse to allow the PvE->PvP server transfers.  It will essentially mean that even levelling on a PvE server would have taken you as long as the new exp system as it would currently on a PvP server based on their logic.  And if they don't, once people start re-rolling because it's even easier to level on a PvP server, I think they'll be forced to make the decision at some point.

  The largest problem I see now is that the low-level populations are just not present, at least not on the three servers I've tried.  Finding a tank for any instance pre-50 is fairly non-existant, healers being the second most desired, and lacking class.  There is however, no shortage of Mages or Warlocks.

What?  First I've heard of that.

At Blizzcon they said they wanted to speed up leveling from 20 to 60 through: an increase in quest experience in those levels, a decrease in total experience required, a retuning of zones (Dustwallow Marsh was mentioned), and the change of some group quests into normal ones (Stromgarde in Arathi and the Ogre quests in Alterac were mentioned).

Looking forward to it.  I've gotten 3 to 60 or higher, and really don't want to level any others unless they rework 20-60.

It'd be nice if they reworked the elite quests in Arathi and Alterac...those were hard to find groups for even right after release.

I think I read somewhere that most world elites in Azeroth, barring named, etc, are being turned into normal mobs. I'm pretty sure that Stromgarde was specifically mentioned as well.

Doesn't that halve the experience tho ?

:)

Personally speaking I'd rather have less xp per formerly-elite mob + soloable quest than elite mobs xp + unsoloable until green/grey, what wiith the tweaks to the 21-58 xp curve & across-the-board 30% increase in quest reward xp that will go live at the same time as the mob changes.

Kail, i can't believe you are not embarassed to say that crap.  PvP servers are not a bug, or stupidly designed boss encounter.  The fact that see nothing wrong with something so blatantly hypocritical is disturbing.  Another expansion is on the way (so gear doesn't matter much), they are changing the xp curve (so leveling a new character should be much less painful), if you want to stomp noobs that bad re fucking roll and endure it yourself, else fuck off.

EDIT:  Yes pvp players are more deserving of stomping noobs then pve players.  Leveling up you may or may not be the type that likes to take advantage of other people in bad situations.  Most people who aren't, change from leveling because they grow to hate the other faction.  Some are unattached to their characters and the game itself that they dont really care, but for people who really get into it thats what happens.  If you are the type of person who could just walk into a new situation and get your rocks off killing level 40's that need more gorilla hair or whatever, i consider you a wretched individual but its just a game so whatever.

Modern, the reason pvp servers are more progressed is that they select for an ever-so-slightly higher grade of player.  Other people, who also made their server selection based on guestimated demographics (and i knew several people in my own guild and the other top horde guild on my server) who did the same.  People who didn't necessarily care that much about pvp/world pvp, but who didn't want easymode leveling and who had a competitive bent.

As an aside, pre-tbc i played an elemental shaman who was for the most part denied elemental loot regardless of my dkp totals.  This was true of all the top horde guilds on my server (all the guilds capable of killing c'thun and making progress in nax).  So, i began going through every "somewhat" progressed guild on every fucking pvp server i could find, and found that almost universally Horde PvP guilds practiced this policy of "progression over everything" loot distribution policy.

The only exceptions?  1)  Overrated, the at-the-time #1 horde guild in the US, and 2) pve servers.

I would say PvP servers are most likely much more progressed because they contain a more hardcore, willing-to-sacrifice (for lack of a better term) playerbase then pve servers.

As to the present direction the thread has gone, GFraizer is still on the interwebs, just not in a official moderating capacity on blizzards forums (where i'd bet anything he posted as Fangnoob aka Fangtooth, untilll he got blown out for being such a raging moron).  His website is www.expectnothing.com , i remember from my starcraft playing days.

I hope the elite-to-normal change is not universal.  The troll city in the Hinterlands is one of my favorite spots in the 1-60 game.  I found a group to do it with for every character i leveled except my UD mage & priest, because it didnt exist then.

Another thing i really hope blizzard does before the launch of WotLK is normalize the item/exp transition from azeroth to outland, so that scholo loot is only slightly worse then ramparts loot, etc.  Its such a waste of content and genuinely cool dungeons that no one even touches the level 60 stuff anymore.  It also makes no sense that ramparts mobs give double (or more?) the exp of azerothian dungeon mobs.

I imagine the Hinterlands will get the nerf-stick if Arathi/Alterac do, since that quest series is needed for the mallet to summon the (worthless) Ghaz'rilla and get the egg for the generic ST quest reward (which is one of the better itemized quest rewards in the game).

I'd honestly love for Blizz to reitemize the whole 1-60 game so people have a REASON to hit up Blackfathom Deeps/Razorfen Kraul/Razorfen Downs/Shadowfang Keep. Make the items useful, remove green drops from bosses, replace with good twink gear. THAT'S how you'll get people back into those.

Edit: Original version of my reply was somewhat offensive, I feel.  So, axed it.

The toned down reply is basically that this is a game.  It sounds like you're taking this very seriously, like clicking on a PvP or PvE toggle actually MEANS something about you, as a player.  People theoretically click on the game play style they find the most fun when they start up.  If they find they made a mistake, PvP players can switch, but PvE players cannot, and I don't see why.  I don't see why the devs should restrict what some players can do but not what other players can do, unless they can give a good reason, and I haven't heard a good reason.  If you have one, I'd love to hear it, but the only thing you've said has been that PvP servers have better players, which is the reason why PvE players want to transfer there in the first place, not a reason to prevent them from doing so.

And I have no desire to transfer my PvE characters to a PvP server, so your rants about how I should reroll or whatever are kind of pointless.  I do think it's a strange mechanic, and I don't see a reason for it.  That doesn't mean that I'm staring at the character transfer screen every day, lusting over the thought of raping lowbies or something.  I do have a few lowbie characters on PvP servers, too, they're just not very frequently played.  So it's not like I personally have a huge stake in this particular issue.  It just doesn't seem like a very good rule to me.

Because they're HARDCORE and better than you, man.  Don't you get it? You suck at life because you chose the wrong server on a game!

Yeah, we don't want you PVE nubs being able to play on a PVP server without going through the crushing hardcore rite-of-passage that is leveling up on one.

Listen you god damn kids, WoW PVP servers are so motherfucking soft that a card-carrying "Hooray for Trammel!" carebear like me went to one and had a good time stabbing faces until the game itself just plain bored me.  Hell, I got to a much higher level on my PVP server than I ever did on my PVE one, just because the fighting helped maintain my interest longer.

I can't see why PVP and PVE servers ought to be treated differently at all, as far as transfers are concerned.  It's not like all the PVP on the PVP servers actually... you know... does anything.

Keep the crazy train rolling guys. This is like immigration but dumber.

Regardless of how you feel about battlegrounds or arenas, nobody can really argue that WoW got outdoor PvP totally wrong.  At almost every development turn they've grossly botched their iterations of meaningful outdoor PvP.  It seems to me that they just figured from the outset that if they allowed people to fight by governing zones with rulesets (contested zones) that the players would naturally just LOL kill each other.  For the most part they did, but when that got old what then?  Aside from some pretty awesome, but server melting battles outside Blackrock Mountain between guilds zerging their way into the two raid zones there, or the "Oh shit we don't have 40 on, let's go zerg IF/ORG," outdoor PvP in WoW was just a ghost town on PvP servers that you never saw that much of at all after you reached level cap. 

Sure you're going to get ganked a couple times in STV leveling up.  Sure there have been attempts since the Silithus patch to try to make it more interesting.  But none seem to make it worth your time to even inhabit, much less actually kill people in PvP zones for anything other than yuks.  If they would have backed up zones like Silithus and Halaa with meaningful rewards, then I'm sure they'd be more frequented, and hence more fun.  Halaa seemed to me that it was an awesome step in the right direction.  Birds - check.  Bombin' dudes - check.  Rewards - Wait I gotta do this for how long to get what?  Oh nobody's here cause this blows, so it's even going to take even longer to loot enough bodies for that NON flying mount?  That sucks. 

It just doesn't seem to me like they've ever really been able to wrap their heads around the fact that their outdoor PvP is lackluster.  It's like they're in denial.  It sounds good in patch notes, but in practice it just doesn't have meaning.  Like it's on the list of things to do, and stuff, but they always seem to just go ahead and patch before they're done with it.  And that's okay I guess.  WoW can't be all things to all people.

So without meaningful outdoor PvP in the game, how can we really justify this server ruleset no transfer policy?  PvP R HARDCOREZ?  Nah.  I had over 200 days logged on a PvP server, and I think they should just let people play where they want.  People opposed, it seems to me are just nerd birds puffing out their chests. 

Fuck illegals, fuck big business for importing them, and fuck you.
The reason why the dev's should (and do) restrict what some players can do and some cannot:
You cannot enter Karazhan (sp?) unless you have gotten keyed.  Ditto Hyjal/BT.  They restrict you from doing Y because you have not done X.
You cannot play on a pvp server unless you have leveled your character on a pvp server.  You must do Y before you can get X.

Leveling in an easier enviroment, and later transfering into one in which it was harder erodes some of the basic reasons people leveled in the harder enviroment.  I will do anything to have even a slightly higher % chance of not having TerriBad2000 in my group.  Im sure their are plenty of others who feel exactly the same.  Which is not to say that their aren't plenty of suckass players on pvp servers, im simply saying that for every 100 apes that click on the pvp server, 105 click on the pve (statics fabricated simply for illustration, i dont want to lend credeance to the random fuckboys in the tread trying to put words in my mouth).

As for the opposite (pvp being able to transfer to pve), i wouldn't give a rats ass if they disabled that.  I have never nor do i personally know even 1 person that plays this game who has xfered from pvp to pve.  Im sure they exist but i haven't met them.  My guess as for why they allow that is as i said before, blizzard looks at it as tiered, with pvp being higher.  So you may downgrade yourself if you wish, but if you want to upgrade you gotta work for it.

@ WUA:  Yes WoW pvp may be shit compared to other games, but this isnt other games.  You have a few server types to pick from, what minimal filters exist to seperate mind-meltingly bad players from functional ones (such as letting people select "easy" or "slightly less easy" for leveling when they start the game), i wish to remain in place.  Yes these filters have holes the sides of asteriods but if they deflect even a few per 100 im happy.

EDIT:Musashi, the problem you are having is being ends-focused.  World pvp in WoW unfortunately isnt about the ends.  They want you to go into neat little instanced containers for your rewards.  On the server i currently reside (azgalor), Halaa has pretty frequent activity, most any time im farming in nagrand i see ppl lfm halaa raid or LF halaa raid, and control seems to go back in forth all the time.  I have also heard Mal'Ganis has very active world pvp.  Most all servers have shit happening at elemental plateau.  You can find it if you want it.  Honestly fuck the loot anyway.  Do what you feel like doing when you feel like doing it and when you get shinies on the way thats great.  Blizzard will turn your purples into poo within a year anyway.

Only thing im really willing to grind for is an epic flyer, because it has a drastic impact on doing stuff in the game world, which is what i enjoy most.

I think the impact that you believe this would have is mostly in your head. There are idiots everywhere, and you're afraid that some small percentage of awesome that the pvp servers hold over pve is gonna be driven into the ground by letting people pay money to transfer over there? How often do you run into someone hellbent on annoying the shit out of you in-game? I know people want to believe that everyone is trying to act like a jackass and they are out to get you if they aren't in your direct circle, but it's simple not the case. The most annoying things I've seen on PvE servers are people just sitting in front of the banks on the coolest mount they can find, or they camp mobs you want to kill or gather. Other than that, unless you have general open you never really open yourself up to much stupidity.

Oh and as far as meaningful world pvp, put a one and only Auction House in the whole of Outland in Halaa. Then, put the only "always open" portals in the Zangermarsh PvP section instead of Shatt. That'll spice things up if you make the needed perks a pvp option.

Heh, that's insane.  Even for PvE servers that's insane.

Hey, I liked the world PVP in WoW.  Then again, I'm not very demanding.  All I wanted was a little fragging to spice up my diku, and that's what it gave me.  I still don't see it as being some big barrier to leveling compared to a PVE server, nor did I find the people on the PVP server to be any less stupid than anyone else.  Half the people I took on fought like they were manipulating the keyboard with their feet.

Insane? Very! However, at some point you have to decide that if you want PvP to mean something to the world you have to make it impact things that people actually use everyday. Hell, the Auction House idea is more of a carrot than anything since one doesn't exist in the world to date.

If you want to have a top-selling game in the West, you cannot have "meaningful outdoor PvP."  We learned this from UO, Darktide, the Zeks, Shadowbane, etc.  People do not want to suffer anything resembling a meaningful penalty (or to be denied anything resembling a meaningful bonus) for getting wtfpwned while camping foozles.  They want ding-grats-loot or maybe ding-grats-loot with some meaningless fragging tossed in now and again to spice things up.  That's what WoW PvP servers give them.  When they want to actually PvP, they want to do so in a roughly fair setting with more-or-less formal rules, which is what WoW's arenas and battlegrounds give them.

Meaningful world PvP is for niche games only.  They can be fun, they can be successful, but they cannot be WoW.

Kinda beside the point, but isn't that what they said about MMO's as a genre 'till someone did it right?  I mean, it's just the D&D nerd demographic, right?

I don't know if meaningful outdoor PvP has to involve meaningful (as in super-harsh) penalties.  Unless you count getting your ass ganked a penalty, but doesn't that kind of come with the PvP territory?  You don't stop playing an FPS because someone bounced a grenade off a wall on your head.  Not me of course...  I never die.  But it does have to be meaningful in the way of being intuitive and rewarding.  I don't know man.  Give the guys at Blizzard a little bit different direction and background back when they were at the drawing board, and we may be having a completely different conversation.  Just that nobody's really pushed the genre since those games you mentioned.  Nobody with Blizzard's IP anyway.  Could you imagine a well done Starcraft RvR game?  I'd play.  You would too.  In no way would that game be niche, even if it didn't do as well as they hoped.  It would still be a money tree.

The point is that's definitely not what PvP server means in WoW, so there's really no reason to block transfers.

You're playing with the definition of the word "meaningful", which is like cheating; the very features that make the PvP "meaningful" as defined by those who WANT those features and use the word also make the game niche / unpopular with the masses.

This is like every hardcore RAID 4EVA guy except with imagined interwebs social strata. Fabulous levels of fail here :inluv:

I think you're replying to me?  Hmm.  Still beside the point, but who knows what meaningful features those are, or how big a market they have 'till we see them?  Sure you can say that you generally want outdoor PvP, and that it has to be more fun than it is in WoW.  But I'm not claiming to have the answer in anything other than REALLY general terms as far as developing that game.  What I am claiming is that whatever the right blend of those features is, it isn't in WoW.  In the absence of that, it's pretty pointless to pin people down to their initial server choice when everyone else can go where they please.

Whether or not some other game like that is 'niche' could boil down to a lot of things that aren't related to actual game development too, like marketing, payment plan, etc.  So it's pretty hard to just sit here and say, yea it will work, or no it won't.  That's all basically irrelevant to this thread, but when people start throwing around the words 'niche' and 'market...'  How do you know?  Didn't Kodak sell the idea for the PC because they thought the market would only be for old ladies to store recipes?  Niche market indeed.  They have a way of being a Pokemon fad away from run-away popularity.  If there's one thing WoW does prove, it's that if you do shit people like, and do it well, then your 'niche' market has a way of growing.

 :-)

Here is what I think the reason must be.  They are probably concerned that it will become very popular to level in peace on a PvE server, then switch over and gank face on a PvP server.  This could lead to a problem where the lower level game on a PvP server is all but nonexistent, as anyone with $20* to spare would never level up on a PvP server.

Conversely, the high level game on PvE servers could languish, since there's no reason to keep your 70 on a server where all you can do is PvE, when you can switch over and gank lowbies in addition to high-end PvE.

Worst case scenario: the defacto game becomes to level on PvE and switch to PvP, entailing a "hidden cost" of $20, then people would start saying that was Bilzzard's plan all along, to milk us of an additional $20 per character.  Conspiracy! (never mind that we asked for it)

That's just my guess.  It's sociology, people!


*or whatever a transfer costs

A strata that is so imaginary that you would pay to integrate with it, because the one in which you are stuck (according to your own words in previous posts), sucks.

No, sparky. It's not imagined social strata. The game is taking place on a different server set. You're ablooblooblooing because you don't want filthy carebears mixing with the pvp caste. My argument is that the game is broken because they've focused so much effort on raiding and the raiding is taking place elsewhere. And you know who's NOT wanting the status quo on this? The top flight raiding guilds.

I know this thread is in English, but I stopped understanding it ages ago.

 :wink:

Was DAOC really a niche game, or is that not world PvP as being discussed? That is basically what I want from WoW 'world' PvP, a DAOC type frontier environment. AV without the instancing and with more depth and persistence. (which is supposedly coming with WotLK... but it may yet be a entire zone dedicated to the awesomeness of lolsand and contested towers.)


I'm not "hardcore" enough to play on a fully open PvP server without being annoyed, but I don't like the stupid of the PvP flag system on PvE servers either. AV comes close to what I really want from my PvP, but the way the instance gets gamed and the total lack of persistence and flow really diminish the appeal.

I want to die in a RvR zone, etc  :-P 

Depends on the scale we're talking, I suppose.  In the grand scheme of games MMOs were a niche at the time of DAoC, but the game itself was popular for a time.   Of course, on the grand scale of 'all games' pvp is much more popular, just completely meaningless outside of ladders and 'sport' PVP that is so hated by the hardcore "I wanna gankster or it's meaningless" here.

Fun opinion time: DAoC was only 'successful'* because Verant couldn't be bothered to support PvP in EQ due to Brad McQuaid's idiocy. Of course, Brad McQuaid's idiocy about PvP in EQ was a direct reaction to Raph Koster's idiocy about PvP in UO.

*Read: 2/3rds the subscribers of EQ at peak, and lost them at a faster rate. IOW, Mythic were worse at MMOG development than Verant.

Supposedly the zone in WotLK for open-world PvP combat with a destructible environment is about the size of Westfall.

I would love to see a Westfall/Deadmines-themed battleground.

Tying in with Deadmines and thinking of Freespace 2, I'd love to see world PVP in an area that is being subjected to naval bombardment (medieval ships with cannons or ballistae or magic) while the players fight through it.

I love WoW's outdoor PvP system.  Its perfect for what I want- I am doing quests most of the time, and when I get bored with that I start doing random solo pvp.  I understand how its bad for people who want MASS outdoor pvp, but I have tons of fun doing stuff like this (as a balance druid):

1)  One man stalking of 3,4, or 5 equal level players.  The trick is  you wait until the end of a big pull, and then finish the weakest, sprint, and stealth.  They chase you, you escape, you circle back and do it again.  If you do it enough, you can make even a big group REALLY paranoid (and can go for a total wipe if they are doing something like fighting a quest elite, such as the giant near the giant diamond hill in the barrens-esque outdoor zone).  Invisible emoting ALONE can wipe a group- I did it next to a healer once after wiping their group and he ran and his group died. 

2)  Get out the Mind control cap when a 70 is protecting a lower level as the newbie quests.  Get the 70 mesmerized, and together you beat on his partner. 

3)  Kill someone, and then watch as they repeatedly fake-attack mobs (start a spell, then stop and spin around).  When they finally do get a monster, kill them.  Then, come back and wait.  They will spend 10 or 15 minutes in hopeless paranoia, and maybe even fly to a remote spot and put their back to the wall.  Wait 30 or 45 minutes until they FINALLY let their guard down (not the first time they let their guard down, but the second) and kill them again.  Most don't expect a pvper to be that patient, and it really steams them.  Once I did this enough to a guy that when he flew to a new spot and I followed, he stayed in the air.  I flew next to him and we stared at each other for 45 minutes. 

4) Roll a low-level engineer with the Rocket Helmet and have fun at the STV arena.  I've gotten the grand prize (from at least 12 tokens) on three different level 38ish characters by waiting out an epic level 70 arena battle, then bonking the last combatant with the Rocket Helmet.  Its even better if they are on your side because they swear at you. 

So, for a guy who hates arenas and BGs, WoW pvp is fine in my book. 

So, you like griefing people, what's the point?

Yea, there are awesome mechanics for solo PvP in the game.  That's why I think it's so sad.  Point is, whether you like MASS PvP, or solo PvP, not too many people are doing it outdoors, as there's no incentive.  Sure I'd love massive battles and shit.  But wouldn't your solo stalking be more exciting if there were people out there stalking you?  Wouldn't it also be more fun for you if there were LOTS of people running around fighting?  I mean, I love LOLpwning some random grinding noob too, but it gets old.  To me, it would be more exciting if that guy were out there fighting other people with no excuses.  It would be more fun for me to kill him if it meant something for my guild/affiliation/what-have-you.  It would be more fun if I killed him enough times, then it MEANT some kind of advantage to me and my friends.

There was a Horde guild who wanted to open the AQ gates on my server.  We wanted to do it.  So, we crushed them.  We literally camped them out of Silithus, to the point where they came on our vent and begged us to let their tank (who we had a circle of people around for hours) out of the zone so they could go raid.  That was awesome.  Way better than ganking noobs.  We were only there because we had a REASON to be.  We never went back after we were done.  Needs to be more of that in order for something to qualify as a "PvP" server.  You can't really justify calling it that if nobody actually PvP's outside instances other than the random gank.

We've had this discussion before, except about 'fixing' battlegrounds. What it comes down to is that in WoW people only care enough to fight when there's something other than fun in it for them. This is why AV is a big dumb PvE rush and the other battleground aren't played nearly as much - the time vs reward sucks. World PvP doesn't occur because people don't enjoy being rolled by the opponent's inevitable zerg, and because a fight is much more quickly found in a battleground. There ARE rewards for world PvP in 3 different areas in Outland and even there the PvP is only sporadic. So what more do you want?

[edit] Also how do you know mass PvP is fun if you've never done it?

Triforcer and Musashi have just demonstrated why FFA PvP will never be any more than a niche market.

EDIT: I'll specify. Your fun is spoiling the fun of someone else. That doesn't scale well and doesn't lead to customer retention.

My thoughts exactly. Especially with regards to that group part. If you're gaining fun by pissing off a group of people that is bad from the developer's perspective.

PvP arguments aside, the restriction is dumb and all it really serves to do is hurt raiding guilds by restricting the recruitment pool. Recruitment is the lifeblood of guilds, the currency of raiding. This artificial restriction hurts guilds and players on both sides of the fence and there really is no upside to it. Not only that but it goes against Blizzard's policy of not tying people to restrictions at creation. They've said they understand that people get frustrated by things like the abilities in Diablo being unchangeable hence things like Talents being infinitely changeable. Someone rolling on a PvE server is stuck there and that's something they probably won't realize when they first start playing.

Personally, I'm just thankful that I'm a leader in one of the top end PvE (as in server type) guilds. If I was in a middle of the road guild stuck on a PvE server I'd be pretty damn frustrated that roughly 75% of the top end guilds out there are unavailable for me to join. Yes, PvP servers are more popular for top end raiding by a large margin. I have no idea why this is as it is opposite what you would expect. Regardless, that's how it rolls out.

Just some stats (according to Bosskillers):
9 of the top 10 raiding guilds worldwide are on PvP servers
40 of the top 50 raiding guilds worldwide are on PvP servers
79 of the top 100 raiding guilds worldwide are on Pvp servers

It's pretty lopsided. Kind of ironic given the faction imbalance, but Horde vs. Alliance is actually much more balanced that PvP vs. PvE. 48 of the top 100 raiding guilds worldwide are horde.

Another sizable imbalance is US vs. EU.
7 of the top 10 guilds worldwide are EU
59 of the top 100 guilds worldwide are EU

Maybe it is a niche market at the moment.  But I think that given time to develop the right combination of tech/features for the right game, the number of people who think that sort of risk actually heightens their game play might surprise you.  Maybe they don't know it yet.  All it would take is one opportunity to be on the winning side just once.

Also, I didn't say my fun was spoiling someone else's fun.  I said my fun was competing with someone who would have done the exact thing as me if I wasn't more proactive about it.  It forced me to be a better planner, and because of that I won.  But he knew the repercussions, and he wasn't mad.  If either one of us didn't want to participate we always had the option of bowing down, and letting the other one proceed.  But of course we weren't gonna do that.  We picked a PvP server after all.  To be fair to him, he had his fair share of victories against us too.  That's the way it goes.  Sure it's harsh.  That's one of the selling points, no?  I don't buy for one second that this has any ramifications on retention in any way.  If anything it makes people try harder.  It did me.

You're new to this aren't you.  We've had this discussion for the last 10 years.. it hasn't changed. Please lets not have it again, and someone post a link to the last one.

Here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=134.0)'s one I like from 2004.

For some reason I missed that quote originally.  Fucking hilarious.

 :-D

Wow, yeah awesome.  Truly wondrous.  You're another sociopathic Cunt.  We've never seen them in online games before.

I'm somewhere in that past discussion, but I just wanted to bring up something that UO had that made the outdoor ganking extremely bearable and even as Musashi says, fun because of the danger element...

If you could live for two seconds, you had a completely un-interruptible spell that you could cast from a scroll (no magery required) to get you out of there. All it took was two seconds to cast recall and, if you were paying attention, the only thing you lost was your walk from your nearest rune and a minor expense for the scroll material. You could even bind a "Ha, Ha, can't catch me, fuckers!" to your Fkey while you cast it, if I remember correctly.

I don't have a problem with the cat-and-mouse as long as the mouse has a chance to get to the mousehole.

Now, the rest the stuff, talking about curbstomping some random guild until they begged you to stop because they got in the way of your internet dick lengthening contest... you lost me.

Holy shit!  :-o

That level of inconvenience: Having your play interrupted and needing to return from your nearest rune location. Substitute "graveyard" for "rune location" and that's called "a PvP death" in WoW. It pisses a lot of people off.

Granted I played a rogue, most of the time, but for me getting away from someone who tried to gank me, never was a problem.

Usually I died only when I decided to fight back. Which happend a lot.

I usually only got angry when I got killed more than once or twice in a row, and even then I just logged of for a few minutes/took a biobreak or whatever.

I do not know of many people who really where really angry because of dying in WoW.

Not in a "OMFG, I am quitting this broken game !!1!1!!eleven!!"  at least.

They don't quit the game because WoW offers them the choice of non-PvP servers where they can safely play in harmony with their other-faction brethren. A game which didn't offer its own Trammel would simply see them flee to another game which did.

Back to the original post, this is significant because?

I was expecting another scandalous story like how Eve dev were cheating in their own game.
As for the whole pro and anti world PvP, it's pointless in WoW. There's no great relic to be won or lost (DAoC), territorial control benefit was minimal at best in the Outland and lol@people who thinks lowbie ganking is h4rdc0r3. Huddling in some discreet corner grinding away in fear != not pvp skill

A quicker way of starting that would have been "Well, duh, that's because you're playing on a PvP server. The people that find that shit annoying are playing on the PvE servers".

Man, I got carried away reliving past glory.  I don't know how much you folks know about the AQ event, but viewing my statements in the context of competing with another guild to open it makes what I said seem a little less 'sociopathic cunt-ish.'  In other words, I'm not talking about rolling around in a grinding area with my band of internet dicks fucking with noobs.  I'm talking about two equally geared and progressed guys of opposing factions WILLINGLY going at it for ultimate epeen glory, and that's a bit different.  Only reason I bring it up in the first place is to point out that brief time in WoW history where zone control meant something.  That was to say that since the event and zone were designed for those kind of fights, it wasn't unreasonable.  So to be more clear:  If WoW had more shit like this, then yea, no PvE to PVP transfers.  Since it doesn't, fuck it, let them transfer.

I'm of the mind that there's got to be a happy medium out there where players like me who enjoy shit like that don't piss off the players in this thread that don't.  I'm in no way a proponent of mechanics that fuck people who aren't at the same level, or otherwise aren't willing participants.  But that, I have to admit, is kind of relative to how seriously you take yourself when you get killed in PvP.  If you take dying on a PvP server as getting fucked, well, I guess I just don't take it as seriously as some.  Especially in a game like WoW where it's impossible to get camped unless you're a total retard, or you keep trying to fight when you're at a disadvantage.

The AQ event also transferred a lot of money from rich veterans who wanted rep rewards to sweaty noobs who saw a huge jump in the market for linen cloth and copper bars.  It also featured an epic cooking recipe.  And now you point out that it briefly gave a point to PvP.  I don't see how  you could get more perfect than that, but everyone else's response was OMG COCKBLOCK!!1!

More AQ-style events plz.

This time with better server architecture in place FIRST and less buggy events.  :x

Only the Hardcore Raiders saw it as a cockblock.

The only cooking recipe my priest lacks is that one. :(

I liked the AQ event too.  It sure did a great job of redistributing gold.

There was a recipe there?

The quests are still there.  It's just a matter of getting the people together to do it.

Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21025#teaches-recipe)

It was the best cooking recipe in the game, but it's obsolete with TBC.  It was also a huge pain in the dick to farm, as the meat is from elite chimeras only found on the south island off the coast of Feralas (Read:  BFE).  The combine was Goblin Rocket Fuel, which required Volatile Rum.  Also a huge pain in the dick, but at least you could do it by yourself.

That quest line was one of the worst examples of short sighted thinking at Blizz yet. As an example of what made it suck so badly, the chimera hide (whatever the single drop off the named elite was) was a rare drop and it only dropped for one person. 25 sta food is barely obsolete, though why they didn't retrofix all food buffs to last a half hour when they changed it in BC is beyond me.

Well, the quest chain was designed with the intention of only one person per guild (or raid) being able to do it a week, as the whole chain was really a one-off part of the opening event. So it being a single drop really made sense in that context. Remember, you had to grind from max hated up through to Neutral by collecting carapaces in hell silithus before you could even get to the "chicken" quest before the gates were open.

It would not necessarily have been a bad idea to "nerf" the quest later on when every server had the gates open, I will agree to that. But as far as how that chain was designed, the goggles being a random drop in MC (that you could clear the whole zone completely and not get like we did) and the Eranikus event in Moonglade being too much for their servers to handle were really the only parts that were totally and utterly annoying. Oh and the sheer cost of making an Arcanite Bouy making anyone completing the chain after the gates were opened seem to be an utter and complete waste.

And that's the key. When I'm running along at lvl 30 or so and a lvl 70 decides to spend 2 seconds absolutely demolishing me, well, that's frustrating. I'm sure as hell not going to pick on him, but out of the kindness of his heart, he picks on me and I have absolutely no chance of surviving or even getting away. Usually if I'm attacked and realize it's a 70, I just stand there and let him get his rocks off for 2 seconds and then just rez up and go back to what I was doing.

Hence why I called it short sighted. Why even bother having the item that started the quest drop after the One had opened the gates?
And if you do let it keep dropping, why not make the quests doable after the gates open?

If WoW supported PvE to PvP transfers, I'd resub. Some friends are on a PvP server that I'd play with, but having to go through 1-60 again makes me want to stab myself.

If by 'the quests' you mean the entire chain barring the final opening of the gates and the opening event, then it is doable. Several people in Goon Squad have done them after the fact and then transferred to some other server to get their bug mount and title.